What does the Bible teach us about the soul, death and the resurrection?

On our earth we know three kinds of life: plants, animals and humans. The Bible calls both animals and humans souls.

The Bible teaches that life has always existed, in the form of God, and that life has brought forth matter; not the other way round. The Bible also teaches that within the created world only life can produce life.

The second living being that appeared in the universe is the Son that God Himself has created. After that the angels were created. These have a body, but it is a spiritual body which does not consist of matter.

Only after He had made the angels did God create the material universe as we know it. The Bible does not tell us when God made the material world and the universe. The book Genesis does tell us how God made the earth habitable for man in six time-periods, which the Bible calls days. In this story we read that God created the plants on the third day. On the fifth day He created the fish and the birds and on the sixth day the land-animals and the humans.

As we have said before, the Bible calls both animals and humans souls. They need oxygen and life force to be able to continue living. Both also have blood. Through reproduction they pass on life and life force to new individuals.

The Bible says that humans are of a higher order than animals. Humans have mental capacities which animals do not have: intelligence, wisdom, reasoning power and a sense of good and evil. Humans can understand that there is a God who created them and they can know why God created them. Humans can understand what God desires from them. Humans can also understand that God has made them and the world in which they live in such a way that they need instructions which tell them how to deal with themselves, their fellow humans and the world in general.

The most important distinction between humans and animals is based on the fact that only humans were created in God’s image and according to God’s likeness, which means that only humans know moral values and can make moral choices.

Again: the Bible uses the word souls for both animals and humans. To understand the Bible well it is of vital importance to realize that in the Bible the word soul has a different meaning compared to the meaning of this word in daily speech.

The meaning that the word soul has in daily speech has not originated from the Holy Scriptures, but from Greek philosophy. It is mainly the Greek philosopher Plato who developed the notion that every human has a soul which is not material and which is immortal. When a person dies his soul leaves his body and continues to live in perfect happiness in another world which is also inhabited by the gods.

In Bible translations the word soul is used for the Hebrew word nephesh and for the Greek word psykhe. In the Bible this Hebrew word and this Greek word are used for both animals and humans: all living beings that have blood. However: in the Bible the words nephesh and psykhe, do not refer to a part of man, but to the whole of man, man as a living being. The words refer to the life within a man, the human personality, the human consciousness. They also refer to the visible manifestation of the life force within a man in our concrete material world.

Accordingly the Bible does not tell us that humans have souls (which can leave them when they die), but that humans are souls. A human being is his soul. When a man dies and ceases to exist, his soul dies with him and also ceases to exist. Man and his soul are one. They are inseparable.

In short: in the sense in which man is mortal and destructible, also man’s soul (in the meaning which the Bible attaches to the word) is mortal and destructible. The Bible is full of sentences and passages which demonstrate that this is so. And there are no sentences or passages in the Bible where the words nephesh and psykhe are accompanied by the word immortal.

To give some examples:

When God told Adam and Eve in paradise that if they should disobey His laws they would die, He did not say that He would kill their bodies and let their souls continue to live somewhere else. He threatened to kill their souls: their entire being, their entire life, everything they were and everything they had.

The Bible also says very clearly that in order to continue living in their paradise Adam and Eve needed to eat of the tree of life. This means that at their birth they had not received life as something that was by nature eternal and indestructible. There were things they had to do to be able to continue living for ever: eating of the tree of life and obeying God’s commandment.

In addition the Bible states very clearly and very regularly that all the people that were born after Adam and Eve have inherited sin from them and together with sin: death. And, as we have said before, with the word death the Bible means total death, the death of all aspects of the living being. After an animal or a person has died, nothing invisible or immortal of that dead animal or person is left to continue living at some other place. Death is the end of everything.

But on the other hand: the Bible leaves no doubt about the question why God created the earth and man: with the creation of earth and man God had in mind a paradise-like dwelling place filled with perfect and perfectly happy people who will live on their earth for ever.

In short: both the complete death of the human soul and the eternal life of the human are Biblical realities of immense importance. And the believer should accept both these realities completely. The Bible teaches that in the course of God’s history of salvation some human souls are destroyed for ever, but other human souls are given eternal life.

What the Bible certainly never asserts is that the human soul in itself, through its own nature, is immortal and that all souls get eternal life.

When Adam and Eve sinned in their paradise and God realized that sin and death would spread over all humans, He already had an alternative plan to realize His ends for which He had created earth and man. At once He promised a seed (an offspring) of the human species who would not only destroy Satan, but who would also undo Satan’s work: sin and death.

God had and has a plan of salvation which can liberate people of good will from sin and from death and can give them an eternal life on a paradise earth which Adam and Eve forfeited for themselves. The eternal death of human souls exists, but the eternal life of human souls exists as well.

As regards the way in which God’s plan of salvation which gives people a chance to be redeemed of sin and death actually works, little is found in the Hebrew Scriptures. There are just a few passages in these writings that indicate that people like Abel, Noah and Abraham had a vague notion of a resurrection.

What the Hebrew Scriptures do demonstrate very clearly is how sinful people are and how something extremely unusual must take place if humans who are so sinful by nature can ever be given a chance to receive forgiveness of their sins and eternal life.

But the Greek Scriptures demonstrate that this extremely unusual event has actually taken place: Christ has come as our Savior and our Redeemer. And He has brought people something: forgiveness of sins and eternal life in His perfect Kingdom.