How Understanding the Soul Impacts the Way We Serve: Stan Wallace

Full-Text Transcript

As pastors and ministry leaders, why is a thorough understanding of the body, mind, and soul so vital as we minister in a rapidly shifting world?

Jason Daye
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Stan Wallace. Stan is the president and CEO of Global Scholars. He travels the world, writing and speaking on issues of apologetics, ethics, and Christian thought. His most recent book is entitled Have We Lost Our Minds?: Neuroscience, Neurotheology, the Soul, and Human Flourishing. Together, Stan and I explore concepts around the brain, the mind, and the soul. Stan shares the dangers of some of the extremes in these conversations and helps point us to a healthy middle way that resonates with biblical truth. Now I want to encourage you to hang with us in this conversation because Stan has to explain some deep concepts, but in the second half of the conversation, Stan really helps us understand the implications of all of this when it comes to ministering and serving in the world we live in today. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to yet another insightful episode of Frontstage Backstage. I am your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the honor of sitting down with an experienced, trusted ministry leader, all in an effort to dive into a conversation and explore some topics to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you embrace healthy rhythms in life that help you flourish in both life and leadership. We are proud to be a part of the Pastor Serve Network. Not only do we engage in a conversation every week, but we also provide an entire toolkit for you and the ministry team at your local church to dig more deeply into the topic we discuss. You can find that toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. There, you’ll find a number of resources, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. There, you’ll find insights and questions to help you dig more deeply into the topic, and we encourage you to take advantage of that resource. At Pastor Serve, we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you would like to learn more about how you can receive a complimentary coaching session from one of our trusted ministry coaches, you can get those details at PastorServe.org/freesession. So be sure to check that out as well. Now, if you’re joining us on YouTube, please give us a thumbs up and take a moment to drop your name and the name of your church in the comments below. Giving us a thumbs up is a great way for the YouTube algorithm to share our show with other pastors and ministry leaders so they can benefit as well. So, thank you for the taking time to do that. We love getting to know our audience better, so as you drop your name below, our team will be praying for you and for your ministry. So thank you for that. Then, whether you’re joining us on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, please take time to subscribe or to follow so you do not miss out on any of these great conversations. We have a great conversation for you today. At this time, I’d like to welcome Stan Wallace to the show. Stan, welcome.

Stan Wallace
Thanks, Jason. Good to be with you.

Jason Daye
Yeah. So good to have you with us. We’re going to dive into a topic that may not be one that everyone spends a lot of time thinking about. However, we’re grateful that you do, Stan. That you do invest the time, and you’re able to distill a lot of things in such a way that we, as pastors and ministry leaders, can wrap our minds around it and dig in a little more deeply. So, thank you for elevating these types of conversations for us. We’re going to be talking about something that humankind has been pondering, considering, and wrestling with for millennia, right? Since the beginning of time, our minds, our bodies, and our souls. Actually, Stan, some people spend more time, like you, focusing on this, digging into this, and we’re grateful for that. But Stan, why is it valuable for all of us, as pastors and ministry leaders, to take time to consider the realities and the relationships between mind, body, and soul?

Stan Wallace
Sure. Well, Dallas Willard wrote a lot on this and he’s been a mentor of mine in various ways. But he said, in one place, “The issue of human nature is of great importance, too important for us to leave alone. We must deal with it if we’re going to have anything useful to say about spiritual formation or the spiritual life that Jesus brings.” Then later he says, “Once we clearly acknowledge the soul, we can learn to hear its cries.” So it’s that broader issue of what is the soul. How is it related to the body? What are the implications of a proper anthropology, a theology of what we are, that then leads to flourishing and serving others well?

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s excellent, Stan. So, all this leads to the idea of spiritual formation. How do we draw closer to God? How do we know God more intimately? Then, how can we serve others, as you said, in the kingdom, in that understanding? So vitally important. Stan, you have recently written a book. It’s called Have We Lost Our Minds? Which is a great title, by the way, I like it. You dig really deeply into some more recent research developments in the field of neuroscience. We’re learning about ourselves because we’re blessed, God has blessed us, and we have people who are who are digging more deeply. We are understanding things at a deeper level than we have in the past, which is all important. So, Stan, can you help us with what are some of the more recent discoveries in these fields that we should probably be aware of or begin to pay a little more attention to, that’s going to help us do exactly what you said? Help us with understanding ourselves, understanding how God created us, understanding spiritual formation, and serving others.

Stan Wallace
Right. Yeah, actually, it’s more of a question of how recent discoveries have confused us, not helped us as much. There’s a lot of great research being done in neuroscience. We’re learning a lot about how the brain functions. But it’s raised a lot of questions for believers about, well, what does that mean for my immaterial reality, for my soul, for my spiritual life? How do I understand what I thought were immaterial things in light of what we’re learning from neuroscience, which seems to say that those are parts of the brain? My thoughts, my beliefs, and even my very self. So there’s this disconnect a lot of believers are feeling. Historically, we had an idea that we’re a soul and a body, and different views of how they connect. But, nonetheless, this duality of soul and body. Especially two recent, well not so recent, but developing discoveries in neuroscience are raising these questions. One is the increased correlations being made between certain neural events and certain “mental events”. So correlation between certain neural firings and a thought of lunch, or a desire to do something, or whatnot. So, trying to explain, what do we make of those correlations? Then also discoveries of the brain’s neuroplasticity, which is its ability to be reshaped. So some conclude that, well, that data means that really a thought is nothing more than that neural event, or the brain itself is what shapes itself, and we have no need anymore for the soul. In fact, there are Christians who call themselves Christian physicalists. For instance, Nancy Murphy, she’s a professor at Fuller Seminary. She says, “We need not postulate the existence of an entity such as a soul or mind in order to explain life and consciousness.” Joel Green’s also out there, a New Testament guy who takes the same line, and others. So there’s this whole growing group of Christian physicalists now among pastors and Christian counselors and others who are, again, I think, confused about how we interpret this data from neuroscience to understand what we are most fundamentally. The group that I’m writing to respond to is a group who called themselves neuro-theologians because they’re trying to take this understanding of us as either purely or at least fundamentally physical beings, fundamentally brains, and apply it to then, what does that mean for our spiritual formation? How do we learn more about our brain function so that we can better be formed in the image of Christ? I’m critiquing two very prominent authors who are advancing this idea, Jim Wilder and Kurt Thompson, in their popular books. Renovated is Jim Wilder’s book I’m critiquing and The Anatomy of The Soul is Kurt Thompson’s book that I take to task a little bit. Let me say at the outset that these are dear brothers in Christ. They have fantastic insights pastorally. They help a lot of people with what they have to say. Their motives are pure. I have no doubt. They certainly, in all their writings, clearly communicate they want to serve the kingdom. They want to serve the people who hear them speak or read their books. So, my concern is not at all with their pastoral ministry. The concern is with their anthropology. They tie their pastoral advice to, I think, a flawed anthropology, a flawed view of what we are, and inadvertently promote this physicalism, which, quite frankly, is, I think, a cancer, not only in the culture but in the church as it festers undiagnosed a lot of times in our churches.

Jason Daye
Okay, Stan, let’s dig in a little more so you can better explain to us what you see as the concerns around this idea of neuro-theology or becoming a Christian physicalist. What are the things that you see that don’t really align with biblical understanding, biblical truth, or those types of things?

Stan Wallace
Got it. So maybe first, I’ll just give a few examples of how this physicalism comes out in Thompson and Wilder’s writings. So one place Thompson says that it’s the left hemisphere of my brain that sets me apart as me. Basically makes me, me. In another place, the brain and the mind are terms that really are closely enough related to seem interchangeable. So in other words, when we talk about a mind, we’re really talking about a brain, and that’s where he spends his time, talking about what the brain does and how we should understand that better. Jim Wilder is the same. Talks about how “our brain creates and maintains a human identity”. Historically, that’s what the soul did, but he’s shifting it to the brain does that. Later, brain functions determine our character. Again, those historically have been dimensions of the soul. Truth, honesty, virtues, etc, etc. But he wants to say they’re brain functions. Then another place he says, that’s the conscious attention of the slow track of the brain that’s usually what we mean by mind. So this is very different than the historical, biblical, and I’d say philosophically justifiable understanding of what we are. From scripture, historically, the church all the way back, has understood that, no, we are a body, absolutely. Contrary to the Gnostics who wanted to deny the body as early as the writing of 1 John said, No, Jesus himself had a body. Bodies are important, but we’re also a soul. Scripture is really clear that we have an inner material dimension. Thirdly, Scripture is clear that they are deeply united to one another. The soul and body create a functional unity. In fact, you read through a lot of the Old Testament, and the person is referred to as sort of almost one thing because there’s this deep, deep unity between the soul and body. Which is very different than the way some have framed the soul-body relationship, which is really drawing on Plato more, which sees the soul kind of stuck in the body. It’s very unnatural, it’s very unhealthy, and the goal is to kind of get liberated from the body because it’s what holds us back. But the scriptural view, I think, has this deep, deep, healthy connection between soul and body. This is a view of the soul-body relationship that goes way back. It’s not a new idea. It’s the view of my mentor, JP Morland, who studied under Dallas Willard, and Dallas’s view also within Protestant circles, CS Lewis took this this approach. That’s why I think so many people really resonate with what he had to say. But it goes back in church history, through, say, Pope John Paul II drawing on Thomas Aquinas, all the way back to Aristotle, who, by the way, is also a Greek philosopher. Sometimes people identify Greek philosophy with this radical dualism of Plato, where spirit and matter are diametrically opposed, and spirit is good and matter is bad. But that’s only one Greek view. The other Greek view is the view from Aristotle, which I think is very consistent with the biblical record of the value and goodness of the material world, including our bodies and our being embodied. So there are three things scripture says. That we’re a soul. We’re a body. We’re deeply united. The last thing, equally important, the Scriptures are clear that our soul, ultimately, is primarily what we are because the soul is what endures when the body dies. So we do have life after death when, for instance, Jesus says to the thief on the cross today, you will be with Me in Paradise. Now your body won’t, but you will. So you’re that thing that will be in Paradise with Me. The soul is the thing that stands under and unifies all those other things that make us, us. Some of which we have when we’re embodied, like physical properties. But some of them are the properties of our mind, our thoughts, our beliefs, our desires, and our choices. So ultimately, it’s called a substantial soul. It’s a substance. It stands under. Dallas talks a lot about how, as a substantial soul, it naturally lives through the body. Of course, there’s an intermediate state when it doesn’t, but there’s the final resurrection, when, again, the soul and body are united, right? He talks a lot about how it’s so natural. In fact, here’s a quote from Dallas. “Matter, ordinary physical stuff, is the place for the development and manifestation of finite personalities, souls, individuals who in their bodies, have significant resources, either to oppose God or to serve Him.” So again, it’s just the natural place for our soul to fully flourish and be all we’re created to be as embodied being. So that’s the biblical teaching. That’s four points.

Jason Daye
That’s great, Stan. So as we look at that, then the concern, it seems, with neurotheology from your perspective, is that there is kind of a dismissal of soul, and even it sounds like, to some degree, mind, and the focus is on body, which is the actual brain, right? Because I think, to clarify, brain and mind are not the same thing, although sometimes we talk that way, just naturally. But the brain is body. Mind is separate. So is that what we’re looking at?

Stan Wallace
There are some important distinctions and I don’t know how much nuance to bring, but I will say this. Historically, now again, they’re two views, two dualistic views. Views of what we are as body and soul. The one that historically has run through the medieval thinkers, through Aquinas, into the work of, say, Dallas Willard, is this view that the immaterial dimension is much more than mind or the cognitive aspect of what we are. It’s all that immaterial dimension entails which is so much broader than just our mind. The Enlightenment Descartes advances another view of what we are. It’s called Cartesian Dualism from his name, Descartes, which really draws on Plato and that radical bifurcation, and he focused a lot on the immaterial thing as a thinking substance. So we tended to reduce the soul to just the mental aspect, the mind. So I want to refer to our immaterial dimension as our soul, not just our mental capacities, our mind, but the whole of what we are in terms of our immaterial reality that is our fundamental being. Though, never to discount the role the body plays as one of the ways the soul expresses itself. I go into this in some detail in two chapters in the book. So, having said that, it’s a little bit of a nuance, but it’s important. I’ll refer to soul and mind as a dimension of soul and where I think the problem lies because all of those dimensions of soul seem inadvertently, I do think,by the likes of Kurt Thompson and Jim Wilder, to be reduced to brain states, or, again, maybe a little technical, epiphenomena of brain states. A lot of people will read Wilder and Thompson and say, Well, no, they believe that there’s an immaterial reality. They believe people have thoughts, desires, beliefs, and even a soul. There are some passages where they seem to speak as if that’s true, so I’ll grant that, but that doesn’t mean they believe there’s actually a soul in the way you and I mean it. When we talk about soul, and historically, the church has talked about soul, the soul is a substance. In other words, it’s something that exists in its own right. Dallas talks a lot about this as it’s a real thing apart from the material. Okay, the other view, and then the view that they might take, is what’s called non-reductive physicalism. It’s the view of Nancy Murphy. Jim Wilder studied at Fuller for masters and doctors, so he probably picked this up from Nancy. But it says, yeah, there are these immaterial things like thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, but they’re ultimately, just for lack of a better word, secretions of the brain. They ride above. That’s where the word epiphenomena comes from, things that ride above the more fundamental reality. It’s kind of like smoke is to fire. I mean, smoke is different than fire. Clearly, they have different properties. Smoke is not as hot as fire, for instance, but smoke only exists because there’s fire, and when the fire goes out, the smoke goes away. So yes, it’s a different thing, smoke, but it’s not something that has its own subsistence, its own being. It exists in and of itself. It’s just a secretion of something more fundamental that gives it its reality. So that’s the non-reductive physicalism. I think it’s hard to say in their writings, they vacillate, but I think they may be non-reductive physicalists because they might affirm some of these mental properties as epiphenomena, but they’re certainly not the result of a substantial soul, which is the key.

Jason Daye
Excellent, excellent.

Stan Wallace
That’s the word because that’s physicalism.

Jason Daye
Right, right. So how does this ultimately, Stan, then impact us as pastors and ministry leaders? Why do we need to be thoughtful and careful as we assess these types of things, the anthropology of all this?

Stan Wallace
Absolutely, and that’s my chapters 9 and 10. How does a proper understanding of what we are help us? Chapter 9, love God, spiritual formation, and chapter 10, love others, ministry. So again, I’m going to revert back to one of the things Dallas said actually, near one of the last months of his life, he called JP to his bedside and said, Hey, there are some things I’m really concerned with. I think it needs to be something that you carry on. He said two things. JP shares this in the eulogy at Dallas’s memorial service. It’s online on YouTube. You can find it easily. But Dallas said that the first concern I have is that the spiritual formation movement needs to be established on more intellectually rigorous, philosophical, and theological underpinnings. In other words, we’ve got to think better about what we are, both from theology and I didn’t get into the philosophical support, which is important and very, very interesting, and very helpful. But now to get to your point, here’s where it all plays out for those in ministry, in terms of spiritual formation, both our spiritual formation and as we help others. It avoids the two extremes because there are these two other extremes in terms of anthropology. The one that I’ve been talking about is physicalism, where spiritual formation is reduced to neural formation. The fact is that you aren’t forming your brains, ultimately. You might be, well, no, you are using your brains in the process. But by putting the focus on neural formation, it really guts the essence of spiritual formation out of it and this is damaging to our souls. Again, Dallas says our preachers and teachers must emphatically and repeatedly acknowledge the soul as the living center of Christian life that it is. They must reassume their responsibility for the care of souls. So, as we do so and reject the physicalism, we can understand how the soul’s nature and operation make sense of things like living out our nature more and more as we grow spiritually. I’ve got a whole section on this idea of the soul flourishing and how we can help the soul flourish as we better understand what it is. As well as, as we understand how those different faculties of soul, our mental faculty, our emotional faculty, our volitional faculty, and so on. How they relate together causally and there can be limitations in one that affect the others. Or as we grow in one area, we can leverage that in other parts of our soul’s growth. But understanding the soul properly is essential to get there. Now on the other hand, so that’s why we have to affirm as a soul, not just a body, right? Contrary to the neuro-theologians. The other extreme, though, is this radical dualism of Plato through Descartes, where spiritual formation has nothing to do with our incarnate reality. It has nothing to do with us being embodied. So spiritual formation is just those immaterial things we do, devoid of our lived experience. Again, this is where Dallas made such a point about the spiritual disciplines, which are things we do in our bodies that affect our souls. So the holistic dualism that I argue for is the lineage through Aristotle, Aquinas, Lewis, Willard, and Moreland. That holistic dualism is not only consistent with the scriptures and what we can determine from philosophy, but it makes sense in terms of the practical role we have in ministry, related to spiritual formation. The other side of its ministry in terms of loving others and beyond soul care. So you may want me to say a few things about that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, this is good, Stan. This is helpful. So, the two extremes, this is kind of like a middle way between those two extremes. Quick question, do you think that the neurotheology movement is reactionary to the Cartesian understanding, and so it’s kind of like the pendulum maybe has swung too far, as things often happen, right?

Stan Wallace
Absolutely. Good insight. Yes. The Cartesian view has become so dominant, it has become associated with dualism, as if those are the same thing. My point is they’re not. There’s a third option here, the holistic dualism we Protestants have tended to throw out, if I could use theological language, the anthropological baby with the soteriological bathwater in the Reformation. We agree, as Protestants, with the sola fide, and so on and so forth. But we’ve tended to say, therefore there’s nothing we can learn from the medieval thinkers like Aquinas, Anselm, or others, right? They had a lot to say about the human person. It was not this Cartesian, platonic, radical bifurcation of body and soul. It was this deep unity that I’m arguing for and the middle way that I think we’ve lost in the Protestant tradition. In my book, I even cite NT Wright in one place where he says we need to have nothing to do with dualism because that’s caused so much harm in devaluing the physical realm. I grant that, if it’s a platonic Cartesian, but it misses the third option here that we just, as Protestants, aren’t familiar with. One of the reasons I had the opportunity to go study at Marquette, which is a Catholic University for my doctoral work because I wanted to understand what these guys were saying, even though I don’t agree with their theology in broad terms. When I read them, I thought, This is what Scripture is talking about, in terms of this unity I see, and the final Resurrection, and the eternal embodied state we’ll have after. So, yeah, I think that’s exactly right. Your point to react and throw away all dualism because I throw out Cartesian Dualism.

Jason Daye
That’s helpful. Very, very helpful. So as pastors and ministry leaders, we’re looking at this and thinking through this and processing through this, and trying to determine, hmm, again, because not everyone goes into the depth of this, as you and others have, right? But we all, as we hear and process through this, think, Oh, where do I fall on this spectrum? What are some helpful next steps, without someone having to go get a doctorate? What are the helpful next steps for pastors and ministry leaders who are saying, Okay, I see the value. I see the importance of this. I see the importance of understanding this for myself, and my formation, for teaching and serving others, and for serving the kingdom. What are some helpful, practical next steps for the everyday pastor or ministry leader to kind of move into and explore?

Stan Wallace
Yeah, good question. Let me tie my answer into both the earlier question implications regarding ministry and then some other ways that can play out. In seminary, we use for our systematic theology textbook Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology, and I still love it and refer to it often. He makes this statement in his section on anthropology. He says extraordinary care must be taken to formulate correctly our understanding of humanity as what humans are understood to be, will color our perception of what needs to be done for them, how it is done, and their ultimate destiny. So the implications for ministry and how we serve others are huge. Just to bullet-point some things in terms of evangelism and missions, this middle way, this holistic dualism, means we love the whole person. We love the body and care for the body, and we love and care for the soul. It allows us to treat people as they truly are. So that’s one implication. Another related to evangelism and missions is it doesn’t supplement or support this cultural narrative we have that all things can be explained physically. As that continues to grow in our culture, the things that we look at and think that’s not material. We say, yeah, really it is. If we continue to say that about the soul as Christians, yeah, that looks like it’s immaterial, but really it’s just our brains doing things. It continues to develop this plausibility structure in the terms of Lesslie Newbigin, that, yeah, it’s not plausible to believe in anything immaterial anymore. So, it’s less likely to believe moral values exist, or truth exists, or even God exists because increasingly, we’re explaining more and more as purely physical realities. So the whole realm of evangelism and missions is so influenced by how we understand the human person. It has to do with issues in Biomedical Ethics, of course. I use, as a case study, abortion. What are we? Also, when does the soul come to be if we understand ourselves to be in-souled persons? So I talk about the implications there. In terms of our social ethic, it has to do with whether there is such a thing as justice for all. Which is grounded in whether or not there’s actually something shared among everybody, so that everyone is equal, and our value is therefore not determined by our functional abilities, our social status, or whatever else. But that’s only true if there’s a shared human nature that bears the image of God. So that’s huge. Then there’s a whole range of implications as we practice our different professions. And I use eight as an example. Education, medicine, business, architecture, law, politics, science, computer science, and vocational industry. Where what we understand the person to be and I use these three examples, essentially physical or purely physical, radical bifurcation of soul and body, Cartesian Dualism, and a holistic dualist unity. That determines how let’s say, in medicine, we treat the person. If you’re a practicing physicalist, you come in and look at the chart. But if you’re a holistic dualist, you’re going to want to ask the patient lots of questions about how they’re feeling and get their first-person response because there’s a lot that’s going on that’s not just physical that might be contributing to their physical ailment. So now, not everyone is consistent. I think there’s some physicalists who operate as if they’re holistic dualists as physicians, for instance. But the point is, the more we think about this, the more intentional we can be in practicing our disciplines and our professions from an intentionally Christian perspective. In this way, I’m arguing an intentionally holistic dualist perspective. Now I can go on and talk about some other things real quickly.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I’d love to hear.

Stan Wallace
Okay, so shameless plug, a practical next step is to read the book. There’s so much more to try to unpack this and I know this is such a superficial 30,000-foot fly-by, but I think I’ve got some helpful things to say there for pastors and ministry leaders that go further. But more broadly, I’d say we need to continue as ministry leaders to think carefully about these things. Not only anthropology, but certainly anthropology. I’m often reminded of the wisdom of John Wesley. He was once asked, speaking to pastors, near the end of his time. He was a very seasoned minister of the gospel at this point and had a very effective ministry. He was asked by young pastors in training, what do I need to be effective like you have been? He said, there are four things you got to do. I mean, other things you can do. But there are four non-negotiables if you’re going to be effective for Christ. Now, everybody’s going to agree with the first three and the fourth will be like what? So he says, You’ve got to pray in a way that God hears you. Okay, check. You’ve got to be able to do evangelism in ways that people understand the true gospel. Check. You have to be able to exegete the Scripture. So a parishioner can come up to you and ask about a passage, and you can go forward and backward in context and explain what that means. Check. You’ve got to understand logic and metaphysics, and have critical thinking skills to understand the deeper issues of the faith and you can then articulate them to your congregation. What? The fact is that we have lost that in our seminary training and in our practice of ministry, being able to make distinctions, to see where an idea leads logically. That, by the way, the people in our ministries see, but sometimes we don’t, and so there’s a disconnect. So in this case, let me give you two places where we don’t think critically. We don’t make the connections that we ought to make. One is we see that in Scripture there’s a functional unity. Well, we see in Scripture there is a unity between soul and body, right? In the Old Testament, especially as you look at that, it almost, as I said, talks about the person as one thing. But we make the assumption that the unity is ontological unity. In other words, in our being, we’re one thing. It misses the distinction, no, unity could be ontological or could be functional. It could be two things that function in unison. Those both are ways something can be a unity, but we don’t make that distinction, and therefore we miss the fact that scripture continues through more and more of its unfolding, this idea that, no, we are an ontological duality. We’re a soul that lives past our body’s death, but we’re still a functional unity. So without making that distinction, we get all stuck, right? Or we’re out of touch with the history of thought and we assume that Greek thought is platonic thought. That Greek thought is this radical bifurcation of matter and spirit, whereas, no, that’s one Greek thinker, a very influential Greek thinker, Plato. But that is absolutely not the view. It’s contrary to the view of Aristotle, another pretty important Greek thinker, and we’re just out of touch with it. So, having a sense of, hey, it’s important to think about these things, to understand logically what’s being said and its implications, to make distinctions, and to understand the history of thought. That’s all important for all of us to do. That’s what John Wesley’s trying to get at. The third thing I want to say is very important. Two more things, and then I’ve probably talked your ear off here.

Jason Daye
No, this is good.

Stan Wallace
Let’s get a few things on the table that are super important in practical ways. Usually, and I am certain there are counter-examples, but usually, I have found that the middle ground between extremes turns out to be the right place to be on a whole range of issues. Again, certainly, counter-examples can be given, but certainly in this issue, right? One extreme is some form of physicalism, either reductive or non-reductive physicalism then the neurotheologians, either explicitly or implicitly adhere to. The other extreme is this radical dualism. The middle ground is holistic dualism. Yes, bodies are important, souls are important. There’s a deep unity, but ultimately we’re a soul that has a body. Both, and. So that’s a practical takeaway. Hey, here’s an example of a middle position that helps answer both the realities that both extremes identify, but avoid their excesses. Then the last point I want to make is that we are a body of Christ. None of us can do everything or should do everything. That’s a truism, so no one has a problem with that. But we tend to fail to apply that when it comes sometimes to addressing these kinds of issues. For instance, this is an issue in theology and philosophy, so when we speak, teach, or write on this, and this is where I’m challenging Thompson and Wilder because they didn’t do this. When we speak, teach, or write on this issue, we ought to look to those who have training theologically and philosophically in anthropology, so that we can benefit from the body of Christ and not have to think we’ve got to bring everything to the table. I’ve actually included in my book some suggestions for further reading by very thoughtful believers who have done extensive work on this. John Cooper, being the theologian, his book Body, Soul and Life Everlasting is a very, very thorough deep dive into the biblical data concerning what we are. Then, well, I did a lot more in the philosophical data of what we are, summarizing quite a few folks like Dallas Willard, JP Morgan, Thomas Aquinas, and others. But again, as the body of Christ, we should work together on these things and be helped by one another.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good, Stan. I’m tempted to ask something that could open up an absolute Pandora’s box. So I’m gonna ask it. I know we’ve spent a lot of time together, those of you who are watching or listening in, but I’m going to ask it because some of your speaking, some of what you shared, has kind of prompted some thoughts in my mind. So I’m going to ask it. Maybe it will take a long time to process through, maybe not, right? Maybe you could distill something for us. But there are lots of conversations in culture today around identity. It seems that this conversation that we’re having today relates pretty directly to conversations around identity. Talk to us a little bit about that, Stan, because I think that’s, as I was thinking about, well, how does this impact where the rubber’s hitting the road and some of the conversations that we’re having in ministry. Identity is a huge conversation, whether it’s a gender identity, sexual identity, or any other type, I mean, it’s just a massive conversation. It seems that there’s some connection in understanding here. So talk to us a little bit about that because this might be something that would be really helpful to us in ministry as well as we’re serving, right?

Stan Wallace
Absolutely yes. Very insightful. I very briefly touched on this. A lot more can be said. It could be a sequel I make it to at some point, or somebody else might have done some things I’m not familiar with. But a number of things can be said. One, and throughout the book, I use as the motif, let’s just think about this question from these three perspectives. Physicalism of some form, Cartesian Dualism, and holistic dualism. So I’ll do the same here. So if you’re a physicalist, it’s sort of a non-starter because your identity is your body. That’s all you are. So set that aside. It becomes an issue when you’re a duelist of some sort, either a holistic or a Cartesian duelist. So for instance, let’s take the issue of identity related to race, equality, justice issues, and whatnot. I mentioned that earlier. If you’re a duelist of any stripe, then you have something beyond the physical that makes you the same as everyone else. If you’re just physical, then we all revert to matter. So there’s nothing that unites us at all, and no basis for equal rights or justice for all. But yeah, if we’ve got something that is immaterial and shared by all of us, namely humanness, where the image of God resides, I believe, then we can affirm in the deepest terms and beyond quoting scripture, which is very important. But we’ve also got other reasons for the culture that doesn’t buy scripture right to be able to come alongside and say, Yeah, we agree. There are equal rights. There is justice for all that is, in our view, not only biblically grounded but grounded in the very nature of the person. This is again, why I think Wesley and others said it’s important to have a broader understanding of the philosophical issues, to be able to articulate these things in the public square. So that’s certainly true. No matter what one’s gender, sexual identity, ethnicity, or whatever it is, it’s irrelevant because we’re all sharing this fundamental thing that makes us what we are and grounds our value. Now sexual identity issues. Let’s go there. Again, if you’re a physicalist, it’s a non-starter because you’re just a body and so you’re whatever your body is because you’re a physical thing. The issue comes in when, no, I’m in some way a spiritual being, and I’m somehow related to my body. Now, if you’re a Cartesian dualist, where there’s this very, very loose connection, it’s kind of like water in a cup. Yeah, the water’s in the cup, but it’s superficial. It doesn’t affect the body or doesn’t affect the cup or the water. It’s just a container. That’s a Cartesian view. Well, in that case, you, the ultimate self, the soul, are stuck in a body that might be different than what you really are. So you might be of one gender, and you’re stuck in a body that’s a different gender, if you’re a Cartesian dualist, okay? If you’re a holistic dualist, the view I take, that would be impossible. This gets a little bit into the metaphysical weeds if you will. This is the field that this is in, metaphysics, in the Western tradition. Now, in the Eastern tradition, metaphysics means something very different, crystals and whatnot, right? In the Western tradition, it means the views of what a thing is. So when you do metaphysics, you’re asking, what is something? So when we’re talking about, what is the human person, you’re doing metaphysics, a certain field of metaphysics, right? So on the view I’m taking, the holistic dualist view, by the way, it goes by six or eight other names that I list in the book, Thomistic dualism, Thomistic-like dualism, Thomistic hylomorphism, functional unity, I think, as one theologian uses, but don’t get confused. There are all these different terms, but I use holistic dualism, which is what Cooper uses. The soul actually creates the body to accomplish its ends in the world. That’s the way God created our souls to be able to structure a body “around” itself, not physically, of course, but around itself, so that it can actually engage in the world in ways that it flourishes and it accomplishes God’s purposes. So if that’s the case, my body is simply one expression of my soul, just like my faculty of mental capacities and my faculty of volitional capacities are aspects of my soul as well. I’ve got a diagram in the book of those faculties of soul and how they relate to the different sense organs in the body itself and how that then feeds back sense data for us to engage the world. Now, if that’s the case, again, that’s chapters five and six, I think, what is the soul and how it relates to the body. But if that’s the case, then our body is simply an expression of our soul. You can’t have a body that’s different than your soul by definition. So it’s just a matter of whether someone’s a Cartesian, a Thomistic, or a holistic dualist, as to where one understands this issue. Now I’ve just given a metaphysical evaluation. There’s so much more involved in that conversation that’s emotionally laden, that’s socially, and relationally laden. Pastors are so much better than I at engaging it at that level. That’s why they’re pastors, and I’m not. But from as much as we philosophers might help pastors think about these things, to then articulate in the right ways, in the right times, that’s important. Those are important issues to understand.

Jason Daye
Absolutely. Thank you for that. I’m glad I asked because I’m sitting there wrestling with it in my mind. I’m like, Okay, I know this is going long, everybody, but it was just one of those questions. I’m glad I asked. I think that’s very, very helpful. Stan, as we’re kind of winding this down, I would love to just give you a couple of minutes just to share, what is your encouragement to pastors and ministry leaders, thinking about the world in which they’re serving and the challenges that we have? What is your encouragement to them?

Stan Wallace
Wow, great question. A few things come to mind right away. One, the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and we need to preach the word in season and out of season, which includes, I think, understanding those things that the scriptures either imply, but we can bring greater clarity to, like this. I think of the ancient creeds. Scripture was clear that God is a trinity, but we, in the first few centuries, had a hard time figuring out exactly, how do we talk about that? Really saying ultimately it’s a mystery, but we’ve got to have some sense of, how do we help people understand this. At the end of the day, they look to the resources of Greek philosophy, the idea of a nature, ousia, an essence, and of a person, right? Those are categories from Greek philosophy that were very helpful in the formation of some of the important creeds, like the Nicene Creed and others. So in this day and age, God has raised up a very, very robust cadre of Christian thinkers in not only theology but philosophy. I think the two areas deal with these big questions and they ought to be consulted, whether their writings or have them in to speak on these issues or whatnot, could be so helpful, I think, to pastors to accurately handle the word of truth. Again, in the Reformation, we tended to throw out that and tended to think of Scripture as just, let’s just look to the Scriptures. Whereas we would all affirm, in theory, there’s general revelation. God has revealed truth beyond what he writes in Scripture, which we can know in other ways and we certainly say it concerning science. We can know truth through scientific inquiry. Well, my point is, that we can know through philosophical inquiry as well, from my field, and we can say it out of other fields as well. But pastors could be helped, and I hope they are and encouraged to do so by some of these issues. I’d also say that developing a more and more robust theology of the body and the material realm in general, without capitulating all the way to physicalism, right? Finding that middle ground helps us so much better minister to the whole person. It engages in our worship. It engages in so many other ways our encouragement of what people do nine-to-five. People as whole people who experience worship through their five senses, who go to work, most of them, 99% outside of “vocational ministry roles”, and it helps do what we as pastors and ministry leaders are called to do, serve the person so that they are equipped for the work of ministry. So, just off the top of my head, a couple of things I think are important there.

Jason Daye
Appreciate that, Stan. Appreciate that, brother. Well, thank you so very much for making time to hang out with us. Incredible conversation and again, thank you for the deep work that you’ve done and making it accessible to the rest of us, and encouragement for us to dig in. Your book Have We Lost Our Minds? Really takes a lot from your field of philosophy and theology, brings it together, and really makes it approachable. That’s a good word, I think, for us. So I want to encourage everyone to remember that we have a toolkit for this episode, which is going to have a lot of different resources. In that toolkit, you will have links to Have We Lost Our Minds? Stan’s book. You’ll have links to Stan’s website. You’ll have links to the podcast that Stan hosts and lots of other resources that he has. We want to provide, and Stan has done a great job of providing a lot of different resources. Engages in this world to such a degree, the ministry that he’s a part of as well, all those things, and those links will be available in the toolkit. So be sure to check that out at PastorServe.org/network. Along with other resources, including the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, so that you and your team can dig more deeply into this very important conversation, see how it applies, and how it’s showing up in your ministry context. So check that out at PastorServe.org/network.

Stan Wallace
Can I make a plug real quick? My ministry and how it could help pastors. So I work with Global Scholars. We help equip Christian professors to be the aroma of Christ in their universities and we focus on the non-Christian context of public universities and “secular” private universities around the world. But as far as pastors listening, if have professors in their congregations, and want to better equip them for their nine-to-five, Monday to Friday, so to speak, we would love to come alongside and help serve you in that.

Jason Daye
Absolutely love that. It’s great work that you and your team are doing, Stan, through that ministry. One of those places, one of those mission fields, honestly, that we don’t talk enough about, right? So certainly appreciate that, Stand. We’ll have links to the ministry in the toolkit as well. What is the website for the ministry?

Stan Wallace
It’s Global-Scholars.org.

Jason Daye
Global-Scholars.org. Perfect. Awesome, brother. Stan, thank you again for making time hanging out with us and doing a lot of heavy lifting to help encourage us as we serve the kingdom, brother.

Stan Wallace
Well, thanks for the time to chat about this and I pray it’s a blessing to those who watched the video.

Jason Daye
Excellent brother. God bless you, my friend.

Jason Daye
Now, before you go, I want to remind you of an incredible free resource that our team puts together every single week to help you and your team dig more deeply and maximize the conversation that we just had. This is the weekly toolkit that we provide. And we understand that it’s one thing to listen or watch an episode, but it’s something entirely different to actually take what you’ve heard, what you’ve watched, what you’ve seen, and apply it to your life and to your ministry. You see, FrontStage BackStage is more than just a podcast or YouTube show about ministry leadership, we are a complete resource to help train you and your entire ministry team as you seek to grow and develop in life in ministry. Every single week, we provide a weekly toolkit which has all types of tools in it to help you do just that. Now you can find this at PastorServe.org/network. That’s PastorServe.org/network. And there you will find all of our shows, all of our episodes and all of our weekly toolkits. Now inside the toolkit are several tools including video links and audio links for you to share with your team. There are resource links to different resources and tools that were mentioned in the conversation, and several other tools, but the greatest thing is the ministry leaders growth guide. Our team pulls key insights and concepts from every conversation with our amazing guests. And then we also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how that episode’s topic relates to your unique context, at your local church, in your ministry and in your life. Now you can use these questions in your regular staff meetings to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. You can find the weekly toolkit at PastorServe.org/network We encourage you to check out that free resource. Until next time, I’m Jason Daye encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. God bless.