The Ethics of the Innate Immortality of the Soul

For more than a week now I’ve almost ceaselessly been contemplating this whole “soul”-issue. I’m still far from a perfect understanding of the topic. No human knows perfectly and I guess it will take me still a long time to chisel out my own believes. It is for this reason that I rely on Inspiration as it is in Scripture, on philosophical logic, on science even, to try and appreciate what the “soul” is, and what is wishful thinking.

White strikes me is how our understanding of the soul will influence our ethical basis.

The following are the basic soul-views which I can now quickly think of:

1. The soul is innately immortal.

2. The soul is innately mortal, but may receive Eternal Life as a gift.

3. The soul is innately mortal and that’s the end, or put less esoterically, there is no soul.

For ease of explanation let’s call the proponent of #1 Jack and the proponent of #3 John and let’s use abortion as a vehicle of ethical discussion.

Jack, a typical Religious Right Christian, believes in the innate immortality of the soul. Therefore, he must believe that if a baby is killed (or to put it less emotive – if a foetus is aborted) it will go directly to heaven. I have to ask then, what’s the issue? Why is Jack against abortion?

That child will now experience bliss everlasting. Aren’t you in fact sparing it from lots of pain here on earth? If its soul is innately immortal then you are actually doing it a favour, rather than having it be born as a bastard child; with a mother that is still a child herself; as the spawn of a rapist. What kind of life will such a child have?

In this context, Jack’s pro-life propaganda doesn’t make sense. His argument is that the child is deprived of the opportunity to life. But if the soul is innately immortal then it cannot die, and is really not deprived of life at all. Instead, as discussed above, it will actually have a better “life” in heaven, than here on this sin-stained Earth.

Even if Jack is not a Christian, and doesn’t believe in Heaven, but still insists on the innate immortality of the soul, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, that killing the foetus isn’t an issue, since from Jack’s paradigm physical death isn’t real death.

Jack’s only real argument is not that the child be deprived of the opportunity to life, but rather that it is wrong to kill. This is a different argument altogether, and one that he will only be able to make from an external moral framework. I mention an external morality, because Jack will have a hard time philosophically qualifying why it is wrong to kill if the soul is innately immortal. Jack’s argument must be substantiated by some external morality. Killing must be wrong for some other reason, such as God saying: “Thou shall not kill.” But even this sounds like an arbitrary reason at best.

John, on the other hand, has the right to advocate the pro-life argument. Since John doesn’t believe in the innate immortality of the soul, then aborting the foetus will deprive it of the opportunity at life – since this is the only opportunity at life it has.

John can much more strongly argue against abortion than Jack can, because to John the pro-life argument is sensible. Also, John has stronger motives for agreeing that it is wrong to kill. For John, one’s life is of utmost importance, because there is no other.

James, representing #2, which says that the soul is innately mortal, but may receive Eternal Life as a gift, can adopt similarly strong ethical arguments as John, but can also keep sound spiritual motivations as well.

…ooOoo…

This blog-entry is not really about abortion. I’m still in the process of trying to come to terms with the abortion dilemma myself. Therefore I won’t now box myself in as a proponent of either “pro-life” or “pro-choice”.

What this entry is about, though, is the ethical implications of the innate immortality of the soul. How you understand the nature of the soul has severe implications on your ethical expression.

Is it all just interpretation?

In a previous post I stressed my reluctance to get involved in an argument against someone that is convinced by experience. We ultimately believe what we have experienced. If I have experienced Korea first hand, and afterwards you come to me and try to convince me that Korea does not exist, there is probably no amount of persuasion you can try that would convince me otherwise.

But the Bible warns us against experiences. Apparently experience can also fool us into believing a deception. Christ cautions: “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders; so much so that, if it were possible, they would deceive even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). People will experience “signs and wonders”, and will be fooled into believing the truths that they propagate.

Where is the line between trusting our experience, in other words trusting our senses, and being skeptical of our senses? How can we know what is truth and what is deception?

The scientific community would propagate that one should only trust measurable experimentally-replicatable facts. But this leaves out of equation all those things that cannot be tested in a laboratory. And it is precisely those metaphysical things that concern me at present.

On the other hand the Christian community would push that the Bible, the Word of God, is our measure of things to trust.

But this is presented as an argument against Christian objectivity. Christians are accused of seeing the world through a specific Biblical paradigm, which disallow most to see anything beyond that paradigm’s framework. That is why a minority of Christians even refuse to believe in the existence of dinosaurs, because according to their narrow understanding there is no room for dinosaurs – and they are therefore unable to conceive of such creatures, even when presented with proof, such as dinosaur bones. Conversely, other Christian who believes that God also created these creatures can more easily fit the extinct beasts into their mindset.

Having had countless providential experiences myself it would be almost impossible for me to conceive a reality without God. Even though I may try and be as objective as possible, it is almost unattainable for me to interpret Life, the Universe and Everything purely materialistically, i.e. atheistically. My experiences stain my understanding.

I can imagine a reality without religion, and definitely without an innate immortal soul, but not one without God. My paradigm doesn’t allow it. And why not? Because of philosophical arguments for God’s existence, yes, but more so, because of experiences; experiences of God providence.

The only way for me to believe otherwise, is if the experiences could be interpreted differently. At the moment, there is no way I can imagine those experiences as just mere random accidental events. They were to consistently accurate to be accidents – for instance receiving exact amounts of monetary donations for pressing needs. My only interpretation is Providence. And if so, I have to believe in something behind such Providence – i.e. God.

Again, my question: Where is the line between trusting our experience, in other words trusting our senses, and being skeptical of our senses? Is there any real objectivity – or is everything merely interpretations of experiences?

I experience random favourable events as providence; you experience it as accidents – as good luck. Does everything just water down to personal interpretation?

I don't have a soul, I am a soul.

A Time Magazine article, in July 1995 – “Glimpses of the Mind”, reduced the mind to processes of the brain. This is to the chagrin of most Christians who belief that if there is no metaphysical mind, then there is also no metaphysical soul. And to them, it means the end of the Christian religion.

One reader replied in the next August issue as follows: “You do not mention the profound religious consequences of the scientific investigation of consciousness. If it turns out to be true that consciousness, the soul, is not a separate reality, but a consequential phenomenon of the material world, then a fundamental truth of Christianity is shown not to be true because the concepts of heaven, and hell, and eternal life are based on the immateriality and indestructibility of the soul. The scientific demonstration of the material basis of consciousness would seem to mean the end of Christianity.”

I disagree with the reader on two major points. Firstly, Christianity is not centred on the innate immortality of the soul (and heaven, hell and eternal life do not hang on this idea) and secondly, the innate immortality of the soul is not truly Christian. The innate immortality of the soul is not of Scriptural origin, but of pagan origin – or worse yet, of Satanic origin! It was the Snake that said: “You shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4).

The Scriptural view of the soul is one that is not innately immortal.

Body + Breath = Living Soul

The Bible teaches that God formed man from the dust, breathed life into him, and he became a living soul: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).

God did not implant him with an immortal soul. No, the body plus the breath-of-life became a living soul. A living soul is therefore the combination of a body, plus life.

A Soul Can Die

This entity (a living soul) is not innately immortal. The Bible is very clear that a soul can die.

“The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20).

“And the second angel poured out his vial on the sea. And it became like the blood of a dead one, and every living soul died in the sea” (Revelation 16:3).

A soul is not innately immortal. If it were, it would not be able to die.

When the person dies, his life energy (breath) returns to the Life-Giver, and the body returns to the earth, and his consciousness cease: “His breath goes forth; he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalms: 146:4).

Scripture and science agrees that there is no separate soul, apart from the living body. This idea of an innate immortal soul that survives the deceased body is unbiblical. God alone is innately immortal (1 Titus 6:16). Everlasting life in the Bible is a conditional gift, given to people only at the Second Coming of Christ.

Immortality is only imparted at the Second Coming

“And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes on Him should have everlasting life. And I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40).

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall ever be with the Lord” (1 Th 4:16-17).

“Behold, I speak a mystery to you; we shall not all fall asleep [die], but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in a glance of an eye, at the last trumpet. For a trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).

The Bible is very clear on this teaching – immortality is a conditional gift: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). This gift of everlasting life, though we can accept it now in faith, is only truly received at the Second Coming of Christ. In the meantime those that die, stay dead (or symbolically asleep) until that day when the “trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible…[with] immortality”.

Heaven and Hell

Mainstream Christianity erroneously holds on to the unbiblical doctrines that when a person dies his or her soul immediately transcends from this physical plain to another metaphysical plain – either heaven or hell (or limbo / purgatory).

The Bible teaches that the person stays dead (or “asleep” as the Bible refers to it), until the Second Coming of Christ. My dead mother is not at this moment being tortured in hell, or pampered in heaven. On the day she died her breath went forth, her thoughts perished and a few days later we returned her body to the earth.

Those that are dead “in Christ” will stay dead and unconscious, soulless as it were, until the Second Coming, when the dead in Christ will be raised with incorruptible bodies and with the gift of eternal life (immortality). God will again form their bodies and breathe the breath of life into them as he did with the very first man. And God whom knows everything and remember perfectly will reinstall into them their characters – network of synapses.

The doctrines of Heaven and Hell do not falter before the truth that we do not have an soul, but that we are a soul – and a soul that is not innately immortal. Instead the clear Biblical teaching of Heaven and Hell comes to the fore with this understanding of the human soul.

Science and Scripture in Agreement

Science is confirming Scripture. We are, in fact, bodies that are alive. This does not diminish us, nor does it take away the mystery and wonder of life and consciousness. Rather it enforces that we are holistic beings. Unlike the unbiblical teaching of Dualism, that tries to separate body and soul.

Science and Scripture are in agreement that I do not have a soul, I am a soul, and when I die, I’ll be a corpse.

Ultimates

There is probably a fear that if we do not have some separate soul, then all metaphysical truths will disappear. Whether or not I have a separate immaterial soul does not affect true metaphysical phenomena. “1 + 1 = 2” is still just as logically sound, and philosophically viable as ever. The great morals of not stealing, killing, and so on are still just as sensible as before. These “truths” are true regardless of humanities soulfulness or soullessness. These truths are seated not in the human soul, but in God.

Can a mind exist without a brain?

Scientifically speaking, a mind cannot exist without a brain, because a mind needs the matter of the brain to act as the hardware, whereupon the mind can run like software. The mind is the network of electric pulses acting according to a program. Once the electricity is cut, the program ceases – so too, once life is cut, the mind ceases.

The greatest problem with this understanding does not really involve how our minds work, but how God’s mind work. Are we to understand that God has a physical brain? And if not, does God have a mind? The question is liken to ask if God needs to eat, or sleep?

The answers are “no”. God does not need to function in the same way as we do. God does not need a brain as we do. His mind is different from ours. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways My ways, says Jehovah” (Isaiah 55:8). God is self-sufficient and not limited to our physical limitations. We, on the other hand, are not self-sufficient. For instance we need to eat and drink to live.

Just because we are physical does not mean God needs to be physical as well. Similarly, just because we are not metaphysical, does not mean that God has to be similarly reduced from supernatural to natural. He is the Creator and we are the creatures. Pretending that we are of the same stuff as God is pagan – not Christian.

Talking about the Dead over Pizza

“I don’t believe in death” she said. “Shortly after my father’s death I had a dream in which we strolled on the beach and talked.” My friend and I were walking towards a pizza parlour for dinner when she shared with me this intimate experience she had.

In response I recounted a similar experience. “Just after my girlfriend died in a car accident I also dreamed of having a conversation with her. We were discussing how to plan for her funeral. It felt very real.”

The difference between my friend and I is that that dream about her father confirmed for her that the soul survives death. I on the other hand do not read any supernatural meaning into my dream even though it was extremely vivid and tremendously emotionally touching. If I had to impose spiritual significance on my dream, at most I can believe that God evoked such thoughts in me, as an artificial way for me to say goodbye to someone I loved deeply. I do not believe that I actually spoke to the spirit of my girlfriend, even though the idea might be appealing.

“I don’t believe in the immortality of the soul.” I added.

We kept walking in silence for quite a while. Clearly we were in disagreement. We both had similar experiences, but our interpretations of those experiences differ greatly. The soul survives death and is therefore innately immortal, or the soul does not survive death and is not innately immortal. Those are the two camps.

I thought about sharing with my friend some Scriptural reasons, or even philosophical motivations, as to why I do not believe in the innate immortality of the soul. But almost instantaneously I decided against it.

Her reason for believing what she believes is based on personal experience. The conversation she had with her departed father was overwhelming proof for her and certainly had some therapeutic benefit. I doubt any amount of theological or philosophical discussion, abstract as they are, could easily persuade the subjective conviction of a personal experience.

For me, in contrast, my personal experience did not convince me. If souls are innately immortal, then from my Christocentric paradigm an everlasting hell must exist at this very moment, with loved ones being tortured there at present.

While my friend finds comfort in the idea of the soul surviving death, I’m absolutely horrified by it. I explained in a previous post that the concept of hell, a place where people are burned for ever and ever, requires that the soul be innately immortal.

Because I believe that God is infinitely good, I cannot believe that God would be torturing souls in hell at present. And of course if souls are immortal they have to go one of two places, hell or heaven. Since not everyone will be going to heaven, some must go to hell and must therefore be tormented right now. If you are Catholic you have a third option, which is not that much better either. The soul could instead be in purgatory where it is also tortured for thousands of years until it is cleansed enough for heaven.

Life and Death in a Nutshell

Sin is selfishness (inward focussed). God is Love (always outward focussed). Because Sin is selfishness, it separates us from God. (We are to selfish to trust God.)

Since God is also the Source of Life, and we are separated from God through our sin, we are also separated from the Source of Life. The result is death.

Death is not strictly the punishment of sin. It is rather the natural consequence of being separated from the Source of Life - God. One can just as well say that death is the punishment for not eating. Or the wages of not breathing is death. Separation from the life-giving elements results in death. God is the ultimate life-giving Element. Separation from God results in ultimate death.

The Shaky Pillars of Hell

The idea of hell, where sinners burn through all eternity, balances on two pillars: the immortality of the soul and a vindictive God. Both doctrines are shaky, yet the majority of Christians believe in such a concept of hell, where an angry God keeps people alive for the sole purpose of torturing their souls without ceasing.

A closer look at these pillars foils the problem with this common belief.

We do not have immortal souls. Only God is immortal.

Nowhere does the Bible teach that people have an immortal soul. God, alone, is said to possess immortality: “…the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality…” (1 Timothy 6:15, 16).

There’s no talk of an innate immortal soul that survives death, accept in hyperbolic parables. Immortality is a gift, which is received not at death, but at Jesus’ Second Coming, when Christ returns to pay the wages. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). The Bible teaches us to strife for eternal life (1 Timothy 6:12), to hope for it (Titus 1:2), and to accept it as a promise (1 John 2:25) – a gift we are to receive, which we do not innately posses.

If immortality was inherent, we would not need to strife for it, hope for it, or receive it as a gift later at Christ’s return. It therefore makes sense that the wages of sin should be “death”, not eternal life in hell.

By means of Hebraic parallelism the Bible frequently equates hell with death, for example:

“The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.”
“Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell…”
“The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me…”
“Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.”
“Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”
“But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.”
“Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement…”
(Psalm 18:5; Psalm 55:15; Psalm 116:3; Proverbs 5:5; Proverbs 7:27; Proverbs 9:18; Isaiah 28:15.)

Hell is not eternal life while tortured, but eternal death. The final end for the unsaved is complete annihilation, called the second death: “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (Revelation 20:14).

Even Jesus said that hell is not a torture chamber where souls are kept alive, but a place where “both soul and body” are destroyed (Matthew 10:28): “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The dead are not conscious in some other dimension, either heaven or hell. “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17); “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing…” Ecclesiastes 9:5).

The followers of God that already passed away (also known as the “dead in Christ”) will one day be raised from the dead to receive the gift of eternal life. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

God is not vindictive.

The second pillar is the idea that God is a vindictive, arbitrary deity that believes it is just to torture people for thousands upon thousands of years, even though they only sinned for a short lifetime. And this counts for both the adult that sinned for seventy years, as for the child that sinned for ten years. Clearly this does not make sense!

No, Jesus came to show us that God is not vindictive and arbitrary. He said: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). At the cross, Jesus was spat upon and cursed, tortured and beaten, yet he forgave his aggressors. This is also the character of the Father who forgives our sins for His name’s sake (1 John 2:12).

God does not now, nor will He in the future, keep souls alive in hell in order to torture them. That is a sick doctrine that brings shame to a loving God.