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some additional thoughts about my demon-puppet objection

In the podcast Facebook group Skylar McManus asks some typically perceptive and insightful questions,

I’m hoping Dr. Dale Tuggy can clarify his “demon possession” thought experiment for us. If not here, then in his published statement in the (apparently) forthcoming book with Mr. Date.

The thought experiment is meant to show the following: For models of the Incarnation that hold Christ’s human nature is a concrete particular (both a human body and human soul), the divine Person who assumes a human nature is not truly human. That is because he is merely “piloting” a body.

A body and a soul – we’re not now discussing “Apollinarian” views.

Enter the thought experiment. Suppose a demon enters into a compositional union with your human body and soul, and deactivates your soul. This is supposed to be a state of affairs equivalent to that of the Incarnation. Here, Dr. Tuggy suggests, it’s just obvious that the demon is merely piloting a human body/soul, and therefore clearly isn’t a human.

Let me just interrupt here and say that I think you’re granting that in said scenario, the demon would not be a man. Good! But, you want to say that the scenario isn’t sufficiently or relevantly like the sort of incarnation theory mentioned above. The differences are great enough so that even if I’m right about the demon scenario, nothing would follow about the incarnation theory.

There are two problems with this thought experiment as suggested. The first is that this occurs, apparently, at a later time in the human’s (or “your”) life. I’ll return to this in a moment. The second is that the demon’s piloting your body isn’t like the hypostatic union because your human nature doesn’t subsist because of the union with the demon.

Side note: Is “deactivating” a human soul even a coherent idea? Maybe, since I thought Dr. Tuggy’s conception of death is “the ceasing of all or most life functions.” Is that what occurs at this “deactivating”? Does the demon kill the human soul? If so, once again, how is this at all like the traditional tenets of the Incarnation?

Honestly, I don’t see why the first difference should matter. Imagine – now this is going to get weird – that God has lying around some extra bodies and souls. If and only if they’re assembled in the right way, they constitute a human being. But they’re just lying around disassembled. So our demon bribes some angel and gets one of each. And then he enters into a union with them, so as to operate through this “complete human nature” which is not a man. Does this make the demon a man? I would say not. Even if he lives out the life of Marilyn Manson. 😉

Now let’s add in the second change – now, the body and soul “subsist” – exist as a single substance/entity/thing – because the demon has assumed them. Somehow, he’s combined them, and thwarted the normal result of such a combination, which is the existence of a normal man. Would this, then, make the demon a man? I don’t see why! By hypothesis (I mean, according to this incarnation theory) that body and soul don’t compose a man. But even if they did, I don’t see why having a part which is a man would make you, the whole, a man. Nor would it make the other part a man. Is there a man in this theory at all?

Probably most dualists would say that the only essential part to a human is the soul. So there would be a man there in the demon scenario – a disembodied man. Would he be dead? It would seem so, if the “assumption” is not momentary, because he would have lost all or most of his normal life functions, e.g. breathing, talking, moving around with the body. Perhaps you think a soul won’t be an essential part of a human unless it is first united to a body. In that case, it matters whether the demon assumes a “fresh” or a “used” body and soul – in the former case there will be no human person at all in the scenario. Back to our friend Mr. McManus:

Why is that a problem? Because when the demon pilots your body, there are predicates that will be apt of you, as a subsisting individual, but will not be apt of the demon. For example, it is false that the demon has sensations through your human nature because *you* have them. You are the ultimate subject of predication (what the medievals called a “supposit”) even in this situation, not the demon. But on the Incarnation, the Person of the Son/Word *is* the ultimate subject of predication for all human predicates. How is this at all like what has been traditionally held about the Incarnation?

I don’t grant that this doctrine of “supposits” is even possibly true, as I think it involves individual properties which are had by more than one thing. I see “supposits” as purely motivated by a desire to solve problems with incarnation, and I think it is of no use whatever in metaphysics. No one even says they have any other use! (It’s even worse off in this respect than “relative identity” theory – and that is bad indeed.) BUT, if you think the eternal Logos can be the supposit (ultimate subject of properties) in the case of Christ, why not think that the demon would be a supposit in the demon scenario?

Here, I think, is where we get to the real problem with Pawl-type incarnation theories. If you really think the “human nature” really thinks, loves, suffers, get’s hungry, considers what to have for lunch, gets tempted, walks to Jerusalem (using a body), etc. – then you think that this thing (this combo of body and soul) is a man, whatever you decided to call it. You may, with Pawl and others refuse to call it a “person” or a “self” or a “human being” or “a man” – but at any rate, it is what the rest of us would call a man, a human self or human person. And so, this sort of theory terribly misfits the NT. It just doesn’t allow a man and also the Son of God. We can call it “Nestorian,” but I see no point in quarreling over that label. You just can’t read the NT that way, even though Origen did.

I think many who follow the tradition that “the human nature” is “anhypostaticdon’t think that properly speaking the human nature died on the cross, or got hungry, or cried. They think the one composite Christ did these things “through” that human nature OR that really the Logos/divine nature is the only agent and subject of those actions and states. In either case, I say, I don’t see a man here. Just as with Apollianianism – a god in a bod does not a man make – so here a god operating somehow through a soul and body would not thereby be a man, but just a god operating through a soul and a body. Now if you have a god operating through a man – now I see a man, be he’s not also divine.

Here’s one way to try to modify this: Suppose that instead of at a later time in your life, a demon “assumes” a concrete human nature from the moment of its conception. There is a truly human soul and body there, and hence a complete human nature. Through some compositional model of the Incarnation (like Katherin Rogers’ “action composite” model), we can say the demon is hypostatically united to the complete human nature.

But in this case, it sure seems like that demon really is truly human on the metaphysics presupposed by compositional models of the Incarnation we’ve been discussing. That person who is really an angel, and in fact a demon, is born, grows up, etc. Through it’s union with the complete human nature, it is true to say it has sensations, acts in the world, and that the human nature only subsists because of its union with the demon. But now the supposed obvious nature of the incoherence of the Incarnation disappears. Where’s the problem here?

I see a man in your scenario, but I don’t see a demon who has become a man.

Also, this thing (the demon) is neither a first human, nor does he exist because of any prior human. So it seems to me that he’s not a member of the human race, despite this remarkable use of a man (or of “a human nature”). I think something’s origin matters for this, not only its current qualities or what parts it has. Do you disagree? (I didn’t get in to this in the debate.)

Summary: If the “demon possession” thought experiment occurs at a later time in a human’s life, there are obvious disconnects that Dr. Tuggy ignores entirely that, it seems to me, make the intuitive feel of the thought experiment work.

When these disconnects are brought to light, it’s not at all obvious that the thought experiment shows what Dr. Tuggy thinks it does. And if we modify the thought experiment to be more like the Incarnation in all those ways, we end up with a truly human demon. So what? In that case, thanks for demonstrating the coherence of one way to understand the Incarnation.

Sorry, feel free to push back, but I don’t get it. If there was a man at the start of it all, then after the demon’s “assumption” we wonder what happened to the man. And possibly, in the modified demon scenario, where the body and soul never form a thing without being “assumed” by him, there never is a man, so we don’t wonder about his fate. But I don’t think either scenario is plausibly seen as the demon becoming a man.

Note that some here will just agree with me that there is no man in either the demon scenarios OR in the incarnation. They will say instead that the Logos becomes “man” but NOT “a man.” That is, “man” and “human” are now predicable of him because of his mysterious union with the human nature (which isn’t a man). In effect, they’ve traded the man of the NT for a being which is in some ways similar to a man and told us to call this “human.” But I take it this is not really consistent with the NT, but is docetism.

BTW I think Chris Date has to go in the direction of Pawl’s theory. He wants to have Christ be both timeless and yet in time – which requires that Christ has at least one part in time and at least on part outside it – and that’ll have to be the human nature and the divine nature, understood as two selves, one timelessly omniscient and the other temporally limited in knowledge. I would that all two-natures theorists would head in the direction of Pawl, as in my view that just puts them head-on against the NT – and then some will see that they need to make a choice: NT christology or this cherished two-natures speculation.

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6 thoughts on “some additional thoughts about my demon-puppet objection”

  1. “First, you say you don’t even grant that supposita are logically possible, and that the notion is ad hoc. Maybe you’re right, but I want to be much more tentative than that. But you seem to have another objection: “I think it involves individual properties which are had by more than one thing.” Can you elaborate on that?”

    To clarify – it’s not the concept of a suppositum (ultimate subject of predication) which in my view couldn’t be satisfied, but rather the concept of a substance which is NOT an ultimate subject of predication (because it is not the ultimate possesses of its intrinsic properties). In my view the concept of a substance/thing/entity just is the concept of a suppositum – but we don’t need that word, because there couldn’t be a substance which isn’t one. I think of an individual intrinsic property as a mode of a thing, of the owner of the property. It seems that in principle such can’t be shared by multiple things. The bentness of this paperclip couldn’t be the bentness of another thing. Now imagine that you are a substance which is not a suppositum. Then, there’s this other thing that also has all your thoughts, for instance. All those thoughts have two thinkers! But this other guy has them ultimately. You have them, but some how they as it were pass through you and ultimately reside in another being – one exactly like you, as far as mentality is concerned. I’m sorry, but this strikes me as ridiculous. But the reason I think it’s ridiculous is that two different things are sharing an individual (not universal) property, and these (individual properties) are by definition unshareable.

    “In any case, I think the idea of supposits, or “ultimate subjects of predication” as I put it, captures a commonsense idea: “blonde” is true of my hair, but more fundamentally, “blonde” is true of me. (Maybe that explains a lot!) So I’m frankly surprised you find no use for the concept. Since a person is a “rational supposit,” do you not find use for the concept of a person? I don’t know of a better, and ethically more relevant, concept of human personhood than “rational supposit,” to be honest.”

    As I understand it, supposit-theory really has to do with properties, not only with predicates. We apply “blonde” to you because a part of you (or a part of something closely related to you) IS blonde (has that property). Just like you’ll say “Dale is injured” when it is just my ankle that is injured. So this is not an example of a substance which is not a supposit. Yes “rational supposit” is the same concept as “rational being” or “rational substance” – of course I agree that is very important. But again, unless there are substances which are not supposita, we should just jettison this term “supposit” as redundant and useless.

    “Second, on the modified scenario, you say that “I see a man in your scenario, but I don’t see a demon who has become a man.” But then you say, “And possibly, in the modified demon scenario, where the body and soul never form a thing without being ‘assumed’ by him, there never is a man.”When you say “a man” in both statements, it seems that in the first you mean “a human nature” (given the immediately following paragraph), but in the second statement you mean “a human person.” So the demon is only “a man” in an equivocal way: he has a human nature, but he’s *really* a angelic (demon) person, not a human person.”

    I think “human nature” means either the essence humanity or just: human being, i.e. a human self, a man or a woman. I don’t grant that there could be a concrete human nature which is not a human self.

    1. To contine: Skylar, you say: “Why can’t it be the case that he’s an angelic-human person? There could be more, and greater, ways to be a human person. If your objection is that he’s not a human person, or a man, because he’s not *solely* (or a non-hyphenated version of) a person, then that’s question-begging. So too with the God-man.”

      So, the tradition vehemently denies that the composite Christ is a godman if that means that he’s a hybrid of a human and a god, like a liger (offspring of a lion and a tiger).

      Could there be a angel-human? I don’t deny it; I can’t see that its impossible. It’d have to have at least one human parent to be in the human race, but in principle I don’t see why the other cause of the pregnancy couldn’t be an angel, and that somehow this changed the genetic code of the resulting being. But again, the tradition asserts that the natures are mysteriously unified but not as it were chemically combined, resulting in a third sort of thing.

      “You ask, “I think something’s origin matters for this, not only its current qualities or what parts it has. Do you disagree?” Maybe I do, because this is avoided by Morris’s distinction between a universal and an essential property. I can grant that it is universally true that all finite human persons are either a first human or depend for their existence on prior humans. (Let’s exclude the possibility of later humans being created ex nihilo.) But how does it then follow that either of those are an essential property for true humanity? I don’t think this distinction can trim just any property from humanity (e.g., rationality), and I’d like to hear a reason to think that this distinction doesn’t trim this one.”

      Suppose a baby appears on your doorstep, with a note: “Congratulations on your new McManus!” It appears to be a human being. You have him examined and tested – it all seems normal. But the real shock is when they genetically test him, and he has the kind of DNA than an offspring of you and your wife must have! You conclude that somehow, someone must’ve stolen a sperm and an egg, and somehow produced this baby. But then you learn his true origin. He was made by aliens from a far-away galaxy. They buzzed the earth in their rocket and happened to scan you and your wife as they passed by. Back on their home planet, they built that baby. It’s got all the parts that a normal human has.

      Question 1: is he really a McManus?
      (I would say obviously not – it is not in the McManus lineage, not having at least one McManus as a cause.)

      Question 2: is he a human being, a member of the human race?
      (I would say not – he is not, as C.S. Lewis would put it, a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve. He is not in the human lineage.)

      What say you?

  2. Hi Dr. Tuggy,

    Just a quick clarification. You are correct in pointing out that according to orthodox Christology, God became “man,” but He did not become “a man.” I would add that if one accepts the first seven ecumenical councils of the Church (as Catholics, Orthodox, many Anglicans and some Protestants do), then Jesus Christ was indeed one person in two natures (Chalcedon, 451 A.D.), which means that He also possessed two wills (Constantinople III, 680-681 A.D.) and by implication, two intellects or minds; what’s more, this person was a Divine person, not a divine-human person (Constantinople II, 553 A.D.). However, the human will of Christ was not a robot: it possessed genuine freedom. The only thing which Christ’s human will was unable to choose (by virtue of its hypostatic union with Christ’s Divine will) was sin.

    As for death: according to orthodox Christology, since death is primarily predicated of a person, we can truly say that a Divine Person died on the cross at Calvary. To die here means: “to undergo separation of soul and body,” not “to cease to exist.” Christ’s human nature underwent death in the more immediate sense of being separated from the body proper to it. Even though it was dead, the person of Christ (i.e. God the Son) was perfectly complete after the crucifixion, but Christ’s human nature was not. Cheers.

    1. Hi Vincent – thanks for your comment. I agree with most of your first paragraph. But when you say “However, the human will of Christ was not a robot: it possessed genuine freedom…” this does not make sense. It is persons who are free or not, not wills. Again, it is persons who are tempted to sin, not wills. And it looks like in your view the one person here in principle could not sin, and so could not face real temptation.

      I agree that death does not obviously imply ceasing to exist. (For my analysis of the concept of death see this https://trinities.org/blog/podcast-145-tis-mystery-immortal-dies/) It sounds like you’re saying that both the composite, two-natured Christ and the human nature died. But Christ (in your view) is a divine person, so can’t die. It looks like you must say that only a part of Christ died, and that this part is a man. (You have to have a human life to lose it, and to have a human life is to be a man.) It looks like you have both a man and a divine person in Christ then, despite your statement that the only person here is the divine one.

      God bless,
      Dale

      1. Hi Dale,

        You may be interested in the following article from The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) on the Communicatio Idiomatum:

        http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04169a.htm

        And it seems that many Protestants agree:

        http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2016/03/did-the-second-person-of-the-t.php

        According to Catholic theology (and that of many Protestants), it is therefore admissible to say that God (the Son) died on the Cross, because it is persons who die. The musical Godspell got it right, in its last song (“O God, you’re dead.”) The soul of Christ and the body of Christ were the soul and body of a Divine person. Since the soul and body were separated at Christ’s death, and since they belonged to a person, then the separation that took place pertained to that person, who died.

        I understand that the Biblical word for tempt means “put to the test.” (I owe this point to Matt Slick’s article on the subject, at https://carm.org/jesus-christ/god-cannot-be-tempted-jesus-was-tempted .) I believe Jesus was put to the test, but it was one He could not have failed, as a Divine person, even in his human will. That may not sound like a real temptation to some, but think of it this way. Whom do we admire more: a weak but honest public official who is offered a bribe and who feels the allure of the money in full force but finally manages to say no to the offer, or an incorruptible official who easily rejects the bribe because an act of dishonesty would be unthinkable for him or her? Surely the latter. I hope that helps. Thanks for the exchange.

  3. Hi Dale,

    Thanks for the response. I have a lot to think about and revisit from this exchange as well.

    There’s just a couple of things I want to address by way of clarification first. Two of them are from what you’ve written here, and one of them is a statement of mine I should modify. Then I’ll answer one of your questions.

    First, you say you don’t even grant that supposita are logically possible, and that the notion is ad hoc. Maybe you’re right, but I want to be much more tentative than that. But you seem to have another objection: “I think it involves individual properties which are had by more than one thing.” Can you elaborate on that? It seems like what you’re saying is that a single supposit can have an individual essence true of different parts or something. So Peter’s individual essence is had by Peter simpliciter (his soul?) and some other proper part of Peter’s supposit (maybe the union of his body and soul?), which would clearly make two Peters. Is that the thought, or something else?

    In any case, I think the idea of supposits, or “ultimate subjects of predication” as I put it, captures a commonsense idea: “blonde” is true of my hair, but more fundamentally, “blonde” is true of me. (Maybe that explains a lot!) So I’m frankly surprised you find no use for the concept. Since a person is a “rational supposit,” do you not find use for the concept of a person? I don’t know of a better, and ethically more relevant, concept of human personhood than “rational supposit,” to be honest.

    Second, on the modified scenario, you say that “I see a man in your scenario, but I don’t see a demon who has become a man.” But then you say, “And possibly, in the modified demon scenario, where the body and soul never form a thing without being ‘assumed’ by him, there never is a man.”

    When you say “a man” in both statements, it seems that in the first you mean “a human nature” (given the immediately following paragraph), but in the second statement you mean “a human person.” So the demon is only “a man” in an equivocal way: he has a human nature, but he’s *really* a angelic (demon) person, not a human person. Why can’t it be the case that he’s an angelic-human person? There could be more, and greater, ways to be a human person. If your objection is that he’s not a human person, or a man, because he’s not *solely* (or a non-hyphenated version of) a person, then that’s question-begging. So too with the God-man.

    Third, the statement I made about the “metaphysics presupposed” in the modified scenario sounds far too strong. I don’t mean to imply that Pawl, Rogers, or anyone else who accepts compositional Christology should think that an incarnate demon is possible. Given Pawl’s Thomistic framework, he will in fact deny this and say that finite persons cannot have two natures. So what I now want to say is, absent of some reason to think God couldn’t cause a demon to have two natures, I’m going along with your thought experiment to try to show it wouldn’t work anyway. But some will say I probably shouldn’t have gone along with it. Maybe they are right.

    You ask, “I think something’s origin matters for this, not only its current qualities or what parts it has. Do you disagree?” Maybe I do, because this is avoided by Morris’s distinction between a universal and an essential property. I can grant that it is universally true that all finite human persons are either a first human or depend for their existence on prior humans. (Let’s exclude the possibility of later humans being created ex nihilo.) But how does it then follow that either of those are an essential property for true humanity? I don’t think this distinction can trim just any property from humanity (e.g., rationality), and I’d like to hear a reason to think that this distinction doesn’t trim this one.

    That’s maybe enough for now.

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