Winifred E. Weter Faculty Award Lecture for Meritorious Scholarship Est. 1975
The annual Winifred E. Weter Faculty Award Lecture for Meritorious Scholarship provides a public platform from which the claims of the liberal arts in the Christian university are espoused. Delivered each year by a SPU faculty member selected by the Faculty Affairs Committee, the Weter Lecture honors Winifred E. Weter, SPU professor emeriti of classics. Her teaching career spanning 40 years (1935-75) exemplifies a life of Christian character and integrity. Her love for the study of classical languages and literature inspired a similar enthusiasm in thousands of her students, and this lecture continues that tradition of inspiration. .
To listen to past Weter Lectures visit our University iTunes.
The 2012 Winifred E. Weter Lecture
Resurrection of the Body?: Physicalism and the Possibility of Life After Death
Rebekah L. H. Rice, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Upper Gwinn, Queen Anne Room
Rebekah L. H. Rice, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Seattle Pacific University. Dr. Rice earned her Ph.D. at Brown University and taught for two years at Whitworth University prior to coming to SPU. Her research focuses primarily on issues in Action Theory, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Mind, with more recent projects exploring the religious implications of certain philosophical views about the nature of the human person, the nature of human action, and the nature of causation. Her article “Agent Causation and Acting for Reasons” was recently published in The American Philosophical Quarterly (Oct. 2011) and she regularly presents papers at meetings of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
In the 2012 Winifred E. Weter Lecture, Dr. Rice will consider the compatibility of two theses. On the one hand, Christians maintain that as a result of divine grace, human persons can survive their deaths. This occurs as a result of a remarkable divine act – something Christians call “resurrection.” And it constitutes an important piece of the “good news” that Christians profess. On the other hand, Physicalism – a view about the nature of persons – is gaining traction in many of our academic disciplines and also among the general populace. Physicalists maintain, roughly, that a person is simply a physical thing (i.e., her body) and that, contrary to what Plato and Descartes thought, a person is not an immaterial soul. As one who takes seriously the doctrine of resurrection, can a Christian be a Physicalist? Is there a coherent story to tell about how a physical entity (like me, ex hypothesi) can survive bodily death? A handful of Christian Philosophers have answered “yes” to both questions and have gone on to propose theories about the possibility of the resurrection given Physicalism. In this talk, Dr. Rice will critically evaluate these proposals, and then offer some suggestions for moving forward.
PDF versions of past Weter Lectures
02-02-10— The Chemical Constraints on Creation: Natural Theology and Narrative Resonance