davidbu@loowit.wr.tek.com (David E. Buxton) (03/09/91)
Where did this idea come from, that we either go to hell or heaven when we
die? Or that hell can go on and on torturing for eternity?
We get our first glimpse of the origins of such a theory in the story of the
Garden of Eden - "And the serpent said to the woman, 'Ye shall not surely
die.'" (Gen 3:4). When she ate of the fruit the process of death was
started in her. Eternal hell and the eternal soul is the devil's lie. This
lie of Satan's is that the wicked really do not die. That their souls go on
living through eternity. Eve made the mistake of putting her trust in what
Satan said instead of in what God had told her. Before we pursue a bit of
history let us consider what the Bible says:
For dust you are, and to dust you shall return. (Gen 3:19)
"For in death there is no remembrance of You; In the grave who will
give You thanks?" -- Psa 6:5 (NKJ)
"The dead do not praise the LORD, Nor any who go down into silence."
-- Psa 115:17 (NKJ)
"Will You work wonders for the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise
You? Selah Shall Your loving kindness be declared in the grave? Or
Your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Shall Your wonders be
known in the dark? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetful-
ness?" -- Psa 88:10-12 (NKJ)
"His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his
thoughts perish." (Psa 146:4)
"For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and
they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also
their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; nevermore
will they have a share in anything done under the sun." -- Eccl 9:5,6
(NKJ)
"For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down
to the pit cannot hope for Your truth. The living, the living man, he
shall praise You, as I do this day; the father shall make known Your
truth to the children." -- Isa 38:18,19 (NKJ)
"Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them; they shall
not deliver themselves from the power of the flame; it shall not be a
coal to be warmed by, nor a fire to sit before!" -- Isa 47:14 (NKJ)
The Old Testament is clear about the state of the dead - they sleep a sleep
of total unconsciousness.
In his book "The Fire That Consumes", Edward Fudge (Evangelical Theological
Society) takes a look at the books written between the time of the OT and
the NT, a period of 400 years. These were years of dispersion among the
pagans in the lands of Egypt, Persia, Syria, Babylon, etc. Fudge offers a
summary on the Apocrypha:
". . . . On the fate of the wicked this literature overwhelmingly
reflects the teaching of the Old Testament. The wicked will not escape
God's judgment. They will surely die. Worms will be their end. They
will pass away like smoke of chaff, or burn up like tow. The righteous
may hope for a resurrection and blessed life with God, but the wicked
will have no part in that. Even faithful martyrs gasping final words
of warning to their murderers say no more. . . . . . ."
Fudge's summary on the Pseudepigrapha, which is also intertestament (pp 153-
154):
The Pseudepigrapha offers us a variety of Jewish expectations regarding
the final end of sinners. It is absolutely clear that there is no such
thing as "the Jewish view" on the matter. Neither is it proper to say
that everlasting conscious torment is the primary or predominant view
in this literature. This expectation appears quite clearly in a hand-
ful of passages. It is a possible interpretation in several other
cases. For present purposes we will allow them all to those of that
persuasion.
Is is also absolutely clear that the pseudepigraphical literature
thoroughly documents the older view of the sinner's total extinction .
. . .
Because of this unquestionable range of opinion, which can be so
thoroughly documented, we cannot presume a single attitude among Jews
of the time of Christ on this subject. We cannot read Jesus' words or
those of the New Testament writers with any presuppositions supposedly
based on a uniform intertestamental opinion.
We must deny categorically the common assumption that Jesus' hearers
all held to everlasting torment. We must not assume that Jesus
endorses such a view simply because He nowhere explicitly denied it.
We are free to examine the teachings of the New Testament at face value
and to determine the meaning of its terms according to the ordinary
methods of proper biblical exegesis. The literary and linguistic back-
ground for this exegesis includes the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, but
rising high and towering over it all we see the inspired revelation
contained in the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
In Acts 23:6-8 we can see that the Sadducees and Pharisees had opposing
views:
"But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other
Pharisees, he cried out in the council, "Men and brethren, I am a Phar-
isee, the son of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection of
the dead I am being judged!" And when he had said this, a dissension
arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and the assembly was
divided. "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection; and no
angel or spirit; but the Pharisees confess both. " -- Acts 23:6-8
(NKJ)
The Sadducees were the conservative "fundamentalists" of their day and the
Pharisees were the liberal, progressive "modernists".
Here is what I found in the Jewish Encyclopedia:
"SOUL - (<Hebrew>, <Hebrew>, from <Hebrew> and <Hebrew> = "he
breathed"; equivalent to the Latin "anima" and "spiritus"): The Mosaic
account of the creation of man speaks of a spirit or breath with which
he was endowed by his Creator (Gen. 2:7); but this spirit was conceived
of as inseparably connected, if not wholly identified, with the life-
blood (Gen. 4:4; Lev. 17:11). Only through the contact of the Jews
with Persian and Greek thought did the idea of a disembodied soul, hav-
ing its own individuality, take root in Judaism and find its expression
in the later Biblical books, as, for instance, in the following pas-
sages: "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord:" (Prov. 20:27);
"There is a spirit in man" (Job 32:8); "The spirit shall return unto
God who gave it" (Ecc. 12:7). . . ."
The soul is the breath given by God and the breath, or life force, that
returns to God. This breath that returns to God is not a conscious breath
but rather the gift of life.
"His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his
thoughts perish." (Psa 146:4)
The soul is that essential that man has failed to create in a test tube. God
takes back this life force. He already has a record of our character and
other essential statistics about us, perhaps even a DNA map. God returns to
His possession your ability to live and not some conscious entity to take to
heaven or to cast into hell. The judgement is still future.
The concept of the immortality of the soul was developed in the mystery
religions of ancient Greece. The immortality of the soul was a principal
doctrine of the Greek philosopher, Plato, who was born about the time of the
last Old Testament book was being written. In Plato's thinking, the soul
was self-moving and indivisible or "simple." Ungenerated and eternal, it
existed before the body it inhabited, and it would survive the body as well.
To be apart from the body was the soul's natural and proper state; to be
imprisoned in a body was its punishment for faults committed during a previ-
ous incarnation -- New Catholic Encyclopedia, 13:464. Examine what Paul
says about philosophy and the wisdom of man (1 Cor 1:19-2:5 and Col 2:1-10).
Greek philosophy was rather popular in Paul's day and Paul warns against it.
The Old Testament is clear about the state of the dead - they sleep a sleep
of unconsciousness. Several of you sent me texts to support the popular
ideas of death and hell. A quick search reveals that the first one of these
texts show up in Matthew and none in the Old Testament. The Old Testament
is clear that the soul does not fly away as a conscious entity and hell is
not yet burning. Start with todays popular views as your bias and I can
understand why you would say that you can prove the state-of-the-dead both
ways. That is perhaps true if you confine your search to the New Testament
alone. Starting from such a bias you can then offer some Old Testament
texts in support. But if you set your biases aside and study the subject
from cover to cover, comparing scripture with scripture, then it becomes
clear that the New Testament does not contradict the Old Testament. It
becomes clear that the dead do not fly away to heaven or to hell. It
becomes clear that in the end the body and soul of the wicked are consumed
with everlasting results.
Someone has said that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed,
while the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. We cannot abandon
the Old Testament in our study of the Biblical question of what happens
after we die. In fact the Old Testament is vital in properly understanding
what the New Testament has to say on virtually every topic.
The early apostolic fathers agree with Scripture and with each other that
the wicked will be raised to face God in judgment. Both traditionalist and
conditionalist advocates have their early fathers that they like to quote,
often quoting the same statements of the same early fathers. The earliest
of the fathers being more clearly conditionalist and restricting themselves
more closely to the scriptures. As we work out way into the mid 3'd century
we see the concepts of a torturing hell infiltrate the Christian church.
But first the term "immortal soul" was documented in the early church in
188, used by Athenegoras. Tertullian carried it the next step by reasoning
that if you have an immortal conscious soul after death then there must be
an immortal conscious hell for lost souls. It was Origen (AD 185-AD250) who
introduced the idea that hell was a place to purify the soul - and so his
following of universalists. Augustine, in the 4th Century, popularized the
idea that there is conscious torment for the wicked, drawing heavily from
the works of Neo-Platonists. Gnosticism and Manichaeism also promoted a
conscious, immortal hell. Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274, was an eager
follower of Aristotle and builds from this base, teaching the immortal
incorruptible soul.
The theories of eternal souls and burning hell prevailed and grew and ela-
borated up until the time of the Protestant Reformation. That is when the
printing press was invented and people by the thousands were able to read
the scriptures, reading them much more diligently than Christians do today.
By far the dominant consensus among the Reformers was that the soul is not
conscious and that hell is not eternal. Here is what the reformers had to
say:
Martin Luther (1493-1546) - "We should learn to view our death in the
right light, so that we need not become alarmed on account of it, as
unbelief does; because in Christ it is indeed not death, but a fine,
sweet and brief sleep, which brings us release from this vale of tears,
from sin and from the fear and extremity of real death and from all the
misfortunes of this life, and we shall be secure and without care, rest
sweetly and gently for a brief moment, as on a sofa, until the time
when he shall call and awaken us together with all his dear children to
his eternal glory and joy . . . "For since we call it a sleep, we know
that we shall not remain in it, but be again awakened and live, and
that the time during which we sleep, shall seem no longer than if we
had just fallen asleep. Hence, we shall censure ourselves that we were
surprised or alarmed at such a sleep in the hour of death, and suddenly
come alive out of the grave and from decomposition, and entirely well,
fresh, with a pure, clear, glorified life, meet our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ in the clouds . . . "Scripture everywhere affords such
consolation, which speaks of the death of the saints, as if they fell
asleep and were gathered to their fathers, that is, had overcome death
through this faith and comfort in Christ, and awaited the resurrection,
together with the saints who preceded them in death." -- A compend of
Luther's Theology, edited by Hugh Thompson Ker, Jr., page 242.
William Tyndale, Bible translator and Martyr (1484-1536) -- Tyndale
supported Luther in the revived teaching of conditional immortality,
and it brought him into direct conflict with the church of Rome - "The
true faith setteth forth the resurrection, which we be warned to look
for every hour. The heathen philosophers, denying that, did set forth
that the souls did ever live. And the Pope joineth the spiritual doc-
trine of Christ and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers together;
things so contrary that they cannot agree, no more than the spirit and
the flesh do in a Christian man. And because the fleshly-minded Pope
consenteth unto heathen doctrine, therefore he corrupteth the scripture
to stablish it."
John Firth, associate of Tyndale and fellow Martyre (1500-1533) -- ". .
. that some are already in hell and some in heaven, which thing ye
shall never be able to prove by the scriptures . . . ."
George Wishart, Greek Scholar and tutor of John Knox (1500-1546) -- He
was charged (Charge XVI) with promulgating the doctrine of the sleep of
the souls.
John Locke, late 1600s, taught that the wicked will finally become
extinct and be no more.
General Baptists, found in large numbers in England - they held "that
the soul, between death and the resurrection at the last day, has nei-
ther pleasure or pain, but is in a state of insensibility."
R. Overton (17th Century) - The whole man dies, that the soul going to
heaven or hell is mere fiction. Immortality begins for the saints at
the resurrection.
John Milton, secretary to Cromwell (17th Century) - "The grave is the
common guardian of all till the day of Judgement."
Archbishop John Tillotson of Canterbury (1630-1694) - "I do not find
that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is anywhere expressly
delivered in scripture, but taken for granted."
Henry Layton, Anglican (1670-1706) - During life we live and move in
Christ; and when we die we rest and sleep in Him, in expectation of
being raised at His second coming.
I could go on and on quoting from the days of the Reformation and the years
that follow. The big question must emerge - where do Protestants get their
theology on immortal souls and torturing hell? Why were not the pagan
derived theories on eternal souls left behind at the Reformation?
We must turn to John Calvin. I have read Calvin's favorite texts to support
his theories, and he does expound on them with exceeding great eloquence.
But he also stands squarely on the traditions of Augustine who draws heavily
from Greek philosophy. Calvin quotes extensively from Tertullian and
Augustine as well as others of the church fathers, even from Plato to add to
his eloquence. Fudge, on page 459, says - "Calvin consistently thinks and
speaks of the soul and its attributes in terms refined by and inherited from
pagan philosophy. . . . ." On page 466 - Calvin, more than any one man, put
the Protestant stamp of approval on the traditional understanding of souls
and of hell. The power of his influence may be seen in the history of
theology since. It would please the Reformer to know that his heirs would
cling to the immortality of every soul -- evil as well as good -- longer and
with greater affection than their Lutheran, Baptist and Anglican evangelical
brethren. . . . .
So, why was it that Calvin was able to overturn the majority view and the
originally strong position of Luther and Tyndale? Edward Fudge (Evangelical
Theological Society) spent many long hours researching this and other his-
torical questions. He offers an explanation on pages 72 and 73 and now I'll
quote from pages 381 and 382 of his book "The Fire that Consumes" :
Calvin was an exegete, but he did not build his case for final punish-
ment on an exegetical basis. Even though he could write in the 'Insti-
tutes' that God's wrath "is a raging fire devouring and engulfing
everything it touches," his philosophical presuppositions of man's
immortal soul prevented him from taking such language seriously in the
matter of final punishment. Like Luther, Calvin largely began with the
Augustinian theology. He constantly sought to correct the received
doctrines in the light of Jesus Christ and the gospel of justification
by faith. But he did not shine the light of the cross and the empty
tomb on his doctrine of man or of the sinner's final end. He did not
interpret the popular traditionalist proof- texts in the light of their
prophetic background; like other traditionalist, he largely ignored the
conditionalist passages altogether.
Calvin's first theological treatise was a work entitled 'Psycho-
panychia', and it was a vehement attack on the doctrine (which he
ascribed to the detestable Anabaptists) that man's "soul" either died
with the body or slept until the day of judgment. Because the hated
Anabaptists were associated with this doctrine, Calvin's opposition to
it increased all the more. And even though Luther and Tyndale had both
expressed the same mortalist views as the Anabaptists, the intense
opposition of Calvin and Bullinger to the doctrine led the other
leaders to drop the subject rather than to chance dividing the whole
Reformation over what seemed to be a minor point.
applied to a wide diversity of Reformation Christians who rejected the state
churches of Luther and Calvin. Their modern descendants are Baptist, Men-
nonites and some Brethren. {I ponder here how then the Baptists come to be
so famous for their hell fire sermons?} The Anabaptists stressed the
authority of the Word of God over any creed or any confession of faith or
any state religion {on that basis I would have been Anabaptist}. Just as it
was the hatred of the Jews that kept the Reformers from embracing the Bibli-
cal Sabbath, so it was the hatred of the Anabaptists that turned the Refor-
mation in the direction of Calvin on the question of souls after death.
Today the Jehovah's Witnesses serve the role that the Anabaptists once
served - that is to further entrench the popular position against what the
Reformers originally set out to proclaim.
Someone has observed that truth is always true even if it is not plain,
while error is often more plain than it is true.
How can politically motivated theology claim to be the truth? Is the
defence of ones church a more noble motive than the search for honest truth?
Is 'innocent' error acceptable before God? Do we swallow error out of a
fear that the truth will divide the church?
Dave (David E. Buxton)
From the Silicon RainForest of the Northwest