Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-hvd4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T14:05:55.947Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Emergent creationism: another option in the origin of the soul debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2014

JOSHUA R. FARRIS
JOSHUA R. FARRIS*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, England, BS8 1TH, UK e-mail: jfarris@bristol.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the debate over the theology of the soul's origin, there have traditionally been three broad views on origins. These include creationism, traducianism, and Origen's pre-existence view. In the recent philosophy of religion and mind literature, William Hasker posits an alternative view of origins called emergent substance dualism. As a contribution to this discussion, I put forward one novel option as a via media between simple creationism and Hasker's emergent substance dualism, wherein it has relevant overlapping features found in the two contrary positions. I suggest that this view is a variation of creationism like emergentism where the material part (i.e. the brain) has some positive causal role in the soul's coming to be as a discrete effect of one divine cause. I argue that emergent creationism (as I call it) is a viable option deserving the attention of philosophers and theologians.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 321 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burrell, Peter (1993) Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press).Google Scholar
Foster, John (2001) ‘A brief defence of the Cartesian view’, in Corcoran, Kevin (ed.) Soul, Body, and Survival: The Metaphysics of Human Persons (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press), 15–19.Google Scholar
Hasker, William (1999) The Emergent Self (London & Ithaca: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Hasker, William (2011) ‘Souls beastly and human’, in Baker, Mark C. & Goetz, Stewart (eds) The Soul Hypothesis (New York & London: Continuum), 209–211.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Paul (2009) ‘Cartesian Composites’, in Essays on Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, David Albert (2004) The Soul of the Embryo: An Enquiry into the Status of the Human Embryo in the Christian Tradition (London & New York: Continuum).Google Scholar
Koons, Robert (2000) Realism Regained (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Patrick & George, Robert P. (2008) Body−Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian (2001) ‘Souls dipped in dust’, in Corcoran, Kevin (ed.) Soul, Body and Survival (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press), 120–138.Google Scholar
Moreland, J. P. (2008) Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (New York & London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Pasnau, Robert (2004) Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologia 1a 75-89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Rea, Michael C. (2011a) ‘Hylomorphism and the Incarnation’, in Marmodoro, Anna & Hill, Jonathan (eds) The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 134–152.Google Scholar
Rea, Michael C. (2011b) ‘Hylomorphism reconditioned’, Philosophical Perspectives, 25, 341–358.Google Scholar
Siegfried, Francis (1908) ‘Creationism’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, IV (New York: Robert Appleton Company), <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04475a.htm> [accessed 24 July 2012].Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (1995) ‘Non-Cartesian substance dualism and materialism without reductionism’, Faith and Philosophy, 12, 505–531.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore (2003) Aquinas: Arguments of the Philosophers (London & New York: Routledge).Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard (1997) The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard (2013) Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Tanner, Kathryn (2005) God and Creation in Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).Google Scholar
Wachter, Daniel von (2003) ‘Free agents as cause’, in Petrus, K. (ed.) On Human Persons (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag), 183–194.Google Scholar