Immortality of the soul or resurrection of the body: what is the testimony of the New Testament?
What fate awaits the soul when the body dies?
Does the soul cry when the body dies?
Or is he glad to be freed from "slavery of the body"?
Or does it die out with the body and have the same fate in death?
Although the view that the soul survives the death of the body was very common in the world of ancient pagan belief, this was not the view of the early Christian church.
The soul is not immortal in itself, according to the Lord Jesus Christ:
"Whoever finds (keeps) his soul (ψυχὴ) will lose it, and whoever loses his soul (ψυχὴ) for me will find it." (Matthew 10:39)
“He that loveth his soul (ψυχὴ) shall lose it; and he that hateth his soul (ψυχὴ) in this world shall keep it forever.” (John 12:25)
Here we read that a man may lose his soul (ψυχὴ) for Jesus—probably extinguished by men: How then could he be immortal?
When the soul dies, it leaves life with the body, enters a state close to the meaning of sleep, and rises at the end of the world with the body, receiving eternal life if it died as a righteous man. Athenagoras, a second-century Christian defender of the faith, believed that souls sleep (in a kind of death sleep) between death and resurrection: "The dead and the sleeping are subject to similar conditions."
John Damascene classified this early Christian idea as netopsychism ("death of the soul").
Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body: The Testimony of the New Testament (available online in some languages)
"The Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Body: The Testimony of the New Testament," written by Oscar Cullmann, explains that the assumed view of the immortality of the soul is not compatible with the resurrection.
However, from the 2nd century, with the mortality of the soul supported by the Bible and the Apostolic Churches, the doctrine of the pagans infiltrated among the Christians and it was incorporated into the Christian doctrine, saying that only the body dies. Eustratios of Constantinople (after 582) condemned what he called hypnopsychism ("sleep of the soul"). And they didn't stop there, they tried to revise certain Bible verses.
An example of this is the oldest quote from Matthew 10:28 - written by the Christian Justin Martyr in the 2nd century - which does not contain "but they cannot kill the soul".
This agrees with what is in Luke 12:4: I say to you, my friends: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but can do nothing.
Besides Luke's clear reading, it was not worded differently in Matthew, the original text.
If men cannot kill the soul (ψυχὴ), but yet one can "lose his soul (ψυχὴ) for Me", it is an antithesis and it is a clear contradiction, both cannot be true.
Considering the Greek text of Matthew 10:39 and John 12:25, it would be meaningless to say and believe that "but they cannot kill the soul", rather it gives reason to suspect that an early insertion was made in the text of Matthew 10:28, and the text sounded, as we read it in Justin the Martyr and in Clement of Alexandria.
Does the soul cry when the body dies?
Or is he glad to be freed from "slavery of the body"?
Or does it die out with the body and have the same fate in death?
Although the view that the soul survives the death of the body was very common in the world of ancient pagan belief, this was not the view of the early Christian church.
The soul is not immortal in itself, according to the Lord Jesus Christ:
"Whoever finds (keeps) his soul (ψυχὴ) will lose it, and whoever loses his soul (ψυχὴ) for me will find it." (Matthew 10:39)
“He that loveth his soul (ψυχὴ) shall lose it; and he that hateth his soul (ψυχὴ) in this world shall keep it forever.” (John 12:25)
Here we read that a man may lose his soul (ψυχὴ) for Jesus—probably extinguished by men: How then could he be immortal?
When the soul dies, it leaves life with the body, enters a state close to the meaning of sleep, and rises at the end of the world with the body, receiving eternal life if it died as a righteous man. Athenagoras, a second-century Christian defender of the faith, believed that souls sleep (in a kind of death sleep) between death and resurrection: "The dead and the sleeping are subject to similar conditions."
John Damascene classified this early Christian idea as netopsychism ("death of the soul").
Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body: The Testimony of the New Testament (available online in some languages)
"The Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Body: The Testimony of the New Testament," written by Oscar Cullmann, explains that the assumed view of the immortality of the soul is not compatible with the resurrection.
However, from the 2nd century, with the mortality of the soul supported by the Bible and the Apostolic Churches, the doctrine of the pagans infiltrated among the Christians and it was incorporated into the Christian doctrine, saying that only the body dies. Eustratios of Constantinople (after 582) condemned what he called hypnopsychism ("sleep of the soul"). And they didn't stop there, they tried to revise certain Bible verses.
An example of this is the oldest quote from Matthew 10:28 - written by the Christian Justin Martyr in the 2nd century - which does not contain "but they cannot kill the soul".
This agrees with what is in Luke 12:4: I say to you, my friends: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but can do nothing.
Besides Luke's clear reading, it was not worded differently in Matthew, the original text.
If men cannot kill the soul (ψυχὴ), but yet one can "lose his soul (ψυχὴ) for Me", it is an antithesis and it is a clear contradiction, both cannot be true.
Considering the Greek text of Matthew 10:39 and John 12:25, it would be meaningless to say and believe that "but they cannot kill the soul", rather it gives reason to suspect that an early insertion was made in the text of Matthew 10:28, and the text sounded, as we read it in Justin the Martyr and in Clement of Alexandria.
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