The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul — the notion that a human being survives consciously at death — is a pagan addition to Christianity. This fact is so widely recognized by scholars of all denominations that it is puzzling that a radical reformation on this issue has not swept the land. The problem is that churchgoers are not generally searching for truth on the great questions of life and death. They seem content to abide by “what we have always believed.” This attitude invites deception. If they were to survey the readily available literature on the subject, as well as the Bible, it would become obvious that survival in a post-mortem condition as a disembodied spirit in heaven or hell is a fiction needing to be rooted out of our thinking. Jesus did not believe it; neither then should his followers.
The problem is that the pagan notion that man is inherently immortal, by virtue of his “immortal soul/spirit,” is deeply entrenched in popular church culture. It is confirmed repeatedly when congregations assemble at funeral services. After all, it is comforting to imagine that our loved ones who have died have really just moved into a different sphere of life and consciousness.
The Evangelical Alliance was founded at an enthusiastic meeting in London in 1846. Assembled were 800 members of various denominations: Presbyterians, Independents, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Reformed, Moravians, and others. A nine-point doctrinal statement was agreed upon. Number 8 read as follows: “[We believe in] the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body.”
It is a remarkable fact that this body of churchgoers thus committed themselves to belief in a non-biblical concept. Equally noteworthy are the constant objections of evangelical scholars of various denominations in regard to the question of man’s immortality. They fully know that the doctrine of the “natural immortality of the soul” has no basis in Scripture. It is merely a man-made tradition.
Evidently evangelicals have not listened to some of those eminent scholars who have complained that the immortality of the soul and man’s uninterrupted life at the moment of death are without support in the Bible. Philip Schaff, the famous church historian (1819-1893), expressed his conviction that it was time to take up the unfinished business of the Reformation and bring it to completion. Schaff called attention to the necessity of reforming and correcting the prevalent and popular teaching of the survival of the soul in the “middle state,” prior to the resurrection when Jesus returns. He wrote:
“While the Reformers rooted out the medieval [Roman Catholic] doctrine of purgatory, they failed to substitute a better theory of the “middle state” [the intermediate state] and left it for our day to reconsider this whole question and to reach positive results…The old Protestant theologians nearly identify the pre-resurrection state of the righteous and the wicked [what happens at the point of death] with their post-resurrection state, except that the former is a disembodied state of perfect bliss [heaven at death] or perfect misery [hell]. By this confusion the resurrection and the general judgment are reduced to an empty formality.”
William Tyndale (c. 1490-1536), who was martyred for his faith, had earlier made exactly the same point against the Roman Catholics. “In putting souls in heaven and hell [at death] you destroy the arguments with which Paul proved the resurrection.” The same objection applied also to his Protestant colleagues.
Evangelicals, indeed nearly all Protestants, have taken on, with the immortality of the soul, a Roman Catholic doctrine, without protest. It is surely time for this mistake to be seen for what it is — a significant denial of a central Bible teaching — that the dead go nowhere at the moment of death, other than to the grave. Echoing the protest of Professor Schaff, Dr. Charles Briggs, editor of The Presbyterian Review and writing in a book entitled Whither? A Theological Question for the Times (1889) said:
“All the faults of Traditionalism converge at this point, i.e., in eschatology [teaching about the Christian future, at death and at the resurrection and Kingdom of God]. Here we find extra-confessional errors, intra-confessional errors and the entire Church is in a condition of great perplexity.” But has this confusion been cleared up?
Things have changed very little and business is as usual in the denominations. Sermons preached to commemorate the dead continue to falsify the biblical teaching, by reinforcing the pagan notion of survival in a disembodied form. This magazine attempts to further the unfinished work of the Reformation. We stand on the shoulders of the giants whom we quote in support of our various positions. From the various denominations the plea for a straight biblical teaching about death and the afterlife has been sounding out, but with very little response:
An Episcopal doctor of theology said:
“Never-ending existence [the immortality of the soul] is not the common heritage of all men in virtue of their having been born into this world, but is rather to be regarded as a gift bestowed on those who seek it from the Eternal Himself. The Father being the only one who possesses immortality in Himself (1 Tim 6:16), it is to Him that we must turn to obtain the immortality we need.” A Baptist doctor of theology wrote “Not a single passage of Holy Writ, from Genesis to Revelation, teaches, so far as I am aware, the doctrine of man’s natural immortality. On the other hand, Holy Writ emphatically declares that God only has immortality (I Tim 6:16): that is to say God only is naturally, inherently, in His own essence and nature immortal…It is amazing that a notion so thoroughly heathen as man’s natural immortality was not long uprooted out of Christian theology…There is on the part of the Church itself such a belief in the doctrine of the natural immortality of all men as to amount to a virtual denial of the doctrine that immortality or eternal life is the gift of Christ alone…When we come into our pulpits, it is not to soothe our listeners with brilliant conjectures, hopeful surmises, elaborate attempts at demonstration concerning immortality — that kind of preaching we leave to heathen teachers and pagan philosophers in Christian lands. But when we come into our pulpits, it is to give to our listeners positive, divine information about the hereafter.”
Amen!
What then is the origin of the noxious doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul?
A Methodist Yale Professor answers: “Having given the whole subject a careful and prayerful investigation — examining alike the strongest rational and Scriptural arguments used to support the dominant view — I am compelled to reject the current doctrine of the inherent immortality of the soul.” He then gives 12 reasons, of which we have space to print just the first:
Satanic origin. “This doctrine of the immortality of the soul can be traced through the muddy channels of a corrupted Christianity, a perverted Judaism, a pagan philosophy and a superstitious idolatry, to the great instigator of mischief in the Garden of Eden. The Protestants borrowed it [the notion of immortality and immediate consciousness at death in heaven or hell] from the Roman Catholics, the Catholics from the Pharisees, the Pharisees from the Pagans and the Pagans from the Old Serpent who first preached the doctrine amid the lovely bowers of Paradise to an audience all too willing to hear and heed the new fascinating theology — ‘You certainly shall not die.’ Satan patched up his system by inventing the double-entity theory that man is a dual being with a material body and an immaterial soul consisting of the real man whose soul leaves his body at death and continues to exist as a conscious personality either in conscious bliss for ever or conscious misery for ever.” Dr. Phelps added, “When this theory is accepted God is discredited and Satan believed.”
The theory continues to be the standard fare of millions upon millions of churchgoers.
Speaking further of the insidious paganization of original Christianity, Dr. Phelps pointed out that “Satan’s oily argument” was adopted by the pagans down the “stream of time.” It was popular in Egypt and led also to the concept of the transmigration of souls. For the Greek the concept of natural immortality became a philosophy. Plato was its chief proponent and he coupled the doctrine of immortality with that of preexistence.
In reaction to the doctrine of endless punishment (which follows logically from the mistaken notion that man is naturally immortal), a further error developed. The idea of endless torment was so revolting, if not inconceivable, that some rushed to the opposite but unbiblical extreme, that every human being will inevitably be saved (“Universalism”).
Dr. Phelps of Yale concludes with this warning for us all: “The commingled systems of Christianity and Platonic philosophy permeated the church. This unholy leaven worked until nearly the whole lump was at last infected.”
It should come as a salutary shock and wake-up call to us all that the doctrine of survival at death in heaven or hell received official authorization from the Pope in 1513. In that year Pope Leo X affirmed that the soul is immortal and decreed that those who assert otherwise are “heretics.” Amazingly most of the Protestant reformers sided with the Pope and their Helvetic Confession echoed the official Roman Catholic support for the pagan doctrine of natural immortality by declaring: “We condemn all who scoff at the immortality of the soul, or bring it into doubt by subtle disputations.”
It is hardly surprising that Protestants are once again joining hands with Roman Catholics. After all they have much in common! But the common ground is a crypto-paganism in regard to the nature of man and his destiny. Dr. Phelps spoke out boldly when he tried to warn his colleagues: “Think of the harvest of grievous errors such a dogma as the immortality of the soul has brought forth — Mohammedanism, Shakerism, Swendenborgianism, Spiritualism, Purgatory, the worship of Mary [who is actually not in heaven at all], Universalism…All these systems are built on the assumption that dead folks are alive.”
Readers will find a compendium of information on the corruption of Christianity by paganism in The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers by Froom (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1965). We are indebted to this work in the article above.
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