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Soul
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Genesis 2:7  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) We should note that this verse does not say man has a soul, but that he is one. This word in Hebrew, nephesh, is better rendered as "creature" or as the New King James does, "being." Nephesh is also used for animals (Genesis 1:20), dead bodies (Numbers 9:6), even dying (Job 11:20; Jeremiah 15:9). William Gray Taking It Through the Grave

Genesis 2:7  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Man does not have a soul—man is a "soul"! The original Hebrew word for "soul" is nephesh. Bagster's Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon defines it as "breath" and "anything that breathes, an animal." It can also refer to a "person" or even "one dead, a dead body." In Genesis 1:21, 24; 2:19; 9:10, 12, 15, 16 and Leviticus 11:46, the same word nephesh is translated "creature" when referring to animals. And so man is a soul. Notice that the word nephesh is translated as "dead body" or "the dead" in Leviticus 19:28; 21:1; 22:4; Numbers 5:2; 6:11; 9:6-7, 10. The "soul," then, is merely an air-breathing entity that is subject to death and decay. It is not immortal! The soul is composed of the "dust of the ground"—it is material, not spiritual. It is matter. When man breathes, he is a living soul. When man ceases to breathe, he becomes a nonliving or dead soul. That is what the Bible reveals. Just What Is Man?

Genesis 3:1-5  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Earlier, God had informed Adam and Eve that sin exacts a penalty, death—the cessation of life—and, if a person will not repent of sin, this means total death—no chance for eternal life. This threat God has held over mankind's head from the beginning. Notice, however, how the Devil replies: Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (verses 4-5) Here is the lie: "Look, Adam and Eve, you have an immortal soul. God cannot enforce His threat." In its various forms through the centuries, this doctrine of man having eternal life already has appeared time and again. In theological terms, this belief is the basis of the "Doctrine of Eternal Security." What is worse, this heretical doctrine has resurfaced in the church, having been part of the latest apostasy. It cannot stand, however, before the light of God's Word. God has a far superior way of dealing with humanity—both righteous and incorrigible. Richard T. Ritenbaugh Do We Have 'Eternal Security'?

Job 32:8  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) This spirit is not the man—it is something that is in the man. Joined with the physical brain of the man, it forms human mind. It imparts to man's brain his unique powers of intellect and personality—the ability to think rationally and make free will decisions. It imparts the ability to learn mathematics, languages, or any type of philosophical knowledge. But that is all! The spirit that is in man has no consciousness of itself. It is not an "immortal soul." This spirit is not the "man." Because of this spiritual element, the Bible often uses the word "spirit" simply to mean man's mind, intelligence, attitude. To distinguish this kind of spirit in man and the kind of spirit that is God's Holy Spirit from mere physical breath, the book of Job continues in context to use two separate Hebrew words—ruach for spirit, neshamah for breath (Job 33:4; 34:14). Just What Is Man?

Ecclesiastes 9:5  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Since the Bible states plainly that the dead are not conscious of anything, we can logically conclude that man is not born with an immortal soul that is conscious and aware of things happening around it after death! Just What Is Man?

Ezekiel 18:4  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) The ancient philosophers taught that man is essentially an immortal, spiritual "soul" housed in a temporary body of flesh—that the real man is not the body, but an invisible, immaterial "immortal soul" that thinks, hears, sees, and will consciously live on forever. At death, according to the speculation of the ancients, the soul leaves the body and journeys to a nebulous realm, possibly paradise or a place of punishment. The body, they correctly observed, goes to the grave. Some Oriental philosophers speculated that the souls of the departed go into other bodies after death and live as animals, birds, snakes, even trees or gnats—or perhaps as human beings. This doctrine, called "transmigration of souls" or "reincarnation," is currently gaining a renewed popularity. But what is the authority for these beliefs? Do they come from biblical revelation? Where did they come from? Where did the Christian-professing churches acquire their present teachings about the immortality of the soul? Consider this candid statement from the Jewish Encyclopedia: The belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body [after death] is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accordingly nowhere taught in the Holy Scripture. (article, "Immortality of the Soul") This same article continues: The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, according to this respected encyclopedia, came from pre-Christian Greek philosophers who acquired it from pagan Egypt and Babylon! Notice what Herodotus, the famous Greek historian who lived in the fifth century before Jesus, admitted: The Egyptians also were the first who asserted the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal. . . . This opinion, some among the Greeks have at different periods of time adopted as their own. (Euterpe, chapter 123) It was the Greek Socrates who traveled to Egypt and consulted the Egyptians on this very teaching. After his return to Greece, he imparted the concept to Plato, his most famous pupil. Compare the present-day doctrine of the churches with what Plato wrote in his book, The Phaedo: The soul whose inseparable attribute is life will never admit of life's opposite, death. Thus the soul is shown to be immortal, and since immortal, indestructible. . . . Do we believe there is such a thing as death? To be sure. And is this anything but the separation of the soul and body? And being dead is the attainment of this separation, when the soul exists in herself and separate from the body, and the body is parted from the soul. That is death. . . . Death is merely the separation of soul and body. Sounds a lot like ordinary church teaching, does it not? You were probably taught that this same doctrine was totally Christian. You undoubtedly assumed it came straight from the Bible—but it did not. After Plato came Aristotle who perpetuated the theory. Then the poet Virgil (70-19 BC) popularized it throughout the Roman World. But how did this concept become a fundamental doctrine of the vast majority of professing Christians? The introduction of this popular superstition into the churches was a gradual process that took centuries. The early "church fathers" were divided on this subject. As late as AD 160, Justin, the philosopher-turned-professing-Christian, wrote: But our Jesus Christ, being crucified and dead, and having ascended to heaven, reigned, and by those things which were published in His name among all nations by the apostles, there is joy offered to those who expect the immortality promised by Him. (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. I, p. 176) Many of the early Catholics indeed knew they did not have immortality within themselves. It was something they yet expected to receive (see Romans 2:7; I Timothy 6:16; I Corinthians 15:50-54). Origen, an early Catholic teacher in Alexandria, Egypt, joined the speculations of Plato with certain parts of the Bible and called his philosophy neo-Platonism. Here is what Origen wrote around AD 200: "Souls are immortal, as God Himself is eternal and immortal"! He openly professed to be a true "Platonist, who believed in the immortality of the soul" (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. IV, pp. 314, 402). Another influential teacher at the close of the second century was Tertullian of Phoenician North Africa. He wrote: For some things are known, even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many. . . . I may use, therefore, the opinion of Plato, when he declares: "Every soul is immortal." (ibid., vol. III, p. 547, emphasis ours) And so the personal ideas of these influential men helped mold the thinking of the entire Christian-professing world. But a few Catholic writers and teachers as late as the time of Constantine condemned the change in doctrine from Christ's teachings to those of Plato. Here is the remonstration of Arnobius against those who were being carried away by an extravagant opinion of themselves, that souls are immortal. . . . Will you lay aside your habitual arrogance, O men, who claim God as your Father, and maintain that you are immortal just as He is?" (ibid., vol. VI, p. 440) After the time of Emperor Constantine—who forced the Roman Empire to accept one universal faith—Augustine, another writer of North African extraction, "sanctified" the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in his book, The City of God. Along came other writers—all under the influence of Plato, Aristotle, and Virgil—who dominated the philosophy of Western "Christian" theology during the early Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas (AD 1225-1274), Italian scholastic teacher and theologian, stamped the doctrine of the immortality of the soul permanently on the Christian-professing world. Fifty years later, Dante Alighieri wrote the immensely famous poem, The Divine Comedy, in which he pictured for the common people his imaginary concepts of hell, purgatory, and paradise—which have been widely believed since that time. But not only did this doctrine become religious dogma in the medieval world, those who rejected this idea became branded as heretics! Just before the Protestant Reformation, the Lateran Council of 1513 issued this decree: Whereas some have dared to assert concerning the nature of the reasonable soul that it is mortal, we, with the approbation of the sacred council, do condemn and reprobate all those who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, seeing, according to the canon of Pope Clement V, that the soul is . . . immortal . . . and we decree that all who adhere to like erroneous assertions shall be shunned and punished as heretics. That meant that any who taught the truth were to be turned over to the civil authorities for punishment. And the punishment was usually severe! During the Reformation, some early Protestants tried to cast off the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Martin Luther declared that the Bible did not teach the immortality of the soul (Defense, Proposition No. 27). "Luther held that the soul died with the body, and that God would hereafter raise both the one and the other" (Historical View, p. 344). How different were Luther's first teachings from Protestant doctrine today! Here are Luther's own words, expressed about the year 1522: It is probable, in my opinion, that, with very few exceptions, indeed, the dead sleep in utter insensibility till the day of judgment. . . . On what authority can it be said that the souls of the dead may not sleep . . . in the same way that the living pass in profound slumber the interval between their downlying at night and their uprising in the morning? (From Michelet's Life of Luther, Bohn's edition, p. 133.) Luther's original teachings have never ceased to embarrass Protestant theologians who have since readopted the teachings of ancient Egypt and Greece. William Tyndale, the printer of the first New Testament in English and another of the Reformers, wrote: In putting departed souls in heaven, hell, or purgatory you destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection. . . . The true faith putteth the resurrection; the heathen philosophers, denying that, did put that souls did ever live. . . . If the soul be in heaven, tell me what cause is there for the resurrection? That is a very good question! The Protestant Reformers found the people unwilling to change their doctrines. Gradually, the Reformers themselves gave in to popular tradition—tradition which has its roots in pagan philosophy and speculation! And so many churchgoers today believe the doctrine of the immortality of the soul simply because they have unquestioningly embraced the speculations that have been passed down from ancient pagan philosophers! The apostle Paul wrote about this very kind of speculation: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments [fundamental concepts] of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8) Just What Is Man?

Matthew 10:28  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Although some people use this text to support their belief of the immortality of the soul, it plainly says the soul is something that can be destroyed in hell! Thus, whatever this "soul" is, it could not be immortal! The Greek word here translated "soul" is psuche. It refers to the same thing as the Hebrew word nephesh. It simply means "life," "existence." In Matthew 10:28, Christ obviously uses this word to refer to "life" that man cannot destroy—but which God can. What kind of life could this be? Obviously life that God restores by a resurrection! Man cannot "destroy" a life that God turns right around and renews. But God can destroy it—permanently—by casting the resurrected physical person into the "lake of fire," never to be resurrected again! Luke makes this scripture plainer: "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell. . ." (Luke 12:5). God not only has the power to take our present physical life, but also has the power to resurrect us and—if we have proved disobedient and incorrigible—to cast us into the Lake of Fire from which there will be no future resurrection (Revelation 20:14-15; 21:8)! Although men may kill their physical bodies, true Christians know that men cannot take from them eternal life, which God has promised at the resurrection. Just What Is Man?

John 3:6  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Man is composed of flesh—of protoplasm. Jesus plainly says that if one is born of (and therefore composed of) flesh, he cannot also at the same time be born of (composed of) spirit. He must be one or the other! So this verse alone is strong evidence that man is not an immortal, spiritual "soul" in a body of mortal flesh. Just What Is Man?

1 Thessalonians 5:23  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) This verse does not define man as a trinity. It is a Hebraism, a common saying among the people, which simply means "the whole" or "every part." A.T. Robertson, in his authoritative Word Pictures in the New Testament, defines it as "every part of each of you." It corresponds to loving God "with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind," but it is somewhat paraphrased and placed in a specific context. John W. Ritenbaugh Eating: How Good It Is! (Part Five)

1 Thessalonians 5:23  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Paul here refers to the mind in man when he uses the word "spirit." And to the physical life when he uses the word "soul." And to the flesh when he uses the word "body." What is wrong with having your whole mind, your life, and your body preserved blameless—preserved from the penalty of sin—in anticipation of the coming of Christ (see also II Corinthians 7:1)? Nothing! That is something we should all fervently desire! Just What Is Man?

Revelation 6:9  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) The word "souls" (psuchás, plural of psuché) also requires explanation, as the Greek word is far too complex in meaning to define facilely as a person's immortal essence, as most Catholics and Protestants are wont to do. Its basic meaning is "breath," and is thus equivalent to the Hebrew nephesh and Latin anima (as in English "animal" and "animate"). One of its uses is as the New Testament version of what Genesis 2:7 calls "the breath of life," that is, the vital force that makes a body live: "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 being [nephesh]." Luke 12:20 and Acts 20:10 use psuché in this manner. From this basic meaning derives its extensions: as "life" (see Matthew 6:25; John 10:11; Philippians 2:30; Revelation 12:11) and "living being" (see I Corinthians 15:45; Revelation 16:3). In addition, psuché can refer to the seat of emotion, will, and desire, whereas we would use the terms "heart," "mind," "personality," or "being" today (see Luke 1:46; Acts 14:2, 22; Hebrews 6:19; II Peter 2:14). In a similar sense, it can also identify man's moral and spiritual life (see Hebrews 13:17; I Peter 1:22; 2:11, 25; 4:19; III John 2). Some try to read immortality into certain biblical uses of psuché (for instance, Acts 2:27, 31; II Corinthians 1:23; Revelation 20:4), but the Bible does not support such an interpretation. In fact, in one of these, Matthew 10:28, Jesus confirms that souls can indeed be destroyed (also supported by the Old Testament in Job 33:22; Ezekiel 18:4, 20)! One must consult extrabiblical sources (such as Plato, Xenophon, Herodotus, and other Greek writers) to find usages of psuché that define "the soul as an essence which differs from the body and is not dissolved by death" (Thayer's Lexicon). How then is this word used in Revelation 6:9? We must remember that John is viewing a vision (Revelation 1:10), a symbolic representation for mortal eyes and minds of future events, not reality. One cannot see a person's actual soul, that is, his being, his life, so what John saw were representations of those who had been martyred. He probably literally saw bodies (Greek soma) under the altar but chose to identify them as psuchás, "lives" or "persons," because, as the next verses show, the vision depicts them speaking and receiving clothing, things a person can do only while alive. The important point to remember is that John specifically identifies them as having been "slain"—they are dead—and the Bible elsewhere shows that "the dead know nothing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5) and cannot work, plan, learn, or pursue any activity in the grave (verse 10). Thus, John, a Hebrew, is using psuché in the same sense as Old Testament writers sometimes use nephesh, as "dead body," a being that once had life (see Leviticus 21:11; Numbers 6:6; 9:6-7, 10; 19:11, 13; Haggai 2:13). Richard T. Ritenbaugh The Fifth Seal (Part One)

Revelation 20:10  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) This verse seems to describe the Lake of Fire as a place where God torments people forever. This raises a few questions: 1) If the Beast and False Prophet are mortal men, why are they still alive after the Millennium when Satan is cast into the Lake of Fire? 2) If they are mortals, how can they "be tormented day and night forever and ever" in an inferno that would soon consume them? 3) What kind of God would devise such a "cruel and unusual" punishment? Before we answer these questions, we must briefly consider whether man has an immortal soul. Our understanding of the Scriptures compels us to maintain that he does not for several reasons: u Job recognized that man has a spirit (Job 32:8), which Paul shows in I Corinthians 2:11 endows humanity with intellect. This spirit in man comes from God (Zechariah 12:1) and returns to Him when we die (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Acts 7:59). It records our experiences, character, and personality, which God stores until the resurrection of the dead. However, the Bible never describes this spirit as immortal or eternal; in fact, I Corinthians 2:6-16 explains that man needs yet another Spirit, God's, to be complete and discern godly things. u The Bible flatly asserts that all people die: "It is appointed for men to die once" (Hebrews 9:27). Ezekiel says clearly that souls die: "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; see Romans 6:23). Jesus warns in Matthew 10:28 that God can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. u In death, life and consciousness are gone. "The dead know nothing," says Solomon in Ecclesiastes 9:5, and he later adds, "There is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going" (verse 10). In Psalm 146:4, the psalmist writes about a man's death, "His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish" (see Genesis 3:19). u Scripture also confutes the idea that people go to heaven or hell after death. Peter says to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, "Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. . . . For David did not ascend into the heavens" (Acts 2:29, 34). Our Savior confirms this in John 3:13: "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven." The biblical usage of Sheol and Hades simply means "the grave." u Men cannot have immortality unless God gives it to them. Paul writes, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). In I Corinthians 15:53 he tells the saints, "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." At the first resurrection God will give "eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality" (Romans 2:7). If we already had immortality, why should we put it on or seek it? u Only God has immortality. He is, Paul writes to Timothy, ". . . the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality" (I Timothy 6:15-16). John says of the Word, "In Him was life" (John 1:4), meaning as Creator of all things (verse 3), He had life inherent. Jesus affirms this in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Men must go through Him to receive eternal life. With such overwhelming proof, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul proves false. Man is not immortal, nor does he possess any "spark of God" unless God has given it to him through the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:11). A Christian's hope of life after death rests in the resurrection of the dead (I Corinthians 15:12-23). Conversely, the wicked only await eternal death as recompense for their evil lives, not eternal life in torment. To understand Revelation 20:10 correctly, we must put it into its proper chronological context. Once we know when it occurs, much of the confusion about this verse clears up. Though only twelve verses separate Revelation 19:20 from 20:10, one thousand years pass between their respective events. The Beast and the False Prophet are cast into the Lake of Fire when Christ returns (Revelation 19:11-21). Soon thereafter, an angel imprisons Satan in the bottomless pit for the thousand years of the Millennium (Revelation 20:1-3). When the thousand years pass, Satan is released, and he gathers Gog and Magog to fight against the saints (verses 7-9). After God defeats this futile attempt, He casts Satan, a spirit being, into the Lake of Fire to be tormented forever and ever (verse 10). Obviously, the flames of the Lake of Fire totally consume mortal men like the Beast and False Prophet. In no way could they survive a thousand years of burning! The laws of nature simply will not allow it. The translators of the King James and New King James versions render the final clause of the first sentence as "where the beast and the false prophet are." The present-tense verb "are" is not in the Greek; it is an understood verb. In English grammar, such silent verbs take the same tense as the verb in the main clause of the sentence. The translators ignored this rule, however. The primary verb of the sentence, "was cast" (an aorist verb usually translated as simple past tense), demands that the silent verb should be "were cast" (past tense) to agree with the plural subject, "the beast and the false prophet." Deceived by the false doctrine of the immortal soul, the translators had to deny nature and break the rules to make this verse fit their understanding! On the other hand, we can confidently assert that our teaching agrees with Scripture, nature, and grammar! Richard T. Ritenbaugh Eternal Torment?

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