Ch3 Experience of death within the Jewish tradition

Few ideas are as unsupported, ridiculous and even downright harmful as that of the ‘human soul.’ And yet, few ideas are as widespread and as deeply held. What gives? Why has such a bad idea had such a tenacious hold on so many people? ~D.P. Barish

In the Garden of Eden, our Creator told Adam and Eve where they would go upon their death – nowhere! No heaven and no hellfire. They would simply go “back to dust” (Gen 3:19). This is the outcome for all humans and all animals at the time of their death. They stop breathing. They go back to being as they were prior to their first breath. Nothing more. Nothing less.

When someone takes their first breath, their life begins; when someone takes their final breath, their life ends. It’s very simple and very natural. This is the Jewish understanding that God ordains throughout the five books of Moses.

Is this a pleasant thought? Is this a scary thought? Is this the sort of future that you anticipate at the time of your death? If not, what sort of future do you expect when you breathe your last breath?

According to Genesis, God fashioned Adam out of the clay of the earth and breathed life into this inanimate form (Gen 2:7). When God later went on to create animals and birds, he used essentially the same process that he used when fashioning Adam (Gen 2:19). At no time does Genesis say that Adam was created with an “immortal soul” while animals were created with “mortal souls.” In fact, to be clear, Genesis says nothing about “souls” whatsoever.[1]

In the Jewish tradition, “breathing” was understood as the dynamism that kept someone “living.” When someone stopped breathing, this was the prime indication that someone has died. This was what I experienced during the three hours when my father was dying:

My father was being cared for by the staff at Cleveland Clinic Euclid Hospital which is located just a ten-minute walk from my family home. I was alone with my Dad throughout the night. His condition had been slowly growing worse during the past three days, and the nurse told me that he could die at any time. After sunset, the lights in the hospital room were dim and the only sounds were the faint beeps of electronic monitoring devices and the soft breathing of my dad.

Just after eleven o’clock, I noticed that the slow rhythms of my Dad’s breathing quietly came to a stop. The rising and the falling of his chest also stopped. Then, after missing two or three breaths, he slowly began breathing again. I came closer and held his hand. Over a period of three hours, the interruptions in his breathing occurred more and more frequently. At first they came every 15 minutes. After two hours, they came every three minutes. Then, without any distress or commotion of any kind, my Dad peacefully interrupted his breathing as he had done so many times before. After five minutes, I knew that my Dad had taken his last breath. His whole life had come to an end.

At this point in my life, I was no stranger to death. A few years back, one of our beloved cats was diagnosed with a fatal heart condition. The afternoon she died, I was holding her in my lap because I noticed that she had become weaker and weaker during the day. In her case, I could not hear her breath but I could clearly see her chest gradually expanding and contracting. At the moment of death, she made a slight jerking motion and then stopped breathing entirely. Her life had come to an end. It was no different for my Dad.

If I had been raised in a Jewish household, no one would have been telling me that these two deaths had very little in common. Yet, when I allow myself to block out the idea that my Dad’s soul rises out of his body at death and takes flight toward heaven, then the experience of life as intimately associated with breathing demonstrates a remarkable parallel. The Book of Genesis makes this clear.

In the Garden of Eden, our Creator told Adam and Eve where they would go upon their death – nowhere! No heaven and no hellfire. They would simply go back to dust. This is the outcome for all humans at death.

• In the sweat of your face, you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:19 KJV).

• For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they no longer have any share in what is done under the sun (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6).

• Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

• For there is an outcome for humans and an outcome for animals; they all have the same outcome. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit. So, man has no superiority over animals, for everything is futile (Ecclesiastes 3:19).

 

The treatment of death and immortality in Gen 2-3

Walter Brueggemann is a prolific, Protestant scholar and theologian who is widely considered one of the most influential interpreters of the Hebrew Scriptures in the last several decades.[2] In 1994, Brueggemann published a review of James Barr’s fresh and challenging reading of Gen 2-3 entitled, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality. Brueggemann approvingly summarized Barr’s thesis in the following terms:

Barr shows (in agreement with much current scholarship) that in Genesis 2-3, or in the Old Testament more generally, there is nothing of “The Fall” or “Original Sin,” or the notion of death as punishment.

The “Pauline understanding of Adam and Eve” is based only in certain later strata of the Old Testament and in literature outside the present Hebrew canon (p. 18) [hence, it cannot be used as the litmus test for understanding Gen 2-3.]

In Barr’s closely reasoned argument, death is no heavy-duty punishment, but is what happens to the primal couple when the peculiar chance of immortality is offered by God and lost. As a consequence . . . , he [Barr] considers that death is natural, that it is willed by God and is not to be considered as a punishment for sin.[3]

Using Bruggemann and Barr as my own starting point, I have carefully studied Gen 2-3 with the help of both Jewish and Catholic scholars. After twenty years, I came to discover that the original meaning of Gen 2-3 was to explain how our primal parents sought to become like their beloved Father.

 

When examined closely, the “serpent” in Genesis functions as a spirit-guide within ancient Middle Eastern culture (see Matt 10:16). Far from deceiving Eve, this “serpent” is assuredly a truth-teller: “You will not die [when you eat this fruit]; for God knows that when you eat of it [a] your eyes will be opened, and [b] you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5-6). And, according to the text, this is exactly what happens.[4]

Adam, meanwhile, has been telling Eve that God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die” (Gen 3:3). Adam deliberately added, “nor shall you touch it.” When Eve touches the fruit, however, nothing happens. Adam clearly is mistaken. So, she eats it. And the eating has wondrous effects. No one dies. Thus, Eve, with the help of the serpent, exposes the errors of Adam on both counts.

Eve and Adam are expelled from the Garden. According to the prevailing theology of the churches, this expulsion takes place due to God abhorrence of their grave sin [the “original sin”]. The text itself provides quite another explanation: “The LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden” (Gen 3:22-23). Thus, God finally approves how his children have “become like one of us”; yet, God does not want his children to “live forever.”

In the Garden, God has planted not one but two empowering trees: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and “the tree of life.” God intended his children to be mortal. The text specifies this intention clearly, “You are [made out of] dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19). Hence, God expels his children from the Garden, not due to some supposed “sin” but in order to ensure that the “tree of life” remains out-of-reach of his beloved children.

The text says that God assigns to a “cherubim” the task of “guard[ing] the way to the tree of life” (Gen 3:24). Here again the text indicates clearly that “sin” was not an issue here; rather, protection of the “tree of life” was God’s primary concern.

I do not have the space or the time here to develop each of these propositions. In my book, each of these points are spelled out in greater detail. For the moment, however, three potential pillars for interpretating Genesis will be put forward as in need of further study and application:

#1 Death is natural, (a) that it is willed by God and (b) that it is not punishment (Barr).

#2 Eve is (a) the explorer and (b) the innovator–just exactly the sort of helpmate that Adam so desperately needed.[5] 

#3 God expels his children from the Garden, not due to some supposed “sin” but in order to ensure that the “tree of life” remains out-of-reach for his beloved children.[6] 

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in the 4^th century, would have been entirely opposed to the interpretation of Gen 2-3 that I have put forward.  I cannot give any attention to his objections here. Yet, even within academia, the weaknesses of Augustine,[7] esp. his tendency to misinterpret Gen 2-3 and to overplay the gravity of the sin of Adam[8], are gaining more and more attention. I draw attention to the studies of Peter C. Bouteneff that were published in the prestigious Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation and reveal the weaknesses of the classical interpretation of Gen 2-3:

The Hebrew Scriptures indicate that the understanding of Adam and Eve as the originators of sin and death, and thus at the heart of ‘the fall’, is foreign to ancient Judaism where, if anything, Cain’s sin is more grievous and cataclysmic than Adam’s (e.g. Wis 10.3–4). The word ‘sin’ first occurs in reference to Cain (Gen 4.7; see also Jude 1.11). [It is never used in reference to Adam and Eve.] It is Paul who, uniquely in the entire Bible, establishes Adam in the role of inaugurator of sin/death.[9]

Taking notice of the absence of soul-talk in the Synoptics

When the Gospels present us with the grueling death of the Lord Jesus, I find it instructive that the writers of the Gospels tell us that “Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last” (Mark 15:37 and par.). Ἐξέπνευσε is the Greek term that literally means “he breathed out” and, since the verb is in the Aorist Indicative, this signals that a single, one-time event is being specified, thus, “his final breathe” is clearly implied.

What is noteworthy is that the Gospels tell us that “Jesus died” in precisely the same way that other men and women die. The oldest creed known to us, the Apostles’ Creed says quite simply, “He [Jesus] was crucified, died, and was buried.”  It is noteworthy that none of the Gospels tell us that, at the moment of his death, his immortal soul was released and took flight toward heaven.

With the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:22–24, 35–43); the raising of the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11–17), the raising of Tabitha (Acts 9:36–41) and the raising of Eutychus (Acts 20:9–12), the reader is never told that their souls had to be lured out of Hades in order to reanimate their bodies.

The case of Lazarus is especially detailed (John 11:1–44). In this instance, Lazarus has been dead and buried for “four days” (John 11:17). In order to raise Lazarus, Jesus first orders that the tombstone be removed (John 11:39).  Clearly both Jesus and the Jewish mourners understand that someone being raised from the dead cannot be supposed to have sufficient strength to move the tombstone by themselves from the interior of the tomb.  Secondly, Jesus prays: “”Father, I thank you for having heard me” (11:41). This implies that Jesus has asked his Father to raise Lazarus and that Jesus was aware that his petition was accepted.  Thirdly, Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” (11:43). The result is reported: “The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth “(John 11:44).  He was breathing, but his movements were hindered by the burial cloths that were used to attach aromatic herbs to his body at the time of his burial. 

Had this been a Greek narrative, everyone would be wondering how the soul of Lazarus had been able to escape from the confines of Hades. The Greeks knew of a few instances wherein some daring person had descended into the Underworld with the object of persuading Lord Hades to release some cherished soul that was confined there. It would have been entirely unthinkable, however, that Jesus could somehow liberate a soul confined in Hades simply by raising his voice. “This could never happen,” the Greeks would insist.

Within a Jewish milieu, everything was different.  No one would ask Lazarus what he experienced during the last four days when he was no longer breathing. Why not? Because, with death there was no longer any hearing, seeing, smelling, etc. Thus, very simply and directly, there was “nothing”[10] to report.  The dead had stopped breathing.  They were no longer living.  They were totally unconscious. Thus, among the Jews, there was no possibility for someone living to consult the dead.[11] The dead were no more.[12]

How I grew up trying to save my immortal soul

When I was five years old, I began attending Holy Cross Grade School that was situated just a short ten-minute walk from my parents’ home. Here the Ursuline nuns gave us copies of the Baltimore Catechism that was to become the framework guiding my religious instruction for the next eight years. Just a week ago, I want back and found my Baltimore Catechism and was astonished at how massively the Jewish message of Jesus had been overlaid by the Socratic philosophy of the Greeks. You can discover this for yourself:

3 Q. What is man?

A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God.

4 Q. Is this likeness in the body or in the soul?

A. This likeness is chiefly in the soul.

5 Q. How is the soul like to God?

A. The soul is like God because it is a spirit that will never die, and has understanding and free will.

6 Q. Why did God make you?

A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him [in Heaven] forever in the next.

7Q. Of which must we take more care, our soul or our body?

We must take more care of our soul than of our body.

When I read the Baltimore Catechism today, I immediately realize how strangely unbiblical it is. In point of fact, none of the Gospel stories presents Jesus as teaching his disciples that their bodies will only last a short time–eighty years tops–but that their spiritual souls would last for an eternity. Moreover, Jesus never understands his teaching mission to be about “saving souls.”[13] Nor does the entire New Testament tell us that our everlasting happiness consists in shedding our mortal bodies at the time of our death such that our souls might be taken up into Heaven in order to live with God and enjoy the Beatific Vision forever and ever.

How I first learned that Jesus never endorsed an immortal soul

 Cullmann gave his Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man in 1955. The thesis of his lecture was that there was no biblical evidence supporting the immortality of human souls, and that this doctrine had nothing in common with the Christian hope in the resurrection of the body.  Fifty years later, the academic and pastoral tide has massively turned in Cullmann’s direction:

The concept of an immaterial soul separate from and surviving the body is common today but according to modern scholars, it was not found in ancient Hebrew beliefs.^[28] The word nephesh never means an immortal soul^[29] or an incorporeal part of the human being^[30] that can survive death of the body as the spirit of the dead.^[31] URL=<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible>

 

In my first year of graduate studies at the Graduate Theological Union; I was required to read Oscar Cullmann’s Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Dead? (1956).[14] I was shocked and dumbfounded by what I discovered. Giving my religious instruction under the guidance of the Ursuline nuns followed by four years learning from the Marianist Brothers at St. Joseph High School, it never entered my mind that Jesus did not believe that every person had an immortal soul that survived the death of the body. After a single reading, however, I realized that Jesus never endorsed the immortality of the soul. Thus, it became clear to me that the Baltimore Catechism that was the pillar of my early Catholic upbringing had been contaminated by dubious unbiblical ideas that originated with Socrates.

I felt betrayed.

The sweet Ursuline nuns who taught me for eight years using the Baltimore Catechism had misled me. They taught me that the Baltimore Catechism[15] had an “imprimatur” that assured readers that everything it contained was in harmony with the Catholic faith. They had assured me that the successor of Peter, the Pope in Rome, was our divinely appointed watchman who faithfully passed on the teachings of Jesus. My Baltimore Catechism assured me that this was the “guarantee of authenticity” that was promised to me as a Roman Catholic.

124 Q. What do you mean by the infallibility of the Church?

A. By the infallibility of the Church I mean that the Church cannot err when it teaches a doctrine of faith or morals.

125 Q. When does the Church teach infallibly?

A. The Church teaches infallibly when it speaks through the Pope and the bishops, united in general council, or through the Pope alone when he proclaims to all the faithful a doctrine of faith or morals.

I remember very clearly that the nuns assured me that, should any pope ever get confused and set his mind upon teaching a false doctrine, God would quickly intervene by paralyzing or even killing him so that he could not proceed. Thus, in my mind, I had imagined that everything found within the Baltimore Catechism was backed up and certified as infallible by the Pope.

I now recognized that I had been misled by my kind and intelligent Ursuline Sisters. I came to realize that God would never step in and paralyze wayward popes. What kind of cruel Father would act in this way? In fact, I had to come to grips with the realization that my Church had endorsed other doctrinal errors[16] as well. For the first time in my life, I lost my smug certainty that papal infallibility was far more important than the biblical infallibility claimed by Protestants.

I also came to realize that I could learn some very important truths from Protestants like Oscar Cullmann. All my life I had relied exclusively upon Catholics teaching Catholic doctrines. The sweet Sisters at Holy Cross Grade School warned me that Protestants could not be trusted to know and to teach what Jesus knew and taught. Hence, I made it my rule of life to exclusively trust only those books and pamphlets that had the “imprimatur.” In our school library, there was a section reserved under lock and key which held books written by Protestants. Only “well-informed” and “true blue” Catholics were able to get permission to read these books.

Now, however, at the Graduate Theological Union[17], I realized that Oscar Cullmann had discovered a very serious flaw in my Catholicism that not even the Pope and all his Jesuit advisors had been able to uncover. I was learning astonishing things I never thought possible.[18]

Within Protestant commentaries on the bible, it was commonplace to find strong affirmations of the “immortal soul.” When I explored the very popular Pulpit Commentary[19], for example, I discovered a strong Socratic interpretation of Luke 23:46.  Here is their judgment:

This commending his spirit [πνεῦμά] to his Father has been accurately termed his entrance greeting to heaven. This placing his spirit as a trust in the Father’s hands is, as Stier phrases it, an expression of the profoundest and most blessed repose after toil. . . .  Doctrinally it is a saying of vast importance; for it emphatically asserts that the soul[20] will exist apart from the body in the hands of God. This at least is its proper home.[21]

Thus, this makes clear that Cullman must have been very unwelcome in very many Protestant churches as well.  At this time Prof. Cullmann was a full professor of theology at the University of Basel and at the Sorbonne in Paris.  He himself acknowledged that “no other publication of mine has provoked such enthusiasm or such violent hostility.”[22]  Given my own personal turmoil at reading Cullmann’s thesis, I completely understood the “violent hostility” that was visited upon him from both Catholic and Protestant circles.

Why Socrates and Jesus were sentenced to death as “troublemakers”

  Socrates was regarded by the civil authorities as a “troublemaker.” He was publicly tried[23] and convicted of having “corrupted the youth of Athens” due to his critical attitude toward the popular religious notions of his day. As punishment, Socrates was required by the court to take his own life by drinking poison hemlock.  Socrates died on 15 February 399 BCE at the age of 70.

Jesus was also regarded by the temple authorities as a “troublemaker.” He, too, trained his disciples to take a critical attitude toward the popular religious notions of his day. He was privately questioned by the Sanhedrin and convicted of having unlawfully disrupted the temple operations.  As punishment, the chief priests handed Jesus over to Pilate as a threat to Roman rule by virtue of his laying claim to be “King of the Jews.” He was crucified by the Romans on the basis of these trumped-up charges.  Jesus died on 3 April 33 CE[24] at the age of 34 (+/- 3 yrs).

But here is where the parallels end. As Plato narrates it, Socrates faced his impending death with the utmost tranquility.[25] Surrounded by his grieving disciples, he encouraged them not to lament his death. Socrates explained to them that the poison hemlock would destroy the life in his body but it would not in any way disturb his immortal soul. Thus, following his death, Socrates anticipated that his soul would ascend into the celestial world where he would have the satisfaction of continuing his search for truth among the deceased philosophers who died before him. In this setting, Socrates assured his disciples that his life mission would continue unabated in a place beyond the reach of the nervous civil authorities of Athens. In fact, Socrates made the bold claimed that, only after death, would the task of discovering the truth become easy and natural because everything would be illuminated by “the light of truth”:

It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have pure [i.e., certain and unchanging] knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body. . . . If while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one or two things follows—either [pure] knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, [pure knowledge can be attained only] after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be parted from the body and exist in herself alone.

In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body, and are not surfeited with the bodily nature [which is unreliable because it is continually changing], but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and hold converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth (Phaedo, 1022).[26]

This is the very doctrine that is secretly being expounded in the Baltimore Catechism:

“The soul cannot have pure [certain and unchangeable] knowledge [of God]” in this life. Only when “the soul will be parted from the body and exist in herself alone” can she have the beatific vision of God. So, we must “keep ourselves pure [free from mortal sins] until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us.” Then and only then can we “hold converse with the pure [the Saints]” and “know of ourselves [in] the clear light everywhere [through the beatific vision].”[27]

Unlike Socrates, Jesus never explains to his disciples that he has an immortal soul that insures his continued existence on the other side of death. Rather, Jesus was rooted in the conviction that God, his Father, was preparing to come to earth (a) to raise the dead[28] to life, (b) to judge the living and the dead, and (c) to gather his elect into his Kingdom on earth. This was the “good news” that Jesus had tirelessly preached to God’s beloved people, the Jews. Jesus wanted to be here on earth when God arrived.

At the Passover that his disciples had celebrated on the night of his arrest, Jesus reassured his disciples saying, “I have longed to celebrate this Passover with you.” Jesus even went so far as to make a vow “that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). This was the holy night when, many years earlier, God heard the cries of his suffering people, and he came down to earth to liberate them from their Egyptian taskmasters. Here again, the dominant narrative is that God comes to us.

 

The faith of Socrates (a troublemaker in Athens, 499-430 BCE)	The faith of Jesus (a troublemaker in Galilee and Jerusalem, 3-33 CE)
Philosophers are truth-seekers now and in the afterlife	Prophets are God-seekers and God-responders.
Here on earth, our immortal souls are handicapped because they are imprisoned in our mortal bodies.	Here on earth, God comes to us, to make covenants with his people, to liberate them, to establish his Kingdom.
Socrates knew that his soul was safe from his persecutors; his body not so.	Jesus knew he was vulnerable, but he trusted in his Father’s time-table.
Socrates faced his impending death with utmost tranquility.	Jesus faced his impending death with terror and sweating blood.
Ultimately, Socrates looked forward to continue his truth-seeking among the dead philosophers in the celestial realm.	Ultimately, God raised Jesus from the dead and brought him to Heaven in order to prepare him for his return to earth.

 

So, as the night wore on and his anxiety grew, he began to pray. Gone is the naïve assurance that his prophetic mission was somehow so essential that his God would shield him from his powerful enemies. Even the inevitability of the coming of God upon the clouds to establish his reign on earth was of little comfort. God would come when God would come. The death of one prophet would not serve to either hurry him up or to slow him down. As the early Evangelists tell it, Jesus was so thoroughly gripped by fear that he actually “sweat blood” while he urgently prayed to his Father that he would rescue him from drinking from the “cup of suffering” that was all-to-quickly overtaking him. “Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:43-44).

Jesus never appeals to his immortal soul to save him

Jesus, unlike Socrates, never tells his disciples that his immortal soul is beyond the reach of his tormentors. Jesus, as he is presented in the Gospels, knew himself to be vulnerable in the face of his enemies.[xxix] Sure, he could have disguised himself and quietly hid himself outside of Jerusalem until the threats posed by the high priests might cool down. Matthew tells the story of how, as an infant, his parents quietly left Bethlehem taking the coastal road to Egypt in order to evade the plot of Herod the Great on his life (Matt 2:12-22). Was there something to be learned from this infancy narrative? Was it sometimes permissible to take flight?  When and how?

Yet, Jesus had chosen to take on the dangerous calling of a prophet; and, no prophet worthy of his calling leaves town with his tail between his legs. How could he expect his disciples to stand fast in the face of danger if he himself was always ready to take the safe road out of town?  Consider the case of modern prophets such as Martin Luther King[xxx], Óscar Romero, Malcolm X, Mahatma Ghandi, J.F.K., and Robert Kennedy–once they began to bring needed changes into society, it was always just a matter of time before they would risk being cut down by lawless and cowardly men.  

Jesus, himself, reflected on the Jewish prophets. He knew that a prophet who was welcomed by everyone was assuredly more of a crowd pleaser rather than an effective social change-agent acting in the name of God.  Here are a few of the reflections on this that show up in Matthew’s Gospel:

• Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven[xxxi], for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matt 5:11-12).

• Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward . . . ; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones [my disciples] in the name of a disciple‑‑truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward (Matt 10:41-42).

• Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house (Matt 13:57).

• When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee” (Matt 21:10-11).

The supreme horror of Roman crucifixions

Modern scholars tell us that the Romans had perfected the craft of crucifixion by way of terrorizing onlookers. Once a trouble-maker was scourged and nailed to wooden beams in a public place, the unfortunate victim was guaranteed to be screaming on an instrument of torture designed to intensify and prolong the suffering and humiliation of its trapped victim.[xxxii] Records show that those being crucified could be made to suffer for a few hours or a few days.

In the case of Jesus, the Romans undoubtedly wanted him to have a quick death because the Sabbath would begin at sundown. In the case of Jewish victims, the family of the deceased would not be able to bury the victim if he died too late in the day. This presented certain problems for the Romans in charge. Thus, the Roman guards were ready to break the legs of those victims whom they wanted to die quickly.[xxxiii] The Synoptic accounts specify that the Romans found that Jesus had already died; hence, it would have been useless to break his legs.

Images of Jesus on the cross routinely depict him as having a loin cloth. The Synoptic Gospels narrate that Jesus was stripped of his clothing. Nothing is said regarding his loin cloth. Historians assure us that Romans stripped their victims of all their clothes thereby adding “forced nudity” to their public humiliation. The victim on the cross was thus forced to puke, piss, and shit in plain sight of everyone. Onlookers were encouraged to jeer and abuse victims verbally. Supporters were forced to watch at a distance but never allowed to relieve the suffering of the naked, bruised, and humiliated victim.

The Renaissance artists sought to capture the ignominy of Jesus being crucified. They wanted “realism” but they had to respect the sensibilities of Italians visiting their art in churches. They didn’t want true believers turning away in disgust. They didn’t want believers to regurgitate their lunches in front of their paintings. They didn’t want weak-spirited women to be passing out. Hence, artists had to “intentionally “reduce the realism” such that a pious onlooker would be “mildly shocked” but not “overcome” by the great price Jesus had to pay to gain for us the forgiveness of our sins. 

The notion of “soul” had a history of development

The meaning of words changes as one moves into different cultural and social contexts.  Living in China, the frailty of words is constantly brought to my attention. 

Just today I saw a sign pointing out the direction to “Dung Chapel.”  By translating one word, “chapel,” and leaving the name of the chapel, “dung,” untranslated, the creators of the signage leave a very unsavory impression. As in happens, “dung” has a variety of meanings in Mandarin.  But, when I learned that this was an Anglican chapel, I then suspected that “Dung” was the name of the donor who donated this chapel to the Anglican Church.  And, sure enough, I was correct.  “Mr. Dung,” a Chinese convert to the Anglican Church, had this chapel built in the 1800s.  His name was honored by naming it “Dung Chapel.”  Hence, my first shock at hearing that a chapel was named as “dung” was entirely misplaced.  A person’s name is never translated and is never offensive.  Hence, it was only by getting the words back into their original cultural background was I able to understand it correctly.

At times visitors to China can find many signs created for tourists to be downright humorous.  In a large park that I visit, for instance, there is a water canal and a large sign at the edge of the canal reads, “Don’t walk on the water!”  Do you suppose that this sign is meant for Jesus when he returns?  Not a chance.

Near my home in Shanghai, there is a sign next to a water fountain that reads, “Don’t paddle in the water.”  I have to presume that the writer meant to say, “Don’t swim in the water.”  In my Chinese-English dictionary, the Mandarin word for “to paddle” is the same as for the word “to swim.”  So, going by the dictionary, the two words are, more or less, equivalent. Even in English, “dog-paddling” is a form of “swimming.”  Nonetheless, a fluent English speaker would always say, “Don’t swim in the water.”  But someone with only a modest mastery of English could hardly be expected to capture the different nuance that separates “to paddle” and “to swim.”  When I speak Mandarin using my limited vocabulary, I’m quite sure that I often say some very silly things, but the Chinese are much too polite to laugh at me.  I prefer that they would laugh so that I might learn to speak correctly, but this isn’t going to happen.  I can’t expect a five-thousand-year-old culture to change so as to help me to speak correctly in Mandarin.

 A better instance took place when I was a young man first visiting Oxford University.  It was Michaelmas Term (known as “Fall Semester” in the USA), and went into the main entrance and admired the perfectly manicured lawns in the quadrangle. I had taken a book along with me that I was reading at the time just in case that I arrived before the main entrance was opened. About ten minutes later, I was checking out the dorms.  I noticed a lift (elevator) and the door opened and I stepped in. There was a student there and we were both going up to the third floor.  He asked me very casually, “What are you reading this term?” I immediately showed him the book I was reading. He showed puzzlement on his face, and I immediately broke out laughing, because I suddenly realized that he was not interested in my book.  At Oxford, one “reads” a course.  He was asking me what courses I was taking.  So, a perfectly good English word, “read,” had thrown us off.  Given my USA background, “what I was reading” was the book that I was carrying.  Given his Oxford background; however, he was asked me “what I was reading [i.e., what courses I was taking]” this term. 

Now here is the kicker.  For nearly three thousand years, “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”) was a perfectly good word in the Greek language. When the Greeks first began to imagine the difference between a living being and a dead being, they decided to use this word to refer to that spiritual entity which imparts life into a dead thing. When “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”) enters into the womb, a dead being starts to live.  When the “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”) leaves the body, then a living being becomes a dead being.  As time passed, the “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”) in plants was seen as quite different from the “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”) in animals; yet, without the soul, there would be no living plants and no living animals.  The same holds true of humans. 

The Greeks never supposed that plants, or animals, or humans lived forever.  Each of them was born in due time and each of them died in due time.  The “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”), on the other hand, was eternal.  Thus, the Greeks give us a doctrine of reincarnation.  This means that while specific plants are born and later die, the plant “soul” (ψυχή “psyche”) continues to give life in generation after generation of plants.  It is the same for animals and humans.  Achilles lived once and died once.  His soul (inhabiting different bodies) showed up generation after generation.[xxxiv]  That means that it was incarnated hundreds of thousands of time before it came to reside in Achilles. After the death of Achilles, his soul gave life to thousands of other persons, generation after generation.  Achilles was dead.  His soul was nothing more than “a shadow in Hades.”  Touch him, and your hand will pass through him. In the Greek circles of thought, the number of souls of each kind was, more or less, a constant.  Thus, in brief, the soul is immortal while the bodies are always being born and dying.  Achilles and everyone else for that matter had only one opportunity to live on Earth, and, at a certain point of time, everyone took up residence in Hades.

Whether the second century churches supported the immortality of the soul

Just as I used Justin Martyr earlier, I want to make use of him again.  Justin is important because he traces how he first became a Stoic and then an avid Platonist.  At the age of 20, due to a single encounter with an “old man walking along the lake,” he completely lost faith[xxxv] in the immortal nature of the human soul.  Those who want to recover the narration of this encounter with the “old man” can easily do so.  For our purposes here, however, it suffices to note that Justin Martyr converted to Christianity only when he had lost faith in the Socratic eternal soul. 

Most Christians today, by way of contrast, are holding tightly to the reality of the “natural immortality” of the soul.  They have persuaded themselves that God himself needs immortal souls to keep alive the “human identity” of those who are waiting to be raised from the dead on the last day.  But this is a wish-driven fantasy.[xxxvi] 

In the second and following centuries, the outreach mission of the Jesus Movement was greatly facilitated by harmonizing the Gospel message with many of the tenants of Socratic philosophy that circulated within Greco-Roman culture at that time. In the gentile world, Socrates [Middle Platonism] was widely admired; hence, the credibility of the Jesus Movement had much to gain by acknowledging their indebtedness to Socrates.

This situation no longer prevails today:

• Modern believers do not feel indebted to Socrates. Rather, if they believe they have an immortal soul, this is due to their religious formation or due to Near Death Experiences or due to apparitions of the Saints.  I have yet to meet a Catholic who tells me that Socrates led him/her to Jesus.
• Even dedicated Socratic philosophers teaching in institutions of higher learning are aware that the so-called “proofs of the immortal soul” are entirely unconvincing. One must also acknowledge that the norms for such a “proof” is much higher today than what was expected during the lifetime of Socrates.
• Those unfortunate persons who experience a brain trauma or who are suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease67 lose their personal histories and sense of self as the disease progresses. Thus, the soul (if there were one) cannot be relied upon to prevent irreversible memory/identity loss as is commonly supposed.
• Socrates was, as I have tried to show, sadly misguided when he persuaded our forebearers that our exalted destiny[xxxvii] was to leave our material bodies behind as our spiritual souls seek to be absorbed for all time by the majestic vision of God in Heaven. In so doing, the eschatological Jewish hope of Jesus has been subverted by Socrates.  Jesus preached that “The kingdom of God/Heaven68 has come near” (Mark 1:15 and par.) to us here on Earth while Socrates teaches his disciples that only his death will free his soul from bondage to the flesh.

Does Socrates condemn us to an eternity of solitary confinement?

Even if Socrates were successful in demonstrating that every human has a soul, there was still grave uncertainty as to whether disembodied souls would be able to communicate with each other after death. On earth, we communicate with each other exclusively due to our body’s ability to touch, to see, to hear, to write, and to speak. Take away our ability to touch, to see, to hear, to speak, to feel, and one arrives at a state of complete and total isolation:

Moreover, apart from the question of immortality or otherwise, there is the further question whether the soul, if it does have some form of existence after the person has died, “still possesses some power and wisdom” (Phaedo, 70b; cf. 76c). Answering both questions, Socrates says not only that the soul is immortal, but also that it contemplates truths after its separation from the body at the time of death. Needless to say, none of the four main lines of argument that Socrates avails himself of succeeds (a) in establishing the immortality of the soul, or (b) in demonstrating that disembodied souls enjoy lives of thought and intelligence [during those periods when they live independent of human bodies after death].[xxxviii]

Socrates presupposed that he would be able communicate with the souls of other dead philosophers after his death. Judging from our current situation, however, souls after death would be doomed to exist in complete and total isolation.[xxxix] At best, one might expect some fleeting dreams. Even after receiving a dream, however, one could never have any way to communicate the content of a dream to anyone else. And, since we cannot transmit our dreams soul to soul on earth, it remains extremely unlikely that we will be able to do so in the afterlife.

Can the living contact the dead?  Can the dead contact the living?  Can the dead contact the dead?  No, no, and no.

Why the unbiblical “immortal soul” has such a tenacious hold on Catholics

D.P. Barish caught my attention when he wrote this:

Few ideas are as unsupported, ridiculous and even downright harmful as that of the ‘human soul’. And yet, few ideas are as widespread and as deeply held. What gives? Why has such a bad idea had such a tenacious hold on so many people?

After reading nearly fifty articles dealing this this topic, I discovered that S.B. Marrow, S.J., presented the best response to Barish’s urgent question by first exploring how the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures speak about death. Here is what he concludes:

Death [in the Bible] is never partial, but total.  Between being dead and being alive, no other possibility exists. . . .  Because death is such an absolute, every generation in every age seems to have attempted to devise some means of escape[xl] from its unseemly finality, [and] to find a solution to Ps 89:48, “What can live and never see death? Who can escape the power of Sheol [Hades]?”[xli]

What Marrow[xlii] points out is that the Christian Scriptures were written with a firm adherence to the experiential certainty of death; but then, there emerged a hope in the resurrection of the dead.  But by the beginning of the second century, Hellenized converts were already accustomed to escape the certainty of death by virtue of accepting the teachings of Socrates that were held in high esteem.  The writers of the Gospels knew that “between being dead and being alive, no other possibility exists.”  But, the genius of Socrates taught a “middle way”—at death, the body rots in the pit but the soul lives on in full vitality.  In the Phaedo, Socrates tells his disciples, “All who have duly purified themselves by philosophy live henceforth altogether without [any dependence upon their] bodies, and [after death they] pass to still more beautiful abodes” (Phaedo 114c).

Accordingly, Marrow notes that the Hellenized converts partially removed the “scandal” of the “resurrection of the dead,” by explaining that it was only the “resurrection of the body.”  The immortal soul protected the intelligence, the memories, and the personal identity alive and well.  God had only to “resurrect the body” and, in the twinkling of an eye, the immortal soul would spontaneously reseat itself into the newly created body.  Socrates thought of the soul as immaterial and immortal (just like the gods); hence, the “middle way” removed the insurmountable task of creating a soul.  Socrates, you may recall, believed that souls were eternal.  When someone died, their soul was passed through the bath of forgetfulness and then reinserted into a new embryonic body.  This is the logic of reincarnation.  Hellenized converts attached to Socrates thus found it very plausible that the soul of a Christian would be asleep until such time that the archangels sounded their trumpets and all the sleeping souls would be taken from their sleep and reincarnated as part of the collective resurrection of the dead.  In this way, Marrow notes that, with the passage of time, “the immortality of the soul” gradually became “an unalterable part of the Christian’s worldview, an indispensable presupposition for reading the gospel.”[xliii]

It wasn’t until the works of Aristotle were acquired from Islamic scholars and translated into Latin during the 15^th century that the trouble began.  Aristotle, a disciple of Socrates, rejected the notion of the eternal soul.  For Aristotle, the soul was the form of the body; hence, when a person died, both the matter and the form died.  At the Fifth Lateran Council at the end of 1513, Pope Leo X solemnly condemned and reproved “all those who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal . . . , or those who raise doubts in this matter.”  Accordingly, Rev. S.B. Marrow, S.J., and Prof. Aaron Milavec are on notice for, quite clearly, we have “raised doubts in this matter.”

So, what needs to be done?  Many, of course, would affirm that this is serious matter, that an ecumenical council has solemnly declared an infallible teaching, and that faithful Catholics have no choice but to humbly renounce our heresies and to realign ourselves with the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. 

But no, this is not the way forward.  What Marrow and I have come up against is a stubborn mistake that has deep roots within the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.  This is a mistake that has deep roots comparable to the (a) condemnation of all Jews for the death of Jesus Christ and (b) the notion that God has firmly renounced his loving covenant with Israel and has transferred his abiding love to the Gentiles who have embraced the Gospel due to their love for Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  This is a mistake that has deep roots comparable with the tenants of the vicarious atonement theories to explain the “divine necessity” for the crucifixion of Jesus.

Anyone who would choose to love Jews and anyone who would cherish the “light” given to the Gentiles cannot back down “in the name of blind obedience.”  Rather, in the name of Jesus, one has to carefully expose the Socratic undergarments that Jesus has been forced to wear for over eighteen hundred years.  Otherwise, one is forced to promote a social condition within the Church where “the blind are leading the blind.”

The propositions affirmed by the Jesuit S.B. Marrow

Here then are the propositions that Marrow puts forward by way or returning to Jesus:

#1 The NT neither teaches nor, in and of itself, presupposes that the immortality of the soul is an exegetically verifiable fact[xliv].

#2 Authority, even the most sacred, cannot unmake a given fact. [One cannot settle this issue by reaffirming a solemn decree.  Rather one has to start a fresh examination as to whether Jesus taught the “immortality of the soul.”]

#3 The immortal soul—corruptible body dichotomy misunderstands death and, therefore, is unable to understand life rightly.  It cannot but reduce the resurrection of the body to an ornamental increment to a life that is already there.[xlv]  [As such, the immortal soul distorts the teaching of Jesus and misguides the faithful in this matter.]

#4 By the resurrection of the dead [as distinct from the “resurrection of the body” in the Apostles Creed] the NT understands the resurrection of identifiably the same individual who died—body, soul, [memories,] and spirit.

#5 Eternal life is difficult to conceive as an absolute gift [of God] in Christ Jesus. [It cannot be a natural endowment available to everyone, nor can it be, strictly speaking, earned by our merits (cf. Rom 3:28).

How one Christian denomination defused the immortal soul and life with God in Heaven

Marrow says that before one studies the texts, one has to get reconnected to the experience of death.  I did this earlier.  Now I have found one of those rare denominations that actually “taught the faithful” that death has a natural finality (that was subverted by our ancestors who mistakenly got attached to the Greek notion of “soul”).

What is the soul?

The word “soul” in the Bible is a translation of the Hebrew word neʹphesh and the Greek word psy·kheʹ. The Hebrew word literally means “a creature that breathes,” and the Greek word means “a living being.”  The soul, then, is the entire creature, not something inside that survives the death of the body.

In the Garden of Eden, our Creator told Adam and Eve where they would go upon their death – nowhere! No heaven and no hellfire. They would simply go back to dust. This is the outcome for all humans at death.

• In the sweat of your face, you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:19 KJV).
• For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they no longer have any share in what is done under the sun (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6).
• Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
• For there is an outcome for humans and an outcome for animals; they all have the same outcome. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit. So, man has no superiority over animals, for everything is futile (Ecclesiastes 3:19).

All are going to the same place. They all come from the dust, and they all are returning to the dust.  The Bible is clear about the condition of the dead. There is no power, wisdom, emotions, or thought that continues at death.

• You [God] make mortal man return to dust; You say: “Return, you sons of men” (Psalm 90:3).
• As for mortal man, his days are like those of grass; He blooms like a blossom of the field (Psalm 103:15).
• Therefore, do not let sin continue to rule as king in your mortal bodies so that you should obey their desires (Romans 6:12).

Therefore, because humans are mortal we rely on Jesus for a future resurrection. Through the power given to him (as he demonstrated on Earth) humans can be resurrected and will be resurrected in the future. But not by our own power.[xlvi]  [And certainly not by relying upon our fictitious souls.]

Christian denominations that believe in an immortal soul get this teaching, not from the Bible, but from ancient Greek philosophy. The Encyclopædia Britannica says: “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.”

Observe, Judge, and Act

Q1. Up until this point of time, the message given to you by loving parents and by your religion teachers is that “everyone has an immortal soul.” This message has been repeated so often and has been enforced by loving teachers to the point that “there can be no doubting that this is exactly the greatest gift that God offers us.”  Think back to the moment in your life to when you felt absolutely certain that God made you with an immortal soul?  What feeling tones did this leave you with?

Q2. Think back to the moment in your life to when this was not a joy and salvation but a doubt and a burden.  Describe one of these moments.  What feeling tones did this doubt and burden leave you with?

Q3. In Ch3 of this religious autobiography, Aaron has explained how, during his first year of graduate studies at the Graduate Theological Union, he was required to read Oscar Cullmann’s Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Dead? (1956).[xlvii] He was shocked and dumbfounded by what he discovered. Giving his religious instruction using the Baltimore Catechism under the guidance of the Ursuline nuns it never entered his mind that Jesus did not believe that every person had an immortal soul that survived the death of the body. After a single reading, however, he sadly realized that Jesus never endorsed the immortality of the soul as explained in Q2 to Q7. Thus, it became clear to him that the Baltimore Catechism that was the pillar of my early Catholic upbringing had been contaminated by dubious unbiblical ideas that originated with Socrates.

Do you share Aaron’s disappointment that the Baltimore Catechism had been contaminated by dubious unbiblical ideas that originated with Socrates?  How so?  Did Aaron rightly discover, thanks to Oscar Cullmann, that the Pope made a tragic mistake when it came to endorsing the immortal soul?

Q4.  No one can change her mind without first of all having slept on the evidence.  The process of deep sleep allows one to forget the non-essentials that are cluttering your mind and feelings.  Therefore, I urge you not to commit yourself until you sleep on it for a few nights.  Where has your mind and heart settled after three days?

Q5.  After a week, open your heart and mind to a trusted and informed guide who is willing to hear the depths of your soul.  Share your whole process of finding flaws in your original position.  How and why have you undertaken to study this issue more deeply.  What new evidence has jumped out at you and how has it changed you?  Give yourself forty days to test drive the position of Oscar Cullmann.

Q6. In the Garden of Eden, our Creator told Adam and Eve where they would go upon their death – nowhere! No heaven and no hellfire. They would simply go “back to dust” (Gen 3:19). This is the outcome for all humans and all animals at death.  They stop breathing.  They go back to being as they were prior to their birth.  Nothing more.  Is this a pleasant thought?  Is this a scary thought?

Q7. Jesus really died but then God brought him back to life.  He appeared to his disciples.  He ate with them. They touched him.  Never did any of his disciples ask him what it was like being in Hades for three days.[xlviii]  Why didn’t this question come up?

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Endnotes

[1] James Tabor, in his book, What the Bible says about Death, Afterlife, and the Future, expresses the intent of Gen 1-3 as follows:

The ancient Hebrews had no idea of an immortal soul living a full and vital life beyond death, nor of any resurrection or return from death. Human beings, like the beasts of the field, are made of “dust of the earth,” and at death they return to that dust (Gen. 2:7; 3:19). The Hebrew word nephesh, traditionally translated “living soul” but more properly understood as “living creature,” is the same word used for all breathing creatures and refers to nothing immortal. URL=https://jewishromanworldjesus.com/ and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible>

[2] Brueggemann received an honorary doctorate from the Jesuit School of Theology in 1965. His work often focuses on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argues that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism.

[3] W. Brueggemann (1994), 102.

[4] My early religion teachers had taught me that the result of the eating was (a) that Adam and Eve disobeyed God, (b) that sin had entered Paradise, and (c) that our first parents and all their future children were doomed to die.  No one had told me that (a) Adam and Eve were young children and (b) that their wise Father had planted a tree in the center of the garden that would give his children super-powers—the ability to discern good and evil for themselves.  Up to this point, God had to tell them what to do and what not to do.  When they arrived at a point of maturity, God had intended to introduce his children to eat of the tree and to gain super-powers that would give them the power to discern for themselves what is good and what is evil.  This is a wonderful gift!  And our Father is a wonderful father in preparing this gift for his children. Every child wants to become like their parents.  Now, this desire is fulfilled.  Unhappily, however, Eve learns of the super-powers from the spirit-guide—the serpent. She touches the fruit.  Nothing happens.  Adam had added that bit about “not touching” the fruit.  He was clearly mistaken.  So, having gained a curiosity that was not yet developed in her brother, she went ahead and ate of the fruit.  Yowzer!  “Her eyes were opened!”  For more details on this, see Milavec (2016a) 1-15.

[5] The second chapter of Milavec (2016a) spells out how Tertullian took the Greek myth of Pandora Box and projected it as the background text for interpreting the betrayal of Eve in Gen 2-3. This presented a terrible disservice to all women since, by implication, they were all taught that they had inherited the same treachery and gullibility that was manifest by Eve (1 Tim 2:13-14, 1 Cor 11:8). They were “tools of the devil” and “betrayers of God,” hence, entirely unreliable to serve as teachers within the Jesus movement.

[6] When one examines the New Jerusalem that God sends down from heaven, one notices that the tree of life shows up. Thus, the first book and the last book of the bible are linked. The “tree of life” in Rev 2:7, 22:2, and 22:19; however, is much different from the “tree of life” in Genesis.

[7] Bouteneff draws attention to the fact that Augustine was entirely dependent upon the Latin Vulgate which, in the case of Rom 5:12, was mistranslated from the Greek. To this I would add that Augustine was acutely aware that many converts had delayed their baptism in order to wisely use the “complete pardon of all their sins” that would come with the rite of baptism. By promoting the literal transmission of “original sin,” Augustine was expecting to solve the pastoral problem posed by delayed baptism. Hence, he felt no qualms when he told mothers that, should their children die without baptism, they would spend an eternity with the damned. He could has said that, “due to the desire of their parents to have their child baptized,” they would enter into Heaven due to their “baptism of desire.” But no. He accutely knew that he had delayed his own baptism and that his mother Monica had wept bitter tears when he repeatedly refused to complete his adult catechumenate. So, Augustine terrorized mothers who wanted their children baptized a.s.a.p. This strategy eventually killed the catechumenate. A few years back, when the CDF had an opportunity to disassociate the Church from Augustine’s ill-conceived move toward infant baptism, they failed to find the courage to do so. They settled the issue by giving terrorized mothers the lame assurance that the Lord is merciful.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in China discontinued infant baptism in 1984. When I asked them why, they told me, “Given the climate in the public schools here in China, no parent could any longer give any assurance that their children would embrace their faith.” Buddhism and Confusianism has a long and compelling association within Chinese culture. The Chinese don’t even think of Buddhism and Confusianism as “religion.” On the other hand, Christianity (in all its forms) is spoken of as “a religion” that is vaguely associated with the Opium Wars. Accordingly, new churches have to obtain permission of the government in order to establish themselves. Even when they have government approval, they are prohibited from advertising themselves and using public media to make converts. The same thing holds true for “militant atheists” in the Chinese Communist Party; they are forbidden to publicly promote “atheism” or to discriminate against those who are “not atheists.” Both “militant atheists” and “militant Catholics” are thus free to practice their rites in private; in public, they are forbidden to advertise and to promote their way of thinking.

[8] In the medieval period, scholars such as Thomas Aquinas speculated that, if Eve alone had transgressed, then the grace of Adam would have been transmitted to all his children. The subtext here, of course, is that fathers alone rule and decide the futures of their children. Mothers are of no consequence. This is not the prevailing notion of the Book of Genesis. Women, in Genesis, are key actors and, in instances where the men fail, the women step forward and do what is just. A glaring case of this is the interaction of the patriarch Judah and Tamar. When the damning evidence is brought forward, “Judah acknowledged before all present that “She is more in the right than I.” (Gen 38:26). In like fashion, I am pleased to say that Bouteneff gives ample testimony that he is aware that female scholars are reading his work. Consequently, when tracing the heavy burden of guilt that are often placed on women due to our reading of Gen 3, Bouteneff presents a strong counter-example in Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople, who was convinced to convert to Christianity by his wife Nonna in 325.:

Gregory of Nazianzus is emphatic that Eve (and with her, the rest of womankind) is not the root of sin or evil. Immediately after a passage that decries the sexist character of the legal system of his day, he goes on to chide his male listeners [in the Church] for their own moral double standards, wherein chastity is expected of women and not men (531).

[9] P.C. Bouteneff (2019), 526.

[10] Even when Jesus was in Hades for three days after his own death on the cross, Jesus had “nothing” to report regarding his condition in the afterlife.  He seemingly did not think his disciples wanted to know how his soul went to work by preaching his prophetic message to those confined in Hades. In the second century, however, this will change. Jesus will witness his extraordinary success in liberating souls from Hades. Later we will hear of these reports in detail.

[11] In fact, there is one instance in which the spirit of King Saul was consulted.

[12] This does not mean that there are a few instances in the late books of the bible wherein a “soul” was understood to offer a diminished existence after death:

The concept of an immaterial and immortal soul – distinct from the body – did not appear in Judaism before the Babylonian exile,[1] but developed as a result of interaction with Persian and Hellenistic philosophies.[2] Accordingly, the Hebrew word נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎, nephesh, although translated as “soul” in some older English-language Bibles, actually has a meaning closer to “living being”.

[13] There are a few places where some English translations of the Greek speak about “losing your soul.” Mark 8:36 comes to mind. Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his own soul [καὶ ζημιωθῆναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ]?” This comes in the context of Jesus talking about the cost of following him. The way of Jesus can be a dangerous undertaking—you could get crucified (Mk 8:34). If you don’t follow him, on the other hand, you could get filthy rich (“gain the whole world”) but, alas, you would at the same time “lose your soul” in the process.

In Socratic circles, it was common to hear Socrates urging his disciples “to save their souls” and “to give preference to protecting their souls.” Such admonitions within Socratic circles served to affirm the importance of living an examined life and freeing oneself from the false opinions of the multitudes. The Baltimore Catechism talks about “saving one’s soul” in the sense of “saving one’s soul from eternal hellfire.” When carefully examined, the Baltimore Catechism uses its metaphors to convey an idiosyncratic meaning that is far removed from what one finds in the Socratic dialogues and in Mark 8:36. Moreover, the Socratic use of these metaphors provides no help when it comes time to interpret Mark 8:36.

Think of the metaphor, “Be wise as serpents” (Matt 10:16). Since we live in a society which does not associate “serpents” with “wisdom,” we are at a loss for what this might mean. Does the wisdom of snakes lie in their powers to blend in with their environment but, when cornered, they strike like lightning? Does their wisdom lie in their powers to remain vigilant even though they eat sparingly? Does their wisdom lie in their ability to regain their youth by sloughing off their skins? Socrates and the Baltimore Catechism are of no use in helping us decide. The snake in the Chinese Zodiac symbolizes “the most mysterious and also the wisest [personality]. They don’t allow others to know much about them, and they usually keep things to themselves.” Thus, Chinese Christians might be prone to think they have a ready-made interpretation of Mark 8:36; yet, in their wisdom, they might not want to imagine that Jesus used a metaphor when communicating with Jews that was imported from China. The same caution applies to American Christians who would be tempted to interpret “losing your soul” based on their reading of the Socratic-inspired Baltimore Catechism.

[14] Cullmann gave his Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man in 1955. The thesis of his lecture was that there was no biblical evidence supporting the immortality of human souls, and that this doctrine had nothing in common with the Christian hope in the resurrection of the body.  Fifty years later, the academic and pastoral tide has massively turned in Cullmann’s direction:

The concept of an immaterial soul separate from and surviving the body is common today but according to modern scholars, it was not found in ancient Hebrew beliefs.^[28] The word nephesh never means an immortal soul^[29] or an incorporeal part of the human being^[30] that can survive death of the body as the spirit of the dead.^[31] URL=<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible>

[15] McGuire, ed. (1942).  Since its 1885 debut, the Baltimore Catechism commissioned by the Third Council of Bishops in Baltimore has instructed generations of Catholic faithful.  The Ursuline Sisters gave me the Baltimore Catechism No.2, an edition that had questions for study at the end of each chapter and some simple illustrations.  A catechism is a summary of the principles of Christian religion and articles of the faith. The Baltimore Catechism specifically was the de facto standard Catholic school text in the United States from 1885 to the late 1960s.  For a free download, go to URL = <  https://archive.org/details/baltimorecatechi14552gut>

[16] Milavec (2007) 1-22 and Milavec (2020).

[17] The Graduate Theological Union was founded in 1965. The GTU was dedicated to the idea that seminarians should not be isolated during their years of formation. Hence, eight different seminaries joined together their faculties and students in an ecumenical search for fraternity and for truth-seeking by opening their courses to those of different denominations. Three of the seminaries were Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit. In addition, graduate level courses were provided to advanced students. “The doctoral curriculum builds on the ecumenical, interreligious, and interdisciplinary strengths of the GTU, and offers enhanced opportunities for both specialization and cross-disciplinary study. The GTU’s doctoral program utilizes the depth of faculty expertise made possible by its eight member schools and more than a dozen academic centers and affiliates” (URL=<https://www.gtu.edu/academics/doctoral-program>).

[18] Cullmann acknowledged many years later that “no other publication of mine has provoked such enthusiasm or such violent hostility.” Given my own personal turmoil when I first read Cullmann’s thesis in 1969, I completely understand the “violent hostility” that was visited upon him. Source URL=<https://www.religion-online.org/book/immortality-of-the-soul-or-resurrection-of-the-dead/>.

[19] The Pulpit Commentary is a homiletic commentary on the Bible created during the nineteenth century under the direction of Rev. Joseph S. Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones. It consists of 23 volumes with 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries, and was written over a 30-year period with 100 contributors. 

[20] This is sloppy textual analysis.  The term πνεῦμά in Greek signifies breath, wind, or spirit.  It does not signify “soul” as the author implies.  In fact, the author wants us to believe that Luke 23:46 “emphatically asserts that the soul will exist apart from the body”—a thing that it cannot do since the proper term for “soul” is not found here.  

[21] These same sentiments are offered in Gill’s Commentary on the Entire Bible: “This shows, that his spirit, or soul, belonged to God, the Father of spirits, and now returned to him that gave it; that it was immortal, and died not with the body, and was capable of existing in a separate state from it, and went immediately to heaven; all which is true of the souls of all believers in Christ” (https://biblehub.com/commentaries/luke/23-46.htm).  Here again, the sloppy textual analysis continues, for Gill claims that Luke 23:46 implies that the “soul of Christ” went immediately “to heaven.”  Gill completely forgets that, according to the Apostles’ Creed, the soul of Christ immediately descends into Hades for three days.  Furthermore, if Gill had done his homework, he would have discovered that, during the second and third centuries, the souls of both Christians and pagans also descended into Hades after death.  This illustrates that even Protestant biblical commentaries are content to interpret a key text in the way that their mentors and peers have done so.  Gill has no grasp that the original meaning of the text in the first century is beyond his grasp and, sad to say, beyond his interest as well.  See the instructive exchange between pastors and scholars on the significance of the “descent into Hades” texts of the second and third centuries—URL=https://www.academia.edu/s/b56e1b238f

[22] Source URL = <https://www.religion-online.org/book/immortality-of-the-soul-or-resurrection-of-the-dead/>.

[23] Here is a reconstruction of the events from the sources:

On a day in 399 BC the philosopher Socrates stood before a jury of 500 of his fellow Athenians accused of “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state” and of “corrupting the youth.” If found guilty; his penalty could be death. The trial took place in the heart of the city, the jurors seated on wooden benches surrounded by a crowd of spectators. Socrates’ accusers (three Athenian citizens) were allotted three hours to present their case, after which, the philosopher would have three hours to defend himself. . . .

After hearing the arguments of both Socrates and his accusers, the jury was asked to vote on his guilt. Under Athenian law the jurors did not deliberate the point. Instead, each juror registered his judgment by placing a small disk into an urn marked either “guilty” or “not guilty.” Socrates was found guilty by a vote of 280 to 220.

The jurors were next asked to determine Socrates’ penalty. His accusers argued for the death penalty. Socrates was given the opportunity to suggest his own punishment and could probably have avoided death by recommending exile. Instead, the philosopher initially offered the sarcastic recommendation that he be rewarded for his actions. When pressed for a realistic punishment, he proposed that he be fined a modest sum of money. Faced with the two choices, the jury selected death for Socrates.

The philosopher was taken to the near-by jail where his sentence would be carried out. Athenian law prescribed death by drinking a cup of poison hemlock. Socrates would be his own executioner.
[“The Suicide of Socrates, 399 BC,” EyeWitness to History, URL=<http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com> (2003).]

[24] Determining this from the known sources is no easy task.  Jimmy Akin, a convert to Catholicism, shows how it was done: URL=https://www.ncregister.com/blog/7-clues-tell-us-precisely-when-jesus-died-the-year-month-day-and-hour-revealed.  Andreas Kostenberger, a Baptist scholar, shows how he came to the same date working independently: URL=https://cbs.mbts.edu/2020/04/08/april-3-ad-33-why-we-believe-we-can-know-the-exact-date-jesus-died/.  H. Bond provides a much more exhaustive research into how “the dating of an event” is made to serve psychological and liturgical purposes.  See H. Bond (203) 461-475.

[25] One must allow that crucifixion is designed to bring death with as much pain (physical and psychological) as possible. Drinking Hemlock is a milder method of inducing death in a short time. According to the Cleveland Clinic:

Hemlock poisoning can occur after ingesting even small amounts of poison hemlock. The plant contains several toxic compounds called alkaloids. These alkaloids slowly poison your neuromuscular junctions, which send messages from your nerves to your muscle fibers. This poisoning can cause your breathing muscles to fail. When your breathing muscles fail, you can go into respiratory failure and die. (URL=<https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24122-poison-hemlock>)

[26] Talbott (2021).

[27] This is my own melding of Catholic and Socratic ideas and doctrines.  This creative exercise was to show how, with the passage of time, it was impossible to disassemble the roots of the synthesis proposed.

[28] “Raising the dead” is very different from “reuniting the immortal soul to a new body.”  The latter is a variation on the transmigration of souls.

[29] In the Gospels of Matthew and John, this vulnerability is sometimes denied. See Matt 26:52-53 and John

[xxx] From my study of the life of Martin Luther King [abbr: MLK], I remember reading that the freedom marches had to face hecklers, rock throwers, and mad dogs. The inner circle surrounding MLK pleaded with him to let others do the freedom marches: “You’re too important for the movement to risk losing you due to some random act of violence.” MLK rebuked his disciples saying, “How can I expect others to do what I am unwilling to do myself?”

In the weeks before MLK was shot down by a sniper, it has been reported that MLK told his disciples that he had a premonition that “the time was short” before someone would try to destroy the movement by silencing his voice. If this is true, then MLK was doing exactly what Jesus is said to have done when he predicted his violent death on the road to Jerusalem.

Many Christians want to insist that Jesus, the Son of God, knew, for a fact, when and how he would die. But this is a fatal error. Not even God knows the future in full detail. God knows what has happened and what is happening. The future, however, does not yet exist. Thus, even God has to wait and see what will be. If one reads the Summa Theologica carefully, one can notice how carefully Thomas Aquinas protects the human knowing limitations of Jesus. Christians sometimes think that they are honoring Jesus by declaring that he, at every moment, knows exactly what his disciples and his enemies will do and say in the future. But this is absurd because this would turn Jesus into an automaton that mechanically repeats the lines that he knows he must say because they are already, in his mind, known to him in full detail. This is a form of the heresy of Docetism. Jesus only appears to be human. His divine foreknowledge destroys completely his ability to live within the divinely predetermined limitations of the human condition. 

[xxxi] This text is sometimes used to tell Christians that they have to show up in Heaven to collect their reward. Upon examining the text, this is not so.  Note that Jesus does not say, “Your reward will be in heaven.”  Rather, “your reward” is now in heaven with God.  You don’t have to go there to collect it.  Rather, God is coming to us in the end times and he will be bringing your reward.

[xxxii] The Roman orator Quintillion (circa 35-90 C.E.) observed that, “whenever we crucify the guilty, the most crowded roads are chosen, where most people can see and be moved by this fear. For penalties relate not so much to retribution as to their exemplary effect [in evoking terror]” (Declamationes 274).

[xxxiii] Scholars have shown that the details of the crucifixion were known to those who narrated the Gospels. Once the legs were broken, the victim would not be able to raise his body up so that he could continue breathing. Unable to breath, the victim suffocated in two or three minutes. Breaking the legs, therefore, was not done primarily to cause further suffering. It was done to bring on a quick death so that the Roman soldiers could give the body to his family for burial and then they could go home.

[xxxiv] For the fine details of how, even at its best, one only gets to live one lifetime, see Nightingale, Andrea, “The Mortal Soul and Immortal Happiness,” in The Cambridge Critical Guide to Plato’s Symposium, edd. Pierre Destree and Zina Giannopoulou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017), pp. 142-159. URL=< https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/platos-symposium/mortal-soul-and-immortal-happiness/3E2C03A74ED6BC5381D1A20F919A78F1>

[xxxv] As my mentor, Michael Polanyi, always reminded me, “Every faith works in the eyes of the believer.”  Justin, accordingly, went through the intellectual and emotional turmoil of a profound “philosophical-religious conversion.”  The walk along the lake undoubtedly broke the confidence that Justin had regarding the immortality of the soul.  Within the Socratic system of thinking, there was no beginning and no end to the life of the soul.  Nor was there any occasion for additional souls to be created.  Thus, with each new generation, souls from the previous generation had to be immersed in the bath of forgetfulness and to reincarnate as “new” births.  Thus, the immortality of the soul was an absolute necessity in such a system; yet, no single individual could lay claim to the permanent use of a single soul. But, once an active God was introduced into this closed system, new souls could be created as needed (by the Logos). Every life form that has a beginning must necessarily anticipate its end.  Thus, the “old man” persuaded Justin of this:

Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live. Thus, then, it will not even partake [of life] when God does not will it to live. For to live is not its attribute, as it is God’s; but as a man does not live always, and the soul is not for ever conjoined with the body, since, whenever this harmony must be broken up, the soul leaves the body, and the human being exists no longer . . . (Dial. 6).

[xxxvi] The Saints and the theologians of the middle ages all believed that the resurrection of the dead would have fantastic effects on our bodies as well.  Father Paul A. Duffner, O.P., a devoted Thomist, summarizes some of these fantastic effects as follows:

The risen body will no longer be subject to constant change, e.g. of growth or aging, as in this life. All nutritive functions will cease, because in that state they will no longer have need of them. The body will no longer need food, or drink, or sleep to sustain life and strength as in the present life. It is true that Jesus in his glorified body ate fish in the presence of the apostles, but he did this to show that he had bodily risen from the dead, and not because he had need of it. [Vol 43, No 1, Jan.-Feb. 1990] URL=<https://rosary-center.org/ll43n1.htm>

I have yet to find a single Thomist who would object to this superficial line of reasoning. Duffner imagines that Jesus’ eating was just a matter of demonstrating that he was a living, human being and not a ghost. But, are we to understand that Jesus did not taste the fish, did not smell the roasted skin in the fire, and, even if the fish were rotten, the poisons in the flesh of the fish would not have adversely affected his body in any way?

What can Fr. Duffner say about the words of Jesus when he healed the servant of a Centurion (Matt 8:5-13).  To the Jews following him, he said, “In no one in Israel have I found such faith” (Matt 8:10).  Furthermore, Jesus continues saying, “I tell you, many [like this gentile] will come from east and west and will eat [anaklithēsontai is used here signifying a banquet where guests recline] with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 8:11, also Luke 13:29).  Clearly Jesus is describing how, in the world to come, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will be raised to life in Jerusalem where they will banquet with the holy ones of Israel.  Then Gentiles like this Centurion will join the fellowship of this banquet.  Clearly Thomas Aquinas and Fr. Duffner have made no provisions for telling Jesus that he is sadly mistaken since, after the resurrection, feasting at table would no longer be possible or necessary.

Thomas and Duffner, needless to say, never explored why Jesus has so many instances in which eating (nay, even feasting) take place in the world to come.  If one wants to encounter the faith of Jesus, care must be taken to notice that, in the Didache community, the Eucharist is clearly the assembly point where the chosen will be gathered from the four winds into the community of those who are blessed and sanctified.

Thomas and Duffner provide another instance of “fantastic effects” here:

Some persons die in infancy, some in middle age, some in old age. At what stage of development will they be at the resurrection of the dead? Theologians are of the opinion that, regardless of bodily condition or stage of growth at the time of death, all will be brought back at the stage of perfect development, at the prime of life, a condition that will remain for all eternity. Too, the body will be without any defects it had in this life. The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will walk, the deformed or retarded will no longer be so.        

This does grave injury to our human interactions in the world to come:

#1 A father cannot any longer easily recognize his son—he died at the age of 4 and now, in the twinkling of an eye, he is 24.  A daughter cannot recognize her grandmother—she died at 87 and, among the resurrected, she is 27.  All inter-generational relationships would be fractured.  A specialist in glazing pottery or in meditative practice would seemingly have to lose some of their skills as ten to thirty years were scraped off from their chronological age.  Terms such as grandmother, father, and daughter would become useless when inter-generational coaching and production comes to a halt.

#2 Of what use is having perfect health if the art and the sciences of healing are, due to the “miraculous” and all-pervasive “blessing” of perfect health, rendered useless and unnecessary.  Of what use are perfectly tones muscles if there is no longer competitive athletic games and no need for perfecting advanced forms of agriculture and horticulture.  If one is not improving on a skill (such as football, dance, pottery production), then that skill is gradually being lost to the performers and, with time, lost entirely to the society at large. 

#3 There is no benefit of prolonging life if the quality of that life becomes increasing flat, dull, and repetitious.  The assurance of eternal life may serve those who are creatively producing stage plays and various forms of interpretative dancing.  For so many, however, the prospect of eternal life will quickly evolve into a dangerous monotony wherein one spends ten hours each day watching recorded movies or replaying 3d football games.  No one depends upon what I choose to do or what I choose not to do.  There is no need for risk, for invention, for collaboration—not for bridge-builders, not for genetic decoders, not for astronauts, not for dance instructors, not for oceanographers.  Mental, emotional, and cathartic death necessarily follow as night follows the day.

The fatal flaw in medieval theology is that “the perfect life” was anticipated as entirely other-worldly and heavenly.  In heaven, there are no bridges to be built, no practicing medical doctors, and no dance productions.  Thomas Aquinas and Fr. Duffner invented “the beatific vision” as the source of peace, love, and creativity of being forever with God in Heaven.  According to Fr. Duffner, “the essential happiness of heaven” is “the unspeakable happiness of the beatific vision (the direct union of the faculties of the soul with the divine essence).  In so doing, Aquinas and Duffner depart entirely from the faith and hope of Jesus.  Return to p.29 in this volume where this heading is shown: Bishop N.T. Wright calls “going to heaven” as “totally and utterly wrong.”

[xxxvii] Socrates believed that imperfect souls would pass through the waters of forgetfulness and be reborn in new bodies. Only those souls entirely perfected could expect to take their place shining “among the stars” for all eternity.

[xxxviii] Talbott (2021).

[xxxix] As it turns out, some philosophers have posed this problem:

Furthermore, even if an incorporeal existence were in fact possible, it could be terribly lonely. For, without a body, could it be possible to communicate with other minds. In Paul Edward’s words: “so far from living on in paradise, a person deprived of his body and thus of all sense organs would, quite aside from many other gruesome deprivations, be in a state of desolate loneliness and eventually come to prefer annihilation” (Edwards, 1997:48). URL=<https://iep.utm.edu/immortal/#H3>

Believers, on the other hand, can refute this by insisting that God has designed the “Beatific Vision” so as to ensure that the rewards of Heaven are not plagued with isolation and desolate loneliness.  Thomas Aquinas, for example, has taken this situation seriously.  He admits that, without the body, the soul is severely handicapped.  To offset this, Aquinas posits that the “Beatific Vision” enables God to transmit to the isolated soul news from friends and relatives back home.  He even goes so far as to use the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as a proof that, in the afterlife, visual and audible communications need to exist. This “proof” of Aquinas is very suspect, however.  Why so?

In his Parable, Jesus is clearly not intending to address the issue of communications in the afterlife.  Aquinas commits a non sequitur.

Jesus never presumes that humans are so constructed such that the soul can be detached from the body at the time of death and still be functional.  Hence, Aquinas has no reason to believe that Jesus is addressing issues regarding the detached soul. 

Likewise, a parable of Jesus cannot be used to decide conditions in the afterlife.  If that were the case, then Aquinas would have to allow (a) that Abraham is in charge of Heaven and (b) that righteous Jews and Christians can expect to find their principal comfort in the presence of Abraham once they enter Heaven. 

But no Christian has ever made such an assertion.  On the contrary, Catholics generally presuppose that God and his angels are in charge of Heaven and that the greatest comfort in the afterlife is to be in the presence of Jesus Christ and his Saints.  Thus, it must be admitted that Aquinas misuses the Parable of Jesus when formulating his argument in favor of speculating that there are visual and audible communications in Heaven.  For further details, go to “Appendix 2” in URL=<https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/479/where-did-samuel-come-from-when-he-was-summoned-by-the-medium-of-en-dor>

[xl] For my generation, the preferred escape was “Near Death Experiences [NDE].”  I must admit that, for myself, I spent twenty-five years mesmerized by the variety and the certainty of NDE.  And, then, quite suddenly, I was disenchanted.  Why so?  My confidence that NDEs enabled one to prove the possibility of an afterlife began to break down when I discovered that the content of NDEs is massively shaped by one’s particular religious and cultural upbringing.  Jesus or Mary showed up repeatedly in the NDEs of Catholics; meanwhile, in India, Ram and Krishna showed up in their NDEs, in Iran, Shia Imams showed up.  For further study of how OBEs cannot prove or disprove the survival of the “soul” outside of the body, see Blackmore (2015) 519-527 and K. Augustine (2023).

[xli] Marrow (1999) 575.

[xlii] Marrow (1999) represents an excellent example of a Jesuit who systematically explored the biblical records and came to the firm conclusion that the “immortal soul” was never part of the teaching of Jesus.  Likewise, within Evangelical Protestant circles, The Carson Center for Theological Renewal under the direction of Dr. Benjamin L. Gladd  has arrived at similar findings.  See “Why We Won’t Spend Eternity in Heaven” (24 October 2024).  URL=<https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wont-spend-eternity-heaven/>   A popular pastor, Rev. Jacob Prahlow, gets to the heart of our future life, with his “Life after Life after Death,” Conciliar Post, 04 Oct 2024.  URL=<https://conciliarpost.com/theology-spirituality/life-after-life-after-death/>

[xliii] Marrow (1999) 578.

[xliv] The use of “fact” is problematic in so far as, in physics and in theology, it remains true that “Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use.” 

This astute observation by Albert Einstein enabled him to explain how theories in physics enable the physicist to see certain things and, at the same time, to be perfectly “blind” to other things or events not covered by the theory.  Aristotle, for example, assumed that the Earth was a sphere that stood motionless in the center of the universe and that, all over our spherical planet, heavy objects, when released, moved toward this center of the earth because “dense earth-matter moves toward its natural place.”  Aristotle assumed that the “natural place” for heavy objects was the center of the spherical earth.  Meanwhile, Aristotle postulated that objects in the heavens were made of aethereal matter whose “natural motion” was to move in perfect circles at a constant velocity.  Aristotle and his disciples were perfectly happy with his theory because it satisfactorily explained the phenomena that interested them.

Once Copernicus first postulated that the Earth was not motionless in the center of the Universe (as Aristotle had affirmed) but was one of seven planets that moves in a perfect circular motion around the sun, he was forced to abandon Aristotle’s notion of “natural place.” Galileo, Kepler, and Newton expanded upon the insights of Copernicus, and they gradually developed the Theory of Universal Gravitation that postulates that every object in the Universe is attracted to every other object with a force equal to the product of the masses divided by the square of the distance between them.  This hypothesis enabled physicists to explain how and why heavy objects fall toward the center of the earth even when the earth is travelling at 18,000 mph around the sun. To their astonishment, this hypothesis served to explain how and why the moon orbited the earth (as a satellite). If the gravitational force did not reach out to the moon, it would immediately travel in a straight line at a uniform velocity and escape into outer space.  The slow and progressive confirmation of  “gravitational forces” within our solar system eventually led astrophysicists to boldly assume that Newton’s laws of gravitation applied universally throughout the universe. This is admittedly a radical assumption—one might even say it is a “leap of faith.” 

In the field of religion, theological theories decide what can and what cannot be “seen” in the sense of “being taken into account.”  Epistemologically speaking, there is no such thing as a neutral “fact” in biblical theology.  As in the case of physics, what can be seen is predetermined by the theory that one uses. 

The NT was written by writers that believed that humans were “dust and unto dust they will return” (Gen 2).  As such, when God wished to animate his clay model, he breathed life into its nostrils.  As long as a person is alive, that person is breathing.  Once breathing stops (as explained earlier), animation ceases.  Death sets in.  The person no longer exists.

 For the Greeks, however, the notion of “spiritual souls” allowed Socrates to expect that all the powers of the soul remain intact even after the death/destruction of the body. Since the soul was “spirit,” it was necessary to think of it as  immortal (since it can never wear down nor fall apart). 

If there is going to be punishment in the afterlife, Christian theologians had to imagine that there was a special “fire” that was capable of punishing souls without destroying them. Earth fires always burn out eventually.  Eternal punishment, therefore, required “eternal fires” that burn without the need of adding additional fuel. In the end, one could write a whole essay about the nature of the “fires” in Hades without ever having been there and without any indication that Hades exists.

Jesus makes no mention of fire in Hades; hence, within his theological horizon, he was “blind” to such things. Jesus was also “blind” to an afterlife in Heaven. In his theological horizon, God brought to Heaven only those whom he was planning to send back to Earth as the principal actors in the final days.  That’s why “two men in white” explain to his disciples, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 2:11).  For Jesus, there could be no “afterlife” of any kind prior to his being returned to earth in the end times.  There would be no preliminary judgment.  There would be no conversations with God the Father. Prior to the end times, the fires of Gehenna have no occupants.  Prior to the end times, there are less than a handful of persons in Heaven.

When many Christians embraced the “immortal soul” and the “afterlife speculations” of Socrates during the second century, they had no choice but to concern themselves with an afterlife that took place immediate after death. For the first time, it became possible to ask, “Where was the soul of Jesus following his death on the cross?”  Their answer: “His soul was in Hades.”  Then they could ask, “What was Jesus doing when he was in Hades for three days?”  Without the Socratic immortal souls, these questions could not even arise.  This explains why none of the Gospels make any reference to Jesus’ visitation of Hades. 

In the second century, however, the theology of Socratic Christians became paramount.  Hence, they now could notice what no one had expected earlier. Now, for the first time, speculations could arise regarding the activities of Jesus in Hades.  Now, for the first time, speculations would arise regarding the punishments of the souls of unrepentant sinners and the blessings of the souls of the righteous.  Jesus, in the Synoptic Gospels, is perfectly “blind” to any afterlife activities between the moment of death and the moment when the trumpet sounds for the universal resurrection of the dead. 

For Thomas Aquinas, however, avoiding Hell and going to Heaven formed the apex of the Christian message.  This situation persisted during the period when the Baltimore Catechism was in use.  For Jesus and his contemporaries, no afterlife took place prior to the universal resurrection of the dead.  For Aquinas, however, the immortal soul separated from the dead body had to be given a preliminary judgment immediately after death.  No where in the entire bible is there any mention of this preliminary judgment. Yet, the moment that “immortal souls” begin to show up, there has to be a fresh invention of a “preliminary judgment.”  Without this, there would be no authoritative judgment as to who goes to Heaven, who goes to Purgatory, who goes to Hell. 

During Vatican II, all the Socratic information displaying in questions 3-9 of the Baltimore Catechism became completely obsolete.  That’s a sign that there was a change in theology taking place among the fathers of Vatican II.  With this change in theology, new realities became evident and the old realities quietly disappeared.  As John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote, “To live is to change; to grow perfect is to have changed often.”  All of this is by way of saying, “Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theology which you use.” 

[xlv] If the soul survives after death, then the very notion of “death” is denied since only the body decays while the intellectual soul remains alive and well and fully-conscious in another realm.  For the friends of God, their souls enjoy the beatific vision along with the angels in Heaven.  For the enemies of God, their souls suffer in Hell since they anticipate that they will be condemned at the final judgment. Likewise, resurrection is also altered in so far as God has only to recreate the body and rejoin it to the eternal soul.  In effect, this understanding leaves Christianity with a doctrine of the transmigration of the soul. 

Since the Socratic soul cannot die, “eternal life” is a guaranteed possession of the human person.  Within the Socratic system, there is no God who creates new souls; hence, for life to persist on earth, it is necessary that any given soul would be passed on from body to body for all eternity.  Thus, the transmigration of souls was necessary in order to explain how new bodies became “alive” generation after generation.  The soul was immortal, to be sure, but no person or animal was immortal since they all died (decayed in the grave).  Billions of individuals borrowed any given soul and lived for a short life-span.  The soul departs and eventually passes through the bath of forgetfulness in order to prepare itself for a new life-span for another person.  This is why Socratic thinkers could never imagine the eternal life of individuals while the Israelites could.  Israelites believed that every individual was created from clay and imparted with the “breath” of life.  This notion allowed that God could recreate from scratch those whose life had been cut short due to the evil of tyrants.

When God chose Abraham and Sarah and made a covenant with them, he promised to give them offspring more numerous than the stars in the night sky.  None of them, however, were promised “immortality.”  One has to wait for the Maccabean Revolution (167-160 BCE) before the children of Abraham and Sarah had their first thoughts of “resurrection from the dead.”  The martyrs faced a cruel death because they refused to abandon their faith in God. But death, for them, was not permanent. God promised to return to them the life that the tyrants stole from them. It was as though they had entered into a dreamless sleep, and the sound of the trumpet awakened them from the sleep of death on the last day.

[xlvi] Source URL=<https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/what-is-a-soul/>

[xlvii] Cullmann gave his Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man in 1955. The thesis of his lecture was that there was no biblical evidence supporting the immortality of human souls, and that this doctrine had nothing in common with the Christian hope in the resurrection of the body.  Fifty years later, the academic and pastoral tide has massively turned in Cullmann’s direction:

The concept of an immaterial soul separate from and surviving the body is common today but according to modern scholars, it was not found in ancient Hebrew beliefs. The word nephesh never means an immortal soul or an incorporeal part of the human being that can survive death of the body as the spirit of the dead. URL=<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible>

[xlviii] Earlier I showed that Aquinas is not consistent in his description of salvation for the “holy fathers [of Israel].” Earlier in the Summa Theologica, Aquinas identifies the descent of Jesus into hell [Hades] as the cause for the liberation of the holy fathers from that prison: “Christ the Lord descended into hell that, having seized the spoils of the devils, he might conduct into heaven those holy fathers and other pious souls liberated from prison” (ST I 6, 6).