Information Related to "What Does the Bible Say About the Immortal Soul?"
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Is Death the Final Answer?
Do You Have an Immortal Soul?
What Does the Bible Say About the "Immortal Soul"?;
Many people think the Bible says we have an immortal soul destined, at death,
for heaven, hell or purgatory. What does the Bible say?
by Gary Petty
What happens to us after we die?
Where are our loved ones who have passed on? Will we ever see them again?
Everyone needs to know that life has purpose, that death isn't the permanent end
of our existence. The most common Christian belief regarding the afterlife is that
people possess souls and at death their consciousness in the form of that soul departs
from the body and heads for heaven or hell.
Most religions teach some form of life after death. The ancient Egyptians, for example,
practiced elaborate ceremonies to prepare the pharaohs for their next life. They
constructed massive pyramids and other elaborate tombs filled with luxuries the deceased
were assumed to need in the hereafter.
In some civilizations when a ruler died others who had accompanied and served him
in his life were put to death so they could immediately serve him in the afterlife.
Wives and other relatives, servants, sometimes even household pets joined him in
death and a supposed entrance into a new life on the other side.
Belief in the immortality of the soul was an important aspect of ancient thought
espoused by the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Plato, in Phaedo,
presents Socrates' explanation of death: "Is it not the separation of soul and
body? And to be dead is the completion of this; when the soul exists in herself,
and is released from the body and body is released from the soul, what is this but
death?" (Five Great Dialogues, Classics Club edition, 1969, p. 93).
Socrates explained that the immortal soul, once freed from the body, is rewarded
according to good deeds or punished for evil. Socrates lived ca. 470-399 B.C., so
his view of the soul predated Christianity.
Plato (ca. 428-348 B.C.) saw man's existence as divided into the material and spiritual,
or "Ideal," realms. "Plato reasoned that the soul, being eternal,
must have had a pre-existence in the ideal world where it learned about the eternal
Ideals" (William S. Sahakian, History of Philosophy, 1968, p. 56). In
Plato's reasoning, man is meant to attain goodness and return to the Ideal through
the experiences of the transmigration of the soul. Thus secular philosophies sanction
the idea of the immortal soul, even though the Bible does not. Believe it or not,
God's Word teaches something entirely different.
History of a Controversial Teaching
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