The Wholistic View of Man’s Nature and Destiny—An Adventist Oddity?

In different places in this last Proclamation! issue there are references to our position on the conditional immortality, sometimes referred to as “soul sleep”, even though there is no “soul” to “sleep”, to begin with. We don’t think of a “soul” like a type of built-in ‘friendly ghost’ in man. “Soul” and “spirit” have a large variety of meanings in the Bible but these two words NEVER appear modified by adjectives such as “eternal”, “immortal”, “unending”, for the great disappointment of those who imagine that to be a Biblical doctrine, when it actually derives from paganism and serves no purpose in bringing people closer to Jesus.

Besides, even though the conditional immortality question is presented as if it were a sort of Adventist oddity, the truth is that more and more scholars of different persuasions have been accepting lately the wholistic view of man’s nature and destiny, leaving behind these dualistic notions, to not mention the many along history who were also true believers in conditional immortality.

Recently I learned that the Brazilian Lutherans have instructional material teaching against the immortality of the soul idea, and Lutherans pastors that I contacted confirmed to me their holistic position, one of them even producing an article that I posted in some forums I participate of in the Portuguese language. I sent them some of my studies on the subject and they were pleased with the material and much grateful for my sending them.

They are certainly recovering some of Martin Luther’s statements condemning the idea of immortality of the soul as a despicable junk from Catholicism that should be discarded. Although Luther was not always consistent regarding this point (as regarding some others), the fact is that not only him, but important and reputed Christian men along history, including Bible translators Tyndale, Moffatt and Weymouth, English poet John Milton, politician and theologian William Gladstone, and the more recent Oscar Cullman, John Stott, Clark Pinnock, Paul Althaus, Karl Barth, Emil Brunner identified themselves as anti-immortality of the soul understanding adherents.

According to Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi, who authored a magnificent work on the subject that I highly recommend to all, Immortality or Resurrection? [and the following text is from one of his Newsletters, which I reproduce ipsis verbis] this historical view of death as the separation of the soul from the body has come under a massive attack by many modern scholars. A few examples suffice to illustrate this point. Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus writes: “Death is more than a departure of the soul from the body. The person, body and soul, is involved in death. . . . The Christian faith knows nothing about an immortality of the personality. . . . It knows only an awakening from real death through the power of God. There is existence after death only by an awakening of the resurrection of the whole person.”

Althaus argues that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul does not do justice to the seriousness of death, since the soul passes through death unscathed. Moreover, the notion that a person can be totally happy and blessed without the body denies the significance of the body and empties the resurrection of its meaning. If believers are already blessed in heaven and the wicked are already tormented in hell, why is the final judgment still necessary? Althaus concludes that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul rips apart what belongs together: the body and the soul, the destiny of the individual and that of the world.

In his monograph Life after Death, Taito Kantonen makes this pointed statement: “The Christian view of death is in full accord with the view of natural science as far as the latter goes. When we die we are really dead. Our hopes and desires cannot change this fact. Man does not differ from the rest of creation by having a soul that cannot die.”

Even the liberal Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, in its article on death explicitly states: “The ‘departure’ of the nephesh [soul] must be viewed as a figure of speech, for it does not continue to exist independently of the body, but dies with it (Num 31:19; Jud 16:30; Ez 13:19). No Biblical text authorizes the statement that the ‘soul’ is separated from the body at the moment of death. The ruach [spirit] which makes man a living being (cf. Gen 2:7), and which he loses at death, is not, properly speaking, an anthropological reality, but a gift of God which returns to him at the time of death (Eccl 12:7).”

This challenge of modern scholarship to the traditional view of death as the separation of the soul from the body has been long overdue. It is hard to believe that for most of its history, Christianity by and large has held to a view of human death and destiny which has been largely influenced by Greek thought, rather than by the teachings of Scripture. What is even more surprising is that no amount of Biblical scholarship will change the traditional belief held by most churches on the intermediate state. The reason is simple. While individual scholars can and will change their doctrinal views without suffering devastating consequences, the same is not true for well-established churches.

A church that introduces radical changes in its historical doctrinal beliefs undermines the faith of its members and thus the stability of the institution. A case in point is the Worldwide Church of God which lost over half of its members when doctrinal changes were introduced by its leaders early in 1995.
The high cost of rectifying denominational religious beliefs should not deter Bible-believing Christians who are committed, not to preserve traditional beliefs for tradition’s sake, but to constantly seek for a fuller understanding of the teachings of Word of God on issues relevant to their lives.

Now, let’s see some of the many faithful Christian and Bible scholars who have manifested themselves against this dualistic theology, beginning in the next thread.