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resurrected self
[ 61 ]
resurrection of the body. So there was no need for him to give much thought to
the mechanics of personal identity. He had to prove that the immaterial soul
exists and that the person is essentially the soul (no easy tasks), but after that, so
far as personal persistence is concerned, there is nothing left to explain. How-
ever, when Christian thinkers subsequently reverted to Platonic dualism, they
were not, like Plato had been, in a position to sidestep the thorny issues that are
raised by a relational account of identity, for they had accepted the dogma of the
resurrection of the body. They, thus, had to account for how the body that falls
and the one that subsequently rises are the same. In addition, because in Rome
during this period martyred Christians were being eaten by lions, a complication
that arose early for most thinkers was the chain-consumption argument, includ-
ing cannibalism. As a consequence, once bodily identity became an issue of con-
cern, even Christian dualists had to confront issues of identity that went
considerably beyond those that Plato had tried to solve. In their sophistication,
these Christian theories directly anticipated relational accounts of personal iden-
tity that would later come to center stage in the eighteenth century.
The Triumph of Dualism
Origen of Alexandria (185?-254) is regarded by many as the most important
Christian intellectual before Augustine. Origen is perhaps most famous for argu-
ing that the souls of angels, human beings, and demons preexisted in a state of
perfection before they sinned and fell. Before Jesus Christ became human, all
souls which were ever going to exist, including Jesus’ soul, existed and had the
same nature. That nature was to be a rational being with free choice. No soul is
“pure either by essence or by nature, and no one is by nature polluted.”
7
There is
thus no intrinsic difference between Jesus and any other soul on earth. Whatever
differences exist are the contingent consequence of free choices. How badly a soul
sinned determined how far it fell. The stars, which are souls, sinned only slightly,
and so are only slightly separated from God. Humans, since they sinned more
seriously, are entombed in bodies that are subject to death. Demons are even more
removed from God. In general, the reason there is a world in the first place is to
provide a site for the punishment and rehabilitation of souls, all of whom, once
they have reformed, are destined to be restored to a state of perfection.
In Origen’s view, some humans are better off than others at birth due to their
soul’s previous behavior. Otherwise, he argued, it would be impossible to explain
why some newborn human babies are born “blind, when they have committed
no sin, while others are born with no defect at all.”
8
This, of course, is the doctrine
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