The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VI. Westcott—Innate Immortality “Wholly Insufficient”

Bishop BROOKE Foss WESTCOTT, D.D., D.C.L. (1825-1901), English prelate and Biblical scholar, was canon of Peterborough, then professor of divinity at Cambridge, 1870-1890. In 1883 he was appointed canon of Westminster by Gladstone, and was consecrated Bishop of Durham in 1890. His fame rests on his joint editorship, along with F. J. A. Hort, of the celebrated Westcott and Hort critical edition of the Greek New Testament. CFF2 449.1

While still professor of divinity at Cambridge, Bishop Westcott went on record in his excellent book on the resurrection, as recognizing the “purely philosophical” origin of the Innate Immortality concept. Thus:
“Gradually we have been led to dissociate faith in the resurrection of the body from the actual Resurrection of Christ, which is the earnest of it. And not unfrequently we substitute for the fulness of the Christian creed the purely philosophic conception of an immortality of the soul, which surrenders, as we shall see hereafter, the idea of the continuance of our complete personal existence.” ⁹⁴ CFF2 449.2

And in a summary, on a later page, he adds this:
“It has been seen that our present self is essentially twofold; and that we cannot in any way conceive that we can remain the same if either of the elements of which it is made up wants its proper representative. The doctrine of the ‘immortality of the soul’ is therefore wholly insufficient to satisfy that desire for a life hereafter for which man naturally craves.” ⁹⁵ CFF2 449.3

That is Bishop Wescott’s word—the theory of Innate Immortality is “wholly insufficient.” CFF2 449.4