The Origin & Immortality of the Soul

How did you get your soul and is it immortal? Welcome to part 3 of our Holy Note breakdown of episode 311 in which a creator by the name of Big Nick suggests that the testimony of a former atheist who died and went to heaven proves the pre -existence of our souls.

In part 1, we discuss why it is absolutely unbiblical to suggest that an atheist went up to heaven and came back.

In part 2, we discuss repentance and hit on the point that we don't need sources outside of scripture to cause us to make up doctrines which then help us through our daily troubles.

Instead, the scripture is sufficient for these things. So, in light of what we talked about, I thought it would be good to conclude this discussion with a biblical and historical view of the origin and immortality of the soul.

Now, let's begin with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. We don't believe it means what Big Nick suggests in episode 311, which is that our souls existed prior to our being born in these bodies on earth.

God literally had assignments for us in the spirit realm before we were born because, think about it, when we're told to repent, we're told to do something again.

We are having the mind of Christ again. But how could we have the mind of Christ if the book of Psalms says that we were born into sin and iniquity?

The only way that that's possible is by us existing in the spirit with God. I truly believe this and the testimonies verify this.

It sounds rooted in Plato's development of the concept of the immortality of the soul who believed that the soul and the body are totally distinct with the rational soul being divine, immaterial, and immortal.

It is a superior substance to the body, which is made of matter. So the idea of the immortality of the soul is not a distinctly

Christian idea. In fact, it was a belief held in some form or another by many ancient peoples, including the

Babylonians, the Persians, the Egyptians, and the ancient Greeks. So the first question is, what does the Bible say about the immortality of the soul?

To make a long story short, every time the two Greek words that are commonly translated immortality are used in the

New Testament, it is never applied to the soul. In 1 Timothy 6 .16, athanasia is used of God's original immortality.

The text to which most would probably point to support the immortality of the soul is 1 Corinthians 15, particularly verses 53 and 54, which say that the mortal body must put on immortality.

But you can see that it's talking about our bodies being endowed with immortality at the resurrection.

And it is not speaking to the immortality of the soul, and that is the case for every instance at which the concept of immortality comes up in the scripture.

So the Bible doesn't ever say explicitly that the soul is immortal. Another question is, does the Bible teach that man's soul is immortal?

Well, while the Bible never uses the phrase the immortality of the soul, we should affirm that it does teach the soul's continued existence.

But we must be careful about our understanding of the nature of the soul's continued existence. Our souls are not immortal because of their inherent indestructibility.

Anthony Hokima remarks, in Plato's philosophy, the soul is considered indestructible because it partakes of a higher metaphysical reality than the body.

It is thought of as an uncreated, eternal, and therefore divine substance. The truth is that our souls continue to exist because they receive immortality from the source, who is

God. This means that we are always dependent on God and that we are not indestructible. In the catechism

I'm teaching my children, I ask them questions about their souls. This is the Grace and Truth Memory Book, by the way, edited by Tom Askell.

Question 19 asks, do you have a soul as well as a body? And the children answer, yes, I have a soul that can never die.

So we have souls that can never die. And what we should observe primarily about the biblical data on the soul is the

Bible's primary emphasis on the topic, which is not the soul's mere immortality, but its relation to God.

Either the soul is in the fellowship of eternal life with God, or you continue to exist outside of that blessed fellowship and under the just wrath of God.

This is the way in which the scriptures are chiefly concerned with It should also be said that in regards to the consummation of all things, the return of Christ and our future in the eternal state, the

Bible focuses not on the soul as much as it does on the body. This is what we get again from 1

Corinthians 15. Rather than some translation of the soul that is going to be described, instead the emphasis is on the resurrection of the body.

The final state will not be floaty. We are not angels. We are not spirits. While the Greeks viewed the body as the prison of the soul from which they are liberated at death,

Christianity believes, because the Bible teaches, that God has created man as body and soul. Therefore, upon our glorification, we are not freed from the body, but we are freed in the body from sin and the curse.

Now let's talk about the origin of the soul. There are two main points of view, and neither of them is pre -existence. The first is known as creationism.

This is the idea that conception God creates a brand new soul. I think the majority of people, especially those who have never really thought about the origin of the soul, assume this position.

The other point of view is known as traducianism, which asserts that man as a species was created in Adam.

In Adam, the substance of humanity was yet undistributed. We derived our immaterial as well as our material being by natural laws of propagation from Adam.

In other words, our souls are generated from the union of our parents, going back to our first parent,

Adam. We are in Adam by natural generation. I myself hold to traducianism. I believe that the human race was immediately created in Adam, and as respects both body and soul was propagated from him by natural generation.

All souls since Adam being only immediately created by God. Here are a couple of issues I have with the creationist view.

It holds that only our bodies are begot by our parents and not our souls, but we plainly see that people inherit all kinds of non -bodily traits from our parents.

The observed transmission not merely of physical but of mental and spiritual characteristics in families and races and especially in the uniformly evil tendencies and dispositions which all men possess from their birth are proof that in soul as well as in body we derive our being from our human ancestry.

But the main issue with this view is that it makes God the author of moral evil. If someone holds to the creationist view and to original sin we are sinful by nature from conception, then

God who is who is creating the soul ex nihilo at conception is the direct maker of a sinful nature.

I prefer the traducianist position. We should also note that Genesis makes it clear that on the seventh day

God rested from his work of creation. It seems best to accord with scripture which represents

God as creating the species in Adam and as increasing and perpetuating it through secondary agencies.

Only once is breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and after man's formation God ceases from his work of creation.