# Biblical View of Dualism/Monism



## Justified (Sep 10, 2014)

This has been discussed before on the boards, but all the discussions were very skimp and unsatisfying. What is the biblical view? Surely, monism can't be true-- the soul and the body aren't one substance. However, something like Descartes' dualism creates to creates to great of a dichotomy. It would seem that some form of dualism would be the correct view, although, perhaps I am wrong


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## MW (Sep 10, 2014)

It depends on how one looks at it. Metaphysically, man is obviously composed of material and immaterial elements. Thoughts, choices, and feelings are not physical, even though they might produce physical effects. Scripturally man is treated as an unity -- a living soul. Within the Bible's redemptive message we find a functional dualism owing to the fact that the punishment due to sin is death, and death is the separation of soul and body. Salvation, conversely, includes the restoration of the whole man, including the unity of soul and body. That restoration is worked out gradually, and requires immortal power to sustain the soul in an intermediate state, just as it will require immortal power to raise the man again and unite soul and body at the last day.


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## hammondjones (Sep 11, 2014)

> (2.) *The most eminent substantial union in things natural, is that of the soul and body constituting an individual person. *There is, I confess, some kind of similitude between this union and that of the different natures in the person of Christ; but it is not of the same kind or nature. And the dissimilitudes that are between them are more, and of greater importance, than those things are wherein there seems to be an agreement between them. For, — 1st, *The soul and body are so united as to constitute one entire nature.* The soul is not human nature, nor is the body, but it is the consequent of their union. Soul and body are essential parts of human nature; but complete human nature they are not but by virtue of their union. But the union of the natures in the person of Christ doth not constitute a new nature, that either was not or was not complete before. Each nature remains the same perfect, complete nature after this union. 2dly,* The union of the soul and body doth constitute that nature which is made essentially complete thereby, — a new individual person, with a subsistence of its own, which neither of them was nor had before that union.* But although the person of Christ, as God and man, be constituted by this union, yet his person absolutely, and his individual subsistence, was perfect absolutely antecedent unto that union. He did not become a new person, another person than he was before, by virtue of that union; only that person assumed human nature to itself to be its own, into personal subsistence. 3dly, Soul and body are united by an external efficient cause, or the power of God, and not by the act of one of them upon another. But this union is effected by that act of the divine nature towards the human which we have before described. 4thly, Neither soul nor body have any personal subsistence before their union; but the sole foundation of this union was in this, that the Son of God was a self-subsisting person from eternity.



John Owen, Christologia, xxii, on the hypostatic union.


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