The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

XI. Hooke of London-Greek Inherent Immortality Not in Bible

Former professor of Old Testament studies at the University of London, S. H. HOOKE, ⁷⁹ after stressing the Biblical emphasis on the resurrection-life, concurs with Prof. H. Wheeler Robinson (Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament, pp. 101, 102), and pinpoints the first appearance of the Greek Innate Immortality doctrine in Jewish circles as found in the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon. He likewise declares it to be not only unscriptural but also missing from the early creeds: CFF2 908.1

“The form in which the Church received and has continued to hold the belief in resurrection was, and has remained, Jewish. The late Professor H. Wheeler Robinson has well remarked, in this connection: ‘It is a life on earth, however new its conditions, and it is a resurrectionlife, involving the restoration of the dead body. This form of belief is seen to have been inevitable, once we have grasped the Hebrew idea of personality; a resurrection of the body was the only form of triumph over death which Hebrew psychology could conceive for those actually dead. Even St. Paul shrinks from the thought of bodiless existence.’ (Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament, p. 101-2.)” ⁸⁰ CFF2 908.2

Innate Immortality has no support in Scripture:
“The Greek doctrine of immortality, which finds its first Jewish expression in the Wisdom of Solomon, and which conceives of an immortality of the soul apart from the body, does not occur in the New Testament, nor in the Creeds. Even the Alexandrian Fathers appear to assume the identity of the ‘spiritual body’ spoken of by St. Paul with the earthly body, without, however, explaining the nature of the identity.” ⁸¹ CFF2 908.3