The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Paul’s Leading Problem Passage (2 Corinthians 5:1-9)

I. “Absent From the Body”; “Present With the Lord”

1. PERIL OF INVOKING THE ISOLATED VERSE

It is both illogical and unsafe to build any major doctrine on isolated passages, apart from the general tenor of Scripture. It is to be remembered that enormous errors have been built upon isolated verses. Thus the tender solicitude, “Compel them to come in” (Luke 14:23), was made the pretext for the cruel horrors of the Inquisition. And the symbolic expression concerning the Lord’s Supper, “This is my body,” was made the basis of the dogma of transubstantiation by the Roman Church. CFF1 324.1

Luther, progressing part way, saw in it consubstantiation, and refused the hand of Zwingle, who held the bread to be but an emblem and could not admit of Luther’s strained explanation. Yet on a paralleling page, as it were, Jesus committed His mother unto John, saying to her, “Behold thy son!” (John 19:26), in other words, he would be to her a son. And all understood the use. Paul wisely admonished Timothy as a young minister to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). CFF1 324.2

2. CONTENTION: DEATH ONLY A “TRANSITION.”

In the passage we are about to survey (2 Corinthians 5:1-9), the expression “absent from the body, ... present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) is one of the Pauline statements most commonly drafted upon to prove that death is only a change of life for the believer—simply a transition, with the soul of the saint passing out of the body and going straight into the Lord’s presence. This is because the accepted view of the Immortal-Soulist is that the “dead” in Christ are not dead at all. Rather, they are alleged to be radiantly alive in Heaven in a state of conscious bliss, with instantaneous transference at death to the immediate presence of Christ. The poet has aptly summarized the contention as, “There is no death; what seems so is transition.” CFF1 324.3

One of the tragic results of the popular view is that the language and intent of Scripture have been largely forsaken. But according to Scripture, only in the future, after the Second Advent, will the time come when “there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4). Some have gone so far as actually to substitute “ascended” and “translated” for the term “death,” in certain sermons, obituaries, and epitaphs. CFF1 325.1

3. CONTENTION: SOUL NOW ENJOYING CELESTIAL LIFE OF BLISS

This passage is not the easiest to understand. Peter refers to a few such difficult Pauline expressions “hard to be understood,” which some wrest to their own ruin (2 Peter 3:16). So these verses are often taken as indicating that during the intermediate period, preceding the resurrection of the body, the soul is separated from the body and experiences a celestial life of disembodied bliss. Dr. A. T. Robertson, in commenting on the term “naked” (gumnoi), in 2 Corinthians 5:3, says, “That is, disembodied spirits, ‘like the souls in Sheol, without form and void of all power of activity’ (Plummer).” ¹ But there is not a word about the soul in the whole account. CFF1 325.2

Paul’s words, however, must be understood in the light of his own uniform and repeated teaching on the nature of man, not on a concept never held either by Paul or by any of the other apostles, much less by any group in the Christian church for nearly two centuries thereafter. This mortal body does not enclose an immortal principle or entity, which is released by the stroke of death, and then flies away in glad release. That is simply thinly disguised Platonism. CFF1 325.3

This passage is considered so important to proponents of Immortal-Soulism, and such reliance is placed upon its words and phrasings, that we shall examine it with special care to see whether the dependence is justified. So we will approach it from a number of angles, diagraming its major phrases, so as to show their related intent, and even presenting a definitive glossary of terms as an aid. We shall look at it historically, contextually, linquistically, and exegetically. The question of semantics is definitely involved; hence a precise definition of terms and a study of usages are called for. Truth, it should be added, will always welcome searching scrutiny. CFF1 325.4

4. UNKNOWN IN CHRISTIAN CHURCH UNTIL NEARLY A.D. 200

Be it particularly noted that when Paul wrote his various epistles, the Platonic philosophy of a persisting immortal soul, such as had already devastated the Jewish church, had not yet penetrated the infant Christian church. Such an innovation did not intrude until nearly A.D. 200. None of the apostles so held. Therefore Paul did not, in A.D. 58, teach such a theory nor would any of his early Christian readers so construe his words. CFF1 326.1

That, we earnestly aver, was a deviation that developed in the third and fourth centuries, in time becoming the identifying dogma of the great Roman Church of the medieval centuries, and regrettably retained by many of the Protestant Reformation churches that revolted from the Catholic communion but nevertheless retained various of the Roman departures. (See Part IV for full documentation.) CFF1 326.2