Do we have souls?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I believe so.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

In an extension of my previous post, allow me to rant.

According to the SDA church (my denomination), people do not have souls without both body and breath.  They take this from Genesis, in which "man became a living soul" after God formed Adam's body and breathed life into him.  Personally, I think that's a weak argument, because "soul" in our language is frequently used to simply mean a person.  (Then again, if you look at the original languages that the Bible was written in, it could prove me wrong on that point.)  Considering that many traditional SDA doctrines are based on KJV prooftexts and do not account for the original languages, this should come as no surprise.  (The investigative judgment is the same way, being based on the KJV's mistranslation of Daniel 8:14.)

In Matthew 10:28, Jesus says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Instead, fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell."  This text proves problematic for the traditional SDA mortalist doctrine, as it implies that believers have immortal souls and unbelievers do not (a conditional immortality of sorts).  Another one of the SDA prooftexts for mortalism is Ezekiel 18:20, "The soul that sins, it shall die."  Again, this is based purely on old translations.  More recent ones say, "The one that sins," and the context from the surrounding verses proves that it is NOT teaching the mortality of the soul.  What it is saying it is that a person who does good will not be punished for the sins of their parents or children, but that God will hold people accountable for their own sins.  Simply put, the sinner who does not repent is the one that will be lost, as opposed the person who does repent.  If anything, this verse is actually further evidence of conditional immortality.  Acts 2:34, another SDA prooftext, is also taken out of context.  In the KJV it says, "David is not ascended into the heavens," but most modern translations put the verse in the past tense, such as "David did not ascend into heaven."  The verse is not teaching about death or the state of the dead, but rather that Jesus is the Messiah who descended from David, and that He is the one David prophesied about in Psalm 110.  Again, the surrounding verses provide context that the traditional SDA usage does not.

Not too long ago, I heard a guy preaching on 3ABN who said that the "immortal soul" doctrine came from paganism and was "Christianized" by the Catholic church (taken directly out of The Great Controversy.)  Honestly, I think that argument is pretty weak, too.  There's evidence that pagans practiced a form of baptism before Christians did, yet Jesus commanded that believers be baptized (Matthew 28:19).  Does that make baptism pagan?  It's also been speculated that the Babylonian god Tammuz may have had a cross for a symbol, but does that make the Christian cross pagan?  (It's for this reason that Jehovah's Witnesses and other argue that Jesus was crucified on a stake rather than a cross.)  Typically, these allegations of "Christianized pagan traditions" are usually lobbed by atheists and other skeptics trying to disprove the Christian faith, but they spread like wildfire in conservative churches and denominations.  And The Two Babylons, the anti-Catholic hit piece that shares many similarities with The Great Controversy and is cited as fact by many SDA preachers (to prove the prophetic interpretation of Catholicism as the "whore of Babylon"), is a complete sham.

In short, I would call my views on death and the soul to be somewhat agnostic, although I lean towards a conditional immortality in which believers have immortal souls and unbelievers do not.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I'll grant that the KJV translates Daniel 8:14 differently than most other translations, but I don't see where as far as the investigative judgment doctrine is concerned that affects it. Both cleansing the temple and making right the temple have the same degree of applicability to it. Plenty of other reasons to be skeptical of the investigative judgment doctrine, but I don't see how that verse has been translated as one of them.

Most modern translations use "restored" or another similar word.  If anything, I believe that this is more accurate when compared to the original language.  Desmond Ford, the Australian theologian who was defrocked by the church for pointing out the errors of the IJ, has discussed this point.  Another error that hasn't been discussed is this: SDAs have traditionally interpreted the prophecy of Daniel 8:14 as beginning with the decree of Artaxerxes in 457 BC.  But the chapter makes it clear that the prophecy begins with the defiling of the sanctuary.  How did Artaxerxes' decree constitute a defiling of the sanctuary in heaven?  If you can't answer that, then there is no biblical basis for 1844 or the IJ.  And many traditional Adventist scholars have agreed that without the IJ, the rest of the church's doctrine will collapse like a house of cards.