Podcast brief
Cannibalism, Resurrection, and Personal Identity
Christina Van Dyke and Barry Lam explore a real cannibalism performance and a classical theological puzzle about whether God can resurrect both a cannibal and his victims with their own bodies.
A Stoa brief of an episode from Hi-Phi Nation
Cannibals
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The brief
This conversation uses a real act of cannibalism to open up an old theological puzzle: if bodily resurrection means God reassembles the exact matter a person had at death, what happens when that matter has passed through someone else's body first?
The episode begins with artist Rick Gibson, who in the 1980s publicly ate preserved human tonsils and testicle. Gibson defends the act through utilitarian reasoning drawn from Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer: moral status tracks the capacity for pleasure and pain, not species membership, so once flesh is obtained legally and without murder, there is no principled reason not to eat it. He frames his performances as a demonstration against speciesism, staged partly to answer critics who read his earlier work as misogynistic.
The second half, with philosopher Dean Zimmerman, turns to the classical problem this raises for Christian doctrine. If a cannibal's body is partly built from matter that once belonged to the people he ate, the same matter cannot be reassembled into two resurrected bodies. Van Dyke and Lam trace historical responses from Aquinas, Augustine, and Leibniz: give everyone new matter, deny cannibals resurrection altogether, patch missing matter with matter borrowed from earlier in life, or locate personal identity in a single indestructible part, the luz bone, an idea the episode compares to modern cryonics. Each fix creates a new problem, culminating in a thought experiment where a chain of clones each eat their predecessor, forcing God to resurrect people one generation at a time rather than all at once.
The strongest tension in the conversation is over how literal a resurrected body has to be. Van Dyke notes that Augustine and Aquinas assumed resurrected bodies stop eating and decaying, which is what generates the clone-chain problem in the first place. Zimmerman pushes back by pointing out that the Gospels have Jesus eating fish after his resurrection, which suggests the traditional picture of a static, incorruptible body may be too rigid.
The episode ends by widening the question: cannibalism is just a vivid case of a problem that also applies to decomposition or being eaten by fish. The real question is what makes a body, and therefore a person, the same thing over time, a question worth asking whether or not you believe in a soul at all.
Strongest arguments
Utilitarian case for eating human meat
2:44Gibson argues that if pleasure and pain, rather than species, determine moral status, as Bentham and Singer suggest, then eating legally obtained human flesh is no different in kind from eating animal flesh. On this view, letting human meat go to waste is morally suboptimal once murder is not involved.
Gibson's public performances as philosophical demonstration
9:49Gibson staged two public eatings, one of preserved tonsils and one layering human testicle atop beef, pork, and chicken, to show his position was about species membership rather than gender, responding to feminist criticism of his earlier sculptures.
Bodily resurrection requires the same matter
14:22Zimmerman explains that if God's plan is to reassemble the exact matter that made up a person's body at death, a cannibal who has eaten many people creates a scarcity problem, since that matter cannot be reassembled into more than one resurrected body.
Why bodily resurrection matters theologically
15:12Zimmerman and Van Dyke explain that bodily resurrection, not just survival of the soul, is central to Christian doctrine because it affirms the goodness of the material world against Gnostic devaluation of flesh, with Christ's own bodily resurrection serving as the model for everyone else's.
Proposed solutions and their failures
18:53Van Dyke and Lam walk through several historical fixes: giving everyone brand new matter, which fails because it would not be your body; denying cannibals resurrection, which fails because they would escape final judgment; patching gaps with borrowed or past matter, which raises vagueness and Frankenstein-monster worries; and appealing to a single indestructible part like the luz bone, which makes God's action seem deceptive to mourners.
The clone chain thought experiment
26:28Zimmerman poses a scenario where a person's matter passes through generations of clones who each eat their predecessor. On a matter-based theory, God could only resurrect these people sequentially, one generation at a time, since the same matter must first pass out of use.
The puzzle is really about personal identity
29:01Van Dyke and Lam argue the cannibalism puzzle is not really about cannibals specifically, since ordinary decomposition or being eaten by fish raises the same issue. The underlying question is what makes a body, and therefore a person, the same over time.
Disagreements
Whether resurrected bodies can still eat
28:13Van Dyke notes that Augustine and Aquinas assumed resurrected bodies must be incorruptible and no longer eating, which is why the clone-chain scenario seems to require sequential resurrection. Zimmerman pushes back, noting that Jesus himself ate fish after his resurrection, suggesting the traditional static picture of the afterlife body may be too extreme.
Philosophers and works discussed
- Dean Zimmerman
- Aquinas
Questions this episode answers
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How does eating human flesh create a problem for Christian bodily resurrection?
14:22If God resurrects people by reassembling the matter present in their bodies at death, a cannibal's body contains matter that once belonged to the people he ate, so there is not enough distinct matter for God to reconstitute both the cannibal and his victims.
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What solutions did Aquinas, Augustine, and Leibniz propose to the cannibal resurrection problem?
18:53Proposed solutions included giving everyone entirely new matter, denying resurrection to cannibals, patching missing matter with borrowed or earlier-life matter, and appealing to a single indestructible bone, the luz bone mentioned by Leibniz, as the essential core of a person's identity.
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Why did early Christians reject Gnostic views of the body and resurrection?
16:05Gnostics held that spirit is superior to matter and that flesh is a kind of prison for the soul, which made the incarnation of Christ in flesh seem nonsensical. Mainstream Christianity rejected this by affirming that God created matter as good and that Christ was truly incarnated and bodily resurrected.
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How does Peter Singer's view on animal suffering relate to arguments for eating human meat?
3:16Singer argues that moral status depends on the capacity to experience pleasure and pain rather than species membership, which for Gibson implies there is no principled moral difference between eating animal flesh and eating human flesh once murder is not involved.
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What is the luz bone theory of resurrection?
24:04Leibniz references a rabbinic tradition holding that a small bone called the luz bone is indestructible and cannot become part of another person's body, making it the essential physical core that God uses to guarantee a resurrected person is the same person who died.
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What is the clone chain thought experiment about resurrection?
26:28The thought experiment imagines a person's matter passing through successive generations of clones who each eat their genetically identical predecessor, showing that if resurrection depends on reassembling specific matter, God could only resurrect these people one at a time in sequence rather than all together.
Sources
- Hi-Phi Nation, Cannibals Podcast episode, original episode