Does the soul (psyche) survive death?
Let’s address another biblical paradox by way of the temporal and eternal perspectives to see whether it may be resolved. By way of example, let me begin with a not uncommon question to introduce this biblical paradox.
On Monday November 7, 2005 shortly after 4:00 p.m. MST I was driving home from work and, channel surfing the radio for music, when I chanced upon a radio station of the Calvary Satellite Network. A new Christian convert called the radio network’s question and answer program, To Every Man an Answer.
His question concerned Paul’s teaching that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). He found this confusing in comparison with another of Paul’s teachings, that when Christ returns the dead in Christ will rise first (followed by those still alive on earth) to meet the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). The caller said, “I’m kind of confused on where somebody who dies right now, before the Lord comes, that dies in Christ, where do they go?” This is a tough question to answer, virtually impossibly so, if a person confines their thoughts to the temporal perspective. That the radio program commentators had trouble with this question is evidenced in their responses in the following transcript of the program.
The first commentator said,
“That’s a very, very understandable question, and I appreciate your calling. We do know that when a Christian dies, he’s with the Lord, right then.” Then, remembering a book on the subject, he continued, “Anyway, the point is that we are with Christ. Now, the mystery that we have different conjectures on is what happens between that point that you’re with Christ and when the resurrection takes place, because we look towards a day called the rapture when we’ll all be immediately changed. And we do know that we will be changed and we will be given resurrection bodies. And that occurs at a point in time that is classically called the rapture of the church.”
“Now what kind of bodies do we have between the time we die and that resurrection point is a subject of a lot of theological conjecture, but we do know that we will be with Christ. You remember what He [Jesus] said to the thief on the cross, ‘This day you will be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23:43). And so we know we’ll be with the Lord. And Paul makes many allusions of the same thing that when he dies he’ll be with the Lord. Now, there’s a time issue here in terms of . . . okay there’s an interval between the time we’re with Him and when we finally are given this incredible resurrection body that the Bible talks about. But whether we are given temporary bodies or whether we just somehow are with him without a body, who knows. That’s a subject, to the best of my awareness, for theological conjecture.”
He then referred the question to the second commentator, who with a little hesitation noted that,
“Just absent from the body is being present with the Lord. We immediately go with Him, just as [the first commentator] said. The dead in Christ are in the ground, then we, when the Lord calls, the dead come up, we join them and we all go up to Heaven together. And so I hope that helps.”
These two responses reflect the difficulty of the question viewed from the temporal perspective. If Christians immediately go to be with Christ, then how is it that until Christ returns the dead in Christ are in the ground? These educated and earnest Christian leaders could not specifically answer the caller’s question, but finished by saying that they hoped their response was helpful to him. This is an honest, if not wholly satisfying, response from men whose vision, like that of all of us, is dominated by the temporal perspective, which is the common human view.
The comments of these Christian “answer men” were accurate repetitions of different passages in the Bible. The first commentator was quite correct in noting that there was “a time issue.” Indeed, time is the problem! But if they had been able to view the question from the eternal perspective, which I believe is God’s viewpoint extrinsic to time, then they might have been able to give the caller a more satisfying and comprehensive answer. What I will now propose in the following paragraphs is a response from the eternal perspective. However, it is only fair to warn you, my reader, that this response will lead to frustration and objection if your mind is resolutely entrenched in the traditional temporal perspective.
The Bible has much to say about those who die; death is the great enigma for human hearts, in whom God has placed an innate yearning for eternity (Ecclesiastes 3:11). A comparison of the many Bible passages about death raises an intriguing paradox. The essence of the paradox is found in the two contrasting extremes presented by the radio program hosts.
The first extreme—that the dead have personal conscious existence and communication with God— vividly contrasts with the other extreme—that the dead are unconscious in the dust of the ground with cessation or suspension of conscious being. Let us explore a few pertinent passages to illustrate the paradox and thereby set the stage for resolution of the paradox by way of both temporal and eternal perspectives.
Old Testament despair.
On one side, the Old Testament writers seem cynical and despairing in their description of the dead from a purely naturalistic and temporal perspective. I underline certain phrases for emphasis.
(Job 7:21b) “For now I will lie down in the dust; And You will seek me, but I will not be.”
(Job 14:10-12) “But man dies and lies prostrate. Man expires, and where is he? {11} “As water evaporates from the sea, And a river becomes parched and dried up, {12} So man lies down and does not rise. Until the heavens are no longer, He will not awake nor be aroused out of his sleep.
(Job 21:26) “Together they [the rich and the poor] lie down in the dust, And worms cover them.
(Ecclesiastes 3:19-20) For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. {20} All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust.
(Ecclesiastes 9:5-6) For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. {6} Indeed their love, their hate and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun.
(Psalm 6:4-5) Return, O LORD, rescue my soul; Save me because of Your lovingkindness. {5} For there is no mention of You in death; In Sheol who will give You thanks?
(Psalm 30:9) “What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your faithfulness?
(Psalm 115:17) The dead do not praise the LORD, Nor do any who go down into silence;
(Psalms 146:3-4) Do not trust in princes, In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation. {4} His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; In that very day his thoughts perish.
(1 Kings 2:10) Then David slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David.
(Acts 2:29) “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
The clear implication in all of the above passages is that personal conscious human existence ceases completely at death. All men meet the same end as all other animals—death, which Job refers to as “the king of terrors.” (Job 18:14)
Even a person’s thoughts perish so that he or she is no more able to utter words of praise than the dust is able. All memory and emotion—“hate, love, and zeal”—perish. Even Peter in his New Testament Pentecostal sermon referring to King David (Acts 2:29) seems to declare that David is still waiting, without consciousness or thought, in his tomb a thousand years after his death. This dismal naturalistic view is well summarized by the poet Thomas Gray in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour–
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
This is the temporal view, the natural materialistic perspective of men in this time-cursed cosmos that is devoid of any eternal hope. As Solomon phrases it, there is a “time” for every event under heaven, “a time to give birth and a time to die;” (Ecclesiastes 3:2a). But according to the Bible, this is not the only perspective on reality. There is also the eternal perspective, which Solomon also recognizes, “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; (Ecclesiastes 3:11b). And science at least agrees on the theoretical possibility of the eternal perspective by viewing time as another created dimension and not as an absolute unlimited framework of the entire universe. Science agrees that time is not an unchanging flow within which all matter, energy, and space come into being, have their fleeting existence, and then pass out of existence.
Old Testament hope.
The above selected passages, taken in isolation, sound like the pronouncements of secularists and atheists today. Taken out of their Biblical context they do injustice to the Old Testament writers, whose view is tempered by a note of optimism through their trust in the power of God. Though primitive and nonspecific, that optimism is found in the following passages, some of which are in the immediate context of the seemingly despondent passages quoted above.
(Job 14:14) “If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle I will wait Until my change comes.
(Job 19:26) “Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God;
(Ecclesiastes 12:7-8) then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. {8} “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!”
(Psalm 115:18) But as for us, we will bless the LORD From this time forth and forever. Praise the LORD!
(Psalm 30:12) That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.
The eternal hope of the Old Testament writers is repeatedly expressed in a primitive confidence that God will not abandon man to the dust forever, but their hope forms a paradox with their naturalistic statements concerning death. For instance, Job’s and Solomon’s dismal pronouncements about the finality of death are immediately juxtaposed to their suspicion that a man’s spirit is with God (whether personal and conscious is not stated) and that the “flesh” will ultimately see God.
The Psalmist creates an even greater paradox by expressing confidence that the faithful “bless the LORD from this time forth and forever” and “give thanks to Him forever.” How can such blessing and thanks be rendered by those who are in the dust unconscious and knowing nothing? If this is not contradiction, what is it? Could it merely be paradox depending on one’s perspective?
Contradiction dissolves into paradox if the eternal perspective is admitted. The biblical writers, speaking by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, wrote larger than they understood. This puzzling paradox—death and unconscious dust versus personal life and unending praise—persists down to the present day. This paradox continues to attract questions like that of the caller to the radio Bible answer program cited above. The Old Testament prophet Daniel develops this theme a bit more specifically in the following passage.
(Dan 12:2) “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
Nevertheless, the question of the caller remains unanswered. In comparison with the grim temporal fact of death, the eternal hope of life seems weak and irrational. Where are the dead until Jesus returns? And what is their estate, if the Bible is interpreted as straightforward language?
If it is accepted that eternity is at least a theoretical possibility from the temporal perspective, and an absolute reality from the eternal perspective as proclaimed in the Bible, then further examination of the biblical perspective is in order. For this, it is necessary to turn to the New Testament for the many statements of Jesus and his apostles. The New Testament is fulfillment of the Old Testament hope and history. These statements expand on the eternal perspective, creating greater hope, but hope still so intermingled with the dusty temporal perspective as to create paradoxes which can give rise to confusion on superficial reading without discernment of the eternal view mingled with the temporal. We shall examine these mingled perspectives in the next post dealing with death and sleep.
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