Posted on 05/06/2005 6:37:29 PM PDT by DouglasKC
What happens to us after we die? Where are our loved ones who have passed on? Will we ever see them again?
Everyone needs to know that life has purpose, that death isn't the permanent end of our existence. The most common Christian belief regarding the afterlife is that people possess souls and at death their consciousness in the form of that soul departs from the body and heads for heaven or hell.
Most religions teach some form of life after death. The ancient Egyptians, for example, practiced elaborate ceremonies to prepare the pharaohs for their next life. They constructed massive pyramids and other elaborate tombs filled with luxuries the deceased were assumed to need in the hereafter.
In some civilizations when a ruler died others who had accompanied and served him in his life were put to death so they could immediately serve him in the afterlife. Wives and other relatives, servants, sometimes even household pets joined him in death and a supposed entrance into a new life on the other side.
Belief in the immortality of the soul was an important aspect of ancient thought espoused by the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Plato, in Phaedo, presents Socrates' explanation of death: "Is it not the separation of soul and body? And to be dead is the completion of this; when the soul exists in herself, and is released from the body and body is released from the soul, what is this but death?" (Five Great Dialogues, Classics Club edition, 1969, p. 93).
Socrates explained that the immortal soul, once freed from the body, is rewarded according to good deeds or punished for evil. Socrates lived ca. 470-399 B.C., so his view of the soul predated Christianity.
Plato (ca. 428-348 B.C.) saw man's existence as divided into the material and spiritual, or "Ideal," realms. "Plato reasoned that the soul, being eternal, must have had a pre-existence in the ideal world where it learned about the eternal Ideals" (William S. Sahakian, History of Philosophy, 1968, p. 56). In Plato's reasoning, man is meant to attain goodness and return to the Ideal through the experiences of the transmigration of the soul. Thus secular philosophies sanction the idea of the immortal soul, even though the Bible does not. Believe it or not, God's Word teaches something entirely different.
The doctrine of the immortal soul caused much controversy in the early Catholic Church.
Origen (ca. 185-254) was the first person to attempt to organize Christian doctrine into a systematic theology. He was an admirer of Plato and believed in the immortality of the soul and that it would depart to an everlasting reward or everlasting punishment at death.
In Origen De Principiis he wrote: "... The soul, having a substance and life of its own, shall after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its actions shall have procured this for it, or to be delivered up to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt of its crimes shall have brought it down to this ..." (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, 1995, p. 240).
Origen taught that human souls existed before the body but are imprisoned in the physical world as a form of punishment. Physical life, he reasoned, is a purification process to return humans to a spiritual state.
Later Augustine (354-430) tackled the problem of the immortality of the soul and death. For Augustine death meant the destruction of the body, but the conscious soul would continue to live in either a blissful state with God or an agonizing state of separation from God.
In The City of God he wrote that the soul "is therefore called immortal, because in a sense, it does not cease to live and to feel; while the body is called mortal because it can be forsaken of all life, and cannot by itself live at all. The death, then, of the soul, takes place when God forsakes it, as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it" (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2, 1995, p. 245.)
The influences of pagan Platonic philosophy on Origen and Augustine are profound. Richard Tarnas, in his best-seller The Passion of the Western Mind, points to this influence: "... It was Augustine's formulation of Christian Platonism that was to permeate virtually all of medieval Christian thought in the West. So enthusiastic was the Christian integration of the Greek spirit that Socrates and Plato were frequently regarded as divinely inspired pre-Christian saints ..." (1991, p. 103).
Centuries later Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274) crystallized the doctrine of the immortal soul in The Summa Theologica. He taught that the soul is a conscious intellect and will and cannot be destroyed.
A few centuries later the leaders of the Protestant Reformation generally accepted these traditional views, so they became entrenched in traditional Protestant teaching.
The immortality of the soul is foundational in Western thought, both philosophical and religious. Belief in going to heaven or hell depends on it. But does the Bible teach that death is the separation of body and soul or that the soul is immortal?
The Hebrew word translated "soul" in the Old Testament is nephesh, which simply means "a breathing creature." Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words defines nephesh as "the essence of life, the act of breathing, taking breath ... The problem with the English term 'soul' is that no actual equivalent of the term or the idea behind it is represented in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of the 'body' and 'soul' which are really Greek and Latin in origin" (1985, p. 237-238, emphasis added).
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible makes this comment on nephesh: "The word 'soul' in English, though it has to some extent naturalized the Hebrew idiom, frequently carries with it overtones, ultimately coming from philosophical Greek (Platonism) and from Orphism and Gnosticism which are absent in 'nephesh.' In the OT it never means the immortal soul, but it is essentially the life principle, or the living being, or the self as the subject of appetite, and emotion, occasionally of volition" (Vol. 4, 1962, "Soul," emphasis added).
That nephesh doesn't refer to an immortal soul can be seen in the way the word is used in the Old Testament. It is translated "soul" or "being" in reference to man in Genesis 2:7, but also to animals by being translated "creature" in Genesis 1:24. Nephesh is translated "body" in Leviticus 21:11 in reference to a human corpse.
The Hebrew Scriptures state plainly that, rather than possess immortality, the soul can and does die. "The soul [nephesh] who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4, 20).
The Old Testament describes the dead as going to sheol, translated into English as "hell," "pit" or "grave." Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 describes sheol as a place of unconsciousness: "For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished ..."
King David laments that death extinguishes a relationship with God. "For in death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who will give You thanks?" (Psalm 6:5).
The immortal-soul concept isn't part of the Old Testament, but it began to make inroads into Jewish thought as Jews came in contact with Greek culture. In the first century the Jewish philosopher Philo taught a Platonic concept: "... The death of a man is the separation of his soul from his body ..." (The Works of Philo, translated by C.D. Yonge, 1993, p. 37). Philo followed the Hellenistic view that the soul is freed upon death to an everlasting life of virtue or evil.
In the New Testament the Greek word translated "soul" is psuche, which is also translated "life."
In Psalm 16:10 David uses nephesh ("soul") to claim that the "Holy One," or Messiah, wouldn't be left in sheol, the grave. Peter quotes this verse in Acts 2:27, using the Greek psuche for the Hebrew nephesh (notice verses 25-31).
Like nephesh, psuche refers to human "souls" (Acts 2:41) and for animals (it is translated "life" in the King James Version of Revelation 8:9 and 16:3). Jesus declared that God can destroy man's psuche, or "soul" (Matthew 10:28).
If the Old Testament describes death as an unconscious state, how does the New Testament describe it?
No one wrote more about this subject than the apostle Paul. He describes death as "sleep" (1 Corinthians 15:51-58; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
Many people are surprised to find that the term immortal soul appears nowhere in the Bible. However, though the Scriptures do not speak of the soul as being immortal, they have much to say about immortality. For example: "You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15).
Paul told the members of the congregation in Rome to "seek" immortality (Romans 2:5-7). He taught Christians at Corinth that they must be changed and "put on" immortality (1 Corinthians 15:51-55). Paul proclaimed that only God and His Son possess immortality (1 Timothy 6:12-16) and that eternal life is a "gift" from God (Romans 6:23).
The most powerful words come from Jesus Himself: "And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:40).
We've seen in this brief look at the supposedly immortal soul that the Bible teaches no such concept. The idea filtered into Western thought through Greek philosophy. Its origins are older than Athens, in fact as old as man.
The concept of the immortal soul was introduced into man's thinking at the earliest beginnings of human history. God told the first human beings, Adam and Eve, that if they sinned they would die and return to the dust from which He had created them (Genesis 2:17; 3:19). Satan, the embodiment of evil, the powerful entity who opposes God, assured them they wouldn't die (verses 1-5).
Satan slyly injected into Eve's consciousness the notion that God was lying and that she and her husband would not die, thus ingraining the unscriptural teaching of the immortality of the soul into human thought. Satan has since deceived the world on this important understanding as well as many other biblical truths (Revelation 12:9). Much of the world, including millions of people in religions outside of traditional Christianity, are convinced they have—or are—immortal souls and hope they will go to a happy place or state of being immediately after they die.
Yet the Bible plainly teaches that the dead lie in the grave and know nothing, think no thoughts, have no emotions, possess no consciousness. Does this mean death, the cessation of life, is final, the end of everything?
The Bible answers this question too. Although mankind is physical, subject to death, the good news is that God promises a resurrection to eternal life to everyone who repents, worships God and accepts Jesus as the Messiah and His sacrifice. The first resurrection to immortality will take place when Christ returns to establish God's Kingdom on this earth.
Later will come another resurrection—to physical life—for people who had never had a relationship with the Father and Jesus Christ. They, too, will gain the opportunity for immortality. The true final answer is not death but resurrection. GN
But the "life force", God's breath, is clearly NOT the soul in the scripture you quoted.
Man BECAME a living soul, AFTER the breath of life (spirit), was breathed into him. I agree, the spirit goes back to God that gave it, but the man, the living soul, dies.
A problem is that many interchange soul and spirit. But just this one scripture shows that they are NOT the same. Men are not given souls. They are souls, living beings, lives. The spirit is not a living being, it is the anima, the power used by God to start and continue life. Souls die. They are not immortal.
How do you explain the reference Jesus made to a living man going to bury his dead father, as 'let the dead (that's a dead soul/spirit) bury the dead'?
Let the spiritually dead have as their purpose in life whatever fleshly pursuits there may be.
Look at in context. The man wanted to delay becoming a follower of Christ to go "bury his father". Jesus told him in strong terms to let those who aren't pursuing the truth handle such things. It doesn't make sense to see this as some extremely ambiguous reference to an immortal soul, especially when the Bible clearly says souls die.
It's similar to the people in Noah's day who were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, just like there's nothing wrong with burying your father. The problem comes when you put those things ahead of obedience to God.
And again, spirit and soul are not the same.
The spirit is not the conscious, living being. The spirit is not you. The spirit is the breath of life. The "eternal spirit" of which you speak goes back to God when the person dies. God keeps you in his memory, so in that sense you haven't been destroyed. But you are actually "sleeping", conscious of nothing and doing nothing. That is death.
Psalms 146:4 - "His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish."
Animals and humans, all living souls, have the same spirit, the same "breath of life".
Eccl. 3:19 - "...and they have the same eventuality. As the one dies, so the other dies, and they all have but one spirit."
As Christians we are to have a new body, real, physical, but incorruptible ('for we shall not all sleep, but we will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye' ...). I take that to mean that our body then will be 'time-transcendent'.
But that obviously has nothing to do with what happens when we die now, the subject of the article.
"... spirit and soul are not the same." Strongly agree. The construction of the original Temple (the tent to be carried along by the Hebrews in the Desert) speaks to the definite differences in body (the outer court), the Holy Place (the soul), and the Holy of Holies (the spirit) ... and the Holy of Holies was most Holy when God came in to be in the Temple there. When God was not in the Holy of Holies, the Temple was merely a tent.
The "nephesh" is very interesting. It accounts for the formulation of "...He breathed life into [Adam and Eve]" as well as the occasional description of the Holy Spirit as 'breath.'
Ratzinger uses the "breath" or "pneumos" concept in affirming that the human voice (operative only with breath) is the principal and most sublime way in which we worship God, (affirmed countless times by David) and then applies that "breath" concept in a sidebar-fashion to remind us why the pipe organ is specifically preferred as the instrument for Catholic Churches.
The author's quick dismissal of "life"/"death" OT references--not connecting them to the Hebrew concept of "life," as in the "life eternal" phrase used by Xt to the Samaritan well-woman is unfortunate, because his conclusion is false as a result.
That's not how I read the bible.
What I find intriguing is that God told Adam and Eve that if they sinned they would die and return again to the dust they were made from:
Gen 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
It says absolutely nothing about their souls living on in immortality.
What's really fascinating is that this idea is first broached by Satan:
Gen 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Gen 3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
God says we will surely die. Satan says we will surely not. Who to believe? :-)
Souls dies spiritually not physically. "A soul that sinneth shall die"...means a soul that is separated from God is spiritually dead. An unrepentive soul remains separated from God, spiritually dead, for eternity.
Satan of course lied. He said that if Adam and Eve at the fruit (i.e. sinned) they will not die.
If souls die, then why did Jesus go to Hades? If souls die, who was there -- and why?
Where in the Bible does it say that death in this case means anything other than physical death? Where does it say that "an unrepentant soul remains separated from God, spiritually dead, for eternity"? Where in the Bible is "spiritual death" held out as the punishment for sin? Where in the Bible does it say that the soul is immortal?
There is scripture after scripture that talks of souls dying, but none that talk of the soul being innately immortal. The Bible talks about death quite a bit, and describes death, but not in the terms you use.
"The living are conscious that they will die, but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all." Ecclesiastes 9:5
The dead are unconscious, like sleeping people are unconscious. Jesus often described dead ones as sleeping, for example, Lazarus.
I have never read in the Bible this concept of "immortal soul" or "being separated from God is the punishment for sin". The Bible says that "the wages sin pays is death" and the Bible describes death, not as separation, but as an unconscious state. I have never read anywhere in the Bible where death means "eternal separation". I know this is a popular concept in churches nowadays, just as a hundred years ago the popular concept was that the "unrepentant soul" would burn and be tortured for all of eternity. Now, apparently, it is not burned but "separated" from God for all of eternity. I don't know what it will be tomorrow, but they all stem from the wrong belief that we don't REALLY die. We do REALLY die.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Perish is the other option to eternal life. Eternal life is not the other option. Perish. That word translated "perish" is:
apollumi
ap-ol'-loo-mee
From G575 and the base of G3639; to destroy fully (reflexively to perish, or lose), literally or figuratively: - destroy, die, lose, mar, perish.
It agrees totally with the old testment view of the fate of sinners:
Mal 4:1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
Utterly destroyed. Burnt up.
The penalty for sin is real physical death:
Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.....
We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
II Chor 5:6-8
Hmm United Church of God...An International Association...
Is this an offshoot of the SDA churches?
An offshoot of the Church Of God, Seventh Day,
or and offshoot of the Herbert W. Armstrong churches?
Or Garner Ted Armstrong's church.
If so, any credibility has just been shot.
And? I would presume that most Christians would rather be absent from their bodies and present with the Lord. But this verse doesn't say when it happens. The bible says that this happens when Christ returns:
1Co 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
I don't care whether or not you find any of the above organizations credible or not. What's important is how the information presented here stacks up against the bible.
Thankyou for your post, Douglas. As a child I could never understand the need for a ressurection if we were already floating around somewhere enjoying whatever it was we were supposed to be enjoying.
"The soul that sinneth shall die" finally made sense to me in my early twenties(long time ago).
The creator would not punish the parents of non-believers by allowing them to see their kids burning forever in some sort of unbiblical hellfire. Instead a loving creator would allow these unrepentant children to perish.....and their believing parents would experience the ressurection to eternal life.
Yeah why leave heaven and get a spirit body if we're already in heaven and have a spirit body? Makes no sense compared to what the bible says.
The Church that Chirst established has been around for 2,000 years, and that Church taught one and the same faith, and still does to this day.
On the other hand I get the impression by your expositions that I am supposed to trust your personal interpretations of the Bible over those made by people who made faith their life for the last 2,000 years and not just a Sunday outing? That would be too presumptuous of me I would say.
You will say: I am supposed to believe the Bible and not the Pope or the Church. But for the life of me I don't understand why anyone would want to belong to a "church" whose members are their own "popes", flaunting their personal interpretations of faith -- except as an incredible ego trip.
Judging from your comments, you don't even recognize the terminology of the faith that has been around for millennia. How can we even begin to talk? You trust the Bible which was put together by people whose Church you reject. You trust the product but not the body from which it came!
Best of luck to all you "popes".
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