The Alleged Inherent Immortality of the Human Soul, and
 it's Ability to Exist in a Disembodied State After Death

Statement: Greek philosophy accepted a soul, in some sense, as a separate entity from the body; as did the Jews, Christ, and the apostles.

Response: Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words states:

• "The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of the terms "body" and "soul," which are really Greek and Latin in origin."
• Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: "No biblical text authorizes the statement that the soul is separated from the body at the moment of death" (Vol. 1, p. 802).
• Christian Words and Christian Meanings, by John Burnaby (pp. 148, 149): "Greek philosophers had argued that the dissolution which we call death happens to nothing but bodies, and that the souls of men are by their native constitution immortal. The Greek word for immortality occurs only once in the New Testament, and there it belongs to none but the King of Kings...The immortality of the soul is no part of the Christian creed, just as it is no part of Christian anthropology to divide soul and body and confine the real man, the essence of personality, to supposedly separable soul for which embodiment is imprisonment...Jesus taught no doctrine of everlasting life for disembodied souls, such as no Jew loyal to the faith his fathers could have accepted or even understood. But Jewish belief was in the raising of the dead at the Last Day."
• Companion Bible by E.W. Bullinger, on II Cor. 5:8: "It is little less than a crime for anyone to pick out certain words and frame them into a sentence, not only disregarding the scope and context, but ignoring the other words in the verse, and quote the words 'absent from the body, present with the Lord' with the view of dispensing with the hope of the Resurrection (which is the subject of the whole passage) as though it were unnecessary; and as though 'present with the Lord' is obtainable without it."
• Law and Grace, by Professor A. F. Knight (p. 79): "In the Old Testament man is never considered to be a soul dwelling in a body, a soul that will one day be set free from the oppression of the body, at the death of that body, like a bird released from a cage. The Hebrews were not dualists in their understanding of God's world."
• Families at the Crossroads, by Rodney Clapp (pp. 95, 97): "Following Greek and medieval Christian thought, we often sharply separate the soul and body, and emphasize that the individual soul survives death. What's more we tend to believe the disembodied soul has escaped to heaven, to a more pleasant and fully alive existence. We mistakenly envision the Christian hope as an individual affair, a matter of separate souls taking flight to heaven. But none of this was the case for the ancient Israelites."
• Martin Luther: "I think that there is not a place in Scripture of more force for the dead who have fallen asleep, than Ecc. 9:5 ("the dead know nothing at all"), understanding nothing of our state and condition." - The context of this statement was against the invocation of saints and the fiction of Purgatory.
• NT Wright: "If you go to the resurrection chapters in Luke 24, or in Matthew, or Mark, or John, and say, "What do the evangelists think this stuff means; why are we telling this story?" The answer is not, "Jesus is risen again, therefore, we can go to heaven when we die and be with him." It's interesting they never say that, those resurrection chapters. Rather, they say, "Jesus is risen from the dead. Therefore, God's new creation has begun, and you are commissioned to go off and make it happen." That's the emphasis."

I give the above quotes to show that this position is common among scholars. Even Vine's understands that this whole idea of disembodied existence is "Greek in origin" - It's actually older than that - Egyptian, Hindu, etc. The important thing is that, "The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of the terms "body" and "soul..."

There are explicit statements against the notion of consciousness in death, and/or that disembodied souls go to heaven from Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Hippolytus among others.

All of these men identify Greek Philosophy as being WRONG on this subject. Justin Martyr says,

• Why do we any longer endure those unbelieving arguments and fail to see that we are retrograding when we listen to such an argument as this: That the soul is immortal, but the body mortal, and incapable of being revived. For this we used to hear from Plato, even before we learned the truth. If then the Saviour said this and proclaimed salvation to the soul alone, what new thing beyond what we heard from Plato, did He bring us? (Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 80)

These men were in contention with Gnostics, who denied the resurrection. In arguing for the resurrection of the body, these Fathers secondarily reveal that they hold that the soul of man does not exist apart from the body, or if it does exist in some sense, it "sleeps". It doesn't go to heaven but is kept in the grave (Hades/Sheol) until the resurrection. In Justin's case, in the same context as the quote given above there is a passage where he argues explicitly that without a body AND a soul TOGETHER there is no person. He says,

• "As in the case of a yoke of oxen, if one or other is loosed from the yoke, neither of them can plough alone; so neither can soul or body alone effect anything, if they be unyoked from their communion . . ." (Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 80)

In relation to this subject, these men rightly reject their Platonic heritage and background.

Contrasted to these would be other influential Greek fathers who carried their Platonic presuppositions into their Christianity and superimposed their Greek paradigm onto Hebrew documents. An example would be Origen, who believed in the inherent immortality of human souls. He taught that human souls pre-exist. He believed in the transmigration of souls, that is, reincarnation. His paradigm is directly from Plato.

"Traditional" Christianity has included a belief in the resurrection of the body, while ALSO teaching an immediate salvation of the soul alone in a conscious disembodied state. This is said to be the REAL person, albeit disembodied. Such an idea is flatly contradicted by Justin and Irenaeus and is identified by them as pagan - specifically, Platonic.

The Hebraic paradigm is illustrated thusly:

• "When you take away their breath (ruah), they perish and return to the dust from which they came. When you send forth your breath (ruah), they are created" (Psalm 104:29:30).
• "When his spirit (ruah) departs he returns to his earth; on that day his thoughts perish" (Psalm 146:4).
• "And when the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath (ruah) returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
• "For there will be no work, nor reason, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol (the grave) where you are going" (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
• "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace." (Daniel 12:2)
• "Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; for you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return." (Genesis 3:19)
• "Return, O LORD, save my life; rescue me because of your kindness, for among the dead no one remembers you." (Psalms 6:5-6)
• "The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any that go down into silence". (Psalm 115:17)
• "For the lot of man and of beast is one lot; the one dies as well as the other. Both have the same life-breath, and man has no advantage over the beast; but all is vanity. Both go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return." (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)
• "...the dead know nothing...(Ecclesiastes 9:5)
• "So men lie down and rise not again. Till the heavens are no more, they shall not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep." (Job 14:12)
• Why did I not die at birth...for now I would have lain down and been quiet, I would have slept then, I would have been at rest...with kings and counselors of the earth...with princes who had gold...or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be...there the wicked cease from raging and there the weary are at rest, the prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. (Job 3:11-19)
• And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? For now shall I lie down in the dust; And thou wilt seek me diligently, but I shall not be. (Job 7:21)

Soul (Heb. nepes) - 1. living being, self, life, person. 2. The inner person, seat of emotions and passions (VED & The Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (BDB)).

Soul (Gk. psuche) - 1.own self, the natural life of the body. 2. The seat of feelings, desires, affections, aversions (VED & Thayer's Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament (TGEL)).

In both languages the definitions are almost identical.

When the dust of the earth - be it human or animal - receives the breath of life (spirit - ruah) it becomes a living soul (a living being - nepes/psuche). "The LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life (ruah), and so man BECAME a living soul (nepes)."

I believe the New Testament writers have this same paradigm. When referring to those who have died Paul speaks of those who have "fallen asleep". Jesus spoke of Lazarus as being "asleep." At the very least, this metaphor implies, "not conscious."

"Brethren, I may say unto you freely of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day...For David ascended not into the heavens..." (Acts 2:29, 34)

I would point out that this was spoken of David AFTER the ascension of Christ. David, a man after God's own heart, has not gone to heaven. The only person of whom the Bible speaks of as going to heaven after death is Jesus. And he certainly did not go to heaven in a disembodied state.

If we "go to heaven" when we die, if we exist in a glorious disembodied state in the presence of God and in reunion with our loved ones who have "gone before", why the emphasis on the resurrection? Paul said, "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'" If I believe that I go to heaven when I die, I can think of a very good reason to NOT "eat and drink for tomorrow we die", even if the dead are NOT raised - so that when I die I can go to heaven and be "present with the Lord." A belief in a conscious disembodied after-death existence in the presence of God renders Paul's argument superfluous.

The Greek idea is that the soul exists apart from the body after death, contrary to the Hebraic idea that the soul is the result of the "breath of Life" plus the dust of the earth combined. Remove the breath, the body dies, there is no soul - no living being.

According to the New Testament, the goal of the Christian is NOT said to be to go to heaven when you die, the goal of the Christian is to be resurrected. In Philippians 3:9-14 the prize, the high calling, the thing that Paul strains forward to is "if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead."

In Hebrews it says, "These all died in faith without receiving what was promised." What was promised? "That apart from us they should not be made perfect." What is meant by "perfect"? Paul tells us in Philippians 3 when speaking of the resurrection; "Not that I have obtained this or am already perfect..."

When Christians die, they die in the hope of the resurrection - "...for I would not have you grieve as those who have no hope..." What is the "hope"? It's the resurrection of the dead and the translation of the living, according to Paul in Thessalonians.

If and when my time comes, I intend to die in faith, trusting in my Lord and Savior, Jesus the Anointed, the Son of God, my great high priest - and go to the sleep of death in the hope of the resurrection.

As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with beholding thy form. (Ps 17:15)

If I am wrong about this and I find myself in heaven with my loved ones who have "fallen asleep" before me, so much the better! But this is not, in my opinion, what the ancient Israelites believed, nor is it what Jesus and the apostles taught.

Again, neither the Jews, nor Christ, nor the Apostles accept, "...a soul...as a separate entity from the body." The Hebraic paradigm that I have exposited above is a commonly held position among scholars of all stripes, as illustrated above, including Vine's, as well as Martin Luther, and many of the Greek fathers. It is also common knowledge that this is another area where Greek philosophical thought has co-opted Hebraic/Christian theology, and the interpretation of the Bible.

Now, verses should occur to you like, "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus' words to the thief on the cross, "I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, the witch of En-dor raising Samuel's shade, the souls of the martyrs under the alter in Revelation, and so on.

Given inerrancy, just the fact that the Bible presents us with seeming contradiction indicates we haven't understood one or the other, or both, categories of statements. A readjustment is required. I maintain that all verses that seem to present us with the idea that the human soul is inherently immortal and has an uninterrupted conscious existence after death apart from the body can be dealt with. As I said before, what looks solid today can look distinctly like quicksand tomorrow.

The following is certainly not an exhaustive list of texts that could be used to support the idea of the inherent immortality of the soul, but they are the ones most commonly used. Most people seem to think of these first.

1) Luke 23:43: Jesus, when hanging on the cross said, "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

2) 2 Corinthians 5:8: "...absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord."

3) Philippians 1:23: "...to depart and be with Christ..."

4) Luke 16:19-31: The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

5) 2 Kings 2:11: "And Elijah went up by a whirlwind to heaven."

6) Mathew 17: the transfiguration - Moses and Elijah appear.

7) Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5: "Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." - "By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was found no more because God had taken him."

8) 1 Samuel 28: The medium at En-dor raises Samuel for Saul.

9) Revelation 6:9-11: The souls of the martyrs under the alter.

10) 2 Corinthians 12:2-4: Whether in the body or out of the body

A word about paradigms, Greek and Hebrew