When Was the Church Corrupted by the IMMORTAL SOUL Doctrine?

The Scriptures plainly teach that immortality and eternal life are only available through the gospel of Christ (2 Timothy 1:10; John 3:36). In other words, human beings do not intrinsically possess immortality apart from redemption in Christ, which is why we’re told to seek it (Romans 2:7). For the unrepentant, the Lord plainly declared that God would “destroy both soul and body in hell (Gehenna)” (Matthew 10:28) and the writer of Hebrews said that “raging fire that will consume the enemies of God” (Hebrews 10:26-27), which was corroborated by Jesus’ Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:27). This was backed-up by Paul who unmistakably said that “the wages of sin is death” while eternal life is a gift from God only available in Christ Jesus, not something people already have (Romans 6:23), which is supported by the most popular verse in the Bible, John 3:16. This is just the tip of the iceberg; for more evidence go here.

The fact that the early Church did not subscribe to the doctrine of the immortal soul apart-from-redemption-in-Christ is supported by extrabiblical data, as verified in this article.

So, when did the Church become corrupted by this idea that every human soul, once born, can never cease to exist and thus those who reject the message of Christ will suffer never-ending roasting torture in the lake of fire?

To answer, we need to go back to the 400-year gap between the latest Old Testament books and the earliest New Testament books, which is often referred to as “the 400 silent years” since God did not speak through Scripture prophecy during this time. Within a century after Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, Alexander the Great conquered most of the world from the Greek perspective. Israel was among these conquered lands. Greek culture and philosophy inevitably spread to these lands and Greek became the lingua franca linking peoples scattered since the time of the infamous tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).

As such, the foreign notions of Greek philosophy were introduced to Hebrew culture, including the Platonic theory that every human being, once born, possesses an intrinsic immortal soul and can never cease to exist. While many Hebrews heeded God’s warnings to remain separate and pure, like the Qumranites and John the Baptist, the sect of the Pharisees did not.

While the Scriptures themselves don’t reveal anything about the Pharisees’ official view of damnation, it is contended that they advocated eternal torment because they believed in the Hellenistic belief in the immortality of the soul. Yet nothing good is ever said about the Pharisees in the Bible. Jesus continually conflicted with this sect; he called them names, rebuked them, and spoke badly of them. See, for example, Matthew 5:20 & 23:13,15,25,28,33. In fact, Christ commanded his followers to “Leave them; they are blind guides” (Matthew 15:12-14) and plainly warned of their false teachings in Matthew 16:11-12. Jesus was talking about the Pharisees’ teachings in this particular passage, their doctrines, not their hypocrisy. The Lord no doubt agreed with the Pharisees on quite a few issues, but eternal torment certainly wasn’t one of them.

The apostle Paul was formerly a radical Pharisee named Saul who zealously persecuted the early Church—imprisoning disciples, voicing murderous threats and approving of their executions (Acts 7:58, 8:1 & 9:1,13-14,21). But Christ appeared to Saul and commanded him to leave this sect of blind guides. Years after his conversion and enlightenment, Paul referred to his pharisaic past as “rubbish,” “refuse” and “dung” (Philippians 3:4-8; see the KJV and Amplified renditions). By “rubbish” Paul was referring to all the hypocrisy, lifeless tradition and false teachings of the Pharisees, which would include the doctrine of eternal torment.

Athenagorus of Athens hailed from the 2nd century after Christ (127-190 AD). He was a Platonic philosopher who converted to Christianity and was the first Christian writer to expressly deny the literal everlasting destruction of the ungodly. Tertullian (160-220 AD) was also negatively influenced by Greek philosophy and even stated: “I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato when he declares, ‘Every soul is immortal.’ ” Their conclusions were not based on Scripture, but on the pagan idea that every unsaved human being possesses an immortal soul that can never die. This belief infiltrated Christianity soon after the time of the apostolic fathers when “the apologists” converted from Greek philosophy. Converts from Hellenistic Judaism also contributed to the proliferation of this teaching.

It was Augustine from the 4th & 5th centuries (354-430), however, who systemized and popularized the immortal soul (apart from Christ) and the corresponding eternal torment, causing these beliefs to become the official doctrine of the Roman church, accepted by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. One might understandably wonder how God could allow such false doctrines as these to become imbedded in the collective Christian mindset, yet God had nothing to do with “allowing” these unbiblical beliefs to infiltrate Christendom. These doctrines stem from the very first satanic lie recorded in the Bible (Genesis 3:4) (see this article for details). After the compilation of the New Testament canon, the Roman church increasingly deviated from Holy Scripture in the ensuing generations. When people willingly disregard the authority of God’s Word in favor of the word of human philosophy and religion there’s nothing God can do to stop the resulting apostasy, except inspire a reformation by the Holy Spirit, which came to pass a thousand years later.

Speaking of which, the Protestants based their reforms on the principle of sola scriptura, that all judgments of doctrine and practice must be based on the plain teachings of Holy Scripture, the blueprint for valid Christianity (1 Corinthians 4:6). The very father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, spoke of the philosophical arguments for the immortal soul as “monstrous fables that form part of the Roman dunghill of decretals [i.e. decrees].”

Many Anabaptists believed that the ungodly would ultimately perish in hell and cease to exist, as Christ plainly declared (Matthew 10:28; Luke 19:27), but John Calvin, second only to Luther as a Reformation leader, opposed the Anabaptists on this matter and advocated his support for the “traditional” Roman sect views of the immortal soul and eternal torment. Luther, not wanting to cause division, kept quiet in light of Calvin’s vehement stance. Thus the doctrines of the immortal soul and eternal torment crossed the pivotal point of the Reformation as part of fundamental Protestant beliefs. Consequently, despite the fact that both of these beliefs are clearly unbiblical, many Christians today continue to blindly regard them as unquestionable “orthodoxy.”

This article was edited from chapter 7 of…

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