word abusers
In “word abusers” Jefferson Vann addresses R.S. MacArthur’s assertion that proponents of conditional immortality abuse the true meaning of biblical words.
In 1889, Lyman Abbott published a 943-page tome called “That Unknown Country.”
Abbott, Lyman. That Unknown Country. Springfield, Mass: C.A. Nichols & Co, 1889.
In fact, the full title reads thus:
That Unknown Country: Or, What Living Men Believe Concerning Punishment After Death, Together with Recorded Views of Men of Former Times. the Whole Field Explored, Every Source of Wisdom, Past and Present, Made Tributary to the Illumination of This Theme, Man’s Final Destiny.
Actually, Abbott himself only wrote the first two chapters of the book. The next 49 chapters were written by the proponents of various positions regarding human destiny, including some prominent conditionalists of the day. For that reason, the book serves as a helpful record of the various views, their interpretations of scripture, and their critiques of each other.
I would like to address one comment made by R.S. MacArthur in Chapter 34:
“Those who teach what has been called “conditional immortality” use words of Scripture in an utterly unworthy sense. To say that life means simply continued existence, and death the cessation of such existence, is to use words without any conception of their true meaning in the Scriptures” (649).
MacArthur asserts that the words “life” and “death” have a particular meaning in scripture and that conditionalists interpret those words apart from that true meaning. I want to challenge that assertion. One of the reasons I was convinced of conditional immortality all those decades ago is that the books I read were careful to provide ample textual proof of their arguments. I saw list after list of scripture texts where biblical words are used in their context in ways that do not reflect their popular usage.
But, just in case I have been deceived, I am going to open my Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament again, today. I’m looking for that “true meaning” of the words “life” and “death” in those sacred texts.
life
Genesis 1:20 “God said, ‘Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.'” (NET).
Genesis 1:24 “‘And to all the animals of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move on the ground– everything that has the breath of life in it– I give every green plant for food.’ It was so.” (NET).
Genesis 1:30 “And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so.” (NET).
Genesis 2:7 “The LORD God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (NET).
Genesis 2:19 “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (NET).
Genesis 9:12 “And God said, ‘This is the guarantee of the covenant I am making with you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all subsequent generations” (NET)
Genesis 9:15 “I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh” (NET).
Genesis 9:16 “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (NET).
Ezekiel 47:9 “Every living creature which swarms where the river flows will live; there will be many fish, for these waters flow there. It will become fresh and everything will live where the river flows” (NET).
The King James translators prided themselves on their literal renderings, but they could not bring themselves to translate these verses literally.
Instead, they translated the phrase nefesh chayah (נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה) as “that hath life” (1:20), “living creature(s)” (1:24; 2:19; 9:12,15,16) “thing that liveth” (Ezekiel 47:9), and “wherein there is life” (1:30). But the phrase is much more specific than that. This is the exact same Hebrew phrase that the KJV rendered “a living soul” in Genesis 2:7. The proponents of natural immortality often use that text as proof-text for the idea that human beings were given an immortal soul at their creation. That immortal soul is said to be the difference between the mere biological life that animals possess. Yet these passages show that animals also have that life. They were created with the same life that human beings have. The difference between animals and humans is not in the life they were created with. It is the life we are promised in Christ.
The New Testament also defines life in such a way as to equate it with creaturely existence.
Matthew 2:20 “saying, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead'” (NET).
The enemies of Christ were seeking to put him to death — to end his creaturely existence. They were seeking his “soul” (ψυχή) in order to kill it.
Mark 3:4 “Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or evil, to save a life or destroy it?” But they were silent” (NET).
The word “life” here is also psuche — referring to the creaturely life saved from the destruction of death.
Mark 8:36 “For what benefit is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his life?” (NET).
Again, the word is psuche — a word that traditionalists insist refers to some immortal soul. But Christ’s argument makes no sense if the life he refers to cannot be forfeited.
death
“but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.” (NET)
God’s warning to Adam was more specific than most translations reflect. He said that upon eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and his descendants would immediately become mortal (מוֹת) and that would result in each human being eventually dying (תָּמֽוּת). The truth of the statement is evidenced by all the cemeteries and crematoriums around us. Human beings are mortal, and each one of us has a tombstone awaiting a final date to be added. In spite of this, popular religion continues to deny the reality of our mortality.
The New Testament cannot be blamed for this stubborn resistance to the truth.
Romans 5:17 “by the transgression of the one man, death reigned” (NET).
Romans 6:23 “For the payoff of sin is death” (NET)
1 Corinthians 15:21,22 “death came through a man”,”in Adam all die” (NET)
Hebrews 9:27 “people are appointed to die” (NET).
The good news of the gospel is not that death is unreal, but that through Christ we can be raised to another life — a permanent life that will never die. But the traditionalists have ripped the heart out of this gospel truth by insisting that everyone already has eternal life. They suggest that the real question is not whether you have eternal life, but where you are going to spend eternity.
The real abusers of the scriptural meaning of the words “life” and “death” are those who claim they are code words. “Life” means eternal life in heaven while “death” means eternal life in hell. Conditionalists see the Bible as a revelation of truth — a truth so plain that it does not need to be decoded. To die is to perish, to be destroyed, to be no more. To live is to avoid that fate. The good news from our Savior is that he is coming to raise us to live the permanent life he promised.