The Nature of Man and Immortality (Gen. 1-3)
I am approaching this topic of the immortality of human beings from a Biblical worldview and thus am starting from the opening chapters of the Bible. The first three chapters of Genesis introduce us to man’s creation, early relationship with his Creator and removal from God’s garden.
In Genesis chapter two God creates man and uses the phrase “living being” (NASB) to explain the composition of man. We read that “… the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living (nephesh) being (chaya).” (Gen. 2:7)
But Gen. 2:7 is not the first appears in the or only time the word “nephesh” appears in the Hebrew Scriptures:
Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures (nephesh), and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and every living creature (nephesh) that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day . . . Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures (nephesh) after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. (Gen. 1:20- 21, 24, italics added)
So the Bible uses the word nephesh to describe animals who also received the “breath of life.” See also Gen. 2:19; 9:10, 12, 15, 16 and Lev. 11:46. Dr. E.W. Bullinger in his Companion Bible[1] demonstrates that nephesh is translated in our English Bibles in many different ways.
Nephesh is used of Man, as an individual person:
“… and man became a living being (nephesh).” – Gen. 2:7;
“And Abraham took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons (nephesh) which they had acquired in Haran …” – Gen. 12:5;
“Will you hunt down the lives (nephesh) of My people, but preserve the lives (nephesh) of others for yourselves?” – Ezekiel 13:18
“And the king of Sodom said to Abram ‘Give the people (nephesh) to me and take the goods for yourself.’” – Gen. 14:21
Nephesh can be used of the lower animals only:
“And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature (nephesh) that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good.” – Gen. 1:21, 24
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures (nephesh) after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the erth after their kind’; and it was so.” – Gen 1:24
“And the one who takes the life (nephesh) of an animal shall make it good, life for life.” – Lev. 24:18
Nephesh is used of the Lower Animals and Man in several passages:
“… and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature (nephesh) cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature (nephesh) of all flesh that is on the earth.” – Genesis 9:15-16.
“For the life (nephesh) of the flesh is in the blood …” – Leviticus 17:1
“And levy a tax for the LORD from the men of war who went out to battle, one in five hundred of the persons (nephesh) and of the cattle and of the donkeys and of the sheep …” – Numbers 31:28.
Nephesh is used of Man, as possessing animal appetites and desires:
“When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are full satisfied (nephesh, according to your satisfaction of your soul), but you shall not put any in your basket.” – Deut. 23:24
“And in their heart they put God to the test by asking food according to their desire (nephesh).” – Psalm 78:18.
“When you sit down to dine with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you; and put a knife to your throat, if you are a man of great appetite (nephesh).” – Pro. 23:2
“And the dogs are greedy (nephesh), they are not satisfied.” – Isaiah 56:11.
Nephesh is used of Man exercising mental faculties, and manifesting certain feelings and affections and passions
“Now if a Levite comes from any of your towns throughout Israel where he resides, and comes whenever he desires (nephesh) to the place which the LORD chooses …”– Deut. 18:6
“My desire (nephesh) shall be gratified against them;” – Exo. 15:6
“Do not let your voice be heard among us, lest fierce (nephesh) men fall upon you and you lose your life …” – Judges 18:25
“And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented (nephesh, bitter in soul), gathered to him…” – 1 Sam. 22:2
Nephesh is used of Man as being mortal, subject to death of various kinds, from which it can be saved and delivered and life prolonged:
“Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I (nephesh) may live on account of you.” – Genesis 12:13;
“But they eyes of the wicked will fail, and there will be no escape for them; and their hope is to breathe their last (nephesh, the expiring of their soul).” – Job 11:20
“From the wicked who despoil me, my deadly (nephesh) enemies, who surround me.” – Psalm 17:9
Nephesh is used of man, as actually dead:
“You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead (nephesh) …” – Leviticus 19:28
“But there were some men who were unclean because of the dead (nephesh) person … though we are unclean because of the dead (nephesh) person … If any of you or your generation becomes unclean because of a dead (nephesh) person …”– Numbers 9:6, 7, 10
The use of nephesh (soul) in so many ways shows that it is not referring to an immortal/immaterial soul given to man, but the animating principle of life or “the life-breath” which is present in both man and animals. Both are characterized as “souls alive” in contradistinction to the plants. This seems to indicate that all living creatures are “souls”. What distinguishes mankind from that of animals is the revelation that humans were created in God’s image, that is, with godlike possibilities unavailable to animals.
The Holman Bible Dictionary supports this when it defines the soul as
The vital existence of a human being. The Hebrew word nephesh is a key Old Testament term (755 times) referring to human beings. In the New Testament, the term psyche retreats behind the ideas of body, flesh, spirit to characterize human existence. In the Bible, a person is a unity. Body and soul or spirit are not opposite terms, but rather terms which supplement one another to describe aspects of the inseparable whole person.[2]
This discussion of how the word “soul” nephesh is used makes clear from an O.T. perspective that we do not possess a soul, but that we are a soul. So how did I come to this view that says man is composed of a dual nature, that is a body (material/perishable part) and a soul (immaterial/eternal part)? In reading various writers on this subject, it began to emerge that this viewpoint comes from the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, not from the Bible. That understanding is confirmed by quotes from the writings of these philosophers.:
In like manner, heat while it is heat can never admit the idea of cold. Life and death are contraries and can never coexist; but wherever there is life there is a soul, so that the soul contains that which is contrary to death and can never admit death; consequently, the soul is immortal.
– Platos’ Apology of Crito and Phaedo of Socrates…but man being endowed with a reasonable soul and stamped with a Divine image, is of a different nature, and though his body is corruptible, yet his soul being of an immortal nature cannot perish; but at the dissolution of the body returns to God who gave it, either to receive reward or punishment.
– The Works of Aristotle, Chapter V
Although the teachings of Plato, Artistotle and other Greek philosophers regarding the nature of the “soul” are in line with what I have always believed as a Christian they certainly don’t reflect the Old Testament concept of the soul as the wholistic expression of a person.
The online Encyclopedia Britannica offers this excellent summary of how the concept of the soul developed in the early Hebrew and Greek worldviews[3]
The early Hebrews apparently had a concept of the soul but did not separate it from the body, although later Jewish writers developed the idea of the soul further. Biblical references to the soul are related to the concept of breath and establish no distinction between the ethereal soul and the corporeal body. Christian concepts of a body-soul dichotomy originated with the ancient Greeks and were introduced into Christian theology at an early date by St. Gregory of Nyssa and by St. Augustine.
Ancient Greek concepts of the soul varied considerably according to the particular era and philosophical school. The Epicureans considered the soul to be made up of atoms like the rest of the body. For the Platonists, the soul was an immaterial and incorporeal substance, akin to the gods yet part of the world of change and becoming. Aristotle’s conception of the soul was obscure, though he did state that it was a form inseparable from the body.
In Christian theology St. Augustine spoke of the soul as a “rider” on the body, making clear the split between the material and the immaterial, with the soul representing the “true” person. However, although body and soul were separate, it was not possible to conceive of a soul without its body. In the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas returned to the Greek philosophers’ concept of the soul as a motivating principle of the body, independent but requiring the substance of the body to make an individual.
From the Middle Ages onward, the existence and nature of the soul and its relationship to the body continued to be disputed in Western philosophy. To René Descartes, man was a union of the body and the soul, each a distinct substance acting on the other; the soul was equivalent to the mind. To Benedict de Spinoza, body and soul formed two aspects of a single reality. Immanuel Kant concluded that the soul was not demonstrable through reason, although the mind inevitably must reach the conclusion that the soul exists because such a conclusion was necessary for the development of ethics and religion. To William James at the beginning of the 20th century, the soul as such did not exist at all but was merely a collection of psychic phenomena.
Just as there have been different concepts of the relation of the soul to the body, there have been numerous ideas about when the soul comes into existence and when and if it dies. Ancient Greek beliefs were varied and evolved over time. Pythagoras held that the soul was of divine origin and existed before and after death. Plato and Socrates also accepted the immortality of the soul, while Aristotle considered only part of the soul, the noûs, or intellect, to have that quality. Epicurus believed that both body and soul ended at death. The early Christian philosophers adopted the Greek concept of the soul’s immortality and thought of the soul as being created by God and infused into the body at conception.
The concept of a soul that is separate from the body and that is immortal is something that many people in current American culture seem to simply accept as a fact. We never stop to think about where we got this idea. Most who identify themselves as Christians would reply that the idea comes from the Bible, but words relating to “mortal”, “immortal” or “immortality” are used quite sparingly:
Mortal – The Cambridge Dictionary[4] defines mortal as “unable to continue living for ever; having to die” and the Blue Letter Bible concordance reports that the word “mortal” is only used a total of 12 times (Job 10:5, Psalms 46:3, Isaiah 13:12, Lamentations 3:39, Daniel 2:11, Romans 6:12 and 8:11: 1 Corinthians 15:53 and 54, 2 Corinthians 4:11 and 5:4, Heb 7:8). Each of these verses confirms that human beings are mortal.
Immortal / Immortality –
In the New Testament immortality is only mentioned a few times:
- The apostle Paul first introduced the concept in 1 Corinthians 15 when he tells us that:
“… in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54But when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this mortal puts on immortality …”
- 1 Timothy 6:16-17 describes the Lord Jesus Christ as the “only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see” (italics added). These texts make it clear that God and God alone is immortal.
- As to the immortality of mankind 2 Timothy 1:10 says that “…our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
- 1 Corinthians 15. Verse 53 says that “this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (italics added). These are not qualities that we simply possess by nature of being human. Immortality is something that we will receive from God “at the last trumpet” (verse 52). This teaching is reinforced by Paul again in 2 Corinthians 5: 4 when he says “… so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.”
These passages seem to say that humanity IS NOT immortal by nature but can receive immortality as a gift of God’s grace through the Lord Jesus Christ. N.T. Wright supports this concept when he writes that “Platonists believe that all humans have an immortal element within them, normally referred to as ‘soul’ … In the New Testament, however, immortality is something that only God possesses by nature and that he then shares, as a gift of grace rather than as an innate possession, with His people.”[5]
One of the better expositions on this difference in thinking about the nature of man comes from an article by Dr. George Eldon Ladd[6].
The view found in Plato and in later thinkers, influenced by him, is essentially the same cosmological dualism as is found in later Gnosticism. Like Gnosticism, Platonism is a dualism of two worlds, one the visible world and the other an invisible “spiritual” world. As in Gnosticism, man stands between these two worlds, related to both. Like Gnosticism, Platonism sees the origin of man’s truest self (his soul) in the invisible world, whence his soul has fallen into the visible world of matter. Like Gnosticism, it sees the physical body as a hindrance, a burden, sometimes even as the tomb of the soul. Like Gnosticism, it conceives of salvation as the freeing of the soul from its entanglement in the physical world that it may wing its way back to the heavenly world. Two further elements found in Gnosticism do not appear in the Platonic philosophers: that matter is ipso facto the source of evil, and that redemption is accomplished by a heavenly redeemer who descends to earth to deliver the fallen souls and lead them back to heaven.
The biblical dualism is utterly different from this Greek view. It is religious and ethical, not cosmological. The world is God’s world; man is God’s creature, although rebellious, sinful and fallen. Salvation is achieved not by a flight from the world but by God’s coming to man in his earthly, historical experience. Salvation never means flight from the world to God; it means, in effect, God’s descent from heaven to bring man in historical experience into fellowship with himself. Therefore the consummation of salvation is eschatological. It does not mean the gathering of the souls of the righteous in heaven, but the gathering of a redeemed people on a redeemed earth in perfected fellowship with God. The theologies of the Synoptic Gospels, of John, and of Paul are to be understood in terms of this Hebrew dualism, and each of them stands in sharp contrast to the Greek dualism. (italics added)
Nigel Turner in his book Christian Words reminds us that “The soul is often conceived by Christians as if it were imprisoned in the body, as Plato conceived it, and it is said by Christians to fly to God at death in much the same that Jesus gave up his pneuma (spirit) when he died …Nowhere in the Bible is there any suggestion of an immortal soul which survives death.”[7]
Conclusion and Wider Implication
All of this has led me to the conclusion that man is not immortal by nature and that only those who are related to God through the Lord Jesus Christ receive immortality as a gift of God’s grace. With this in mind, we must ask what about those who have no relationship to God through Christ? Does this imply that unbelievers are not immortal either. If the traditional Christian teaching of the existence of hell as a place of conscious eternal punishment for those who do not obey the gospel of Christ is true, then somehow those people will have to receive immortality from God, in order to spend their eternity in hell or else their end is different then we have imagined.
[1]. Bullinger, E.W., The Companion Bible: Notes and Appencixes by E.W. Bullinger (Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI, 1922) Appendix 13.
[2]. Butler, Trent C. Editor. Entry for ‘Soul’. Holman Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hbd/s/soul.html. 1991.
[3]. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/555149/soul
[4]. MORTAL | English meaning – Cambridge Dictionary
[5]. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son Of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3, 2003, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
[6]. George Eldon Ladd Ph.D., The Pattern of New Testament Truth (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, June 18, 1968).
[7]. Nigel Turner, Christian Words, p 421.