The Physical Nature of Christian Life Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church

This book explores the implications of recent insights in modern neuroscience for the church's view of spiritual formation. Science suggests that functions of the brain and body in collaboration with social experience, rather than a disembodied soul, provide physical basis for the mental capacities, interpersonal relations, and religious experiences of human beings. The realization that human beings are wholly physical, but with unique mental, relational and spiritual capacities, challenges traditional views of Christian life as defined by the care of souls, a view that leads to inwardness and individuality. Psychology and neuroscience suggest the importance of developmental openness, attachment, imitation and stories as tools in spiritual formation. Accordingly, the idea that care of embodied persons should be fundamentally social and communal sets new priorities for encouraging spiritual growth and building congregations.

1. Introduction; Part I. Human Nature as Physical: 2. Christian history and the two-part person; 3. Embodiment of soulishness; Part II. The Formation of Persons: 4. How bodies become persons; 5. How relationships shape us; 6. How we are changed and transformed; Part III. Embodied Christian Life and the Church: 7. Why bodies need churches; 8. Church bodies; 9. The embodied church; 10. Concluding thoughts: the church after dualism.

This book explores the implications of recent insights in modern neuroscience that attribute mental capacities often ascribed to a soul to physical brain function alone. It explores how this insight changes the traditional 'care of souls', encouraging more attention to fostering spiritual growth through a social and communal focus.

Warren S. Brown is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Travis Research Institute at the Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary. He is a research neuropsychologist with more than eighty peer-reviewed scientific papers on human brain function and behavior. He has also edited or co-authored four previous books, most recently Neuroscience, Psychology and Religion (with Malcolm Jeeves, 2009).
Brad D. Strawn is Vice President for Spiritual Development and Dean of the Chapel at Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma. He recently co-edited the book Wesleyan Theology and Social Science: The Dance of Practical Divinity (2010) and he is an ordained Elder in the Church of the Nazarene.