I am honored to post a review of my second book composed by a special friend, Robert Stuart, with whom I worked for 25 years at Reasons To Believe (www.reasons.org).

It is clear that one of the reasons Dr. Lennard has written the book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, is to remind the church and those interested in the life of the Spirit and how one can better understand and recognize the incredible importance of the Holy Spirit in the lives of not only Christians but also those seeking communion with the God of the Bible. As Dr. Lennard writes, “the Counselor and the Helper continues to interact with the mind of man through the spirit.” This book is an indispensable primer on the essentials of the Christian faith as it relates to the Holy Spirit presented in a fresh and engaging way.

In John 16:5,7 Jesus states “it is good that I am going away…otherwise the Counselor (the Holy Spirit) will not come.” Dr. Lennard elaborates on the many roles the Holy Spirit plays in our lives. He elaborates on the body, soul, and spirit of humanity and how the third person of the Trinity was and is such an essential member for us today as much as He was in the past. The mention of the Holy Spirit 56 times in the book of Acts alone highlights the great importance in launching the new body of believers. With the advent of the Holy Spirit all of humanity now has direct, indwelling access to the Spirit of God in repentance.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Dr. Lennard’s book is the research into how the Holy Spirit may interact with the spirits of humanity through what science refers to as the neural synapse. The immaterial Spirit has a way of interacting with the immaterial mind of mankind. Dr. Lennard connects how we, as people created in God’s image, are created to interact through our minds with the Mind and Spirit of God. Distinctions are highlighted between the mind of man and man’s brain. He makes a strong case for our having the “mind of Christ” that is separate from our perishable brains. He makes a point that research indicates evidence of a “force (the Holy Spirit) [that] is available to the mind which does not depend on such electrochemical circuits but is interactive with it.” In Dr. Lennard’s book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks, he goes into depth regarding the research of neuroscientists who have been exploring this realm for a number of years. I consider this book a seminal work, which helps establish the existence of the human spirit from a scientific perspective. Humans have the potential to receive various manifestations of communion with the Holy Spirit that include dreams, visions, perceived words, intuition, and discernment via our minds.

This book is a must read in these dark days we now find ourselves in. There has never been a time that we need God’s Holy Spirit more than now as Christians. The unfortunate fact in today’s church is the under emphasis of the life-transforming effects of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. The impact and power of the Holy Spirit to transform those who do not know God as well as Christians who are feeling loneliness, hopelessness, and/or powerlessness to address the many challenges of this present culture is wonderfully laid out in Dr. Lennard’s book. In a very understandable way he communicates how this happens from both scriptural and scientific truths.

Dr. E. Stan Lennard has a very impressive background professionally with both MD and ScD degrees. He is a former esteemed general surgeon and associate professor of surgery at the University of Washington Medical School. Equally impressive is his writing ability along with active engagement in Christian leadership. His work with the parachurch ministry Reasons to Believe (RTB) included serving as chairman of the board, founder of the RTB Seattle Chapter, a trained volunteer RTB apologist, author of several articles for the RTB organization and an online instructor with Reasons Institute. He also has over 20 years of research exploring neurosynaptic phenomena that has resulted in two published books.

I have personally known Dr. Lennard for more than 25 years in my capacity as Apologetics and Scholar Community Manager at the RTB organization. His dedication to God, the scriptures, and the wonders of nature as described in science is exemplary. I heartily commend this book to you, since it will bring a fresh way to understand the ancient prophet’s proclamation that is for us today, “Not by power, not by might, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” Zechariah 4:6

Of significance is that human beings through the capacity for language not only can describe the material world around us with a high degree of accuracy, but can easily overreach the entire scope of the space-time in which we live in order to express ideas that touch the unseen eternity of abstract ideas. That eternal, unseen realm is accessible to us through the gift of language.

Sir John Eccles defined thinking as a process of mental concentration on some anticipated sensory input, on some particular task or on some particular learned program. There is an internal generation of thinking in the absence of any signaling to the brain by sense organs.

Because human beings are uniquely gifted to express and understand language, neural codes transmit linguistic information (as does the genetic code) with small probabilities defining specification. The information has structure, meaning and purpose. The intention of the immaterial mind of a sender transmits information to a recipient, whether that be the mind of a person or muscles of a limb with an intended action, or result.

I cite Dr. James Le Fanu’s discussion of the “self” in this post which reference is included in my book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man through Neural Synaptic Networks.

“…the Self is an autonomous agent with freedom to choose, … founded upon a rich autobiographical inner record of memory, an accumulated subjective experience extending back to childhood, and that it possesses powers of reason and imagination expressed through language extending beyond the boundaries of personal experience. The Self is nonmaterial with no substance, and it cannot be weighed or measured. Its non-material attributes collectively form the “inner core” that is each unique individual. Self is grounded in the human brain which facilitates its formation through cognition and memory, but it has a coherent, durable transcendent reality that cannot be explained by ever-changing, transient electrical activity of neuronal circuits.”

I am citing work of John C. Eccles addressing dualist interaction between the self-conscious mind and the cortical neurons in the anatomical and physiological entities called modules. These entities are comprised of ensembles of many hundreds of neurons acting in a collusive patterned array. In Part Two of “Waves in Our Brains” we shall see how prescient Eccles was when he coauthored his book with Karl Popper in 1977. Some of the terms he used are changed but the functional relevance remains to this day.

The self-conscious mind is actively engaged in reading out from the multitude of active centers at the highest level of brain activity, namely the [modules] of the … cerebral [cortex]. The self-conscious mind selects from these centers according to attention, and from moment to moment integrates its selection to give unity even to the most transient experiences. Furthermore the self-conscious mind acts upon these neural centers modifying the dynamic spatiotemporal patterns of the neural events. Thus we propose that the self-conscious mind exercises a superior interpretative and controlling role upon the neural events….Thus we conjecture that the self-conscious mind is scanning the modular activities in the liaison areas of the cerebral cortex…from moment to moment it is selecting modules according to its interest, the phenomenon of attention, and is itself integrating from all this diversity to give the unified conscious experience.

With the Fall of Man (Genesis 3) the image of God in humans was corrupted. Intimate communion between the soul of Man and the Holy Spirit was lost. In sin Man thereby experienced spiritual death, loss of communion between the human spirit and the Holy Spirit. Man’s mind became governed by his soul, by the will of his own self-centered focus.

The relationship between God and Man was and is designed to be a bidirectional, interactive one. Man’s capacity is to use all the communicative attributes of his Creator God, his mind being created in the image of the Mind of God. The restoration of this interaction depends upon Man’s repentance and the soul’s choice to follow the Counsel of the Holy Spirit through his human spirit. As the human spirit rules over the soul led by the indwelling Holy Spirit, the soul in turn expresses itself through the cognitive attributes of the human brain.

It is important to understand that to be led by the Spirit it is necessary to communicate with Him, to have “spiritual ears.” It is through the Holy Spirit that Man has communion and communication with God. The spirit of Man comes in contact with and unites with the Holy Spirit as one. The Holy Spirit is divine, and the fallen human spirit is not, but the two are united as one so that the repentant human spirit is reborn to new life in Jesus Christ. The new spirit is none other than God’s indwelling Spirit Who will enable God’s people to follow His decrees. It is the presence of God Himself. The Holy Spirit is in you/us.

In His meeting with the woman at the well in the Book of John Jesus explained what had been proclaimed in the Old Testament, that God is Spirit, a living Person. He existed before the natural. He created the natural and continues to this day to give it life and breath, and He penetrates the natural. The Bible defines life of spirit as a God-given capacity in human beings to form a relationship with God, to serve and to please Him.

I will be posting a series of brief blogs that highlight contents of chapters in my book, Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks. The blogs will march through the book contents. The first blog, “Matter and Mind,” includes excerpts from two articles by William A. Dembski entitled “Are We Spiritual Machines?” and “Conflating Matter and Mind.” I cite both articles on page xxi. They are in response to the question I raised, “But if mental activity includes a functional immaterial component, how can the immaterial mind of Man relate to physically based brain activity and to the Mind of God, who is Spirit? How might the Holy Spirit interact with the human mind, will and emotion - the soul?”

Within [a] richer world of both material and nonmaterial things, physical laws lose their status as absolutes and become subject to principles that may be quite metaphysical, (principles like intelligent agency and divine providence).

The brain is a physical system which captures intelligence . . . which is metaphysical, created by God as part of our mind, soul and “heart” before we were even placed in the womb. Our brains are interactive processors of this distinctive human gift, an incorporation of the divine Logos.