1 - The Rise and Fall of Early Christian Physicalist Soteriology

Summary

Physicalist soteriology, which proposes that Christ’s incarnation has a universal effect on the nature of every subsequent human being, rises as a logical and organic fourth-century development of the early Christian commitment to a universal fall combined with reflection on the Adam-Christ parallel. It falls because of the seemingly unrelated rise of the creationist ensoulment model that, in proposing that God directly creates and implants an unfallen soul in each fetus, removes any logical connection between individual souls and the fall of Adam. When humanity was viewed as a corporate whole in early Christianity, physicalist soteriology was a natural theological position that was never either criticized or defended. There are several signs manifesting a renewal of societal and academic openness to corporate understandings of humanity in theology, which suggests that physicalist soteriology is a part of the Christian tradition that may also prove to have contemporary theological value.