[asa] seminar on the soul and the body: Fri. April 20, 3:30

For the Grand Rapids, MI, area:

The next Christian Perspectives in Science seminar at Calvin College is

       Friday, April 20, 3:30 PM in Science Building room 110.

Speaker: John Cooper, Calvin Theological Seminary

  Title: A Classical Christian Emergent Anthropology

Abstract:
  I'll argue that biblical anthropology presents a holistic or integral
view of soul and body, but one in which persons can exist temporarily
without earthly bodies. I'll then present a version of this anthropology
-- the generically Thomist view that that soul is the subsistent form
(organizing, empowering principle) of the material body that constitutes
humans as one spiritual-physical substance (not two-substance dualism) --
a living organism with human capacities. But by God's supernatural power,
the soul can exist apart from the body between death and resurrection.
(It is not naturally immortal.) I modify Thomism by opting for a
traducian rather than a creationist view of the soul: the union of sperm
and egg is not merely biological but produces a new spiritual-physical
individual. The soul does not "emerge" and develop from mere physical
stuff by metaphysical magic (as in physicalism), but because the
person-spiritual capacities are potentially present from conception.
====
http://www.calvin.edu/~lhaarsma/ChrPerspSciSeminarPage.html

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Apr 13 16:23:33 2007