- The Bible overwhelmingly refers to death as “sleep.”
- The belief that the soul is immortal comes from the first lie the devil ever told to humans: “Ye shall not surely die…”
- Paganism teaches that the soul is immortal. For example, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the consequent doctrine of hell commonly taught in Christianity are much closer to Plato’s teachings than anything the biblical authors taught. The common belief now held by most Christians made its way into Christianity as a result of Catholic syncretism a few centuries after Christ.
- The apostolic fathers believed in conditional immortality.
- Many of the greatest of the Protestant reformers such as John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, and William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into the vernacular and had to wrestle with the meaning of each word, came to the conclusion that the doctrines of eternal conscious torment and the immortality of the soul were Catholic heresy.
- The verses/passages commonly used to support the immortality of the soul (such as Jesus’ promise to the dying thief) and eternal conscious torment (such as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus) can be comfortably harmonized with the view that death is a sleep. The uses of the terms “for ever and ever” and “eternal” must be understood as they were intended by the biblical authors and in the broader context of scripture (see Jude v. 7 for a quick example). The interpretation that fits best is “until the subject is dead.”
- Ultimately, this is a discussion about God’s character. While we can’t rely on our limited moral reasoning to arrive at Truth, a doctrine that flies in the face of everything we believe to be good and just should raise a red flag and instigate further study. Further study should lead to discovering the truth of points 1-6. Rationalizing away such an inconceivably cruel act on God’s part is gaslighting everyone who has ever had a moral objection to God torturing conscious beings forever for deeds committed over the span of a few decades.
