The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. San Francisco’s Gill-“Discarnate” Spirit Idea Not Sanctioned by Bible

Dr. THEODORE A. GILL, ¹⁷ formerly managing editor of the liberal Christian Century magazine, and now president of the San Francisco Theological Seminary, of California, in a book review discussion in The Christian Century of August 13, 1958, takes a forthright position against the concept of any detached “discarnate” souls and the body-and-soul dualism so commonly held. Under the heading “Everything So Strange,” Editor Gill was reviewing Nothing So Strange (1958), the biography of Spiritualist medium and lecturer Arthur Ford, who had championed clairvoyance, clairaudience, and all the other phenomena of Spiritualism, along with parapsychology and extrasensory perception. Gill says the book is “sure to confuse Christians” who are not secure in their thinking and conceptions concerning the soul. CFF2 940.1

1. CHALLENGES CONTENTION OF “DISCARNATE SOULS.”

In vigorous terms Gill challenges Ford’s arguments and contentions. Here is his first charge: CFF2 940.2

“They interpret their bewilderment in the archaic terms of bodymind dualism. Body and mind are detachable units in the human being, according to an old view, so minds can swing free of living bodies, and do swing free of dead bodies, and persons thus rarefied continue to be as ‘discarnates.’” ¹⁸ CFF2 940.3

Attacking the “gimcrack fantasy” of their “supposedly buttressed facts,” Gill states that there is “no footing” for their “ideas.” Rather CFF2 940.4

“they are betrayed by that unquestioned dualism with which they begin. In the main streams of science and of biblical teaching there is no footing for any idea that body and mind can ever be separated.” ¹⁹ CFF2 940.5

2. WHOLE MEN DIE; WHOLE MEN ARE RE-CREATED

Declaring there is neither scientific nor Biblical support for such a dualistic position, Gill continues: CFF2 940.6

“Science then knows no nonphysical entity which disengages itself from the body at death and carries on. Neither does the Bible, as Oscar Cullmann’s 1954-55 Ingersoll Lectures (Immortality of the Soul OT Resurrection of the Dead?)... are now reminding us. Biblical anthropology knows no mortal body-immortal soul distinction: it knows only whole men who die entire and who will finally be re-created whole men by God who ‘alone has immortality’ (1 Timothy 6:16).” ²⁰ CFF2 941.1

3. “DISCARNATES” NOT IN “BIBLICAL PICTURE.”

Discussing the interim state “between the death” of the “whole person” and his “restoration,” Dr. Gill says men “sleep.” There are no roving “discarnates.” Allusions to a “naked soul,” or “inner man, divested of the body,” still “smell of dualism.” ²¹ “Between the death that is really death of the whole person and his restoration by God to life that is really life, embodied and personal, men ‘sleep.’” ²² CFF2 941.2

Then he adds pungently:
“Whatever earnest of the whole man spans the time between death and re-creation, waits. We sleep. Detached minds, immortal souls, discarnates wandering and thinking and talking and materializing things-these have no place in the biblical picture.” ²³ CFF2 941.3

Such are Gill’s strong words. And he repeats for emphasis that God “did not create immortal souls or spirits or detachable minds, but the whole, embodied men whom he will recreate.” ²⁴ He thus disposes of “the utterly alien elaborations so far attempted by spiritualists on their always fascinating, sometimes real experience.” ²⁵ CFF2 941.4