BIBLE TOPICS
"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path". Ps 119:105
Subjects
ONE BIBLE, MANY CHURCHES:
WHY?
| A changing church |
| Another Gospel |
| Greek Philosophy |
| Vain Deceit |
| Plato |
| Has the church gone wrong? |
| The first lie |
| Christian life in the first century |
| Decline and reformation |
| The narrow way |
| What is Truth? |
PLATO AND THE SOUL
The acceptance of Greek philosophers into the church quickly bore its evil fruit. The most characteristic concept of Platonic thought, man's innate immortality, emerged as the orthodox Christian concept of the 'soul', an eternal spark of the divine in every man. Many churchmen have admitted that this concept is foreign to the original message of Christ, and is opposed to Christ's teaching about reward and punishment. Yet it has remained one of the cardinal doctrines of the Catholic Church and its offshoots. The following quotations confirm the non-Christian origin of this doctrine:
"No doctrine of the natural or unconditional immortality of a part or nucleus of the human organism, called the soul, has any right of place within the precinct of revealed Christian truth. It is a philosophical doctrine or theory, older than Christianity, often very ingeniously sustained and as often very effectively contested' (Dr. F.S.M. Bennett, Dean of Chester - "The resurrection of the dead", 1929).
'The Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a curious example of an opinion destitute of any foundation in the Bible, and in some measure contradicting it, derived only from Greek philosophy, yet held firmly by a large number of educated and intelligent Christians and Christian teachers and writers on the mistaken supposition that it is taught in the Bible' (Dr. Agar Beet - "The Immortality of the soul, a protest").
In his preface the same writer says:
[For positive Biblical teaching on the nature of man and the future life, please contact us at Bible Light]'My protest against it is an appeal, which no Protestant can disallow, from the traditional teaching of the Church to the supreme authority of the Holy Scripture'.