ABSTRACT
If the body is not part of human nature, then Christian thought and experience betray reality. Christian thought and experience teach that the body is part of human nature and significant to it. Theologians today have devoted much time and reflection to the notion of embodiment. Connected to this reflection, a dialectical tension has arisen between Christian materialists and Christian dualists in the contemporary literature. On the one hand, Christian materialists have rightly highlighted the importance of embodiment, especially in the context of the doctrine of the resurrection. Christian dualists, on the other hand, have highlighted the importance of a persisting soul as substance that metaphysically accounts for personhood. The problem for Christian materialists is their inability to account metaphysically for a persistent self, while the challenge for Christian dualists is their inability to account for the human body as a contingent part of the person (or human nature) without denigrating or undervaluing the body. The difficulty for the defender of strong dualism is that s/he does not affirm a robust notion of embodiment supported by one’s experience and the Christian tradition.1 Defenders of substance dualism need to find a via media between strong dualism and views that include the virtues of materialism, given embodiment. I argue that all the defenders of the various Cartesian theories can tell a story consistent with both the Christian tradition and experience, but that CSD and EC provide the defender with some additional resources to tell a robust story concerning the soul-body relationship.2
