The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Beasley-Murray-Survival of Soul Only Would Be Fragmentary

DR. G. R. BEASLEY-MURRAY ⁹ is yet another who recognizes the long-standing predominance of the view of “eternal survival of the soul” through Innate Immortality, and then in contrast presents the Biblical view of the resurrection as the means of reuniting both body and soul. The discarnate soul view, he avers, would involve the “survival of a maimed man.” God’s provision is for the whole man. CFF2 828.2

1. RESURRECTION IS REINTEGRATION OF WHOLE MAN

According to Beasley-Murray the survival of the soul only would be but a fragmentation:
“All this leads us to the realization that the Christian hope is not the eternal survival of the soul, which is the popular conception of immortality, but the uniting of soul and body in resurrection. The idea of dividing sharply between the physical and spiritual elements of our nature... The Bible avoids both extremes and consistently treats man as a ‘body-soul’; not a soul in a body but a soul so much at one with the body that the term ‘body’ can often stand for the person. ‘Your bodies are members of Christ’ is one such instance (1 Corinthians 6:14). It is clear, then, that if man is fundamentally a body-soul, survival of the soul only would be the survival of a maimed man. Paul referred to this when he told how he shrank from becoming ‘naked’ in death; he wanted to be ‘clothed’ in resurrection (2 Corinthians 5:4). CFF2 828.3

“The Christian resurrection, accordingly, has been well termed ‘the reintegration of man,’ i.e., it is the making of him into a whole man again.” ¹⁰ CFF2 828.4