The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IX. Switzerland’s Kraemer-Innatism Not Biblical but Greek

Dutch theologian and linguist HENDRIK KRAEMER, for years director of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey, Switzerland, has linked man’s immortality with the “restoration of the image” of God in man through the “resurrection.” This he holds to be the “only ground” of “eternal life.” Stressing the “indissoluble unity” of man’s nature, he arraigns the current popular “undestructibility of the soul” contention as not Biblical, but Greek in origin. Kraemer is very explicit concerning the terms of this conflict. CFF2 905.3

“The belief in immortality, in the way it is held now almost universally in Christendom, is not Biblical. It is of Greek origin and is, accordingly, always taken in the sense of the soul being indestructible, whereas the body is destined to decay. This is contrary to the teaching of the Bible, for two reasons. In the first place because it ignores entirely the Biblical assumption that man as soul and body is an indissoluble unity. CFF2 905.4

“In the second place, because it is said plainly in the Bible that God ‘is that blessed and only Potentate, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality’ (1 Timothy 6:16). This indestructibility of the soul rests on the Greek idea that the soul is of divine essence, which conflicts again with the Biblical teaching of man, created in the Image of God, as a created soul and body.” ⁷¹ CFF2 905.5