Christian mortalism

Christian mortalism is the Christian belief that the human soul is not naturally immortal[1][2][3][4][5] and may include the belief that the soul is "sleeping" after death until the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment,[6][7][8][9][10] a time known as the intermediate state. "Soul sleep" is often used as a pejorative term,[11][lower-alpha 1][14] so the more neutral term "mortalism" was also used in the nineteenth century,[15] and "Christian mortalism" since the 1970s.[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Historically the term psychopannychism was also used, despite problems with the etymology[lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3] and application.[24] The term thnetopsychism has also been used; for example, Gordon Campbell (2008) identified John Milton as believing in the latter.[25]

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Main article: Soul in the Bible

Christian mortalism stands in contrast with the traditional Christian belief that the souls of the dead immediately go to heaven, or hell, or (in Catholicism) purgatory. Christian mortalism has been taught by several theologians and church organizations throughout history while also facing opposition from aspects of Christian organized religion. The Catholic Church condemned such thinking in the Fifth Council of the Lateran as "erroneous assertions". Supporters include eighteenth-century religious figure Henry Layton, among many others.

Etymology and terminology

Since the phrases "soul sleep" or "soul death" do not occur either in the Bible or in early Anabaptist materials, an explanation is required for the origin of the term. Additionally, several other terms have been introduced which relate to the view. Modern theologians have used the term "Christian mortalism" and related wordings from the 21st century onwards.

Soul sleep

The phrase soul sleep appears to have been popularized by John Calvin in the subtitle to his Latin tract Psychopannychia (Psychopannychia (manuscript), Orléans, 1534, Psychopannychia (print) (in Latin), Strasbourg, 1542, Psychopannychia (in French) (2nd ed.), Geneva, 1558 [1545], Psychopannychia, 1581). The title of the booklet comes from Greek psyche (soul, mind) with pan-nychis (παν-νυχίς, all-night vigil, all-night banquet),[26][27] so Psychopannychia, originally, represents Calvin's view that the soul was conscious and active after death.

The title and subtitle of the 1542 Strasbourg 1st edition read: Vivere apud Christum non-dormire animas sanctas qui in fide Christi decedunt. Assertio. [That the holy souls of those who die in the faith of Christ live with Christ and do not sleep. An Assertion.] (in Latin).[28]

The title and subtitle of the 1545 2nd Latin edition read: Psychopannychia – qua repellitur quorundam imperitorum error qui animas post mortem usque ad ultimum iudicium dormire putant. [Psychopannychia – Or a refutation of the error entertained by some unskillful persons, who ignorantly imagine that in the interval between death and the judgment the soul sleeps.] (in Latin).

The 1558 French edition was a translation of that of the 1545 2nd edition: Psychopannychie – traitté par lequel est prouvé que les âmes veillent et vivent après qu'elles sont sorties des corps; contre l'erreur de quelques ignorans qui pensent qu'elles dorment jusque au dernier jugement.

Other terms
  • "Psychopannychism" – In the Latin it is clearer that Psychopannychia is actually the refutation of, the opposite of, the idea of soul sleep. The version Psychopannychie – La nuit ou le sommeil de l'âme [Psychopannychia – the night or the sleep of the soul] (in French), Geneva, 1558 may have caused the confusion that by -pannychis Calvin meant sleep (in Greek -hypnos, sleep, not -pannychis, vigil).[29] The subtitle le sommeil de l'âme (in French) was taken up as Seelenschlaf [Soul-sleep] (in German).[30] The tract first appeared in English as An excellent treatise of the Immortalytie of the Soule, translated by Stocker, T., London, 1581.

Luther's use of similar language (but this time defending the view) appears in print only a few years after Calvin:

…so the soul after death enters its chamber and peace, and sleeping does not feel its sleep

— Enarrationes in Genesis [Commentary on Genesis] (in Latin), 1535–1545.[31]
  • "Hypnopsychism" – from hypno- + psyche ("sleep of soul") was a more correct coinage from Greek than that of Calvin's editor. Eustratios of Constantinople (after 582) denounced mortalism as a heresy using this term.
  • "Thnetopsychism" – A possibly contrasting phrase is thnetopsychism (from Greek thnetos [mortal] + psyche [soul, mind]).[32] The term has its origin in the descriptions of Eusebius of Caesarea and John of Damascus of mortalist views among Arab Christians,[33][34] In the 1600s also this phrase was applied also to the views of Tyndale, Luther and other mortalists, from awareness that Calvin's term Psychopannychia originally described his own belief, not the belief he was calling error.[35] The term is also used of the view of the Anabaptists. Their view is that the soul dies, with the body to be recalled to life at the resurrection of the dead, or that the soul is not separate from the body and so there is no "spiritual" self to survive bodily death. In both cases, the deceased does not begin to enjoy a reward or suffer a punishment until Judgment Day.

Mortalist arguments

Historically, Christian mortalists have advanced theological, lexical, and scientific arguments in support of their position.[36]

Theological arguments

Theological arguments which contended that the continued existence of the soul was not taught in the Bible were made by mortalists such as Francis Blackburne,[37] Joseph Priestley,[38] and Samuel Bourne.[39] Mortalists such as Richard Overton advanced a combination of theological and philosophical arguments in favor of soul sleep.[40] Thomas Hobbes likewise made extensive use of theological argumentation.[41] Some mortalists viewed their beliefs as a return to original Christian teaching.[42][43] Mortalists’ theological arguments were also used to contest the Catholic doctrine of purgatory and masses for the dead.[44][45][46]

The British Evangelical Alliance ACUTE report states the doctrine of soul sleep is a "significant minority evangelical view" that has "grown within evangelicalism in recent years".[47] Although in modern times some have attempted to introduce the concept of soul sleep into Eastern Orthodox thought about life after death, it has never been a part of traditional Eastern Orthodox teaching, and it even contradicts the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the intercession of the Saints.[48]

Mortalists argue for soul sleep using Bible verses such as Psalm 6:5, 115:17, 146:4, Ecclesiastes 9:5, Luke 8:52-53, John 11:11–14, 1 Corinthians 15:51-54, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. Mortalists point to Genesis 2 and Revelation 22, where the Tree of Life is mentioned. It is argued that these passages, along with Genesis 3:22–24 teach that human beings will naturally die without continued access to God's life-giving power.

As a general rule, soul sleep goes hand in hand with annihilationism; that is, the belief that the souls of the wicked will be destroyed in Gehenna (often translated “hell,” especially by non-mortalists and non-annihilationists) fire rather than suffering eternal torment. The two ideas are not exactly equivalent, however, because in principle God may annihilate a soul which was previously created immortal.[49] While annihilationism places emphasis on the active destruction of a person, soul sleep places emphasis on a person's dependence upon God for life; the extinction of the person is thus a passive consequence of separation from God, much like natural death is a consequence of prolonged separation from food, water, and air.

Mortalist writers, such as Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, have often argued that the doctrine of natural (or innate) immortality stems not from Hebrew thought as presented in the Bible, but rather from pagan influence, particularly Greek philosophy and the teachings of Plato, or Christian tradition.[50] Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright noted that 1 Timothy 6:15-16 teaches "God… alone is immortal," while in 2 Timothy 1:10 it says that immortality only comes to human beings as a gift through the gospel. Immortality is something to be sought after (Romans 2:7) therefore it is not inherent to all humanity.[51][52]

These groups may claim that the doctrine of soul sleep reconciles two seemingly conflicting traditions in the Bible: the ancient Hebrew concept that the human being is mortal with no meaningful existence after death (see שאול, Sheol and the Book of Ecclesiastes), and the later Jewish and Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead and personal immortality after Judgment Day.

Lexical arguments

In the late eighteenth century, the standard Hebrew lexicon and grammar of John Parkhurst[53] expressed the view that the traditional rendering of the Hebrew word nephesh as reference to an immortal soul, had no lexical support.[54] Mortalists in the nineteenth century used lexical arguments to deny the traditional doctrines of hell and the immortal soul.[55][56]

Scientific arguments

The eighteenth-century mortalist Henry Layton presented arguments based on physiology.[57] Scientific arguments became important to the nineteenth-century discussion of soul sleep and natural immortality,[58] and mortalist Miles Grant cited extensively from a number of scientists who observed that the immortality of the soul was unsupported by scientific evidence.[59]

Historical proponents of the mortality of the soul

The mortality of the soul has had a number of advocates throughout the history of both Judaism and Christianity.[60][61][62][63]

Judaism
See also: Heaven in Judaism

Modern scholars believe the concept of an immortal soul going to bliss or torment after death entered mainstream Judaism after the Babylonian exile[64] and existed throughout the Second Temple period, though both 'soul sleep' and 'soul death', were also held.[65][66][67]

Soul sleep is present in certain Second Temple period pseudepigraphal works,[68][69][70]4 Ezra, 7:61[71][72][73] later rabbinical works,[74][75] and among medieval era rabbis such as Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092–1167),[76] Maimonides (1135–1204),[77] and Joseph Albo (1380–1444).[78]

Some authorities within Conservative Judaism, notably Neil Gillman, also support the notion that the souls of the dead are unconscious until the resurrection.[79]

Traditional rabbinic Judaism, however, has always been of the opinion that belief in immortality of at least most souls, and punishment and reward after death, was a consistent belief back through the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Traditional Judaism reads the Torah accordingly. As an example, the punishment of kareth (excision) is understood to mean that the soul is cut off from God in the afterlife.[80][81]

Second century

In the second half of the second century, Tatian wrote: "The soul is not in itself immortal... If, indeed, it knows not the truth, it dies, and is dissolved with the body, but rises again at last at the end of the world with the body, receiving death by punishment in immortality. But, again, if it acquires the knowledge of God, it dies not, although for a time it be dissolved."[82] Tatian's contemporary Athenagoras of Athens taught that souls sleep dreamlessly between death and resurrection: "[T]hose who are dead and those who sleep are subject to similar states, as regards at least the stillness and the absence of all sense of the present or the past, or rather of existence itself and their own life."[83]

In Octavius, an account of a debate between a Pagan and a Christian by Marcus Minucius Felix, the Christian in the debate takes mortalism to be a matter of common agreement:

But who is so foolish or so brutish as to dare to deny that man, as he could first of all be formed by God, so can again be re-formed; that he is nothing after death, and that he was nothing before he began to exist; and as from nothing it was possible for him to be born, so from nothing it may be possible for him to be restored?

— Octavius, Chapter XXXIV[84]

Third to seventh centuries

Mortalism in the early church in this period is testified by Eusebius of Caesarea:

About the same time others arose in Arabia, putting forward a doctrine foreign to the truth. They said that during the present time the human soul dies and perishes with the body, but that at the time of the resurrection they will be renewed together. And at that time also a synod of considerable size assembled, and Origen, being again invited there, spoke publicly on the question with such effect that the opinions of those who had formerly fallen were changed.

— Church History, Book VI,[85] Chapter 37

This synod in Arabia would have been during the reign of Emperor Philip the Arab (244–249).[86] Redepenning (1841)[87] was of the opinion that Eusebius' terminology here, "the human soul dies" was probably that of their critics rather than the Arabian Christians' own expression and they were more likely simply "psychopannychists", believers in “soul sleep”.[88]

Some Syriac writers such as Aphrahat, Ephrem and Narsai believed in the dormition, or "sleep", of the soul, in which "...souls of the dead...are largely inert, having lapsed into a state of sleep, in which they can only dream of their future reward or punishments."[89] John of Damascus denounced the ideas of some Arab Christians as thnetopsychism ("soul death"). Eustratios of Constantinople (after 582) denounced this and what he called hypnopsychism ("soul sleep").[90] The issue was connected to that of the intercession of saints. The writings of Christian ascetic Isaac of Nineveh (d. 700), reflect several perspectives which include soul sleep.[91]

Ninth to fifteenth centuries

Soul sleep evidently persisted since various Byzantine writers had to defend the doctrine of the veneration of saints against those who said the saints sleep.[92] John the Deacon (eleventh century) attacked those who "dare to say that praying to the saints is like shouting in the ears of the deaf, as if they had drunk from the mythical waters of Oblivion."[93]

Pope John XXII inadvertently caused the beatific vision controversy (1331–1334) by suggesting that the saved do not attain the beatific vision, or "see God" until Judgment Day (in Italian: Visione beatifica differita, "deferred beatific vision"), which was a view possibly consistent with soul sleep. The Sacred College of Cardinals held a consistory on the problem in January 1334, and Pope John conceded to the more orthodox understanding. His successor, in that same year, Pope Benedict XII, declared that the righteous do see Heaven prior to the final judgement. In 1336, Pope Benedict XII issued the papal bull Benedictus Deus. This document defined the Church's belief that the souls of the departed go to their eternal reward immediately after death, as opposed to remaining in a state of unconscious existence until the Last Judgment.[94]

The Reformation

Soul sleep re-emerged in Christianity when it was promoted by some Reformation leaders, and it survives today mostly among Restorationist sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.[95][96] Conti has argued that during the Reformation both psychosomnolence (the belief that the soul sleeps until the resurrection) and thnetopsychism (the belief that the body and soul both die and then both rise again) were quite common.[97]

Anglican cleric William Tyndale (1494–1536) argued against Thomas More in favor of soul sleep:

And ye, in putting them [the departed souls] in heaven, hell and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection... And again, if the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good a case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of the resurrection?[98][99]

— William Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue (1530), pp. 119–120

Morey suggests that John Wycliffe (1320–1384) and Tyndale taught the doctrine of soul sleep "as the answer to the Catholic teachings of purgatory and masses for the dead."[100]

Some Anabaptists in this period, such as Michael Sattler (1490–1527),[101][102] were Christian mortalists.[103]

Martin Luther (1483–1546) is said to have advocated soul sleep, though certain scholars, such as Trevor O’Reggio, argue that his writings reflect a nuanced position on the subject.[104][105] In writing on Ecclesiastes, Luther says:

Salomon judgeth that the dead are a sleepe, and feele nothing at all. For the dead lye there accompting neyther dayes nor yeares, but when they are awoken, they shall seeme to have slept scarce one minute.[106]

— Martin Luther, An Exposition of Salomon's Booke, called Ecclesiastes or the Preacher (1573)

Elsewhere Luther states that:

As soon as thy eyes have closed shalt thou be woken, a thousand years shall be as if thou hadst slept but a little half-hour. Just as at night we hear the clock strike and know not how long we have slept, so too, and how much more, are in death a thousand years soon past. Before a man should turn round, he is already a fair angel.[107]

— Martin Luther

Jürgen Moltmann (2000) concludes from this that "Luther conceived the state of the dead as a deep, dreamless sleep, removed from time and space, without consciousness and without feeling."[108] That Luther believed in soul sleep is also the view of Michael R. Watts.[109] Some writers have claimed that Luther changed his view later in life.[110][111] Gottfried Fritschel (1867) claims that quotations from Luther's Latin works had been misread in Latin or in German translation to contradict or qualify specific statements and what he perceived as Luther's overall teaching, namely that the sleep of the dead was unconscious.[112] These readings can still be found in some English sources.[113][114][115]

Several passages, including the following examples, show that Luther's views are more nuanced, or are even cited to show that he adhered to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul:[116]

  • It is true that souls hear, perceive, and see after death; but how it is done, we do not understand… If we undertake to give an account of such things after the manner of this life, then we are fools. Christ has given a good answer; for his disciples were without doubt just as curious. ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,’ (John xi.25); likewise: ‘Whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s,’ (Rom. Xiv.8)… ‘The soul of Abraham lives with God, his body lies here dead,’ it would be a distinction which to my mind is mere rot! I will dispute it. One must say: ‘The whole Abraham, the entire man, lives![116][117][118]

  • A man tired with his daily labour... sleeps. But his soul does not sleep (Anima autem non-sic dormit) but is awake (sed vigilat). It experiences visions and the discourses of the angels and of God. Therefore, the sleep in the future life is deeper than it is in this life. Nevertheless, the soul lives to God. This is the likeness to the sleep of life."[119][120]

  • I think the same about the condemned souls; some may feel punishments immediately after death, but others may be spared from [punishments] until that Day [of Judgment]. For the reveler [in that parable] confesses that he is tortured; and the Psalm says, “Evil will catch up with the unjust man when he perishes.” You perhaps also refer this either to the Day of Judgment or to the passing anguish of physical death. Then my opinion would be that this is uncertain. It is most probable, however, that with few exceptions, all [departed souls] sleep without possessing any capacity of feeling. Consider now who the “spirits in prison” were to whom Christ preached, as Peter writes: Could they not also sleep until the Day [of Judgment]? Yet when Jude says concerning the Sodomites that they suffer the pain of eternal fire, he is speaking of a present [fire].[121]

As such, Lutheran churches in the Missouri Synod affirm that "The Confessions rule out the contemporary view that death is a pleasant and painless transition into a perfect world" and reject both the ideas that "the soul is by nature and by virtue of an inherent quality immortal" and that "the soul 'sleeps' between death and the resurrection in such a way that it is not conscious of bliss".[122]

On the other hand, others believing in soul sleep included Camillo Renato (1540),[123] Mátyás Dévai Bíró (1500–45),[124] Michael Servetus (1511–1553),[125] Laelio Sozzini (1562),[126] Fausto Sozzini (1563),[127] the Polish Brethren (1565 onwards),[128] Dirk Philips (1504–1568),[129] Gregory Paul of Brzezin (1568),[130] the Socinians (1570–1800),[131] John Frith (1573),[132] George Schomann (1574)[133] and Simon Budny (1576).[127]

Seventeenth to eighteenth centuries

Soul sleep was a significant minority view from the eighth to the seventeenth centuries,[134] and it became increasingly common from the Reformation onwards.[135]

Soul sleep has been called a "major current of seventeenth century protestant ideology."[136] John Milton wrote in his unpublished De Doctrina Christiana,

Inasmuch then as the whole man is uniformly said to consist of body, and soul (whatever may be the distinct provinces assigned to these divisions), I will show, that in death, first, the whole man, and secondly, each component part, suffers privation of life.[137]

— Milton, page 280

Gordon Campbell (2008) identifies Milton's views as "thnetopsychism", a belief that the soul dies with the body but is resurrected at the last judgment.[138] however Milton speaks also of the dead as "asleep".[139]

Those holding this view include: 1600s: Sussex Baptists[140] d. 1612: Edward Wightman[141] 1627: Samuel Gardner[142] 1628: Samuel Przypkowski[143] 1636: George Wither[144] 1637: Joachim Stegmann[145] 1624: Richard Overton[146] 1654: John Biddle (Unitarian)[147] 1655: Matthew Caffyn[148] 1658: Samuel Richardson[149] 1608–1674: John Milton[150] [151] 1588–1670: Thomas Hobbes[131] 1605–1682: Thomas Browne[152] 1622–1705: Henry Layton[153] 1702: William Coward[154] 1632–1704: John Locke[155] 1643–1727: Isaac Newton[156] 1676–1748: Pietro Giannone[157] 1751: William Kenrick[158] 1755: Edmund Law[159] 1759: Samuel Bourn[160] 1723–1791: Richard Price[161] 1718–1797: Peter Peckard[162] 1733–1804: Joseph Priestley[163] Francis Blackburne (1765).[164]

Nineteenth to twentieth centuries

Belief in soul sleep and the annihilation of the unsaved became increasingly common during the nineteenth century,[165][166][167] entering mainstream Christianity in the twentieth century.[168][169] From this point it is possible to speak in terms of entire groups holding the belief, and only the most prominent individual nineteenth-century advocates of the doctrine will be mentioned here.

Others include: Millerites (from 1833),[lower-alpha 4] Edward White (1846),[170] Christadelphians (from 1848),[171] Thomas Thayer (1855),[172] François Gaussen (d. 1863),[173] Henry Constable (1873),[174] Louis Burnier (Waldensian, d. 1878),[175] the Baptist Conditionalist Association (1878),[176] Cameron Mann (1888),[177] Emmanuel Pétavel-Olliff (1891), Miles Grant (1895),[178] George Gabriel Stokes (1897).[170]

Modern Christian groups

Present-day defenders of soul sleep include Nicky Gumbel,[179] Primitive Baptist Universalists, some Lutherans, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Advent Christian Church, the Afterlife group,[180] Christadelphians, the Church of God (Seventh Day), Church of God (7th day) – Salem Conference, the Church of God Abrahamic Faith, and various other Church of God organizations and related denominations which adhered to the older teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, and the Bible Student movement.

Jehovah's Witnesses teach a form of thnetopsychism, in that the soul is the body (Genesis 2:7) and that it dies (Ezekiel 18:20; Ecclesiastes 9:5,10).[181] They believe that 144,000 chosen ones will receive immortality in heaven to rule as kings and priests with Christ in Heaven (Rev 7:4; 14:1,3)[182] but all the other saved will be raised from the dead on the last day (John 5:28,29) to receive eternal life on a Paradise Earth (Revelation 7:9,14,17).[183]

Seventh-day Adventists believe that death is a state of unconscious sleep until the resurrection. They base this belief on biblical texts such as Ecclesiastes 9:5 which states "the dead know nothing", and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 which contains a description of the dead being raised from the grave at the second coming. These verses, it is argued, indicate that death is only a period or form of slumber.[184]

Critics/opponents

Immortality of the soul

The orthodox Christian belief about the intermediate state between death and the Last Judgment is immortality of the soul followed immediately after death of the body by particular judgment.[185] In Catholicism some souls temporarily stay in Purgatory to be purified for Heaven (as described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030–1032). Eastern Orthodoxy, Methodism, Anglicanism, and Mormonism use different terminology, but generally teach that the soul waits in the Abode of the Dead, specifically Hades or the Spirit World, until the resurrection of the dead, the saved resting in light and the damned suffering in darkness.[186][187][188][189] According to James Tabor this Eastern Orthodox picture of particular judgment is similar to the first-century Jewish and possibly Early Christian[190] concept that the dead either "rest in peace" in the Bosom of Abraham (mentioned in the Gospel of Luke) or suffer in Hades. This view was also promoted by John Calvin, although Calvin taught that immortality was not in the nature of the soul but was imparted by God.[191] Nineteenth-century Reformed theologians such as A. A. Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, and Louis Berkhof also taught the immortality of the soul, but some later Reformed theologians such as Herman Bavinck and G. C. Berkouwer rejected the idea as unscriptural. [192]

Opponents of psychopannychism (soul sleeping) and thnetopsychism (the temporary death of the soul) include the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church (that also teach about Intercession of saints, connected to this subject), most mainline Protestant denominations, and most conservative Protestants, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists.

Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church has called soul sleep a serious heresy:

Whereas some have dared to assert concerning the nature of the reasonable soul that it is mortal, we, with the approbation of the sacred council do condemn and reprobate all those who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, seeing, according to the canon of Pope Clement V, that the soul is ... immortal ... and we decree that all who adhere to like erroneous assertions shall be shunned and punished as heretics.

— Fifth Council of the Lateran (1513)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Main articles: Spirit body, Plan of salvation (Latter Day Saints), and Mormon cosmology

The idea that the spirit continues as a conscious, active, and independent agent after mortal death is an important teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Concerning the post-death, pre-judgment place of human spirits, LDS scripture states that "the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life" (Alma 40:11). They are then assigned to a state of paradise or hell (called Spirit Prison) in the spirit world depending on their faith in Christ and the manner of their mortal life (Alma 40:12–14). The Spirits remain in these states until the final judgment, when they are either received into a state of glory in the Kingdom of God, or they are cast off into Outer Darkness.[186][193][194]

Latter-Day Saint doctrine teaches that the souls in Prison who ended up there due to ignorance or inability to accept Christ may be preached to while in Prison so that they may accept Christ.[195] This is derived from the LDS interpretation of 1 Peter 3:18–20 where Christ is described as preaching to the "dead who were in prison" and 1 Peter 4:5–6, which states:

5 Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. 6 For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

Like many Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, the LDS Church teaches that the prayers of the righteous living may be of help to the dead, but the LDS Church takes this one step further with vicarious sacraments (called "ordinances" but with a sacramental theological meaning).[196] The LDS Church preaches the necessity of baptism by water and the Holy Ghost (Baptism and Confirmation) for salvation.[193] They teach that previously ignorant spirits who accept Christ in Spirit Prison may receive saving ordinances through vicarious Baptism and Confirmation of the living.[197] This is drawn from 1st Corinthians 15, wherein the Apostle Paul is arguing against a group of Christians who are mistakenly denying the physical resurrection of the dead. Paul asks them in 1st Corinthians 15:29:

29 Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?

The LDS Church believes that this is a reference to vicarious work for the dead which was practiced by the ancient Christian Church and considered orthodox in Early Christianity, including by the Apostle Paul, hence his use of it as an example of the correct doctrine of the resurrection. This is the origin of the LDS practice of baptism for the dead.[197] As such, a great deal of LDS doctrine and practice is tied to the idea of the continued existence and activity of the human spirit after death and before judgment.

Modern scholarship

As early as 1917 Harvey W. Scott wrote "That there is no definite affirmation, in the Old Testament of the doctrine of a future life, or personal immortality, is the general consensus of Biblical scholarship."[198] The modern scholarly consensus is that the canonical teaching of the Old Testament made no reference to an "immortal soul" independent of the body.[199][200][201][202] This view is represented consistently in a wide range of scholarly reference works.[203][204][205][206][207]

According to Donelley, "Twentieth century biblical scholarship largely agrees that the ancient Jews had little explicit notion of a personal afterlife until very late in the Old Testament period," and "only the latest stratum of the Old Testament asserts even the resurrection of the body."[208] Scholars have noted that the notion of the "disembodied existence of a soul in bliss" is not in accordance with a Hebrew world view:[203] "While Hebrew thought world distinguished soul from body (as material basis of life), there was no question of two separate, independent entities."[209] Gillman argues that

In contrast to the two enigmatic references to Enoch and Elijah, there are ample references to the fact that death is the ultimate destiny for all human beings, that God has no contact with or power over the dead, and that the dead do not have any relationship with God (see, inter alia, Ps. 6:6, 30:9–10, 39:13–14, 49:6–13, 115:16–18, 146:2–4). If there is a conceivable setting for the introduction of a doctrine of the afterlife, it would be in Job, since Job, although righteous, is harmed by God in the present life. But Job 10:20–22 and 14:1–10 affirm the opposite.[210]

— Gillman, pages 176–182

However, N. T. Wright suggests that "the Bible offers a spectrum of belief about life after death."[211] While Goldingay suggests that Qohelet points out that there is no evidence that "human beings would enjoy a positive afterlife,"[212] Philip Johnston argues that a few Psalms, such as Psalm 16, Psalm 49 and Psalm 73, "affirm a continued communion with God after death," but "give no elaboration of how, when or where this communion will take place."[213]

Neyrey suggests that "for a Hebrew, 'soul' indicated the unity of a human person," and "this Hebrew field of meaning is breached in the Wisdom of Solomon by explicit introduction of Greek ideas of soul.[214] Avery-Peck argues that

Scripture does not present even a rudimentarily developed theology of the soul. The creation narrative is clear that all life originates with God. Yet the Hebrew Scripture offers no specific understanding of the origin of individual souls, of when and how they become attached to specific bodies, or of their potential existence, apart from the body, after death. The reason for this is that, as we noted at the beginning, the Hebrew Bible does not present a theory of the soul developed much beyond the simple concept of a force associated with respiration, hence, a life-force.[215]

— Avery-Peck, pages 1343–1351

Regardless of the character of the soul's existence in the intermediate state, biblical scholarship affirms that a disembodied soul is unnatural and at best transitional. Bromiley argues that "the soul and the body belong together, so that without either the one or the other there is no true man. Disembodied existence in Sheol is unreal. Paul does not seek a life outside the body, but wants to be clothed with a new and spiritual body (1 Cor. 15; 2 Cor. 5)."[216]

The mortalist disbelief in the existence of a naturally immortal soul,[1][217] is affirmed as biblical teaching by a range of standard scholarly Jewish and Christian sources. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (1995) says, "There is no concept of an immortal soul in the Old Testament, nor does the New Testament ever call the human soul immortal."[218] Harper's Bible Dictionary (1st ed. 1985) says that "For a Hebrew, 'soul' indicated the unity of a human person; Hebrews were living bodies, they did not have bodies".[219] Cressey 1996 says, "But to the Bible man is not a soul in a body but a body/soul unity".[220] Avery-Peck 2000 says, "Scripture does not present even a rudimentarily developed theology of the soul"[221] and "The notion of the soul as an independent force that animates human life but that can exist apart from the human body—either prior to conception and birth or subsequent to life and death—is the product only of later Judaism".[222] The New Dictionary of Theology says that the Septuagint translated the Hebrew word nefesh by the Greek word psyche, but the latter does not have the same sense in Greek thought.[223] The Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, 2000 says, "Far from referring simply to one aspect of a person, "soul" refers to the whole person".[224] The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says, "Possibly Jn. 6:33 also includes an allusion to the general life-giving function. This teaching rules out all ideas of an emanation of the soul."[225] and "The soul and the body belong together, so that without either the one or the other there is no true man".[226] The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, 1987 says, "Indeed, the salvation of the "immortal soul" has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical."[203] The Encyclopedia of Christianity, 2003 says "The Hebrew Bible does not present the human soul (nepeš) or spirit (rûah) as an immortal substance, and for the most part it envisions the dead as ghosts in Sheol, the dark, sleepy underworld".[227] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2005 says, "there is practically no specific teaching on the subject in the Bible beyond an underlying assumption of some form of afterlife (see immortality)".[228] The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible (rev ed.), 2009 says "It is this essential soul-body oneness that provides the uniqueness of the biblical concept of the resurrection of the body as distinguished from the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul".[229]

The mortalist disbelief in the existence of a naturally immortal soul[1][230] is also affirmed as biblical teaching by various modern theologians,[231][232][233][lower-alpha 5][235][236][237] and Hebblethwaite observes the doctrine of immortality of the soul is "not popular amongst Christian theologians or among Christian philosophers today".[238][239]

See also

Notes
  1. The term is also common in the works of the Trinitarian Christian countercult movement.[12][13]
  2. Pannychis (παννυχὶς) in Greek means an all night party.[23]
  3. The term pannychis is used correctly in the classical Greek sense in Calvin's original Latin publication Psychopannychia.
  4. The original group following the teachings of William Miller, who began preaching his distinctive beliefs in 1833; Miller himself did not believe in conditional immortality, but it was one of a number of beliefs held among the group.
  5. Fudge admits that belief in the immortality of the soul is the main current in church history. He, however, favors another view: "Crisscrossing all of this flows the stream of Christian mortalism.… This understanding appears as the sparkling water of pristine Christianity". He defines mortalism as "the belief that according to divine revelation the soul does not exist as an independent substance after the death of the body."[234]

References
  1. Garber; Ayers (2003), The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy, vol. I: Volume 2, p. 383, But among philosophers they were perhaps equally notorious for their commitment to the mortalist heresy; this is the doctrine which denies the existence of a naturally immortal soul.
  2. Thomson (2008), Bodies of thought: science, religion, and the soul in the early Enlightenment, p. 42, For mortalists the Bible did not teach the existence of a separate immaterial or immortal soul and the word 'soul' simply meant 'life'; the doctrine of a separate soul was said to be a Platonic importation.
  3. Eccleshall; Kenney (1995), Western political thought: a bibliographical guide to post-war research, p. 80, mortalism, the denial that the soul is an incorporeal substance that outlives the body
  4. Kries 1997, p. 97: 'In Leviathan, soul and body are one; there are no "separated essenses" [sic]; death means complete death – the soul, merely another word for life, or breath, ceases at the death of the body. This view of the soul is known as Christian mortalism – a heterodox view held, indeed, by some sincere believers and not unique to Hobbes.'
  5. Brandon 2007, p. 65-1: 'Mortalism, the idea that the soul is not immortal by nature'
  6. Hick (1994), Death and eternal life, p. 211, christian mortalism – the view that the soul either sleeps until the Day of Judgment, or is annihilated and re-created
  7. Horvath (1993), Eternity and eternal life: speculative theology and science in discourse, p. 108, Thus the so-called Ganztodtheorie, or mortalism, states that with death the human person totally ceases to be.
  8. Pocock (2003), The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic Republic Tradition, p. 35, doctrines of mortalism or psychopannychism, which asserted that the being or the experience of the soul were suspended during the remainder of secular time
  9. Fudge & Peterson 2000, p. 173 -1: 'the belief that according to divine revelation the soul does not exist as an independent substance after the death of the body'
  10. Almond 1994, p. 38: …'mortalist views – particularly of the sort which affirmed that the soul slept or died – were widespread in the Reformation period. George Williams has shown how prevalent mortalism was among the Reformation radicals.'
  11. de Greef 2008, p. 152 -1: "In the foreword of 1534, Calvin says that at the insistence of friends he had given in to the request to dispute the 'heresy of soul sleep.'”
  12. Hoekema, Anthony A (1963), The four major cults: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Seventh-Day Adventism, p. 136
  13. Martin, Walter Ralston (1960), The truth about Seventh-Day Adventism, p. 117
  14. The Rainbow, a magazine of Christian literature, 1879, p. 523, the term 'soul-sleeper' is used today only as a term of reproach
  15. Gardner, Rev. James (1858), The faiths of the world: an account of all religions and religious sects, p. 860, Soul-sleepers, a term sometimes applied to Materialists (which see), because they admit no intermediate state between death and the resurrection.
  16. Burns, Norman T (1972), Christian mortalism from Tyndale to Milton
  17. Overhoff, Jürgen (2000), Hobbes's theory of the will, p. 193, The term 'Christian mortalism,' which I have borrowed from the title of Norman T. Burns's masterly book on that topic
  18. "The tradition of Christian mortalism", The Mennonite Quarterly Review, Goshen College, 1969
  19. Johnston, Mark (2010), Surviving Death, p. 24, The same dynamic can be found in John Milton's Christian Doctrine, another spirited defense of Christian mortalism
  20. Kries 1997: 'Christian mortalism is thus a convenient "middle ground," which, by not departing wholly from possibly genuine... The advantage Hobbes's change to Christian mortalism appears to bring to his teaching is that it attenuates the cord that...’
  21. Wright, Leonard Napoleon (1939), Christian mortalism in England (1643–1713)
  22. Force, James E; Popkin, Richard Henry (1994), The books of nature and Scripture: recent essays on natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands, p. xvii, Force then goes on to show how Newton's Christian mortalism fits with Newton's core voluntarism, ie, his essentially… Force finds Newton's adoption of Christian mortalism clearly stated in Newton's manuscript entitled "Paradoxical…"
  23. Parker, Robert (2007), Polytheism and Society at Athens, p. 166, The mood of a pannychis was often one of gaiety, but this was also a form of religious action... The pannychis was marked, according to one charming definition, by 'la bonne humeure efficace' (Borgeaud)
  24. Williams 1962, p. 581: "It will be recalled that we have allowed the etymologically ambiguous word 'psychopannychism' to serve as the generic term for the two variants 'soul sleep'...”
  25. Campbell, Gordon; Corns, Thomas N; Hale, John K (2007), Milton and the manuscript of De doctrina Christiana, Oxford University Press, p. 117, ISBN 978-0-19-929649-1, The belief that the soul dies with the body but is resurrected at the last judgment is known as thnetopsychism; the belief that the soul sleeps from the moment of death until the last judgment is known as psychopannychism
  26. Scott, Liddle, "Night-festival, vigil", Lexicon (entry), Tufts
  27. Barth, K (1995), The theology of John Calvin, p. 161
  28. de Greef 2008, p. 152-2.
  29. d'Aubigné, Jean Henri Merle, Histoire de la réformation en Europe au temps de Calvin [History of the Reformation in Europe at the time of Calvin] (in French)
  30. Staehelin, Ernst, ed. (1863), Johannes Calvin: Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (in German), vol. 1, p. 36
  31. Luther 1830, v. 5, 6 p. 120: ‘…sic anima post mortem intrat suum cubiculum et pacem et dormiens non-sentit suum somnum'
  32. McKim, Donald K (1996), Westminster dictionary of theological terms, Westminster: John Knox Press, ISBN 978-0-66425511-4, 320 pp.
  33. Migne, Jacques Paul (1920), "St John Damascene (676–760) in liber de Haer", Journal of the American Oriental Society (90), p. 94, col. 759 says that the Thnetopsychists hold that the human soul is like that of the beasts, for it is destroyed with the body.
  34. Ott, Ludwig (1964), Fundamentals of Catholic dogma, Lynch, Patrick, transl. from the German, p. 98, The doctrine of the death of the soul (Thnetopsychism)... Origen defends it against Thnetopsychism which was widely current in Arabia.
  35. Williams 1962, p. 582: 'to designate both the doctrine of the death of the soul (thnetopsychism, mortalism) and the unconscious sleep of the soul'
  36. Blackburne 1765, p. 70: 'In the year 1702, Dr. William Coward a Physician, under the fictitious name of Estibius Psychalethes, published a book entitled, Second Thoughts concerning human soul, demonstrating the notion of human soul, as believed to be a spiritual, immortal substance united to human body, to be a plain heathenish invention, and not consonant to the principles of philosophy, reason, or religion.'
  37. Blackburne 1765, p. 68–69: 'The doctrine of the New Testament is, that men shall become immortal by the way of a resurrection of the dead, a restoration of the whole man to life; and the NT is so far from acknowledging any intermediate consciousness in man, between death and the resurrection, that' if always speaks of that interval as a sleep which implies a suspension of the thinking faculty, a rest from those labours, which require thought, memory, consciousness, &c. during which those faculties are useless.'
  38. Priestley (1782), Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit, pp. 206–207, The notion of the soul of man being a substance distinct from the body, has been shown, and I hope to satisfaction, not to have been known to the writers of the scriptures, and especially those of the Old Testament. According to the uniform system of revelation, all our hopes of a future life are built upon another, and I may say an opposite foundation, viz. that of the resurrection of something belonging to us that dies, and is buried, that is, the body, which is always considered as the man. This doctrine is manifestly superfluous on the idea of the soul being a substance so distinct from the body as to be unaffected by its death, and able to subsist, and even to be more free and happy, without the body. This opinion, therefore, not having been known to the Jews, and being repugnant to the scheme of revelation, must have had its source in heathenism, but with respect to the date of its appearance, and the manner of its introduction, there is room for conjecture and speculation.
  39. Ball 2008, p. 167: "Hence the doctrine of eternal torment, the object of Bourn's attack, is unbiblical, 'void of all foundation in the holy Scriptures.' Death is the final end of the wicked, not continuing life in torment. It is here that Bourn appeals to reason as well as to Scripture. 'To imagine that by the term death is meant an eternal life, tho' in a condition of extreme misery', Bourn says, 'seems to [confound] all propriety and meaning of words".
  40. Watts 1985, p. 119-1: "In 1644 he published a notorious tract, Mans Mortalitie, wherein he sought to prove 'both theologically and philosophically, that whole man (as a rational creature) is a compound wholly mortal, contrary to that common distinction of soul and body: and that the present going of the soul into heaven or hell is a mere fiction: and that at the resurrection is the beginning of our immortality, and then actual condemnation, and salvation, and not before.' Overton's treatise provided the heresy hunters of the 1640s with further evidence of the need to restrain liberty of speculation in matters of religion, but it is wrong to regard his work, as some writers have done, as presaging modern materialism".
  41. Rahe (1994), Republics Ancient and Modern: New modes and orders in early modern political thought, p. 153, Drawing heavily on the theology and biblical hermeneutics of Faustus Socinus and his various disciples, Hobbes denied that the Bible gave any sanction for belief in the existence of spirits, the immortality of the soul, the Trinity, purgatory, or hell; and he contended that Christ's Second Coming would bring resurrection of the dead, the establishment of God's kingdom in the Holy Land, and – for the righteous alone – eternal life on earth. In the new Hobbsesian dispensation, the faithful had a permanent stake in technological progress, while the infidel had nothing to fear after being raised from the dead other than the dreamless sleep that would come with a second and permanent cessation of life.
  42. Snobelen (2005), "Isaac Newton, Socinianism and 'The One Supreme God'", in Muslow; Rohls (eds.), Socinianism and Arminianism: Antitrinitarians, Calvinists, and Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe, Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 134, Brill, pp. 263–264, Both the Socinians and Newton were also mortalists who saw the teaching of the immortal soul, like the Trinity, as an unwarranted and unscriptural obtrusion upon primitive Christianity. Since Newton's manuscripts only occasionally discuss the intermediate state between death and resurrection, it is difficult to ascertain whether he adhered to mortalism of the psychopannychist (soul sleep) or thnetopsychist (soul death, with eternal life given at the resurrection) variety. The latter position was that of both the Socinians and John Locke.
  43. Onuf (1993), Jeffersonian Legacies, p. 32, Priestley summarized his mature religious views in the Corruptions. He wanted to restore the early, primitive Jewish church, one uncorrupted by Greek and pagan ideas. The two great corruptions (he actually listed hundreds of corruptions in both beliefs and forms of worship) involved two noxious and related doctrines – the Greek concept of a separate soul or spirit, and the orthodox doctrine of the trinity. Priestley wanted to restore the corporealism or materialism of the ancient Jews, a materialism he believed essential to any mature religion.
  44. Morey (1984), Death and the Afterlife, p. 200, During the pre-Reformation period, there seems to be some indication that both Wycliffe and Tyndale taught the doctrine of soul sleep as the answer to the Catholic teachings of purgatory and masses for the dead.
  45. Froom 1966, p. 74-1: "Archdeacon Blackburne's incisive summation of Luther's position was this: 'Luther espoused the doctrine of the sleep of the soul, upon a Scripture foundation, and then he made use of it as a confutation of purgatory and Saint worship, and continued in that belief to the last moment of his life".
  46. Almond 1994, p. 67: …'The Socinian mortalist Joseph Stegmann argued that any notion of an intermediate state between death and the day of judgement opened the door for Catholic abuses.'
  47. The nature of hell. Evangelical Alliance. Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals. London: ACUTE (Paternoster Pub.). 2000. ISBN 0-9532992-2-8. OCLC 45128994.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  48. "The "Immortality"".
  49. Evangelical Alliance, ed. (2000). The nature of hell: a report. London: Acute. ISBN 978-0-9532992-2-5.
  50. Springborg, Patricia (2007), Springborg, Patricia (ed.), "General Introduction", The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–26, doi:10.1017/ccol0521836670.001, ISBN 9781139001571, retrieved 30 November 2022
  51. Maves, Paul B. (March 1950). "Pastoral work with older people". Pastoral Psychology. 1 (2): 42–48. doi:10.1007/bf01786112. ISSN 0031-2789. S2CID 147434548.
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  53. Johnston (2004), The use of PAS in the New Testament, p. 10, John Parkhurst's Greek and English Lexicon was published in 1769, though even the first edition was nearly posthumous, for he died while the book was being printed. The third edition appeared in 1825 without any additional editors. Some twenty years later, it reappeared, significantly updated by HJ Rose and JR Major.
  54. Parkhurst (1799), A Hebrew and English lexicon without points: in which the Hebrew and Chaldee words of the Old Testament are explained in their leading and derived senses. To this work are prefixed, a Hebrew and a Chaldee grammar, without points, p. 460, As a noun, nephesh hath been supposed to signify the spiritual part of man, or what we commonly call his soul; I must for myself confess that I can find no passage where it hath undoubtedly this meaning.
  55. Richardson (1833), "Torments of Hell", in Whittermore (ed.), The Doctrine of Hell Torments Overthrown: In Three Parts, pp. 10–11, Dr. Fulke saith plainly, that neither in the Hebrew, Greek, nor Latin, is there a word proper for hell (as we take hell for the place of punishment of the ungodly.) Fulke's Defence Translation, pp. 13, 37, 89. Is not this a full testimony against their opinion of the torments of hell?
  56. Grant 1895, ch 4-1: "Dr. JH M'Culloh says: 'There is no word in the Hebrew language that signifies either soul or spirit, in the technical sense in which we use the term as implying something distinct from the body'. § 55. R. B. Girdlestone, in his Synonyms of the Old Testament, says: 'The soul is, properly speaking, the animating principle of the body; and is the common property of man and beast. ...In other words, it is the life, whether of man or beast.' When every passage in the Bible that speaks of the soul of man has been carefully examined, it will be found that these statements of these eminent Hebrew scholars and lexicographers, and many others, are strictly correct, and therefore should be fully believed by all who love the truth".
  57. Almond 1994, p. 62-1: …'Between 1692 and 1706, Henry Layton had produced a series of pamphlets which, while endorsing the notion of a general resurrection on the last day, had asserted the mortality of the soul primarily on physiological grounds though with the aid of Scripture.'
  58. Bainton, Roland (1979), "Immortality", in Church; Williams (eds.), Continuity and discontinuity in church history: essays presented to George Huntson Williams (letter), p. 393, The acceptance of organic evolution had helped theology by opening up the possibility of extending the process beyond death but had created a difficult at the beginning. The usual assumption has been that animals are mortal, men immortal. At what point then in the evolutionary process did immortality enter?… We are confronted thus with the problem of conditional immortality. Henry Drummond said that life depends on correspondence with the environment. The human body needs food, drink and oxygen to breathe. But if the body is gone and the environment is spiritual what correspondence can there be on the part of one who has lived only for the needs and lusts of the body?
  59. Grant 1895, ch 4-2: "Said Charles A Young, LL D, Professor of Astronomy at Princeton College, New Jersey: 'I think it must be frankly admitted that what is known about the functions of the brain and nervous system does, to a certain extent, tend to 'make it difficult to believe in the immortality of the personal consciousness.' Said Joseph Leidy, MD, LL D, Professor of Anatomy and Zoology, in the University of Pennsylvania: 'Personal consciousness is observed as a condition of each and every living animal, varying from microscopic forms to man. The condition is observed to cease with death; and I know of no facts of modern science which make it otherwise than difficult to believe in the persistence of that condition, that is, 'the immortality of the personal existence.' Science has learned no more than is expressed in Eccl. 3: 19: 'For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast.' " Said Lester F. Ward, AM, at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: 'The consciousness, when scientifically examined, reveals itself as a quality of brain.... It is a universal induction of science that modification of brain is accompanied by modification of consciousness, and that the destruction of brain results in destruction of consciousness. No exception to this law has ever been observed.' Thomas Hill, DD, ex-President of Harvard College, says 'Many facts in the possession of modern science make it difficult to believe in immortality.' Says Alexander G Bell: 'The possibility of thought without a brain whereby to think is opposed to experience, but this persistence of 'personal consciousness' after the death of the body involves this assumption.' Says the distinguished FKCL Buchner: 'Unprejudiced philosophy is compelled to reject the idea of an individual immortality, and of a personal continuance after death.' It is certain that the voice of science is emphatically opposed to the doctrine of the immortality of the personal consciousness".
  60. McConnell (1901), The Evolution of Immortality, p. 84, In the first place, there have not been a few, both in ancient and modern times, who have maintained the truth of a 'Conditional Immortality'.
  61. Streeter; et al. (1917), Immortality: An Essay in Discovery, Co-Ordinating Scientific, Psychical, and Biblical Research, p. 204, At the same time there have always been isolated voices raised in support of other views. There are hints of a belief in repentance after death, as well as conditional immortality and annihilationism.
  62. Knight (1999), A brief history of Seventh-Day Adventists, p. 42, Many biblical scholars down throughout history, looking at the issue through Hebrew rather than Greek eyes, have denied the teaching of innate immortality.
  63. Pool 1998, p. 133: 'Various concepts of conditional immortality or annihilationism have appeared earlier in Baptist history as well. Several examples illustrate this claim. General as well as particular Baptists developed versions of annihilationism or conditional immortality.'
  64. Gillman 2000, p. 200: 'A second doctrine of the afterlife enters Judaism not in the Bible itself but in the intertestamental period, i.e., the first century BCE to first century CE. This doctrine teaches that every human being is a composite of two entities, a material body and a non-material soul; that the soul pre-exists the body and departs from the body at death; that, though the body disintegrates in the grave, the soul, by its very nature, is indestructible; and that it continues to exist for eternity. Not even a hint of this dualistic view of the human being appears in the Bible.'
  65. Wright, NT, The New Testament and the People of God, p. 286, As good creational monotheists, mainline Jews were not hoping to escape from the present universe into some Platonic realm of eternal bliss enjoyed by disembodied souls after the end of the space-time universe. If they died in the fight for the restoration of Israel, they hoped not to 'go to heaven', or at least not permanently, but to be raised to new bodies when the kingdom came, since they would of course need new bodies to enjoy the very much this-worldly shalom, peace and prosperity that was in store.
  66. Eisenberg (2004), Guide to Jewish Traditions (1st ed.), JPS, p. 116, Some sages believed that the soul remains quiescent, with those of the righteous 'hidden under the Throne of Glory'; others viewed the souls of the dead as having full consciousness.
  67. Gillman 2000, p. 196: 'Two independent doctrines of the afterlife for the individual emerged in Judaism, probably during the last two centuries BCE: the doctrine of the resurrection of bodies and that of the immortality of souls. In time (probably the first century CE), these two doctrines became conflated so as to yield the theory that, at the end of days, God will resurrect dead bodies, rejoin them with their souls, which never died, and the individual human being, reconstituted as he or she existed on earth, will come before God in judgment.'
  68. Fudge & Peterson 2000, p. 210: 'However, Strack and Billerbeck, noted authorities on Rabbinic literature, suggest that the pseudepigraphal references to eternal punishment simply denote everlasting annihilation. See Strack, Hermann L; Billerbeck, Paul (1928), Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch [Commentary on the New Testament by the Talmud and the Midrasch] (in German), vol. 2, München: CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Oskar Beck, p. 1096.’
  69. Solomon, Psalms, 3:11–12
  70. Sybilline Oracles, 4:175–185
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  72. Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, pp. 125–154
  73. Walvoord (1997), "The Metaphorical View", in Crockett; Hayes (eds.), Four Views on Hell, p. 64
  74. Chananel; et al. (2003), Hut ha-meshulash, p. 183, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish as well as his colleague Rabbi Yannai said that there is no such thing as the popular concept of a hell, gehinnom, lasting a long time, but that at the time when G'd passes out judgment the wicked will be burned
  75. Darmesteter (2007), The Talmud, p. 52, Thus we have one Rabbi denying the very existence of hell. 'There is no hell in the future world,' says R. Simon ben Lakish.
  76. Davidson (1882), The Doctrine of Last Things Contained in the New Testament, Compared With Notions of the Jews and the Statements of Church Creeds, p. 139, But Ibn Ezra held that the souls of the wicked perish with their bodies.
  77. Rudavsky 2010, p. 105: 'Maimonides claims that since the greatest punishment would be to lose one's immortal soul, the souls of the wicked are destroyed along with their bodies.'
  78. Rudavsky 2010, p. 206: 'Maimonides' views are reasserted by Joseph Albo (1380–1444) in his Book of Principles.'
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  91. Daley (1991), The hope of the early church: a handbook of patristic eschatology, pp. 174–175, 'Isaac,' too, is convinced that the final reward and punishment for human deeds awaits the resurrection (e.g., Bedjan 724.4 from bottom). Then those who died in 'peace and quiet' with the lord will find eternal peace (Bedjan 276.15), while sinners will be banished to a darkness far away from God (Bedjan 117f.) Gehenna, the kingdom of the demons (Bedjan 203.4 from bottom), is a place of fire, and on the day of judgment this fire will burst forth from the bodies of the damned (Bedjan 73.4; 118.3–7). Until the resurrection, the dead must wait in Sheol, which the author seems to imagine as a collective grave (Bedjan 366.3 from bottom; 368.5; 369.4). Some passages in the corpus suggest that the dead continue to act, in Sheol, as they have during life (e.g., Bedjan 90.13; 366.10–18). Others declare that action for good or ill is no longer possible after death (e.g., Bedjan 392.4 from bottom), and even envisage Sheol, before the judgment, as a place of fire ruled over by Satan (Bedjan 93.4f.)
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  94. Pope Benedict XII (20 December 1334). "Benedictus Deus On the Beatific Vision of God – Papal Encyclicals Online". Papal Encyclicals. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
  95. Brandon 2007, p. 65 -2: 'Mortalism, in some form or other, had been around quite a while before the seventeenth century.'
  96. Marshall 2002, p. 47: 'The status of the dead was among the most divisive issues of the early Reformation; it was also arguably the theological terrain over which in the reign of Henry VIII official reform travelled furthest and fastest.'
  97. Conti (2008), "Religio Medici's Profession of Faith", in Barbour; Preston (eds.), Sir Thomas Browne: the world proposed, p. 157
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  103. Finger 2004, p. 42.
  104. Froom 1966, p. 74-2.
  105. O’Reggio, Trevor (2011). "A Re-examination of Luther's View on the State of the Dead". Journal of the Adventist Theological Society. 22 (2): 170.
  106. Luther, Martin (1573), An Exposition of Salomon's Booke, called Ecclesiastes or the Preacher
  107. Luther, Martin, WA, 37.191
  108. Moltmann, Jürgen (2000), Polkinghorne, John; Welker, Michael (eds.), The end of the World and the ends of God: science and theology on eschatology, Harrisburg, PA, pp. 42–46{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  109. Watts 1985, p. 119-3: 'The belief that the soul goes to sleep at the death of the body to await eventual resurrection was held by both Martin Luther and William Tyndale'.
  110. Rathel, Mark (2008), "Theories of Death", in Hindson; et al. (eds.), The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence, p. 166, In church history, adherents of soul-sleep have included orthodox believers such as Martin Luther (at one stage in his life) and many Anabaptists, and heretical groups such as Jehovah Witnesses.
  111. Ellingsen 1999, p. 64-1: 'Luther's more characteristic view, however, was to conceive of death as sleep – as a kind of 'soul sleep' (Letter to Hans Luther, in LW 49:270). The Reformer tried to take into account those New Testament texts suggesting that the dead have an active life with God (Luke 16:22ff.; Rev. 4–5); consequently, he claimed that in the sleep of death the soul experiences visions and the discourses of God. It sleeps in the bosom of Christ, as a mother brings an infant into a crib. The time flies in this sleep, just as an evening passes in an instant as we sleep soundly (Lectures on Genesis, in LW 4:313).’
  112. Fritschel, Gottfried, Zeitschrift für die gesammte lutherische Theologie und Kirche (in German), p. 657, Denn dass Luther mit den Worten 'anima non-sic dormit, sed vigilat et patitur visiones, loquelas Angelorum et Dei' nicht dasjenige leugnen will, was er an allen andern Stellen seiner Schriften vortragt
  113. Ellingsen 1999, p. 64-2: 'consequently, he claimed that in the sleep of death the soul experiences visions and the discourses of God. It sleeps in the bosom of Christ, as a mother brings an infant into a crib. The time flies in this sleep, just as an evening passes in an instant as we sleep soundly (Lectures on Genesis, in LW 4:313)’ Ellingsen adds "of death" where the sleep "of life" may be intended by both Luther and translator.
  114. Luther, Martin (1964), Schick, George V (ed.), Lectures in Genesis, Chapters 21–25, Luther's Works, Volume 4 (American ed.), Saint-Louis, Missouri: Concordia, p. 313, OCLC 471016102, Nevertheless, there is a difference between the sleep or rest of this life and that of the future life. For toward night a person who has become exhausted by his daily labor in this life enters into his chamber in peace, as it were, to sleep there; and during this night he enjoys rest and has no knowledge whatever of any evil caused either by fire or by murder. But the soul does not sleep in the same manner. It is awake. It experiences visions and the discourses of the angels and of God. Therefore the sleep in the future life is deeper than it is in this life. Nevertheless, the soul lives before God.
  115. Schewe, Harold A (3 October 1978), "What Happens to the Soul After Death?", Western Conference Pastoral Conference, McIntosh, SD{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  116. Smith, Preserved; Gallinger, Herbert Percival (1915). Conversations with Luther: Selections from Recently Published Sources of the Table Talk. The Pilgrim Press. p. 123.
  117. Luther, Martin (1950), "Weimarer Ausgabe", in Plass, Ewald M (ed.), What Luther Says – An Anthology, vol. 1, St. Louis: Concordia, 43, 480 – E op ex 6, 329 – SL 2, 216
  118. Walther, Daniel (1955). "Is There a Relationship Between Luther and Seventh-day Adventists?". Ministry.
  119. Luther 1830, p. 120: 'Differunt tamen somnus sive quies hujus vitae et futurae. Homo enim in hac vita defatigatus diurno labore, sub noctem intrat in cubiculum suum tanquam in pace, ut ibi dormiat, et ea nocte fruitur quiete, neque quicquam scit de ullo malo sive incendii, sive caedis. Anima autem non-sic dormit, sed vigilat, et patitur visiones loquelas Angelorum et Dei. Ideo somnus in futura vita profundior est quam in hac vita et tamen anima coram Deo vivit. Hac similitudine, quam habeo a somno viventia.'
  120. Luther, Martin (1964), Pelikan, J (ed.), Works, vol. 4, St. Louis: Concordia, p. 313
  121. Pelikan, Jaroslav; Oswald, Hilton C. (1955). Letters. Concordia Publishing House. p. 361.
  122. "A Statement on Death, Resurrection and Immortality". A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. 15 March 1969. Archived from the original on 15 March 2015. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  123. Simmonds (1975), Milton Studies, vol. 8, p. 193
  124. Vauchez 1966, pp. 198–199.
  125. Vauchez 1966, p. 115.
  126. Ball 2008, p. 36.
  127. Ball 2008, p. 37.
  128. Snobelen 1993, p. 46.
  129. Finger 2004, p. 536.
  130. Williams 1962, p. 739.
  131. Jolley, Nicholas (2003) [1997], "The relation between theology and philosophy", in Garber; Ayres (eds.), The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy, Cambridge University Press, p. 383, ISBN 0-52153180-2, OCLC 56608329
  132. Marshall 2002, p. 223.
  133. Snobelen 1993, p. 34.
  134. Thomson (2008), Bodies of thought: science, religion, and the soul in the early Enlightenment, p. 42, Harold Fisch calls it 'a major current of seventeenth century protestant ideology'.
  135. Brandon 2007, p. 65-3: 'Mortalism, in some form or other, had been around quite a while before the seventeenth century, but for our purposes we can begin to investigate mortalism as it appeared at the time of the Reformation.'
  136. Fisch, Harold (2008), Thomson (ed.), Bodies of thought: science, religion, and the soul in the early Enlightenment, p. 42
  137. Milton 1825, p. 280.
  138. Campbell, Gordon; Corns, Thomas N; Hale, John K (2007), Milton and the manuscript of De doctrina Christiana, Oxford University Press, p. 117, ISBN 978-0-19-929649-1
  139. De Doctrina Christiana citing 1Thess 4:17, Daniel 12:2 etc.
  140. Burrell (1964), The role of religion in modern European history, p. 74
  141. Vedder (1907), A Short History of the Baptists, p. 197
  142. Marshall 2002, p. 213.
  143. Snobelen 1993, p. 54.
  144. Ball 2008, p. 7.
  145. Méchoulan, ed. (2001), La formazione storica della alterità: studi di storia della tolleranza nell'età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò (in Italian), Secolo XVI, p. 1221
  146. Watts 1985, p. 119-4.
  147. Young (1992), FD Maurice and Unitarianism, p. 249
  148. Froom 1966, p. 144.
  149. Richardson (1658), A discourse of the torments of hell: The foundation and pillars thereof discovered, searched, shaken and removed. With many infallible proofs, that there is not to be a punishment after this life for any to endure that shall never end
  150. Milton 1825, p. : 'Inasmuch then as the whole man is uniformly said to consist of body, and soul (whatever may be the distinct provinces assigned to these divisions), I will show, that in death, first, the whole man, and secondly, each component part, suffers privation of life... The grave is the common guardian of all till the day of judgment.'
  151. Lewalski (2002), The life of John Milton: a critical biography, p. 431
  152. Brandon 2007, p. 66.
  153. Almond 1994, p. 62-2.
  154. Almond 1994, p. 62-3.
  155. Nuvo (ed.), 'John Locke: Writings on Religion', p. xxxiii (2002)
  156. Wood (2004), Science and dissent in England, 1688–1945, p. 50
  157. Suttcliffe (2005), Judaism and Enlightenment, p. 207
  158. Johns (2010), Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, p. 141
  159. Outler (1977), "John Wesley: Folk-Theologian", Theology Today, 34 (2): 154, doi:10.1177/004057367703400203, S2CID 170349455
  160. Buck, Charles (1823), A theological dictionary: containing definitions of all religious terms, p. 115
  161. Stephen (1901), History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, p. 429
  162. Ingram (2007), Religion, reform and modernity in the eighteenth century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England, Studies in Modern British Religious History, p. 101
  163. Priestley (1778), A free discussion of the doctrine of materialism, and philosophical necessity, p. 82
  164. Blackburne 1765.
  165. Johnston (2001), "Hell", in Alexander; Rosner (eds.), New dictionary of biblical theology (electronic ed.), It emerged seriously in English-language theology in the late 19th century
  166. Larsen 2001, pp. 255–256: 'Yet many abandonments of the traditional view are to be noted, including F. W. Newman (the Cardinal’s brother who took refuge in Unitarianism), ST Coleridge, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, FW Robertson of Brighton, FD Maurice, Bishop Colenso of Natal, TR Birks of the Evangelical Alliance, Andrew Jukes, Samuel Cox, and others who took up the cudgel for conditional immortality like the redoubtable RW Dale of Birmingham and FJ Delitzsch of Leipzig. Dale himself indicated he was drawn to Moody because of Moody’s great compassion for the lost, but ultimately he came to deny everlasting punishment. The defections were on the other side of the Atlantic also and included such a household name as the Quaker writer and preacher, Hannah Whitall Smith, whose The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life was so popular.'
  167. Morgan; Peterson (2004), Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, p. 197, In the 1900s, the United States saw a minimal emergence of annihilationism, primarily in new fringe groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists. But during that century England saw the rise of several books defending this doctrine, such as Archbishop of Dublin Richard Whately's A View of the Scripture Revelations Concerning a Future State (1829), Congregationalist Edward White's Life in Christ (1846), English Baptist Henry Dobney's The Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment (1858), and Anglican priest Henry Constable's Duration and Nature of Future Punishment (1868).
  168. Fulford (1908), "Conditional Immortality", in Hastings; Selbie (eds.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 3, p. 824, In Germany Richard Rothe, in France and Switzerland Charles Lambert, Charles Byse (translator), and E Petavel, in Italy Oscar Corcoda, and in America CF Hudson and WR Huntington have been prominent advocates of conditionalist views, and have won many adherents. Thus Conditionalism has at length, in the 20th cent., taken its place among those eschatological theories which are to be reckoned with.
  169. Larsen 2001, p. 257: 'RA Torrey, HA Ironside, Paul Rood, John R Rice, Robert G Lee and many others preached on heaven and hell, but they were a vanishing breed.'
  170. Wilson (2003), "Stokes, George Gabriel", in Bebbington; Noll (eds.), Biographical dictionary of evangelicals, p. 633
  171. Thomas (1865), "Tour in the United States and Canada—Letter from Dr. Thomas", The Christadelphian, 2 (7): 105
  172. Thayer, Thomas Baldwin (1855), The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment; no relation to Joseph Henry Thayer lexicographer.
  173. Vauchez 1966, pp. 199–200.
  174. Constable (1873), The Intermediate State of Man, p. 88
  175. Vauchez 1966, p. 199.
  176. Pool 1998, p. 134: 'In 1878, some English Baptists formed the Conditionalist Association. George A. Brown, an English Baptist pastor, hosted this conference and later edited the journal of this association, titled Bible Standard. Other Baptist ministers from this period held this view as well.'
  177. Mann (1888), Five Discourses on Future Punishment
  178. Grant 1895, p. .
  179. Gumbel, Nicky (2003), Alpha: Questions of Life, London: Hodder & Stoughton, p. 58, ISBN 0340862580, OCLC 53124133, there is life beyond the grave. History is not meaningless or cyclical; it is moving towards a glorious climax. ...Then those who are in Christ will go to 'be with the Lord for ever' (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
  180. "Statement of faith", About us, NZ: After life, We believe that human beings are by nature mortal. Genesis 2:7; 3:19; 1 Timothy 6:16; 2 Timothy 1:10; Romans 2:6–7. We believe that human beings in death are unconscious. Psalm 6:5; 115:17; Ecclesiastes 9:5,10. This is likened to "sleep". Job 14:12; Psalm 13:3; Jeremiah 51:39; Daniel 12:2; John 11:11–14; 1 Corinthians 15:51. We believe that immortality is obtained only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:21–23; 2 Timothy 4:7–8; 1 John 5:9–12
  181. What Does the Bible Really Teach?. Watch Tower Society. 2008. p. 58. Not even one part of us survives the death of the body. We do not possess an immortal soul or spirit.
  182. "The Mystery Solved!", Awake!, Watch Tower, p. 8, 8 July 1988, Nowhere in the Bible do we read of an "immortal soul". The two words are never linked. The words "immortal" and "immortality" occur only six times, all in the writings of the apostle Paul. When applying to humans, immortality is described as a prize to be given only to the 144,000, who are redeemed from the earth to reign with Christ Jesus in heaven.
  183. Letters, The Watchtower, 15 January 1950, p. 32, The Watchtower maintains its position that immortality will not be bestowed upon faithful men and women on earth in the new world, but only everlasting life for their loyalty and unbreakable devotion will be given them as a reward. They will always be fleshly mortals. Only the faithful church [of 144,000] taken from among men will be immortal with their Head and Savior Jesus Christ, who is in heaven.
  184. "What do Seventh Day Adventists Really Believe?". Adventist.org. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  185. Lutzer, Erwin W. Heaven and the Afterlife: The Truth About Tomorrow and What It Means for Today, Vol. 1–3. Moody Publishers.
  186. "Spirit World". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  187. Holden, George (1855). The Anglican Catechist: Manual of Instruction Preparatory to Confirmation. London: Joseph Masters. p. 40. We are further taught by it that there is an intermediate state between death and the resurrection, in which the soul does not sleep in unconsciousness, but exists in happiness or misery till the resurrection, when it shall be reunited to the body and receive its final reward.
  188. Swartz, Alan (20 April 2009). United Methodists and the Last Days. Hermeneutic. Wesley believed that when we die we will go to an Intermediate State (Paradise for the Righteous and Hades for the Accursed). We will remain there until the Day of Judgment when we will all be bodily resurrected and stand before Christ as our Judge. After the Judgment, the Righteous will go to their eternal reward in Heaven and the Accursed will depart to Hell (see Matthew 25).
  189. What Are the Differences between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism?, OCF, p. 11, archived from the original on 3 June 2004, retrieved 26 November 2006, Because some have a prevision of the glory to come and others foretaste their suffering, the state of waiting is called 'Particular Judgment'
  190. Tabor, James, What the Bible Says About Death, Afterlife, and the Future, UNCC, Several places in the New Testament we clearly find the notion that the dead are conscious, dwelling somewhere in the heavenly realms beyond, and awaiting, either in torment or comfort, the final judgment (Luke 16:19–31, 23:43; 1 Pet. 3:18–20; 4:6; Rev. 6:9–11; 7:9–12).
  191. Hoekema 1994, p. 88.
  192. Hoekema 1994, p. 89.
  193. Gospel Principles (PDF). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
  194. "Judgment". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  195. "Spirit Prison". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  196. "Ordinances". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  197. "Baptism for the Dead". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  198. Scott, Harvey W (1917), "Future Life and the Book of Job", Religion, Theology and Morals, p. 307
  199. Donelley 1976, p. 99-1: 'Twentieth century biblical scholarship largely agrees that the ancient Jews had little explicit notion of a personal afterlife until very late in the Old Testament period. Immortality of the soul was a typically Greek philosophical notion quite foreign to the thought of ancient Semitic peoples. Only the latest stratum of the Old Testament asserts even the resurrection of the body, a view more congenial to Semites.'
  200. Moon (1999), "Soul", in Benner; Hill (eds.), Encyclopedia of psychology & counseling (2nd ed.), Baker, p. 1148, Modern scholarship has underscored the fact that Hebrew and Greek concepts of soul were not synonymous. While the Hebrew thought world distinguished soul from body (as material basis of life), there was no question of two separate, independent entities. A person did not have a body but was an animated body, a unit of life manifesting itself in fleshly form—a psychophysical organism (Buttrick, 1962). Although Greek concepts of the soul varied widely according to the particular era and philosophical school, Greek thought often presented a view of the soul as a separate entity from body. Until recent decades Christian theology of the soul has been more reflective of Greek (compartmentalized) than Hebrew (unitive) ideas.
  201. McMinn; Phillips (2001), Care for the soul: exploring the intersection of psychology & theology, pp. 107–108, A broad consensus emerged among biblical and theological scholars that soul-body dualism is a Platonic, Hellenistic idea that is not found anywhere in the Bible. The Bible, from cover to cover, promotes what they call the "Hebrew concept of the whole person." GC Berkouwer writes that the biblical view is always holistic, that in the Bible the soul is never ascribed any special religious significance. Werner Jaeger writes that soul-body dualism is a bizarre idea that has been read into the Bible by misguided church fathers such as Augustine. Rudolf Bultmann writes that Paul uses the word soma (body) to refer to the whole person, the self, so that there is not a soul and body, but rather the body is the whole thing. This interpretation of Pauline anthropology has been a theme in much subsequent Pauline scholarship.
  202. McNamara (1997), Beauty and the Priest: Finding God in the New Age, p. 64, The general consensus is that the Old Testament rejected any natural or innate immortality.
  203. Myers, ed. (1987), Bible Dictionary, Eerdmans, p. 518, Indeed, the salvation of the 'immortal soul' has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical. Biblical anthropology is not dualistic but monistic: human being consists in the integrated wholeness of body and soul, and the Bible never contemplates the disembodied existence of the soul in bliss.
  204. Elwell; Comfort, eds. (2001), Tyndale Bible dictionary, p. 1216, There is no suggestion in the OT of the transmigration of the soul as an immaterial, immortal entity. Man is a unity of body and soul—terms that describe not so much two separate entities in a person as much as one person from different standpoints. Hence, in the description of man's creation in Genesis 2:7, the phrase 'a living soul' (KJV) is better translated as 'a living being.'
  205. Wright 2003, p. 92, 129: 'Barr is surely right to stress that the Genesis story as it now stands indicates that humans were not created immortal, but had (and lost) the chance to gain unending life.'; [but Wright himself actually interprets some passages of Scripture as indicating alternative beliefs,] 'The Bible offers a spectrum of belief about life after death.'
  206. Gillman 2000, p. 176-1: 'In contrast to the two enigmatic references to Enoch and Elijah, there are ample references to the fact that death is the ultimate destiny for all human beings, that God has no contact with or power over the dead, and that the dead do not have any relationship with God (see, inter alia, Ps. 6:6, 30:9–10, 39:13–14, 49:6–13, 115:16–18, 146:2–4). If there is a conceivable setting for the introduction of a doctrine of the afterlife, it would be in Job, since Job, although righteous, is harmed by God in the present life. But Job 10:20–22 and 14:1–10 affirm the opposite.'
  207. Goldingay 2006, p. 640, 644: 'The life of a human being came more directly from God, and it is also evident that when someone dies, the breath (rûaḥ, e.g., Ps 104:29) or the life (nepeš, e.g., Gen 35:18) disappears and returns to the God who is rûaḥ. And whereas the living may hope that the absence of God may give way again to God’s presence, the dead are forever cut off from God’s presence. Death means an end to fellowship with God and to fellowship with other people. It means an end to the activity of God and the activity of other people. Even more obviously, it means an end to my own activity. It means an end to awareness. […] "Who knows whether the breath of human beings rises up and the breath of an animal sinks down to the earth?” (Eccles 3:21). In Qohelet’s day there were perhaps people who were speculating that human beings would enjoy a positive afterlife, as animals would not. Qohelet points out that there is no evidence for this.'
  208. Donelley 1976, p. 99-2.
  209. Buttick, ed. (1962), The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible
  210. Gillman 2000, p. 176–182.
  211. Wright 2003, p. 129.
  212. Goldingay 2006, p. 644.
  213. Johnston, Philip S (2002). Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament. IVP Academic. p. 217.
  214. Neyrey 1985, pp. 982–83.
  215. Avery-Peck 2000, p. 1343-1351.
  216. Bromiley 2002, p. 1045-1.
  217. Brandon 2007, p. 65-4: 'Mortalism, the idea that the soul is not immortal by nature'
  218. McGrath (1995), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, p. 101
  219. Neyrey 1985, pp. 982–3: 'This Hebrew field of meaning is breached in the Wisdom of Solomon by explicit introduction of Greek ideas of soul. A dualism of soul and body is present: 'a perishable body weighs down the soul' (9:15). This perishable body is opposed by an immortal soul (3:1–3). Such dualism might imply that soul is superior to body. In the nt, 'soul' retains its basic Hebrew field of meaning. Soul refers to one’s life: Herod sought Jesus' soul (Matt. 2:20); one might save a soul or take it (Mark 3:4). Death occurs when God 'requires your soul' (Luke 12:20). 'Soul' may refer to the whole person, the self: 'three thousand souls' were converted in Acts 2:41 (see Acts 3:23). Although the Greek idea of an immortal soul different in kind from the mortal body is not evident, 'soul' denotes the existence of a person after death (see Luke 9:25; 12:4; 21:19); yet Greek influence may be found in 1 Peter’s remark about 'the salvation of souls' (1:9). A moderate dualism exists in the contrast of spirit with body and even soul, where 'soul' means life that is not yet caught up in grace. See also Flesh and Spirit; Human Being.'
  220. Cressey (1996), "Dualism", in Cressey; Wood; Marshall (eds.), New Bible Dictionary (3rd ed.), p. 284, A particular instance of the Heb. avoidance of dualism is the biblical doctrine of man. Greek thought, and in consequence many Hellenizing Jewish and Christian sages, regarded the body as a prison-house of the soul: sōma sēma 'the body is a tomb'. The aim of the sage was to achieve deliverance from all that is bodily and thus liberate the soul. But to the Bible man is not a soul in a body but a body/soul unity; so true is this that even in the resurrection, although flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, we shall still have bodies (1 Cor. 15:35ff.)
  221. Avery-Peck 2000, p. 1343-2: 'Even as we are conscious of the broad and very common biblical usage of the term "soul", we must be clear that Scripture does not present even a rudimentarily developed theology of the soul. The creation narrative is clear that all life originates with God. Yet the Hebrew Scripture offers no specific understanding of the origin of individual souls, of when and how they become attached to specific bodies, or of their potential existence, apart from the body, after death. The reason for this is that, as we noted at the beginning, the Hebrew Bible does not present a theory of the soul developed much beyond the simple concept of a force associated with respiration, hence, a life-force.'
  222. Avery-Peck 2000, p. 1343-3.
  223. Ferguson; Packer, eds. (2000), New Dictionary of Theology (electronic ed.), pp. 28–29, Gn. 2:7 refers to God forming Adam 'from the dust of the ground' and breathing 'into his nostrils the breath of life', so that man becomes a 'living being'. The word 'being' translates the Hebrew word nep̄eš which, though often translated by the Eng. word 'soul', ought not to be interpreted in the sense suggested by Hellenistic thought (see Platonism; Soul, Origin of). It should rather be understood in its own context within the OT as indicative of men and women as living beings or persons in relationship to God and other people. The lxx translates this Heb. word nep̄eš with the Gk. word psychē, which explains the habit of interpreting this OT concept in the light of Gk. use of psychē. Yet it is surely more appropriate to understand the use of psychē (in both the lxx and the NT) in the light of the OT's use of nep̄eš. According to Gn. 2, any conception of the soul as a separate (and separable) part or division of our being would seem to be invalid. Similarly, the popular debate concerning whether human nature is a bipartite or tripartite being has the appearance of a rather ill-founded and unhelpful irrelevancy. The human person is a 'soul' by virtue of being a 'body' made alive by the 'breath' (or 'Spirit') of God.
  224. Carrigan (2000), "Soul", in Freedman; Myers; Beck (eds.), Dictionary of the Bible, Eerdmans, p. 1245, Far from referring simply to one aspect of a person, "soul" refers to the whole person. Thus, a corpse is referred to as a "dead soul", even though the word is usually translated "dead body" (Lev. 21:11; Num. 6:6). "Soul" can also refer to a person's very life itself (1 Kgs. 19:4; Ezek. 32:10). "Soul" often refers by extension to the whole person.
  225. Bromiley 2002, p. 1045-2.
  226. Bromiley 2002, p. 1045 -3: 'It has been noted already that the soul, like the body, derives from God. This implies that man is composed of soul and body, and the Bible makes it plain that this is so. The soul and the body belong together, so that without either the one or the other there is no true man. Disembodied existence in Sheol is unreal. Paul does not seek a life outside the body, but wants to be clothed with a new and spiritual body (1 Cor. 15; 2 Cor. 5).’
  227. Cooper (2003), "Immortality", in Fahlbusch; Bromiley (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 2, All Christians believe in immortality, understood as a final resurrection to everlasting life. The majority have held that immortality also includes continuing existence of the soul or person between death and resurrection. Almost every detail of this general confession and its biblical basis, however, has been disputed. The debate has been fueled by the development of beliefs about the afterlife within the Bible itself and the variety of language in which they are expressed. The Hebrew Bible does not present the human soul (nepeš) or spirit (rûah) as an immortal substance, and for the most part it envisions the dead as ghosts in Sheol, the dark, sleepy underworld. Nevertheless it expresses hope beyond death (see Pss. 23 and 49:15) and eventually asserts physical resurrection (see Isa. 26:19; Dan. 12:2).
  228. Cross; Livingstone, eds. (2005), The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd rev ed.), p. 1531, soul. The idea of a distinction between the soul, the immaterial principle of life and intelligence, and the body is of great antiquity, though only gradually expressed with any precision. Hebrew thought made little of this distinction, and there is practically no specific teaching on the subject in the Bible beyond an underlying assumption of some form of afterlife (see immortality).
  229. Lake 2009, pp. 586–97: 'The English translation of nepeš by the term "soul" has too often been misunderstood as teaching a bipartite (soul and body—dichotomy) or tripartite (body, soul, and spirit—trichotomy) anthropology. Equally misleading is the interpretation that too radically separates soul from body as in the Greek view of human nature. See body; spirit. N. Porteous (in IDB, 4:428) states it well when he says, "The Hebrew could not conceive of a disembodied nepeš, though he could use nepeš with or without the adjective 'dead,’ for corpse (e.g., Lev. 19:28; Num. 6:6).” Or as R. B. Laurin has suggested, "To the Hebrew, man was not a 'body' and a 'soul,’ but rather a 'body-soul,’ a unit of vital power" (BDT, 492). In this connection, the most significant text is Gen. 2:7, "the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [nišmat hayyîm], and the man became a living being [nepeš hayyâ]" (the KJV rendering "living soul" is misleading). …The Bible speaks of the nepeš as departing and/or returning (Gen. 35:18; 1 Ki. 17:21–22). However, the crucial series of texts are those in which the OT writers indicate a fear of death and a fear of the loss of the self or soul through the experience of death (cf. Job 33:18–30; Ps. 16:10; 30:3; 116:8; Isa. 38:15–17). What is essential to understanding the Hebrew mind is the recognition that the human being is a unit: body-soul! The soul is not, therefore, unaffected by the experience of death. OT eschatology does indeed contain seminal elements of hope implying the more positive teaching of the NT, as can be seen in the OT phrase, "rested with his fathers" (1 Ki. 2:10 et al.), in David’s confident attitude toward the death of his child (2 Sam. 12:12–23), and in Job’s hope for a resurrection (Job 19:20–29). It is this essential soul-body oneness that provides the uniqueness of the biblical concept of the resurrection of the body as distinguished from the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul.'
  230. Brandon 2007, p. 65-5: 'Mortalism, the idea that the soul is not immortal by nature'
  231. Caird; Hurst (1994), New Testament Theology, p. 267, But the Jew did not believe that human beings consist of an immortal soul entombed for a while in a mortal body.
  232. Ford, David; Muers, Rachel (2005), The modern theologians: an introduction to Christian theology since 1918 (3rd ed.), Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, p. 693, ISBN 1405102764, OCLC 57344044, While the idea of an immortal soul is an established belief for most Christians, it cannot be supported by Biblical texts. …Consequently Buddhist and biblical views of the self agree that there exists no immortal soul that remains self-identically permanent through time.
  233. Moody 1990, p. 182: 'Berkouwer has a long chapter on the meaning of the soul called 'The Whole Man.' Here he denounces the theory of a 'substantial dichotomy' between an immortal soul and a mortal body. […] Berkouwer's critique of belief in the natural immortality of the soul is as significant as it is Scriptural. At times he argues that 'creedal caution' is better than dogmatic theology, but his main thrust is against the theory of belief in an immortal soul independent of God. Only God is by nature immortal, and man's immortality is a gift received in dependence upon the immortal God.'
  234. Fudge & Peterson 2000, p. 173-2.
  235. Richards (1991), Winds of doctrines: the origin and development of Southern Baptist theology, p. 207, Theodore R Clark also taught it. In his view, the whole person is mortal and subject to final and total destruction.
  236. Vogels (1994), "Review of "The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality", by James Barr", Critical Review of Books in Religion, 7: 80, It is generally accepted that in biblical thought there is no separation of body and soul and, consequently, the resurrection of the body is central. The idea of an immortal soul is not a Hebrew concept but comes from Platonic philosophy. It is, therefore, considered a severe distortion of the NT to read this foreign idea into its teaching.
  237. Dixon (2000) [9 February 1968], "What Is Man?", Emmaus Journal, Several Evangelical theologians suggest that the concept of man possessing an "immortal soul" is not the teaching of the Word of God. Clark Pinnock argues that its source is Plato (or Greek philosophy in general), and not the Bible.
  238. Hebblethwaite (2005), Philosophical theology and Christian doctrine, p. 113, That the idea of the soul's immortality as disembodied state beyond death is not popular amongst Christian theologians or among Christian philosophers today has already been acknowledged.
  239. "Did you say sleep?", Theology, NZ: After life, 2012, archived from the original on 22 February 2013, Bible consistently uses a metaphor for death that is viewed as neither socially or theologically appropriate among evangelicals. It calls death a sleep. But if a believer slips and refers to the dead as sleeping, judging from the reaction among traditionalists, you would think that he had shot God.

Bibliography

Further reading
  • Bultmann, Rudolf (1953). Theologie des Neuen Testaments (in German). Tübingen: Mohr. pp. 189–249. (English translation Theology of the New Testament 2 vols, London: SCM, 1952, 1955). The leading scholarly reference supporting a holistic anthropology (similar to soul sleep)
  • Burns, Norman T (1972). Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton. USA: Harvard. ISBN 0-674-12875-3. Covers all major strands of psychopannychism and thnetopsychism in English Reformation and Revolution.
  • Jewitt, R (1971). Paul's Anthropological Terms. Leiden: Brill.
  • Kümmel, WG (1948). Das Bild des Menschen im Neuen Testament (in German). Zürich: Zwingli. (English translation Man in the NT, London: Epworth, 1963).
  • Ladd, George Eldon (1974). A Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. pp. 457–78.
  • Smith, Uriah (1897). Here & Hereafter or Man in Life and Death: The Reward of the Righteous and the Destiny of the Wicked. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association., Comprehensive volume covering a multitude of texts for and against the doctrine of soul sleep.
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