For Bill Hasker, the mind body problem can be appraoched with his proposal of “emergent dualism.”

With this, the mind is envisioned as an emergent property of the brain. (A good analogy is the magnetic field around a magnet.) This basically means that the mind was created by the material in the brain, but is a more complicated system than the sum of the parts of the brain.

The mind therefore has an effect on the brain, but the mind isn’t dependent on the brain. And the mind can be separated from the brain upon the second creation. The same individuals will exist in the world to come as they do now. Because the soul is separate from the body, it can be re-embodied in the resurrection of the world.

Hasker asserts that this is superior to Cartesian dualism – where the mind and brain are also separate – because in this, mental processes are dependent on specific parts of the brain. Also, Cartesian dualism the soul has no room for evolution. The soul is as it has always been when God put it in our bodies.

Emergent dualism, however, gives room for evolution. As humans – and all other living things for that matter – evolved their minds got progressively complex.

As far as open theology is concerned, “We could suppose that God endowed us with a capacity to create our own marvelous features, but it doesn’t rule out God’s active involvement in the world and our lives,” said Hasker.