We think that we know what the bible says. Unfortunately we all come to the bible with a set of preconceptions that influence our interpretation. Sometimes these prevent us from seeing the words in front of our eyes. One such preconception is immortality, specifically the immortality of the human soul. It’s a given: your body dies and your soul lives on … forever.

Assumptions 

Growing up, I never questioned this. The idea permeates our culture. It’s the basis of all ghost stories, and it’s implicit in most people’s ideas about life after death. It’s been a major thread throughout religious and philosophical thought down the centuries, and is seldom questioned. Our beliefs about heaven and hell are wrapped around this assumption rather than being formed from a simple reading of the biblical text. So where does this idea originate and how did it become so embedded in our culture?

The Greeks

Plato developed the thought, presenting a picture of an immortal soul that was weighed down by a physical body from which it longed to escape. The picture is basically: body = bad, soul = good (sound familiar?). Plato was all about escaping this world and it’s physicality for the ‘true’ world of thought or ‘ ideal forms’ where the soul would be free, perfect and eternal. Aspects of these basic beliefs have been carried down through the centuries and reinforced by the work of philosophers such as Rene Descartes, until they have arrived with us as unquestioned spiritual assumptions which we then impose on our reading of the scriptures.

The Scriptures

So what about the scriptures? Well, there are plenty of references to the same division of physical and spiritual elements. Take the second creation story in Genesis (yes, there are two!).

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7).

The implication given is that the body was empty and inanimate and that the ‘life’ was in the spirit.

You can find a sense of the two being separated as well. In Ecclesiastes 3.21 the writer says, 'Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?' (So animals have spirits as well?) And in 1 Samuel 28 the spirit of Samuel is summoned by Saul and seen rising up through the ground (just to confuse matters!). So clearly the body and spirit can be separated in some manner.

Paul

Paul hints at the same idea when he prays that God may preserve our 'spirit, soul and body … until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,' thus throwing the cat amongst the pigeons by introducing a third element! (1 Thessalonians 5:23). He also refers to the body as a 'tent' which will be replaced by 'an eternal house in heaven' (2 Corinthians 5.1) implying that (for believers) there is a temporary earthly body to house the soul, but at death the soul moves to a permanent eternal one.

So it’s natural that we should see the Greek doctrine of the ‘transmigration of the soul’ and the biblical picture as being more or less the same, but, here’s the rub: where, in the biblical picture, does it ever say that humans were actually created immortal?

- Do you think each human is immortal?

- What do you think happens when we die? 

Part two Count The Trees coming soon.