Jon Kelly

According to Christianity, transformation and renewal is necessary for human flourishing. The aim of my thesis is to provide a biblical ontology of human persons that supports a coherent explanation of Pauline transformation and renewal of the mind. I argue that holistic dualism provides a successful ontological framework that coheres with relevant biblical, philosophical, and scientific data. My methodology locates transformation and renewal as entailments in human flourishing and fitness grounded in the fundamental structure of reality. I proceed by carving out a biblical ontology of persons including a matrix for sanctification, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and a Christological exemplar for human agency. Next, I provide a model of the image of God founded upon the image-bearing agent and agency that coheres with my biblical ontology. I then explicate five views of the human person and soul landing on J. P. Moreland’s organicist view of holistic dualism. Next, I explicate the structure of the soul merging Moreland’s organicist structure with Richard Swinburne’s mental structure and provide an anatomical model of the soul. Finally, I turn to the sciences and provide an account of organismic plasticity and neuroplasticity that coheres with the restructuring of both the immaterial and material structures of the soul and body. In conclusion, I provide a synthesis of three models of transformation from theology, philosophy, and science integrated with Pauline renewal of the mind in concurrence with the agency of the Holy Spirit. I find that holistic dualism provides a successful ontology that unifies the human person and coheres with essential data providing a positive account of Pauline renewal and human flourishing.

Analytic theology is a thriving research program at the intersection of theology and analytic philosophy. Prior to Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea’s launch of “analytic theology” in 2009, the discipline functioned under the moniker “philosophical theology.” Considerable ink has been spilled on what is analytic theology in the past decade, and most recently by William Wood (2021). Some theologians (e.g., Abraham 2009) have argued that it is systematic theology while others (e.g., Coakley 2013) have been content to remain in a family resemblance class rooted in philosophical theology. At the same time, analytic theology has welcomed Christian philosophers (e.g., Beall 2021) who have migrated into Christian doctrine via philosophy of religion. These philosophers are not systematic theologians, but, rather, philosophical theologians. This essay analyzes the relation between analytic theology, philosophical theology, and philosophy by examining their starting points and how they perceive and access truth, and then proposes a spectrum to graph their overlapping zones of research. I conclude that philosophical theology stands at the heart of the disciplines and thus remains an appropriate term for analytic theologians and Christian philosophers working somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

On hylomorphism and a concrete view of Christ’s human nature, a human person might be defined ontologically by a real definition. Per the definitions of hylomorphism and concretism, both views depend on a thick particular “human person.” I call the dependence between the person and its definition the principle of ontological priority (POP) and I analyze how POP affects the views given two theological puzzles, namely, the disembodied intermediate state, and, following Chalcedon, a single person in Christ. I find that the entailment of the thick particular is unfavorable for both hylomorphism and concretism. Consequently, their real definitions need to be redefined.

This essay argues for a dual-aspect, substantival and functional, model of the image of God following the relation of image to agency and to Christ as the exemplar human agent developed in two parts from exegesis to metaphysics. In part 1, I define agency and trace the functional aspect of the relation of image to agency through the arc of Scripture from the creation narrative to its fulfillment in Christ and Christian regeneration. In part 2, I define image metaphysically and highlight an inference of identity Jesus makes between himself and the Father founded upon their agencies; Jesus’ identity includes the image of God grounded in the divine person of the Son. I argue that Jesus’ inference extends the concept of image as agency to include an ontological entailment such that the agent is identical with an immaterial “person.” The model provides reason to think that agency is the fundamental operator of God’s image throughout Scripture and that divine and human “persons” are immaterial substances, powerful and responsible agents.