Alberto Timm
The original tension between God’s assertion, “You will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17, NIV), and Satan’s denial, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4; cf. Revelation 12:9), extended beyond the Garden of Eden, perpetuating itself throughout human history. Many voices around the world have echoed the theory that every human being has a mortal body with an immortal soul, spirit, or divine energy that remains conscious after death. By contrast, few still hold to the holistic view of death that denies any surviving conscious entity.
These opposing views have polarized the understanding of death and distorted the whole plan of salvation, including the judgment process and the eschatological scenario of the Bible. This chapter reviews the misunderstandings of human nature that shaped the views of modern Christianity. It then turns its attention to some of the crucial Scripture passages that help us understand the biblical view.
There are many philosophical perceptions of human nature. For example, the ancient Egyptians held a highly mythological and complex view of human beings. They believed a person was an organic unity of a body, a heart, a shadow, and two spiritual entities named ba (soul) and ka (spirit). But death would dissociate these components and free the immortal ba (represented by a human-headed bird) to fly like a bird in the sky. They used many amulets and magical rites while preparing the deceased for the afterlife. The mummification processes would help the ba recognize its corpse more easily and better relate to it. For the Egyptians, just as the sun god supposedly “traversed the sky by day and at night visited his corpse, which was resting in the netherworld of Heliopolis,” so the ba of a deceased person would periodically visit its resting corpse and reunite with it in the netherworld of the tomb.1 Even so, the notion of a bodily resurrection was not completely foreign to them.2
Ancient Greek philosophers also spoke about an immortal soul that survives the death of the mortal body. According to Plato, Socrates asserted that the human being has a physical body in which the soul is “imprisoned like shellfish.”3 Assuming that “every soul is immortal,”4 he stressed the theory of the incarnation and reincarnation of the soul. The soul of those who practiced philosophy would undergo one single incarnation, while all other souls would be judged after the end of their first lives. At that judgment, they would either be sentenced to punishment in underworld prisons or be raised aloft to a place in the heavens where they would live as they deserve. In due time, both groups of souls would be entitled to second lives—“the point at which a human soul can be reincarnated as an animal, and someone who was formerly human can be reborn as a human being once again, instead of being an animal.”5
Greek dualism—separating an immortal soul from a mortal body—did not die with its original proponents. It was disseminated by Hellenism (Greek culture) throughout the Roman Empire. While Rome conquered Greece, history shows that Rome was eventually conquered by Greek philosophy. As stated by the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BC), “Conquered Greece took prisoner her rough conqueror and introduced the arts to rustic Latium.”6 No wonder that during the intertestamental period, important sects of Judaism incorporated some Greek immortalist postulates. According to the Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (c. AD 37–c. 100), the Sadducees held that “souls die with the bodies,” but the Pharisees alleged that “souls have an immortal vigour in them” and those who live viciously would be detained in “an everlasting prison” and those who live virtuously would “have power to revive and live again.” The Essenes, another ancient Jewish sect, plainly taught the immortality of souls.7
For the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, man is at the same time mortal, “according to that portion of him which is visible [his body],” and immortal, “according to that portion which is invisible [his intellect].”8 As major segments of the Jewish religion were reshaped by Hellenistic thinking, so also were many ancient Christians of the post-apostolic era. For example, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 395) tried to harmonize the biblical teaching of the resurrection with the Greek philosophical theory of an immortal soul. In his view, the soul was still present in the dissolved elements of the deceased body, even after the former would migrate from this visible life to the invisible one. He argued that “if the Power which governs the universe should send to the dissolved elements the signal for coming together, then by one power of the soul the diverse elements will be drawn together,” and the resurrection occurs.9 In this case, the soul would remain active, with at least a special role to play, even after the death of the body.
The Greek view of a mortal body with an immortal soul shaped Christian thinking throughout the ages and is being intensely advanced today by so-called near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. Having a clear understanding of the biblical view of human nature will help us avoid being misled by ancient deceptions.
Many passages of Scripture shed light on human nature, but all of them are grounded in the foundational concepts expressed in Genesis’s Creation account. There we read that God created Adam and Eve in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26, 27) and that “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” (Genesis 2:7). Thus, the infusion of the “breath of life” (Hebrew nishmat chayyim) into the physical body of Adam transformed him into “a living being” (Hebrew nephesh chayyah). By contrast, death reverses this process, as indicated by God’s own statement: “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).
The Septuagint—an ancient Greek version of the Old Testament widely used in the Hellenistic world—translated the Hebrew nephesh (being) in Genesis 2:7 as the Greek psychē (soul), which is the same word Plato used in claiming that every soul is immortal. Unfortunately, many Hellenistic Jews and Gentiles ended up reading the Septuagint through the lens of Greek culture, without realizing that some key Greek words had assumed new meanings. So, instead of expressing the biblical worldview, those words eventually conveyed Greek teachings. Thus, all serious studies of the Scriptures should preserve the original Hebrew meaning of the text.
The British theologian H. Wheeler Robinson correctly recognized that “the Hebrew idea of personality is an animated body, and not an incarnated soul.”10 He asserted that “the obvious explanation of the difference between a dead and a living man was the respective absence or presence of breath, and in consequence there is no more common theory of the soul than that which identifies it with the breath.”11 Therefore, as well stated by the German theologian Hans W. Wolff, man does not have nephesh, he is nephesh, and he lives as nephesh.12 There are many instances, however, in which nephesh refers to more specific parts or aspects of the human being13 but never as conscious entities separated from the human being as a whole.
It is worth noting that nephesh refers not only to human beings who are alive but also to other living creatures (Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, 30), with the exception of plants. We are told that “what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals… . All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust” (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20). No wonder that the Lord Himself declared,
“Behold, all souls are Mine;
The soul of the father
As well as the soul of the son is Mine;
The soul [nephesh] who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4; cf. verse 20).
And the Mosaic Law sanctioned, “Whoever takes a human life [nephesh] shall surely be put to death. Whoever takes an animal’s life [nephesh] shall make it good, life for life” (Leviticus 24:17, 18, ESV). These passages confirm the mortality of nephesh, which is sometimes translated as “soul.”
Some readers may acknowledge the mortality of the soul but still argue that the spirit of the dead returns consciously to God. One of the passages most widely quoted in support of this theory is Ecclesiastes 12:7, which reads, “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit [Hebrew ruach] will return to God who gave it.” This passage portrays the reversal of the original creation process of Genesis 2:7 (“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 being”) and echoes the last sentence of Genesis 3:19 (“For dust you are, and to dust you shall return”). But what does this notion of the “spirit” returning to God mean?
The book of Psalms highlights the unconsciousness of the dead. It affirms, for instance, that “the dead do not praise the LORD, nor any who go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17). We also are told that when the spirit (Hebrew ruach) “departs,” the person “returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:4). In the same line, the book of Ecclesiastes stresses, as already mentioned, that both human beings and animals “all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals,” for “as one dies, so dies the other” (Ecclesiastes 3:19). Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10 reiterates,
For the living know that they will die;
But the dead know nothing… .
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.
Ecclesiastes 12:1–7 describes the aging process leading toward death in dramatic terms. The Message paraphrases the passage as follows:
Honor and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young,
Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes,
Before your vision dims and the world blurs
And the winter years keep you close to the fire.
In old age, your body no longer serves you so well.
Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen.
The shades are pulled down on the world.
You can’t come and go at will. Things grind to a halt.
The hum of the household fades away.
You are wakened now by bird-song.
Hikes to the mountains are a thing of the past.
Even a stroll down the road has its terrors.
Your hair turns apple-blossom white,
Adorning a fragile and impotent matchstick body.
Yes, you’re well on your way to eternal rest,
While your friends make plans for your funeral.
Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over.
Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends.
The body is put back in the same ground it came from.
The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.
Some Bible commentators see an allusion here to a certain conscious entity that survives the death of the body, as the Greek philosophers proposed. But considering what was stated earlier (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20; 9:5, 10) and the preceding verses (Ecclesiastes 12:1–7), such a conclusion is completely out of context and biblically baseless. The passage has a strong negative tone and never suggests a positive outcome for a claimed disincarnated “spirit” in Paradise!
As pointed out by Roland Murphy, Ecclesiastes 12:7 is “a picture of dissolution, not of immortality.”14 G. S. Hendry explains,
Ecclesiastes would seem to have advanced somewhat beyond the position of 3:21, but his words here [12:7], while suggestive, are not such as to form the foundation of a hope of immortality. He is viewing the dissolution of body and spirit from the standpoint of “under the sun,” and he simply states that each returns to the source from which it sprang, the body to the dust and the spirit to God (cf. Gn. 2:7). As to the final destiny of the spirit after its return to God, it is not his concern to speak of that.15
Likewise, when the Old Testament mentions that Abraham died and was “gathered to his people” (Genesis 25:8), the good king David “rested with his fathers” (1 Kings 2:10), and the bad king Ahab also “rested with his fathers” (1 Kings 22:40), this does not mean that they went to a paradisiacal community of disincarnated souls or spirits. It simply means that they were buried as all their respective ancestors were. The biblical hope is not grounded on the theory of an immortal soul but on the resurrection of the whole human being by a supernatural re-creating act of God.
1 Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 92; see also 87–96.
2 Paul Carus, “The Conception of the Soul and the Belief in Resurrection Among the Egyptians,” Monist 15, no. 3 (July 1905): 409–428.
3 Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 34, para. 250c.
4 Plato, 27, para. 245c.
5 Plato, 32, para. 248e–249b.
6 Horace, Epistle 2.1.155, in Horace, Satires and Epistles, trans. John Davie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 98.
7 Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.2–5, in The Complete Works of Josephus, trans. William Whiston (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1981), 376, 377.
8 Philo, On the Creation 46 (135), in The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, trans. C. D. Yonge, new updated ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 19.
9 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, trans. Catharine P. Roth, Popular Patristics 12 (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1993), 68; see also 65–69.
10 H. Wheeler Robinson, “Hebrew Psychology,” in The People and the Book, ed. Arthur S. Peake (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 362.
11 H. Wheeler Robinson, The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 80.
12 Hans W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1974), 10.
13 See Horst Seebass, “ֶנפשׁ nephešh,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, vol. 9, trans. David E. Green (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 497–519.
14 Roland Murphy, Ecclesiastes, Word Biblical Commentary 23A (Dallas: Word Books, 1992), 120.
15 G. S. Hendry, “Ecclesiastes,” in The New Bible Commentary, Revised, ed. D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer, 3rd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1970), 577.