{"id":4104,"date":"2012-07-16T12:17:59","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T16:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=4104"},"modified":"2017-03-10T05:26:05","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T10:26:05","slug":"buzzards-textual-arguments-against-jesus-pre-human-existence-part-4-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/buzzards-textual-arguments-against-jesus-pre-human-existence-part-4-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"Buzzard&#8217;s textual arguments against Jesus&#8217; pre-human existence &#8211; Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"nv-iframe-embed\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"520\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NRCjwHWzXgs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>In this recent video, Sir Anthony makes various relevant points. As I said in <a title=\"Part 1\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/4082\" target=\"_blank\">part 1 of this series<\/a>, his linguistic argument against &#8220;pre-existence&#8221; is not his only one. At 3:11ff he gives a version of the linguistic argument I&#8217;ve been criticizing. It seems to me that the title of this video is false. To have been &#8220;begotten of God&#8221; I think, just means to be the Son of God &#8211; &#8220;begotten&#8221; neither means nor <em>uncontroversially\u00a0<\/em>implies having been caused to come into existence.<\/p>\n<p>I <strong>completely agree<\/strong> with him, by the way, that the NT strongly and repeatedly warns against any teaching that Jesus is not a real human being. But as we&#8217;ll see, we Christians disagree about what it is to be a real human being. And what it is to be a real human being is a philosophical question, and one not definitively settled by the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>At 1:29-1:51 Sir Anthony\u00a0says, basically, that it is doubtful that a human can exist as a non-human before its human existence, i.e. before its conception.\u00a0<strong>At 4:21-38<\/strong> he seems to make the stronger assertion that any human must come to exist in his or her mother&#8217;s womb.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there are test-tube conceived babies. I think he means to assert that any human must come into existence at his or her conception &#8211; at the union of a human sperm and egg. He presents this <strong>as if it is simply what <a title=\"ESV 2 John 7\" href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=2+John+1%3A7&amp;version=ESV\" target=\"_blank\">2 John 7<\/a> says<\/strong>, but of course, it is only insisting on the genuine humanity of Jesus &#8211; to have &#8220;come in the flesh&#8221; is to have been a real, flesh and blood human &#8211; not an illusion of a human or an &#8220;aeon&#8221; in disguise or something.<\/p>\n<p>An aside: I don&#8217;t think the NT really tells us<strong> the mechanics of the virgin birth<\/strong>: did God create a human sperm to unite with Mary&#8217;s egg, or did he just miraculously change a non-fertilized egg of hers into a zygote? I have no idea. I would think that either one counted as a &#8220;conception&#8221; or, as the NT puts it, as God having made Mary pregnant.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But does being a real human imply having come into existence no earlier than the union of a certain sperm and a certain egg?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The answer is: it depends!<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If a human being is a purely material object, then yes it is obviously impossible for you to have existed before a single one of your parts existed. So <em>if<\/em> materialists about human selves are correct, the answer is yes.<\/li>\n<li>Another view with some popularity amoung philosophers right now is that a human being isn&#8217;t just a physical object with the right parts in the right order, but rather that a human is a certain living biological organism. But this, surely, doesn&#8217;t go back to before its conception. So <em>if<\/em> these philosophers, called &#8220;animalists,&#8221; are right, the answer is yes.<\/li>\n<li>But what if a human being is essentially a soul? It seems <em>possible<\/em> that a soul should should at one time exist disembodied, and then come to be embodied &#8211; and maybe that&#8217;s all it takes for a soul to be human &#8211; to be embodied (whatever that is exactly) in a <em>human<\/em> body.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Such a view is explored in eminent Christian philosopher William<strong> Hasker&#8217;s\u00a0<a title=\"Hasker, The Emergent Self @ Amazon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0801487609\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Emergent S<\/em><\/a><em><a title=\"Hasker, The Emergent Self @ Amazon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0801487609\" target=\"_blank\">el<\/a>f<\/em><\/strong>. His position, roughly, is that God has so made the world that when a certain sort of brain comes to be, it naturally causes to exist a soul, which uses the brain in thinking. This soul, in principle, can survive death, and God ensures that it does, and that it is resurrected in the future. <strong>The position is neutral about<\/strong> whether or not this soul existing without a body would be conscious, or be able to <em>do<\/em> anything. And note that Hasker (correctly) puts no stock in traditional arguments for &#8220;the immortality of the soul.&#8221; Nor does the view imply that human souls pre-exist. Presumably it implies that human souls come to exist some time during the existence of the fetus &#8211; not at conception, but perhaps by the end of the first trimester? (This may be a welcome conclusion, given the number of spontaneous abortions, aka miscarriages which occur.)<\/p>\n<p>See the last chapter of that book, <strong>&#8220;Prospects for Survival&#8221;<\/strong> for a nice discussion of the possibilities for life after death given various views about human persons. Particularly interesting are the arguments against this scheme, which I think some unitarian Christians have held: that death is your ceasing to exist, then there&#8217;s a longish period where you don&#8217;t exist, and then at the resurrection God causes you to start existing again. Essentially, the view is that humans have a time-gap in their existence.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s beyond the scope of this series &#8211; perhaps another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this recent video, Sir Anthony makes various relevant points. As I said in part 1 of this series, his linguistic argument against &#8220;pre-existence&#8221; is not his only one. At 3:11ff he gives a version of the linguistic argument I&#8217;ve been criticizing. It seems to me that the title of this video is false. To&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/buzzards-textual-arguments-against-jesus-pre-human-existence-part-4-dale\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Buzzard&#8217;s textual arguments against Jesus&#8217; pre-human existence &#8211; Part 4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,15,33,9,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-christology","category-incarnation","category-philosophy","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38644,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions\/38644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}