A Living Soul

There has been much discussion and confusion on the nature and destiny of human beings. For example, many Christians believe that after a person’s body dies, his or her soul goes directly to Paradise or hell, or perhaps into purgatory.

Some religions advocate a cyclic existence through an endless process of reincarnation or transmigration. For them, death means that one physical body is being replaced by another physical body. One of the most significant Adventist contributions to this discussion was given by Jean Zurcher. On March 25, 1953, the evaluating committee of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, approved his outstanding PhD dissertation titled « L’homme, sa nature et sa destinée. Essai sur le problème de l’union de l’âme et du corps ».

An English translation later came off the press under the title The Nature and Destiny of Man: Essay on the Problem of the Union of the Soul and the Body in Relation to the Christian Views of Man.49 Zurcher pointed out that many of the Christian misconceptions regarding death come from Greek philosophers (mainly Plato and Aristotle) and the difficulty they had explaining the union of soul and body.

According to Genesis 15:20, the whole human being is “a living soul” and does not have an immortal soul that remains alive after the biological death of the body. Since the soul dies (Ezekiel 31:33), there is no natural immortality of the soul.

Zurcher explained that death is “a state of unconsciousness comparable to that of sleep,” “followed by a reawakening, by a resurrection.” “No immortality whatever is inherent in human nature but life eternal is for him who grasps it by faith and fashions his soul in the image of Jesus Christ.” Biblical doctrines do not function in isolation; they interrelate with other doctrines.

Much more than just another theory, the concept of conditional immortality of the soul sustains the Adventist understanding of Christ’s second coming and the resurrection of the dead. It opens to view the glorious gates of eternity, with sin and sinners existing no more and God’s faithful children living forever in His presence.