Dear Brother,—Yours of Recorder, June 1, is received.
You can scarcely express your astonishment at what you call my "bold and unwarrantable statement," that the Bible is silent concerning the soul's immortality in its present state, or until it shall put it on at the resurrection. You ask for a text that says the soul puts on immortality. You say, "Had you said the body puts on immortality at the resurrection of the just, it would have been well. But your theory required an addition to the simple Scripture statement, and for its sake, you made the addition!" A grave charge indeed! Because the word soul is not in the text referred to, I am charged with adding to the Scriptures. But if I had added body, another word that is not in the text, you say, "It would have been well." Why? Simply because your theory required that addition. The text is found in 1 Cor. xv, 53. It says, "This mortal must put on immortality." Whatever of man is mortal will put on immortality.
What is mortal? You say, the body. I admit it. But have you proved any part of man immortal? No. On the contrary, I have proved the entire man mortal, by plain Bible expressions. Man is a soul. When he received the breath of life, he "became a living soul." But the Scriptures call him, "mortal man." Then the living soul is mortal. The Lord did not talk to the senseless matter of which man was composed, but to the living soul, when he said, "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Hence, if the living soul transgressed—and that alone was capable of transgression—it was to die. What was the meaning of this threatening of death? It was simply this: that the living soul was to cease to live. It was defined by the sentence, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And that this penalty should not fail of execution, man was excluded from the tree of life, "lest he should eat and live forever." The object of this was, that the living soul should not live forever. Now, when Paul says, "this mortal," he means all that is mortal belonging to man; and this certainly includes the living soul. Therefore, though the word soul is not in the text, yet it teaches that the soul puts on immortality at the resurrection of the just. It is the soul that shouts the victory over that personified power which had, for a season, apparently been the victor over it.
You say, "All I have attempted concerning the idea of the soul's immortality, is to prove that the soul does not necessarily die with the body!" Indeed! That is attempting very little. I presume you would have attempted more, had the proof been at hand. You wish me and our readers to believe the soul immortal, but, during a year's discussion of the point, have not yet attempted to prove it! I think it time you yield the point, or attempt the proof.
To prove the existence of human spirits separate from their bodies, you quote Acts xxiii, 8—"For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both." On those questions, Paul took ground with the Pharisees. So do we. We believe in the resurrection most faithfully, and think it of some value, too, as giving life to those that are dead. We believe, also, that all the angels of God are "ministering spirits," and that there are such things as "spirits of devils," which are capable, when permitted, of "working miracles." These things we read; and believing them most fully, we are not Sadducees. But the text is still wanting that speaks of human spirits, as living, conscious beings, separate from their bodies. True, the disciples were frightened, because they thought they saw a spirit; and Jesus told them, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have." I believe the testimony. When those spirits from Heaven have appeared to men, they have appeared in the form of men; but they have not flesh and bones as men have. The dying Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." This would be my prayer under like circumstances; and I should do so, believing, with Paul, "that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." Man's spirit is not a being, but that endowment which man received by the inbreathing of the Almighty. It will be received again at the resurrection, and to the righteous, this gift will be eternal life. This doctrine of human spirits, living, conscious, and active, separate from their bodies, cannot be removed from the New Testament; for it is not there. All that is said of "disembodied spirits" is fabulous. The Bible reveals no such thing.
You admit the possibility that Greenfield is right in his definitions of the Greek terms used in Rom. i, 23, where God and man are contrasted as incorruptible and corruptible, immortal and mortal, imperishable and perishable. I think he is. Hence, the text describes man as "corruptible, perishable, liable to decay, mortal." This covers the whole ground of man's nature in this respect, unless you can find proof that some part of man is incorruptible, immortal, undying, imperishable. All proof of this kind is wanting. But seeing your weakness at this point, you attempt to cover your retreat by the strange request that I should quote "Greenfield, or any other accepted lexicographer, where Aphtharton, [I presume you mean phtharton,] when applied to the spirit of man, is made to mean corruptible in a physical sense."
This paragraph of yours is very remarkable. The text speaks of the "incorruptible God" and "corruptible man." The meaning is obvious, and not to be evaded. But you speak of "Aphtharton, [phtharton,] when applied to decayable substances," just as if it is sometimes applied to undecayable substances. The fact is when phtharton is applied to a substance, it signifies that it is perishable. It is for you to give instances of its application to incorruptible things. The terms corruptible and incorruptible are defined in Scripture: "Not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." That which liveth and abideth forever is incorruptible. That which is corruptible, then, does not live and abide forever. This is the case with "corruptible man." The instances you quote of the use of the words corrupt and corrupted, are rendered from other Greek terms, and not from phthartos. I do say that phthartos might not be used in a like figurative sense, but it is not in the New Testament.
I accept of your lecture upon the philosophy of language and the diversified use of words, as a diversion from the point at issue. I do not dispute the various figurative senses of words. Consequently your instructions on this point, though good, are not necessary. Would it not be better to busy yourself in finding the Scripture language, literal or figurative, which proves that man, by nature, is immortal? This would be more acceptable to those of our readers who wish to ascertain the truth on this subject. Please come to the point. I will accept of figurative language in all cases where there is evidence that it is figurative. Any language to prove your position; but alas! it is all wanting. But I cannot allow you to make the most clearly literal expressions of Scripture [all of which are against you] figurative, merely because words are sometimes used in a figurative sense, and because the necessities of your theory demand it.
I have no "theory that the spirit decays with the body;" and no "unscholarly and absurd habit of attributing physical properties to spirit." Man was made of dust; and when the dust returns to the earth as it was, the spirit communicated by the "inbreathing of the Almighty," which gives man life and understanding, returns to God who gave it.
No; God did not create the horse in his own image; but he created him, and gave him, as well as man, the breath of life.
Yes; "the Bible says man's body is mortal." It also says man is mortal. There is no contradiction in the two expressions; one does not disprove the other. You always find the man where his body is. I have not said that "man's spirit is mortal." The spirit is not a separate entity or being. But we frequently read in the Hebrew Scriptures of "dead souls."
You say, "I do not seek to evade the doctrine, that the 'dead know not anything.' What I deny is, that the spirit dies with the body." Until you prove that man has two distinct lives, one in the body and the other in the spirit, there is no demand for a text to prove that the spirit dies with the body. One death is sufficient to place a man in that state in which he knows nothing. Has the body, while living, knowledge? If so, living matter can think; and an immaterial soul to do the thinking is unnecessary. But if it is the soul alone that has knowledge in life, then it is the soul that knows nothing in death; for it is the same that knows while man is living, that knows nothing when he is dead. The text says, "The living know," "But the dead know not." Which, horn will you have? According to your theory, there is no change in respect to man's knowledge at death, only that he knows more than he did before; for he now knows what death is, and how a dead man feels, a thing he never knew before in all his life. Now it seems to me this theory is a fable, or the text untrue. I hold to the text, however "unscholarly" it may be.
You claim that "the assurance Christ gives, that there is a hereafter to man, is that the soul does not die with the body." I reply, the assurance he gives of a future life is the resurrection. He says, "And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will35of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day." John vi, 39, 40. From this text, we have for the assurance, that Christ's people will not be lost in death, that he will raise them up again at the last day. "That I should lose nothing," he says, "but raise it up. And the condition of everlasting life in the resurrection is faith in Christ. "Every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life." Will unbelievers have everlasting life, too? Thus it is proved that the resurrection is the assurance Christ gives of a future life. "Well, then, let it be so!"
It is, indeed, most fatal to your theory, that we are taught to seek for immortality, and that eternal life is set before us as an object of hope. "To those who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor, and immortality, eternal life." Rom. ii, 7. There is a shade of difference between the terms, immortality, and eternal life; but when the apostle promises eternal life to those who seek for immortality, he doubtless intends to promise the very thing for which they seek. Aphtharsia, the word here rendered immortality, signifies incorruptibility, and by implication, immortality. And Greenfield refers us to 1 Cor. xv, 42, 53, 54, to illustrate its meaning. Now you will not dispute me on the meaning of the word in these texts. You will not dispute that when the apostle says, concerning the resurrection, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption," that he does not mean that his people are buried in moral corruption, and raised in moral incorruption, but that these decaying bodies will be made imperishable, and having life in that incorruptible, immortal state, they will have immortal, enduring, endless or eternal life as the result. Now this incorruptibility and consequent eternal life, which is to be given at the resurrection of the just, is the very thing the apostle exhorts us to seek for, and assures us we only obtain, by patient continuance in well doing. Rom. ii, 7. This "first resurrection," the resurrection of life, "over the subjects of which the 'second death hath no power,' is the one to which the apostle so ardently desired to attain: Phil. iii, 11. It is a resurrection "out from among the dead," i. e., the one in which none but the righteous have a part, all the wicked being left behind to slumber in the dust for a thousand years, and then come forth, not to the "resurrection of life," but to the "resurrection of damnation;" not to incorruption, but to "utterly perish in their own corruption." Rev. xx, 4-6; John v, 29; Acts xxiv, 15; Phil. iii, 11; 1 Cor. xv, 54; 2 Peter ii, 12.
Your first objection to our view on this text is, that it makes it tautological. We can excuse the apostle for promising the very thing sought for, since he varies the terms to avoid tautology. You may qualify the terms by "blessed" or "happy," a thing the apostle was capable of doing, had he thought it necessary, and still the text is not improved. There is no doubt that that life will be blessed; there will be "glory and honor," as well as immortality there. Your second objection is that "no other writer than Paul exhorts us to seek after immortality." Well, one testimony is sufficient if it is well corroborated. If the general tenor of the other scriptures contradicted this idea of Paul's, as they do your view of Matt. x, 28, then we might rightly infer that he did not mean to be understood in a strictly literal sense. But Paul's idea in this text is corroborated by the whole tenor of the scriptures on this subject. I cannot quote a tithe of the testimony in perfect harmony with this exhortation of the apostle, understanding him in the literal sense. I will merely refer you to our Saviour's numerous exhortations to come to him that they might have life, to keep the commandments in order to "enter into life," or have right to the tree of life, &c. All these, and a multitude of other texts, perfectly harmonize with Paul's exhortation to seek for immortality. There is no necessity, then, unless created by a false theory, of forcing this evidently literal language to mean something else. If there is a testimony that does not harmonize with this idea of seeking for immortality, please quote it. Ah! there is the difficulty. There are none. Your other objections I have already answered, and it is unnecessary to repeat.
Olshausen I have not. I have no objection to what you quote from him. To be condemned to everlasting destruction is, certainly, everlasting damnation.
And now, what progress can we report in this discussion on the nature of man? You have proved by unquestionable evidence that the body is mortal. I have proved by testimony equally clear and unquestionable, that the entire man is mortal—that the living soul is subject to death, and that death is not merely a loss of happiness, but a cessation of life—that it was decreed, in consequence of sin, that man should not live forever; and, consequently, it is only through faith in Christ that man can have eternal life.
Have you found any testimony that any part of man is destined, by nature, or independent of redemption through Christ, to exist in conscious being eternally? Not a word of it; and nothing that points a single step that way, except your claim that Matt. x, 28 proves that the soul outlives the body. This I have admitted would be a fair inference from the peculiar phraseology of this single text, were it not contradicted by positive assertions on this point, and the whole tenor of Bible teaching. And I have proved by the text itself, taking your own stand-point, that the soul is mortal, because the Lord threatens to kill it in the same sense in which the body is killed; and you have been unable to present a single plausible objection to my argument. But should we admit all you claim on the text, it would only carry you one step beyond the death of the body, all further than this, is only what your philosophy says must be so. I am willing to submit our discussion of this text to the candid reader, who has carefully examined what has been said. Such reader will see that you have no Bible testimony for the natural immortality of any part of man.
It is an idea too absurd to be entertained for a moment, that God created man with an immortal soul—a soul that must exist in happiness or woe to the endless ages of eternity; and that he has given him a revelation of his origin, present state, and future destiny, in which he has entirely omitted to inform him of this most important and thrilling fact, if it be a fact. But it is a fact that all that we hear of the immortal, never-dying soul, and deathless spirit, comes from a source outside of the Bible. Ministers who believe the doctrine are not so remiss and careless as to keep it from their hearers; and I do not believe that the God of the Bible would have kept it back, were it the truth.
In conclusion, I wish to advertise you, that when we get upon the other part of the question—the destiny of man—I shall not allow you to argue in a circle. I shall not admit that certain texts upon future punishment prove the eternal conscious misery of the wicked, because the soul is immortal, and that the soul is immortal because it is never to be delivered from its just condemnation and punishment. First prove the soul immortal, then you may claim that "eternal damnation" will result in eternal misery. But this you have not, and cannot do, simply because the testimony is not, the Bible plainly teaching the reverse.