Psuche-A Query by T. P. Frost

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 8, 1872

Psuche—A Query.

By T. P. Frost

EDITOR ADVENT REVIEW AND HERALD: For a few months I have been a reader of your paper. In one of the late issues, my attention was attracted to the statement that in no place where soul is spoken of in the Scriptures does the signification of the original text imply that it is an immortal principle, separate from the body.

I beg leave to ask a question, which I would like to have answered through the columns of the REVIEW. In Romans 2:8, 9, we read: “But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul [ψυχή] of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile.” Ψυχή sometimes means breath, as the sign of life. But Homer uses it in the signification of a departed soul—spirit. He represents it as being bodiless, and not to be seized by mortal hands. So with other profane writers of antiquity.

Every classical student knows that the Romans, whom Paul is addressing in the passage above quoted, believed in an immortal ψυχή. Would the Romans, believing as they did the ψυχή to be immortal, understand Paul to say that God, in his awful day of wrath, would render tribulation and anguish upon every breath of man that doeth evil? or upon every immortal soul of man that doeth evil? Would they accept the possible meaning of ψυχή, when every word of the context perfectly harmonizes with the common meaning of the word, and their idea represented by it—an immortal soul? Do you make Paul here exhibit such unpardonable carelessness in the use of terms as would leave the Romans to continue believing in a lie? If this belief is a heathen superstition, why does Paul give countenance to their glaring error by saying that their immortal souls shall have tribulation

and anguish? and not rather cry out, Ye men of Rome, I perceive that ye are in this matter too superstitious; Moses and the prophets teach that ye have no immortal souls.

Yours truly, T. P. FROST.