Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 1 Issue 1 | Page 33

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division between spirit and matter, Conway places them on a continuum such that
they are not distinct substances. In her view, spirit can even turn into matter, and
vice versa. Spirit and matter are to be understood as a single kind of substance
(‘creature’), alongside two others – God and Christ. The three kinds of substance are
distinct due to the kind of change they can go through; whilst God is unchangeable,
Christ can change but only towards perfection, and creatures can change both
towards and away from perfection. For creatures, change towards perfection (as is
usual in monotheistic traditions) means becoming more like God. Conway sees this
as creatures becoming more ‘spirit’ and less ‘matter’ (hence why it is important for
her that spirit and matter lie on a continuum). Although creatures can become less
perfect, ultimately all things tend towards perfection and thus all eventually become
more spiritual over the course of eternity. Such an overall movement towards the
good is due to the imperfections of creation, which bring about pain and suffering,
understood as both divine punishment and a palliative for evil:
Just as all the punishments inflicted by God on his creatures are in
proportion to their sins, so they tend, even the worst, to their good and to
their restoration and they are so medicinal as to cure these sickly
creatures and restore them to a better condition than they previously
enjoyed.8
One striking aspect of this view is that all animals are given precisely the
same status both in substantial and moral terms – all beings can achieve salvation,
which is completely at odds with the traditional Christian reservation of salvation for
human beings alone. Just as controversial is that Conway does not seem to have a
traditional Christian view of the afterlife, but instead believes in the ‘transmigration’ of
souls (a doctrine akin to reincarnation particularly found in Indian religions). One
cannot be damned to eternity because, Conway argues, there is a limit to the degree
to which one can be corporeal (remember that Conway puts corporeality and
spirituality on a moral continuum), whilst one can continue to become more spiritual
to infinity, because a creature can never arrive at the perfect spirituality of God.
When a human being or one of the other animals dies, their constituent parts (of the
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8

Ibid., 38.