human nature and Jesus’s pre-human existence

This post is in response to a Facebook discussion here. I covered some of these issues a few years back in this series.

Some unitarian Christians believe that Jesus existed before he was a human, while others deny it. Both sides hold that the scriptures teach their position. Some want to strongly insist on their view, suggesting that the other side is openly contradicting the scriptures, or held captive by “philosophy” (e.g. ancient Greek preference for belief in souls or the modern dislike of it). This post is a plea for moderation.

People differ on what it takes to be a real human being. Probably most people in the history of the world have been “dualists.” That is, they hold that it is possible that a human should exist even after the destruction of her body, because there is more to a living human than her body alone – there is also a soul, usually understood as wholly non-physical. There are many reasons why Christians are dualists about human persons. A case can be made that the NT assumes it, and there are various plausible philosophical arguments for dualism and against physicalism/materialism about human beings.

On the other hand, some Christians have accepted a narrative according to which Christian thought “fell” from Hebraic purity into corrupted Hellenism (unwarranted Greek philosophical ideas). These hold that the OT and NT in some sense teach physicalism about human persons, with dualism being a later (2nd c.), foreign import.

How does all of this relate to the alleged “preexistence” of Jesus? All sides agree that Jesus was and is a real man.

The one side holds, because of their physicalism about human beings, that it is impossible that Jesus preexisted. This would require that at time 1, he was wholly non-physical, and at time 2 he is wholly physical. This does seem impossible, given physicalism. And it makes sense for a physicalist to think that a mother and father together cause their offspring to come into existence (for the first time). The parents “generate” their offspring, to use the metaphysical term.

But here’s the catch. It is not self-evident that physicalism about human persons is true. In other words, this is not something which every normal adult who is not in the grip of some ideology should be able to know as true. Nor is it beyond dispute that the NT assumes or asserts physicalism. Still, as my friend Sir Anthony Buzzard points out, one can make a case that the gospel writers assume, or even say that Jesus came into existence, when they describe him as the descendant of previous Jews, and as having been “begotten.” Jews didn’t believe in the pre-human existence of all human beings, right?

But as my other friend Patrick Navas points out, if one is open-minded about dualism, one might also be open-minded about the preexistence of Jesus. Why? If dualism is true, then it is possible (just, seemingly non-contradictory) that you or I might still exist after, say, our body is completely annihilated by a nuclear bomb. And if you might some day exist disembodied, then could you have already existed that way, before your earliest memory?

Billions of eastern peoples have thought so. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain people, not to mention some ancient Greeks and some New Agers from California, etc., have believed in reincarnation. Now, I don’t believe it, and don’t find arguments for it compelling. But, I don’t think it is self-evidently false. If it were, it would not be so easy for people to take it seriously.

It is important to make this point, though: just because (since dualism is true) it is possible that you should some day exist disembodied, it does not logically follow that it is possible that you should have existed disembodied before your conception. Why? Because if souls exist, it is not obvious where they come from!

• Some have supposed that God miraculously causes a soul to exist and then attaches it to the fertilized zygote right at conception.
• Other dualists have thought that souls must just naturally arise at some point in fetal development.
• Others have supposed that souls just have always existed, and only need to somehow get attached to one body, and then another, as “rebirth” (aka reincarnation, transmigration of souls) occurs.

If the second group here is correct, so that souls naturally are caused to exist by something in the physical processes between conception and birth, and yet there is no reincarnation, then it would seem possible that a human soul might exist disembodied after death, and yet it would seem impossible that you should have existed before your conception.

Here is my point. If dualism is remotely plausible, then it is not obviously a contradiction that the man Jesus should have once only been a soul, but not a man, before his conception in Mary. A dualist will of course agree that Jesus was “begotten,” in a way that means that Mary is truly his mother, while God has taken the place of a human father. God and Mary have caused Jesus to become a man who can be born, but they will hold that he already existed before the action described in Luke 1:35. Some just can’t see any way around certain famous NT passages which to many seem to assert or presuppose his pre-human existence. Therefore: the other sort of unitarians, we who hold that Jesus did not exist before his conception, must gladly tolerate these, and neither say nor hint that they’re not real Christians, not real unitarians, or that they’re somehow too Hellenized. They don’t need to be fans of Greek philosophy to hold such views, and most of them are not. Nor is belief in Jesus’s pre-human existence only a trinitarian idea. To the contrary, some unitarians were saying this in the 100s, while we don’t see any trinitarians at all until the latter 300s. We can of course have a friendly argument about those few “preexistence” passages, and also about the merits of dualism vs. physicalism about human persons. But this must be done without partisan passions poisoning the discussion.

Finally, I will lay my own cards on the table.

• I do not think that the NT actually assumes or asserts the pre-human existence of Jesus.
• I do think that it assumes dualism about persons.
• I am in favor of dualism for both biblical and philosophical reasons. I think there are decent arguments for dualism and against various physicalist theories.
• I think that humans come to exist some time after the fertilization of a certain human egg in the mother; I don’t know exactly when, but in my view it must be by the time the fetus is conscious in any way.
• I don’t think we have good evidence for reincarnation, and the Bible everywhere assumes, and occasionally implies its falsity.
• But I have no grounds on which to scold or exclude unitarians who believe in Jesus’s pre-human existence. I would only invite friendly conversation on the topic. I would make my case, and urge that it be weighed against theirs. Infinitely more important issues are: who God is (the Father) and that Jesus was and is a real human being. These are core NT teachings.
• It is not a core NT teaching that Jesus never existed before his conception. That he did, or that he did not – neither is an essential part of the gospel.
• Again, at the end of the day, I’m inclined to think that Jesus would not be a real human if he’d been created before his conception, or if he’d always existed, “eternally generated” by God. But I’d need to engage in philosophical arguments to show this, and a person would be able to resist them without denying the obvious or contradicting himself.

Here’s my point in a nutshell. Consider this scenario: at all times < t, A exists as a bodiless spirit. At time t, A becomes embodied in a human body, which makes A a genuine human being. This is not obviously impossible. Myself, I think it is impossible, but I believe this on the basis of philosophical arguments. (I’ll make those another time.) This impossibility is not something we can know on the basis of common sense and ordinary human reason alone. Thus, I must agree that anyone who thinks this scenario to be possible is not unreasonable like someone who thinks there could be square circle, that two plus two could be someday be five, or that they should exist and not exist at the same time and in the same way. A scripture interpretation which fits well with their view, then, can’t be dismissed on the basis that it assumes something obviously or self-evidently impossible.