CHAPTER IV. Teachings of Nature Enlightened by Revelation. Nature
of the Soul; its Two-fold Life. Words used in a Double and Contradictory Sense. Destruction NOT NECESSARILY ANNIHILATION.
1. The necessary immortality of the soul is argued, so far as it is argued at all, on the ground that it is purely spiritual in its nature. Matter is corruptible. But that which is essentially spiritual is said to be incorruptible and indestructible. Whether there is any existence in the universe but the One Great uncreated self-existent -Spirit that is absolutely and purely spiritual in the strictest sense of the word, is a disputed point among philosophers, which it is not necessary for us to discuss. Whatever may be the spiritual essence of the soul, according to the common use of the word spiritual, if, indeed, it be a spiritual essence, it is sufficient for us to know that the soul of man was created. No theist will claim for it an eternal preexistence. But if the soul was created it may be uncreated or destroyed by its Author.
It is evident that the word "soul" is now taken in a higher and more ethereal sense than belongs to the words nephesh (Heb.) and pysche (Greek) in the original Scriptures, for which it stands.
These two words are applied indiscriminately to men and beasts, in
the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. In the first chapters of Genesis, living souls (nephesh chey) are predicated of animals as well as of men repeatedly, and so is it in other parts of the Bible; and in the New Testament the souls (psychai) of animals are spoken of as well as the souls of men; but our translators have thought it proper to translate this word “soul" almost never, excepting when man is spoken of, but to use the words "beasts," "creatures," "life," etc., when inferior animals are spoken of.
Whether it will ever be destroyed is a question of fact to be determined by such evidence as we can get from Reason and Revelation.
But the argument for its necessary immortality on account of its spiritual nature rests entirely on the supposition that it cannot be corrupted like matter. But what if this supposition should prove false? What if the soul shall actually become corrupted, depraved, diseased, in its own nature by sin? The argument for its indestructibility has no force, or, rather, whatever force there is in it goes to show, by analogy, that the soul, like material existences, will be destroyed as a soul. At any rate, the argument holds good only in case the original purity of the soul is maintained or restored. This will be found, when we come to the Scriptural Argument, to be the very doctrine taught by divine Revelation which we have undertaken to defend.
The holy alone shall escape destruction, but "the soul that sinneth it shall die."
2. The human soul is generally understood to have been endowed with an amphibious nature, or a two-fold life; the one allying it to the spiritual; the other to the material world; the one looking upwards toward God and heaven, and communicating with Him through its spiritual faculties; the other looking downwards to the earth and communicating with natural and sensible objects through the senses; the one adapts it to fellowship with pure spirits that are above it in the scale of being; the other, to association with animals that are beneath it in the scale of creation: the one is called in the Scriptures the (pneumatikos) "spiritual mind": the other the ( psuchikos ) "carnal mind," " the fleshy mind," or, as it should have been to perfect the antithesis, the phsuchical or soulical mind.
These two kinds of life in the same soul, so diverse in their natures, are by supposed to have been originally adjusted to work in harmony together. Whether they were both designed to be perpetual, and if this harmony were maintained, to co-exist eternally, or whether the lower life was transitory in its very nature, and was so constituted as to fade away and give place to that which is higher and spiritual and eternal alone, we will not now stop to inquire. But it is evident that if this spiritual life is lost, and the soul is cut off from God, the only source of spiritual life, its animal or lower life alone remains. But this, whether through sin or by its original constitution; is now temporary and must come to an end. Every species of lower life is transitory. Every material organization is destined to be dissolved. What then becomes of the animal life of the soul? Or rather, what becomes of the soul itself,— if it can be regarded as a distinct organism or entity, —when both its spiritual and animal life *re gone — when it is dead towards God and the spiritual world, and dead towards earth and earthly things? Has it still another third kind of life through which it may live forever ? .or can it exist as a soul without any life whatever? This is just what some of the advocates of this theory of the immortality of the soul have attempted to show.* Because a tree can "exist," as it is claimed, for a time, after it is dead, we are assured that the human soul may exist, and that forever after it is dead, and not only exist without life forever, but exist as an intelligent, conscious, active, suffering, sinning soul, forever!!
But we deny that a tree or an animal or anything that ever had life can continue to exist, as such in any true sense of the word, after it is dead. The dead form may remain. But it is not the carcass of an animal that constitutes the animal, nor the timber of a tree that constitutes the tree. No man can make a tree or an animal though he can make an image of either.
Life is necessary to the very existence of the thing itself, and if the thing retains its life, it is not dead. The same is true of the soul. We might, were it necessary, show how the death of a tree necessitates the decay of the very form, sooner or later, and how the death of an animal necessitates the decomposition of the carcass: But the question is not how long this dead tree might stand before going to decay, but whether it can grow, bear fruit, no matter how bitter it may be, or fulfil any of the functions of a living tree after it is dead.} The question is not how long the carcass of a dead animal might be preserved after the life had gone out of it, but whether its animal functions can go on as before! If any one chooses to assert the absurd proposition, that the soul, whether as a material or immaterial entity can exist as a soul after it is dead in both its spiritual and material natures, he has yet to prove that it can think, remember, feel, suffer and maintain the functions of a living soul though it is dead! The assertion is not only fatuous but self-contradictory. No man who asserts it can tell what he means by it. He must first vacate the words life and death of all their proper meaning and put another meaning into them; or rather he must use them in double and contradictory sense at the same time.
No man at the present day would think of employing such sophistical quibbles as this were he not greatly straitened to sustain an untenable theory. It savors of the philosophical quirks which the schoolmen of the dark ages spent so much time in trying to solve. For example —"When a man says “I lie," does he lie, or does he speak the truth! For, if he lies, he speaks the truth, and if he speaks the, truth, he lies." "Can a spirit go from one place to another without passing through the intervening space ?" "Can two spirits occupy the same identical point at the same moment of time?" Haec exempli gratia sufficient. So it is by the employment of such words as life, death, existence and the like in a double and contradictory sense in the same proposition, that a semblance of support is given to the doctrine that the soul can survive its death, and exist after it is destroyed. But it ill becomes our theological instructors of the present day to employ such logOdsedaly as this in the exposition of God's Word.
The same sort of logical prestigiation is practiced with the word annihilation which our oponents are so fond of flinging at us notwithstanding our protests, for maintain
ing the Bible doctrine of the destruction of the soul, as though the extinction of conscious existence in any object implied or necessitated the annihilation of the very substance of which that object was composed. This is a very good word to juggle with, but it has no force in this argument but in the double-entente of which it is capable. The trick consists in first predicating it of the elemental particles of which an object is composed ; and then, " presto " — it is transferred to the object itself, and if we admit or deny the predicate in the one case we must admit or deny it in the other also. That is to say, — the elemental particles that enter into the composition of a house are not annihilated though the house be consumed by fire and the ashes scattered to the winds, but they still exist — therefore the house itself exists, and exists as a house! But we may be told that the soul is such a peculiar entity that it cannot be destroyed so as to cease to exist as a soul without the annihilation of its essence or substance also, and that therefore the soul as a soul cannot be destroyed so as to cease to exist as a soul. " For nothing is ever annihilated.
In all syllogistic reasoning one must look well to his premises or he may be led unawares to the" most fatuous conclusions. In this syllogism both the premises are assumed without any positive evidence to support them, and assumed for the purpose of forcing the conclusion. As to whether any elemental substance ever has been, or ever will be annihilated, all we are at liberty to affirm is — that we do not know. And surely our ignorance is no proper foundation for a positive argument. As to the other premise, that the soul cannot be destroyed so as to cease to exist as a soul, without the annihilation of its elemental substance : — it is simply an assertion without any proof whatever. Before one can affirm this he must first be able to tell us what the human soul is, and of what it is composed, or whether it has or has not any composition or elemental base.
The human body when formed was made, as the Scriptures tell us, out of materials already existing, and when it dies it is resolved back to its original elements. As a living organism it is destroyed and ceases to exist, but the elemental particles remain. If the soul is a living organism, no matter how ethereal the elements that compose it, then it may be resolved back into its original elements and, in like manner, cease to exist as a soul without the annihilation of these elements.
But is the soul only the effect or the manifestation ofcertain organic relations? Then the effect ceases when these relations are destroyed. But there is no annihilation of any substance. Annihilation is a physical term and can only be predicated of substantial entities. -We do not say of color or of sound that they are annihilated.We only Say, — They vanish, or fade away, or cease. Nor do we predicate annihilation of a thought, nor of a series of thoughts, nor of the principle of life itself. We say, — It goes out, it is extinguished, it ceases to manifest itself in the organism it had animated. But we, do not say that it is annihilated; nor can we truly say it. But is the soul neither an organism nor the effect of organic relations, but a simple entity or vital force, corresponding to the other invisible elemental forces in nature emanating from the Deity and acting or manifesting themselves only in connection with some organism or material object? Then what becomes of it when this connection is dissolved? What becomes of the animal soul, or the vital force in any of the inferior organisms when these objects die? What becomes of the electric or galvanic force that has spent itself in the object where it had manifested itself? What of the cohesive power, or of chemical affinity? What of the flash of light that is extinguished? What of heat which is said to be only another mode of motion? What of motion itself when it is arrested? Philosophy tells us that action and reaction are equal and that this force is not really annihilated. It has only entered into other relations. It suggests also the inquiry whether all these vital forces are not, in the last analysis, resolvable into one common principle emanating directly
from the Deity and returning to Him, as the great Reservoir and only Source of all life and power in the
Whether we reason about the cessation of cohesive, crystallic, chemical, vegetable, animal, or spiritual life, when the organism in which it manifests itself is destroyed, thatbis, when it dies, who can give any better account of the matter than the wise man gives ? " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." — Ecc. 12:7. Our chief difficulty in reasoning on this subject is in our ignorance. Men ridicule the idea of the destruction of the soul, not because it seems impossible for God to destroy what He has made, but because they cannot understand what becomes of it. They might as well ridicule the idea of its being created because they cannot understand where it came from. times as well as the more careful study of the conditions of certain psychical phenomena have seemed to favor .... the identity of the vital and spiritual forces." "The principle of life and of psychical activity is one." "If the principle of vital force and spiritual activity be one and the same" — " Now whether or not the life and the soul are one," etc. He then goes on to say, " That the soul begins to exist as a vital force does not require that it should always exist as a vital force in connection with a material body. Should it require another such body or medium of activity it may have the power to create it for itself as it has formed the one it first inhabited, or it may already have formed it in the germ and hold it ready for occupation and use as soon as it sloughs off the one which connects it with the earth." § 25. All this is not only very philosophical but just what the Gospel declares to be true in the case of every Christian; a new spiritual body will be given him, which' his new and heaven-born spirit will animate forever. But how is it in the case of the wicked to whom no such body will be given? How, in the case of those who, according to the same Gospel, die, not only as to their bodies, but as to their souls? What possible life, or activity, or consciousness, remains to them, when not only the organism upon which the vital force exerted itself, but the very force or agent itself has ceased to be, or has returned to the source from which it came? But whatever its original source, God can demand it back to that source. If, like the body, it was formed from something previously existing, it can return like the body to its original elements and cease to exist as a soul. If it had no previous elemental existence, but issued directly from God, then He may recall it to Himself so that it shall have no more separate existence than it had before. Is not this the meaning of the passage just cited?
But the fact is, we know nothing and we affirm nothing concerning the annihilation of the elemental substances or
forces in nature. The word ought not to be thrown into this discussion to confuse the mind and to bring ridicule upon the Scriptural doctrine of the destruction of the soul.
We protest against being characterized or rather, caricatured as "annihilationists" for defending this Scriptural doctrine of destruction. It is a common pratice of sophists and quibblers to endeavor to misrepresent their antagonists, or to throw the odium of obnoxious terms over any
position they cannot successfully assail with fair arguments, but we have a right to expect, and to demand, in the interests of a common Christianity, more honest dealing on the part of Reverend Doctors and Theological Professors in the discussion of this question.*
* The author of "Life and Death Eternal," in his Preface, says :"We have commonly employed the term "Annihilation” to designate the cessation of existence which these writers advocate. We are
aware that many of them object to the term as not being fully expressive of their mode of stating and arguing the case. We would only say that we cannot be debarred the use of a convenient (?), indeed an indispensable (!) term, out of deference to their preferences."
It may be a very "convenient term," for him to use, and " indeed indispensable "to his mode of stating and arguing the case, but is it honest? What must we think of the merits of a cause that needs to be
upheld by such methods.
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