Eld. Cottrell's Second Reply.
By R. F. Cottrell
Dear Brother,—The question under discussion, namely, “What is the nature and destiny of man, according to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures?” is a plain, fair question; and the Scriptures doubtless furnish us with all necessary information upon the subject, as is implied in the question itself. But your first proposition—“that man is composed of matter and spirit”—I do not deem a Scriptural proposition. It is a philosophical or a metaphysical proposition; neither the matter nor the spirit of it is found in the Bible. Both these words, it is true, are frequently found in the Bible, but never in the sense in which they are evidently used in your proposition. Matter is never contrasted with spirit, nor spirit with matter, in the Bible. And herein consists the fallacy of your argument. You frame a proposition with terms used in the technical sense of that which calls itself philosophy, and then go to the Bible, and, lo! the same terms, in form, are there, and the proposition is considered as positively proved! In this way you can prove that feathers are directly the opposite of darkness, because they are light. You seem surprised that I should understand you as having undertaken to prove the immortality of the soul, and you are sure that I have not “well considered the proposition.” You further say, “Nor still have I asserted that the spirit of man is immortal, or that it is so declared by any express statement of Scripture. Neither the terms mortal nor immortal are so applied, so far as I can recollect, in the Sacred Oracles.” I am glad to have you make this admission. You will not, of course, attempt to prove the soul or spirit immortal, since the Scriptures—the only umpire in this controversy—do not assert it. And it is not only remarkable, but truly astonishing, that, while the terms soul and spirit are found many hundreds of times in the Bible, the terms immortal, never dying, deathless, or anything of the kind, is never applied to either of them, if, indeed, either is immortal. But let us consider your second proposition, “That the body is mortal, but”—but what? what is the opposite of mortal, but immortal?—“the spirit is incapable of physical corruption.” You seem to be aware that, respecting the use of the terms immortal and immortality in the Scriptures, we have the advantage, and so you put, “incapable of physical corruption” over against “mortal.” This is ingenious; but what will it avail? What text in the Bible speaks of physical corruption? And if the Bible says nothing about it, how will you prove this proposition by the Scriptures? This, like your terms matter and spirit, is a philosophic term, and, like them, utterly unknown to the Bible. To prove this proposition, therefore, it will be necessary to resort to philosophical, instead of Bible arguments; and still it will remain unproved; for you do not profess to know “what the nature of the substance of the spirit is,” and consequently you are wholly unprepared to say whether it is capable of physical corruption or not. I admit, with you, that the terms soul and spirit are sometimes used in the same sense; but I know nothing of either of them ever being used to denote “man's higher or spirit nature.” You say, “I am also aware, that in many instances, the term soul, as it occurs in the received version, does not mean what it does in popular phrase; and further, that it is often a bad translation of the original Greek word.” Of the corresponding Hebrew word, Parkhurst says, “As a noun, neh-phesh 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.” And I am fully persuaded that neither neh-phesh nor psyche ever mean in the Scriptures, what is called the soul or spirit in popular phrase. You modestly decline defining this soul or spirit, for the reason that “touching the nature of spirits,” you “have no very satisfactory knowledge.” I accept of this as a valid reason. Yet you venture to tell me that “it is not matter.” Being unacquainted with the substance, how could you tell so much without an express revelation? To my mind, as to some others, “immateriality is but another name for nonentity. It is the negative of things and beings—of all existence. There is not one particle of proof to be advanced to establish its existence. It possesses no property or power by which to make itself manifest to any intelligent being in the universe. Reason and analogy never scan it, or even conceive of it. Revelation never reveals it, nor do any of our senses witness its existence. In short, it can exert no influence whatever—it can neither act, nor be acted upon. And even if it does exist, it can be of no possible use.” If you can give any better definition of it, you are requested to do so. If not, please excuse me if I am forced to believe that immateriality is nothing. I do not presume to attempt to explain the substance of which spirits are composed. But this I have learned from revelation; that they are in the form of men; that they have faces, hands, and feet; that they can talk, look, walk, lie down, rise up, hold a staff in their hand, lay hold of men, and pull them with force from the violence of a mob, or hasten them from a doomed city. Gen. xviii, 1–16; xix, 1–16; Judges, vi, 11–21; xiii, 6–21. Angels are “all ministering spirits.” Heb. i. But of disembodied human spirits, that are capable of making any “manifestations,” physical or mental, I know nothing, having never read of them in the word of God. On Matt. x, 28, you make a fair show of argument. I was aware that you could do so; and to those whose prepossessions and prejudices give them a choice that your view should prove true, it will doubtless be satisfactory. But those who can bring their minds to a thorough and impartial investigation of the whole tenor of Bible teaching on this subject, will find that your exposition of this text is out of harmony with the Scriptures. Why should soul, in this verse, mean an immaterial man, that lives after the body is dead, and in the same chapter, and speaking of the very same subject, namely the risking of our lives for the cause of Christ, mean simply life, as it is translated? “He that findeth his soul shall lose it; and he that loseth his soul for my sake, shall find it.”—Verse 39. No one will claim that soul here means “man's higher or spirit nature,” and that he must lose his immortal soul in hell in order to find it in heaven. But if we lose our life in this world, for the cause of Christ, we shall find it in the world to come, by coming forth from the grave to the “resurrection of life.” And this perfectly agrees with what I before quoted from John, xii, 25. “He that loveth his life [soul] shall lose it; but he that hateth his [soul] life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal.” On Matt. xvi, 26, “For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Dr. Clarke says, “On what authority many have translated the word psyche, in the 25th verse, life, and in this verse, soul, I know not, but am certain it means life in both places.” I conclude, then, that in Matt. x, 28, the words are not used in their strictly literal sense; that to kill the body means to take away the present life, but to destroy both soul and body in hell, is to deprive one of life and being in the world to come. The former wicked men can do; but they cannot touch that life that is hid with Christ in God, which is to be given “when Christ who is our life shall appear.” And with this agrees the parallel passage in Luke. Persecutors, after they have killed men, “have no more that they can do.” Death puts the objects of their hatred out of their reach. Not so with the Lord; after he has killed his enemies, he can raise them from the dead, and cast them into hell. All believe that they are “cast alive” into hell; not that they are killed and then cast dead there. I must here remind you, that if you succeed in proving from Matt. x, 28, the separate conscious existence of the soul, you will at the same time prove its mortality; for God can kill it, and he threatens nothing which he does not intend to perform. The wicked he will destroy, both soul and body. And that the souls thus destroyed will be unconscious is implied in your own words: “The souls of the righteous will never become unconscious, because man can not destroy them, and God will not.” The necessity of brevity forbids that I should re-examine at length the other texts you have again spoken51of. I notice only a few thoughts. You think I have things “badly mixed,” having “Christ, by his Spirit, working mightily in men's hearts, to strengthen Christ in men's hearts.” The difficulty will vanish, when we consider, that “Christ within” is defined to be “the hope of glory.” This hope may be strengthened by the Spirit and “renewed day by day,” though the outward man is in a state of decay. I do not see how it makes Jesus “trifle with an earnest inquirer,” to represent that he told Nicodemus that he was mistaken in thinking “that the kingdom of God should immediately appear;” (Luke, xix, 11;) that the present state of “flesh and blood” cannot inherit it; and that therefore he must not expect it till the birth from the dead, and the change to immortality, prefigured by baptism, should take place. He, as a “master in Israel,” should have known this, having the 37th of Ezekiel and other like prophecies to read. I now proceed to speak briefly to the question in debate—the question of man's nature as revealed in the Scriptures. Your first proposition speaks of man's composition, affirming that he is composed of matter and spirit. By the side of this I will lay my first proposition, viz: Man was formed of the dust of the ground. In proof of this I quote Gen. ii, 7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Man was not a living soul until he received the breath of life; but he is called man before that was given; nothing having entered into his composition but the dust of which he was made. In accordance with this, Bible phraseology always represents the man to be where his body is, whether alive or dead. When the breath of life was given, man became a living soul. The man that was formed of the dust became a living soul. The man, then, was the soul, and the soul was the man. Hence one of the primary meanings of soul is the whole person or body. This is the inspired account of man's creation, and there is not one word or intimation in it of the immaterial, immortal soul of popular theology. How strange that the “clay tenement” should be so particularly described, and its immortal occupant not be considered worth naming! Your second proposition is, “That the body is mortal, but the spirit is incapable of physical corruption.” The second part of this proposition is foreign to all Scripture teaching, and, whether it is true or not it cannot be proved by the Bible. The first part of it—‘that the body is mortal’—I have admitted as positively proved. By the side of this I place my second proposition, viz: Man is mortal. I admit that you proved the body to be mortal, because you found the texts of Scripture which expressly call it so. All I ask is, that you admit my proposition proved, when I produce the like testimony. Will you do so? I proceed then to the proof. Job, iv, 17.—“Shall mortal man be more just than God?” Here man as a whole, is called mortal. This could not be true if a part of him were immortal. All those texts that assert, in the broadest sense, that “man dieth,” prove that he is mortal; for that which is immortal is exempt from death. Rom. i, 23.—“And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.” Man, in the broadest sense, is here called corruptible or perishable. (Grove's Greek Lexicon.) Then no part of him is incorruptible or imperishable. Man is corruptible; God is incorruptible. One of the definitions of the word here rendered incorruptible is immortal; and it is so translated in 1 Tim. i, 17, where also it is applied to God. This text, then, asserts the mortality of man. My third proposition is, that man in death has no knowledge. “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything.”—Eccl. ix, 5. If that part of man which knows, while in life, retained its knowledge after death, this text would not be true. The two conditions of man—living and dead—are here contrasted. The living know, the dead know not, is the declaration. That which had knowledge in life, has none in death. Psa. vi, 5.—“For in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave, who shall give thee thanks?” There is a state of death, or there is not. If not, we may throw away our Bible, and say with Spiritualists, “There is no death.” What is death? Is it a state of separation of soul and body? Well, in that state “THERE IS NO REMEMBRANCE” of God. This text being true, the good man does not so much as know that there is a God when he is dead. As ever, yours,
R. F. COTTRELL.