Please Note: The following article was written by J. P. Moreland, who is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University. I am deeply grateful for his insights regarding the teachings of Dallas and the problems in Wilder’s book.
Having just found the website no2renovated.com, I was deeply encouraged by what I read and moved to weigh in on the matter. First, some background. I did my Ph.D. under Willard at USC from 1982-1985. I took several courses with him, and he was my dissertation supervisor. From 1985 until his passing, Dallas and Jane were very close friends and, in fact, it sometimes felt like they adopted my wife and me as part of their family. We met frequently through those years, and I would call him every few months to catch up and talk philosophy. I mention all this to say that I knew Dallas very, very well and, given that I could track with him philosophically and theologically, I dare say that I am among a small handful that know his body of work better than anyone else.
That said, it is beyond my comprehension how anyone could think that Dallas was anything close to being a physicalist, a view he detested. He was a certain sort of substance dualist for as long as I knew him, and he never changed his mind on that. For him, the soul is immaterial, it is the bearer of personal identity, and survives in a disembodied Intermediate State upon death until the Final Resurrection. The soul and the other immaterial constituents of the person are deeply integrated with the body and the two are in two-way causal and functional interaction and dependence. The body for Dallas is not a mere physical entity nor is the brain. Rather, the body and all its organs are ensouled physical entities whose structure, identity, and nature are owed to immaterial and material aspects of the body. Thus, to be a body is to be an ensouled physical entity. A body without a soul is no longer a body; it is a corpse.
I have met Wilder and Curt Thompson. I have no beef at all with them as persons who are brothers in the Lord. They love Jesus and sincerely desire to serve him. It is their ideas that I stand against. Their (perhaps unintentional) promotion of physicalism reinforces the scientism that is destroying our culture, has disastrous implications for developing a true and Christian anthropology, and is so uninformed by philosophy that its content would get a C+ as an undergraduate paper. Though I am sad to say these things, what I have said is the truth. And it needs to be said in public venues.
Since the author of no2renovated.com has done a good job of providing a detailed critique of Wilder’s position, I will not do so here except to make two brief points. First, Wilder’s presentation of Willard’s ideas is outrageous, grossly mistaken, and a travesty. Why didn’t he reach out to Christian philosophers—especially to those of us who studied under Dallas—to provide editorial help before he published his works? What kind of research methodology is that? I urge those reading this post not to accept his presentation of Willard’s ideal. Read Willard himself and make up your own mind. Second, if you read Wilder’s works (or Thompson’s), and you hit upon a section that describes and names the areas of the brain that are activated by various spiritual disciplines and practices, ask yourself this question: Exactly how is this material helping me understand sanctification and grow in Christ? Besides providing additional justification for the appropriate use of medication (and giving a basis for more research about specific areas of the brain that future medication and other interventions could facilitate), this material is not only unhelpful, but also distracting from the real issues in spiritual formation, issues one finds throughout Willard’s writings.
As a lover of Dallas and his ideas, I could not remain silent about these issues. I am deeply grateful for the author of no2renovated.com for posting an important response to and critique of Wilder’s claims. Brothers Wilder and Thompson: No more lone-ranger publishing. You are a part of a body of believers with expertise across the disciplines. When you write about these topics, ask for help from those in the relevant fields, with philosophy being fundamental. For readers with scholarly ability and interest, see Brandon Rickabaugh and J. P. Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism (Hoboken, N. J.: 2024).
J. P. Moreland
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy
Biola University
Admin Note (Nov. 2024): This ear has seen the publication of the book, “Have We Lost Our Minds” by Stan Wallace, with the Forward written by J. P. Moreland, which addresses these issues as well. See Wallace’s Website Here.