The Christian doctrine of the soul

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Preliminary Observations .... 5

II. The Faith of Christendom ... 17

Chapter II. The Faith Of Christendom

The belief that man has a soul as well as a body, and that the soul is spiritual and immortal, has been the commonly received, orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church from the beginning ; while the other notion, that man has no soul, or that it is material, mortal, and j^erishable, that the whole man dies at death, or that the soul sleeps in unconsciousness and nothingness from the moment of death till the resurrection of the last day, is heretical, or contrary to the received faith of the Christian Church in all its branches throughout all ages.

The commonly received doctrine of the early Church, from the Apostolic Fathers downwards, was that the soul passes at death into another state of being, and continues its existence, without interruption or suspension, either in Hades or in heaven. There were many different opinions and theories as to the origin, nature, relations, and operations of the soul, but there was no doubt or question that it was something distinct from the body, and capable of a distinct, separate, and independent existence 2 after death. There was much diversity, uncertainty, and fluctuation of opinion as to the actual condition of the departed in the future state, especially during the period between death and the resurrection, but there was no doubt at all as to the fact of the soul's continued existence and consciousness in the disembodied state. The well-known and wide-spread opinion of the ancient Church, that, after his crucifixion, Christ descended into hell and there preached the gospel to the spirits of men who had lived in the ages before his advent, takes this doctrine for granted, and without an antecedent faith in the continued existence both of Christ and of the souls of men, this opinion would have been manifestly impossible. The same faith was involved and expressed in the commemoration of the martyrs, in the festivals celebrated at their burial-places, whether in caves or catacombs, on the anniversaries of their martyrdom, which were called " dies natales," for the reason that the day of a martyr's death was regarded as the day of his birth to a higher and nobler life. And many of those early Christian writers who are justly called " the Fathers of the Church," and who " belong to Christendom without distinction of denominations," have left on record in their writings their views upon this subject, and their firm faith in the uninterrupted existence of the soul after death.

Clement of Rome, who is thought by many to have been the one spoken of by St. Paul as having his name in " the Book of Life," says that " Peter, . . . . having suffered martyrdom, went into the place of glory due him," and in view of Paul's martyrdom he says, " Thus he was removed from the world, and went into the holy place." 1

Polycarp, who had been a disciple of St. John, after mentioning Ignatius and Zosimus and Rufus, and Paul himself, and the rest of the Apostles, says, " They are in their appointed place in the presence of the Lord ; " 2 and in his prayer at the stake, when he suffered martyrdom, he declared his confidence that "he should be received that day among the martyrs in the presence of God." 3

The unknown author of the " Epistle to Diognetus," which has been called one of the most beautiful of all the remains of Christian antiquity, makes a distinction between the soul and the body, and indicates his own opinion that the soul is immortal, in language which for clearness, force and beauty, could hardly be surpassed. He says, " The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body ; . . . . the invisible soul is guarded by the visible body ; .... the soul is imprisoned in the body, yet pre-

1 Ep. of Clement to the Cor., chap. v.

2 Polycarp, Ep. to the Phil., chap. ix.

3 Martyrdom of Polycarp, chap. xiv.

serves that very body ; . . , . the immortal sou] [ajQdvaros fj i^x"'/] dwells in a mortal tabernacle, and Christians dwell as sojourners in corruptible bodies, looking for an incorruptible dwelling in the heavens."

Justin Martyr, in an elaborate writing addressed to the Roman Emperor and his sons, to defend the Christians from the cruelties of persecution, solemnly reminds them of that death which is common to all men, and of that conscious state of existence, and those retributions, which, as the heathen superstitions, divinations, oracles, philosophers, and poets teach, follow death ; and he says to them, u If death issued in insensibility it would be a godsend to all the wicked, but since sensation remains to all who have ever lived, and eternal punishment is laid up, see that ye neglect not to be convinced, and to hold as your belief that these things are true ; " 1 and in his Hortatory Address to the Greeks, 2 he speaks of the immortality of the soul as one of the things concerning which the inspired Christian teachers have given instruction, saying. " As if with one mouth and one tongue, they have in succession, and in harmony with one another, taught us both concerning God and the creation ol the world and the formation of man, and concerning the immortality of the human soul [~epi 5*

1 First Apology, chap, xviii. 2 Chap. viii.

Opai-ivrjs i/^'X^s aBoyourias] and the judgment which is to be after this life, and concerning all things which it is needful for us to know, and thus in divers times and £)laces have afforded us the divine instruction/'

Athenagoras also says, " Men, in respect of the soul, have from their birth an unchangeable continuance, but in respect of the body obtain immortality by means of change ; " 1 and in another work he says, ' ; TTe are persuaded that when we are removed from the present life we shall live another life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not earthly (since we shall abide near God, and with God, free from all change or suffering in the soul, not as flesh, even though we shall have flesh, but as heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a worse one and in fire ; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work, and that we should perish and be annihilated." 2

Clement of Alexandria, in a fragment that has been preserved from a lost book on the soul, says, " The souls of all, as they are breathed forth, have the faculty of life, and though separated from the body, they are found to possess a love for it ; " and his faith in the separate existence of souls after death is involved in his doctrine that the gospel

1 Resurrection of the Dead, chap. xvi.

2 Plea for the Christians, chap. xxxi.

was preached by Christ and his Apostles to those who were imprisoned in Hades, and that souls in the separate state may pass through a kind of purifying or purgatorial fire. 1

The views of Origen concerning the nature of the soul were such that he looked upon immortality as essential to it ; 2 and when the sect of the Thnetopsychites (as John of Damascus called them), or the Arabici, arose in Arabia about A. d. 248, and taught that the human soul dies and is totally destroyed with the body, and is revived with it at the time of the resurrection, he was called from Egypt to oppose the heresy, and through his influence those false teachers were led to confess and renounce their error. It has been said that, of all who have borne the Christian name, they were first to teach this error. 3

Tertullian spoke of death as " the disjunction of body and soul ; " he held that only the martyrs have the privilege of entering immediately into heaven, while other saints are detained in a separate state till the time of the resurrection ; and he utterly repudiated the notion that the soul sleeps or is in a state of unconsciousness in the intermediate state. 4

1 The Biblical Repository, 1834, pp. 643-653.

2 Hagenbach, History of Christian Doctrines, vol. i. p. 221.

3 Mosheim, Neander, and Hagenbach, in he.

4 Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 401. R. W. Landis, Immortality of the Soul, p. 299.

Cyprian said to his church at Carthage, when that city was swept by a fearful pestilence, " We ought not to mourn for our brethren, who, by the call of the Lord, have been delivered from the world, since we know that they are not lost, but sent before us ; that they have taken leave of us to precede us. We ought to long for them as we do for those who are absent on a journey, or who have sailed on a distant voyage ; but we should not lament them ; nor should we put on black robes of mourning for them here, when they have put on white robes of glory there. We should not give the heathen occasion justly to accuse us of mourning for them as extinct and lost, concerning whom we say, They do live with God ; and of not confirming by the witness of our hearts that faith which we profess with our lips. . . . Why do we, who live in hope, who believe in God, who trust that Christ has suffered and been raised for us, abiding in Christ and rising through Him and in Him, why are we ourselves unwilling to depart from this world? Or why do we lament and mourn for those who have taken leave of us, as if they were lost, when Christ, our Lord and God exhorts and says, 6 1 am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, though he die, shall live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die ' ? . . . . By death we pass over to immortality. Why do we not make haste and run to see our native land, and to salute our parents ? There awaits us a great multitude of those who love us, a vast and eager crowd of parents, brothers, children, who long for us, assured now of their own salvation, and anxious only for ours." 1

Gregory Nazianzen said, " When the souls of the righteous are freed from their bodies, they joyfully hasten to the Lord, and enjoy inconceivable pleasure in his presence." 2

Augustine said, "The souls of the righteous, being separated from the body, are at rest : but the souls of the wicked suffer punishment until the time when the bodies of these shall be awakened to eternal life, and of those to eternal death, that death which is called the second death ; " 3 and, " What simple or illiterate man or obscure woman is there now, who does not believe in the immortality of the soul, and a future state ? " 4

Gregory of Nyssa, also, and Hilary, Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, and others, of well-known names, who were representative men, held and expressed ^the same view that the soul continues its conscious existence after the death of the body, so that the

1 Library of Latin Fathers, vol. iii. Cypriani Opera, De Mortalitate, xx.

2 Landis' Immortality of the Soul, pp. 301, 302.

The Faith of Christendom.

learned Limborch says that " This was the common opinion of the Fathers : " and in one of the Liturgies of the ancient Church, that of St. Clement, in the Apostolical Constitutions, this doctrine is expressed in the words, " Thou madest him [man] of an immortal soul and a perishable body " \_7re-o[r]KO.$ avrov €K i/ruffls aOavdrov kol croj/xaros otccoWtov], 1 which may be regarded as a brief but comprehensive statement of this doctrine of the early Church.

Passing now from the early Church to the times since the seamless garment was rent in twain,

1 The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil: edited by Rev. J. M. Xeale : p. 99.

The passage from which the words above quoted are taken is the following : " And Thou hast not only created the world, but man likewise the citizen of it, manifesting in him the beauty and excellency of that beautiful and excellent creation. Tor Thou saidst to Thine own wisdom, Let us make man in our own image and after our own likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air. Wherefore Thou madest him of an immortal soul and a perishable body, the soul out of nothing and the body of the four elements ; this endued with five senses, and a power of motion ; that with reason and a faculty of distinguishing between religion and irreligion, the just and the unjust."

It is needless to discuss the question as to the age of the Apostolic Constitutions : a question on which much learning has been expended, and which can never be answered with certainty. It is enough for us, with the generality of learned men, to assign them to the third century ; but the Liturgies which they contain are doubtless of a much earlier date.

we find the same doctrine held fast and taught by all the leading branches of the Church of every name.

In the Liturgies of the Greek Church, it is provided that special prayers shall be offered for the souls of the dead during the next forty days after their separation from the body ; and also certain days are appointed by that Church for the offering of prayers for all the dead ; and these services, with the invocation of departed saints, which is allowed by that Church, show that whatever else she may or may not believe, she certainly believes in the continued existence of the soul after death.

The faith of the Roman Catholic Church on this point, as stated by her own writers, is that a The state of the good and of the wicked commences immediately after death ; " and her doctrine of Purgatory has been borrowed from what Calvin calls this " true principle, that death is not annihilation, but a transition from this life into another."

In the Augsburg Confession, which was framed in 1530, which is " recognized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church throughout the world," and which has been called " the mother-symbol of Protestantism," because it " has had more to do with shaping the Confessions of Protestant Christendom, than any other Confession of ancient or modern times," there is no special declaration concerning the condition of the soul immediately after death, because this was not one of the questions then in agitation or controversy between the Romish Church and the Protestants, but the seventeenth Article " condemns the Anabaptists who think that to the damned and to devils there will be an end of punishment;" and under this Confession the Lutheran Church, in common with other orthodox Christians, believes in a future state of reward and punishments, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body. 1

The doctrine of the Protestant Episcopal Church is taught plainly enough in her Burial Service, in which it is said that " The spirits of those who depart this life in the Lord do live with God," and that " The souls of the faithful after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh are in joy and felicity."

In the Heidelberg Catechism, which for three hundred years has been the received declaration of faith of the Reformed Churches of Europe and America, the express and positive statement on this point is, " My soul after this life shall be immediately taken up to Christ its head."

In the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Cate-

1 Philippi Melancthonis Opera, vol. x. p. 362, and " The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States, by J. A. Brown, D. D.," in the Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1868.

chism, which is recognized by the Orthodox Congregationalists and the Presbyterians of this country and Great Britain, as an authoritative statement of their faith, the declaration is, u The souls of believers are, at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory."

In the Confession of Faith put forth by the Baptists of England and TTales in the year 1689, there is the following grandly ringing statement, in the very words of the Savoy Confession adopted by the Puritan Independents in 1658: "The bodies of men after death return to dust and see corruption, but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God, who gave them ; the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into Paradise, where they are with Christ, and behold the face of God in light and glory."

In a statement of " the Faith of Evangelical Adventists," " the dissolution of the body and the separate existence of the soul " is mentioned as one of " those doctrines generally recognized as the fundamentals of Christianity."

Those who hold the doctrine of eternal punishment uniformly believe that, as John Bunyan says, " Man's state is such that he has a sensible being forever ; " and all forms of the doctrines of final restoration and universal salvation take this view of the soul for granted. Methodists and Free-will Baptists, Friends and Sweclenborgians, 1 Unitarians and Universalists, are agreed with the Christian bodies that have been enumerated, in holding that the doctrine of the continued existence of the soul is an essential element of Christianity.

Such as this is the faith of Christendom, or of the Christian Church in all its branches, Greek, Roman, and Protestant. It is a faith of which we may say, after the manner of Vincentius, that it has been held always, and everywhere, and by all, from ancient, through mediaeval, to modern times ; for its absolute unity has been broken only by such small numbers at different times, like the Thnetopsychites of Arabia, the Anabaptists of Germany, and the Annihilationists of our own country, as have no greater proportion to the whole body than the spots on the sun have to the extent of his shinino; face.

1 The following statement of the " doctrine of the New [or Swedenborgian] Church " was made for this work, by the Rev. T. 0. Paine, Professor of Hebrew in the New Church Theological School, Waltham, Mass.

" The soul or spirit is the man himself, in the human form, and is removed from the body as soon as the inmost fibres of the heart are still, which is within two or three days after the last breath. A man's life is not interrupted an instant from the beginning of his existence to eternity, but when he is taken alive into the spiritual world, the effect or result on his cast-off body, never to be resumed, is called death."

It is plain therefore that if any persons, while professing the Christian faith, believe in any extinction or sleep of the soul, or anything less than its continued, uninterrupted, conscious existence after death, their opinions should be considered as not in accordance with what the Church regards as sound doctrine, but as a disallowed, heretical opinion ; as not so much a belief as a disbelief, not so much a faith as a denial of faith.

CHAPTER in.

THE TEACHING OF NATURE AND REASON.

Haying shown, in the preceding chapter, that the notion of the annihilation or sleep of the soul is heretical, that is, contrary to the commonly received orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church in all its branches throughout all ages, we pass now to show that it is also unreasonable, or inconsistent with the teaching of nature and reason on this subject.

The simple fact that the doctrine of annihilation or the sleep of the soul is heretical, does not by any means prove that it is false. So far from this, it is possible or supposable, that the commonly received doctrine of the Church on this or any other subject is erroneous. Therefore the question arises, Is the common and almost universally received doctrine of the Church on this subject of the soul erroneous ? and is the heresy of the annihilationists a doctrine that should be received as true ? as St. Paul said, " After the way which the Jews call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers."

In seeking, now, the answer given by nature and reason to this question, we will first examine the argument usually employed by the materialists in support of their theory ; and then we will pass in review some of the prominent facts of nature and human nature, which go to prove that man has a soul, and that it is immortal.

The argument of the materialist is in substance this : The power of thought in man is always found in connection with a certain material organism ; the physical and mental powers usually grow and decay together ; the brain appears to be essential to all the mental operations — sensation, reflection, volition, reasoning, memory, imagination, consciousness ; the strength of the mental powers is usually in direct proportion to the development of the brain ; whenever the brain is in any way injured or destroyed, the power of thought is disordered or destroyed ; and therefore the power of thought, that is, the mind or soul, should be regarded as dependent on the body, belonging to it, growing out of it, perishing with it.

But strong as this argument may seem to some, its weakness can very easily be shown. For while it proves that in our present organism the brain is an invariable condition of thought, it does not prove that it is the cause of thought, or the thinking power. It overlooks the plain and important distinction between a cause and a condition, even when it is an indispensable condition. It overlooks the distinction between an instrument and the power that uses it ; between machinery, and the force that moves it. And in consequence of overlooking this distinction, and reasoning as if there were no such distinction to be made, it fails entirely of proving the point in question.

Many illustrations of this distinction, and of its bearing on the question before us, are at hand. For instance, the telegraphic wire, with other apparatus, is a well-known instrument for the transmission of thought from one person to another. But it is not the thinking power. It is not the cause, but only a condition of thought, a medium for its transmission or communication. It is a piece of machinery entirely distinct from the person or power that uses it. So also the optician's glass is often a condition, and an indispensable condition of seeing ; but it is not itself the seeing power. Suppose that a person cannot see well enough to read without spectacles, while with them he can read easily. In this case what is it that sees and reads ? The spectacles ? Or the person who uses them as an instrument ? In like manner is it the telescope that sees the stars shining in those depths of space where no unassisted eye can reach ? Or is it the microscope that sees the remains of fossil infusoria, 3 by the thousand millions in a square inch of chalk, where the common observer with his unassisted vision could see no trace of such remains ? Or is it the ophthalmoscope that sees what till recentlyhad been hidden from the oculist, as well as from all others, in the secret chambers of the eye ? Of course the telescope or other glass is only an instrument by means of which we see. The eye also is a condition, and an indispensable condition of vision, but it is not the eye itself that sees, any more than the telescope or the microscope. The eye is only the instrument or organ by means of which we see. And so in our present state, the brain may be a condition, and an indispensable condition of thought, and yet be only a condition, an instrument or organ of the thinking, perceiving power, which we call the mind or soul.

Let all that the materialist's argument proves be granted. Grant that the brain is the organ, and preeminently the organ of thought, and that a certain physical organization is essential to our existence in the present world. What then ? Does it follow that it is the brain which thinks, that the thinking power is material, or that the thinking power will perish at death ? By no means. Not one single step has been taken towards proving this. For always when power is exerted through an intervening medium or instrument, its manifestations, other things being equal, are in exact proportion to the perfection of the instrument. The perfection of a mechanic's or artist's work depends entirely upon the perfection of the materials employed, and of the instruments with which he works. Without suitable materials and tools to work with, the conceptions of Michael Angelo and Raphael could find no fit expression in wood or stone, or on the canvas, and their high power of thought, taste, and genius would remain forever hidden from the knowledge of the world, though their marvelous conceptions might be precisely the same as those which their works have bodied forth. The musician's skill is measured by the perfection of the instrument on which he plays, whether it be the violin, the harp, or the organ ; and if his instrument be broken or out of tune, he cannot play, though no one would, for this reason, suppose that his ability to discourse sweet music had been lost or destroyed. When the telegraphic wire is broken, or when any part of the delicate and complicated machinery of the office is out of order or destroyed, so that no message can be transmitted, when the Atlantic cable fails to work, no one regards the failure as any indication that the operator at the other end of the line has lost his power of thought, or ceased to exist. A person engaged in writing must have paper, pen, and ink, a hand and arm, and a nervous economy to transmit the condition of the paper to the brain, and to transmit the thoughts from the brain to the paper. If any one of these instruments or intervening media be wanting ; if the person has no hand or arm, no pen, ink, or paper, he cannot write, though no one would suppose, in such a case, that he had lost his ability to think. Why, then, should any one suppose that the power of thought is destroyed by pressure on the brain, or by the dissolution of the brain in death? There is no reason at all for the supposition. In spite of all that the materialist has said or shown, the power of thought may remain, though like the musician's instrument, or the telegraphic wire, or the writer's arm, the appropriate medium for its manifestation be disordered or destroyed.

In one of his lectures before 'the Lowell Institute on the subject of Natural Religion, Bishop Potter once spoke of a man who had lost all power of motion from the shoulders downwards, while he still retained his powers of thought and speech as perfectly as ever. What if that man's disease had advanced still farther upwards, till it had affected his speech, his eyes, his brain ? In this case would there have been any reason for thinking that his powers of thought, as well as those of expression, had been destroyed ? Not in the least. Such a supposition would be a pure assumption, unsupported by a single particle of proof. No physiological experiments or observations have shown the absolute dependence of the mental on the physical powers in man, or their identity, and we feel sure that it never can be shown. Prof. George I. Chace, of Brown University, in a profound article on 66 The Dependence of the Mental Powers upon the Bodily Organization," says, " There is no evidence of their [the mental phenomena] being dependent upon the organization, in any such manner as to render that necessary to their development ; " and, " There is nothing .... in the connection between the spirit and the body, so far as we are able to trace it, to afford ground for the belief, that the dissolution of the latter will be attended with the destruction of the former, or even with a diminution of its powers."

Many instances have been known of persons lying, for a longer or shorter time, in a state of apparent insensibility and death, and then recovering from that state and declaring that they had been conscious all the time, and sensible of what was passing around them ; that they had been in full possession of their power to will, though deprived entirely of the power to perform what they willed ; that they had retained all their powers of mind, — reason, memory, forecast, imagination, affection, conscience, consciousness, will, — though the ability to manifest them through the body had been taken entirely away. And if the soul can thus retain its consciousness and other powers in such cases, why not in and after death ?

Also, there have been cases in which, through the influence of some disease, the physical powers, both of sensation and of motion, have been completely suspended, for a longer or shorter time, during which there has been not merely a continuance, but a great and marvelous increase of the mental powers. It was so in the case of William Tennant, a Presbyterian clergyman of the last century. While pursuing his theological studies his health became seriously impaired, and he was troubled with great and distressing doubts concerning his spiritual condition ; when, as he was conversing with his brother one morning about the state of his soul, he suddenly seemed to expire. The usual preparations were made for the funeral, and the friends and neighbors were invited to attend it the next day. But in the evening, a young physician, his intimate friend, detected, as he thought, some signs of life ; and by urgent entreaty he caused the burial to be deferred till the third day, and then, when the friends and physician, who had not ceased to use all possible means of resuscitation, were on the point of giving up the case in despair, suddenly the patient opened his eyes, groaned, and fainted.