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How Strong Is Your Belief in the Resurrection?The Watchtower—1998 | July 1
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Body and Soul
18. How did some Greek philosophers react to Paul’s statement that Jesus had been resurrected, and why?
18 When the apostle Paul was in Athens, he preached the good news to a crowd that included some Greek philosophers. They listened to his discussion about the one true God and his call to repentance. But what happened next? Paul concluded his speech, saying: “[God] has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead.” Those words caused a stir. “When they heard of a resurrection of the dead, some began to mock.” (Acts 17:22-32) Theologian Oscar Cullmann observes: “For the Greeks who believed in the immortality of the soul it may have been harder to accept the Christian preaching of the resurrection than it was for others. . . . The teaching of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato can in no way be brought into consonance [agreement] with that of the New Testament.”
19. How did Christendom’s theologians try to harmonize the teaching of the resurrection with the doctrine of the immortal soul?
19 Even so, following the great apostasy after the death of the apostles, theologians labored to merge the Christian teaching of the resurrection with Plato’s belief in the immortal soul. In time, some agreed on a novel solution: At death, the soul is separated (“liberated,” as some put it) from the body. Then, according to Outlines of the Doctrine of the Resurrection, by R. J. Cooke, on Judgment Day “each body shall be again united to its own soul, and each soul to its own body.” The future reuniting of the body with its immortal soul is said to be the resurrection.
20, 21. Who have consistently taught the truth about the resurrection, and how has this benefited them?
20 This theory is still the official doctrine of mainstream churches. While such a notion may seem logical to a theologian, most churchgoers are unacquainted with it. They simply believe that they will go straight to heaven when they die. For this reason, in the May 5, 1995, issue of Commonweal, writer John Garvey charged: “The belief of most Christians [on the matter of life after death] seems to be much closer to Neoplatonism than to anything truly Christian, and it has no biblical basis.” Indeed, by trading the Bible for Plato, Christendom’s clergy extinguished the Biblical resurrection hope for their flocks.
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How Strong Is Your Belief in the Resurrection?The Watchtower—1998 | July 1
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12. From where did Christendom get its teaching about the immortal soul?
12 Why does Christendom teach something so different from what the Bible says? The New Catholic Encyclopedia, in its article “Soul, Human, Immortality Of,” says that early Church Fathers found support for belief in an immortal soul, not in the Bible, but in “the poets and philosophers and general tradition of Greek thought . . . Later, the scholastics preferred to make use of Plato or principles from Aristotle.” It states that “the influence of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought”—including belief in the immortal soul—eventually was inserted “into the very core of Christian theology.”
13, 14. Why is it unreasonable to hope to be enlightened by pagan Greek philosophers?
13 Should professed Christians have turned to pagan Greek philosophers to learn about something as basic as the hope of life after death? Of course not. When Paul wrote to Christians living in Corinth, Greece, he said: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God; for it is written: ‘He catches the wise in their own cunning.’ And again: ‘Jehovah knows that the reasonings of the wise men are futile.’” (1 Corinthians 3:19, 20) The ancient Greeks were idol worshipers. How, then, could they be a source of truth? Paul asked the Corinthians: “What agreement does God’s temple have with idols? For we are a temple of a living God; just as God said: ‘I shall reside among them and walk among them, and I shall be their God, and they will be my people.’”—2 Corinthians 6:16.
14 Revelation of sacred truths was initially given through the nation of Israel. (Romans 3:1, 2) After 33 C.E., it was given through the first-century anointed Christian congregation. Paul, speaking of first-century Christians, said: “It is to us God has revealed [the things prepared for those who love him] through his spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:10; see also Revelation 1:1, 2.) Christendom’s doctrine of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy. It was not revealed through God’s revelations to Israel or through the first-century congregation of anointed Christians.
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