The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. McCormick’s Knight-Innatism Based on Apocrypha Not Bible

Over in Britain, at the April, 1960, Annual Meeting of the National Bible Society of Scotland, Prof. GEORGE A. F. KNIGHT, ²² then of St. Andrews University, Edinburgh, but now of McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, spoke on “The Message of the Reformation.” After referring to the noncanonical books of the Apocrypha, which were introduced into the Septuagint in the Inter-Testament period, Knight indicted “four doctrines”—including innate “immortality of the soul” and Purgatory—as without foundation or authority in either the Old or the New Testament. Not all of the four, however, were rejected by the church of the Reformation. Here is Knight’s charge: CFF2 1001.1

“I would mention four doctrines that have arisen from the Apocrypha which are not in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament. First, the immortality of the soul, as understood by the Greek philosopher Plato. Second, the pre-existence of the soul, an idea that came out of the East and not from the Old Testament. Third, Purgatory, which is not found anywhere in the Bible, and Fourth, prayers for the dead. These are all in the Apocrypha. It is interesting that the Church rejected some of these, but kept some of the others.” ²³ CFF2 1001.2

Platonic Innate Immortality, then, according to Knight, is not found in the Bible. CFF2 1001.3

1. RESURRECTION PROFFERED HOPE OF “LIFE AFTER DEATH.”

Referring back to Jerome’s Vulgate translation of the Bible, Knight states that Jerome, finding himself unable to translate the Old Testament from the Septuagint, turned to the Hebrew original, which, Knight notes, is “without the addition of the four doctrines” mentioned. Then, turning to the “positive element” in the Reformation “rediscovery of the Bible,” Knight stresses the resurrection as the “great hope of life after death.” Note his searching words: CFF2 1001.4

“I want to mention a positive element in the Gospel which the Reformation rediscovered that has nothing to do with the Apocrypha, but comes straight to us from the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is the great hope of life after death. The Bible, without the Apocrypha, has nothing to say about the immortality of the soul, nothing about the pre-existence of the soul, nothing about Purgatory, nothing about praying for the dead; the Resurrection is the doctrine that comes to us from the Old and New Testaments-the Resurrection of the body.” ²⁴ CFF2 1002.1

That is vitally important. CFF2 1002.2

2. REFORMERS “SHAKEN” AWAY FROM MEDIEVAL INNATISM

Declaring that the term “body” is used to designate the “whole person,” Knight sets forth the contrast between the resurrection and the traditional survival concept, through immortality of the soul. Here are important words, fraught with meaning: CFF2 1002.3

“Our wholeness can only be known and expressed through our bodies as part of the whole persons that we are. Our physical bodies may be changed but in the Resurrection. it will be the whole of each one of us that is concerned-body, soul and spirit. This is His promise to us in the Bible, and not just the survival of the soul. That is Good News; that is part of the Good News that the medieval Church could not preach. No wonder that scholars before the Reformation were afraid of the Hebrew Bible. They were afraid that by going back to it it might shake their faith, because they were preaching the immortality of the soul. When the Reformers came, returning to the original Hebrew or Greek of the Bible, their faith was shaken, but it was shaken into finding the Gospel!” ²⁵ CFF2 1002.4

That is true. But, alas, not of all. Luther, Knight says, went “back to the original Bible.” And our students today learn Greek and Hebrew “in order to understand the authority of the Gospel.” ²⁶ So, even in the Scottish Bible Society meeting in 1960 the significance of the Bible witness on life after death is touched upon. CFF2 1002.5

3. SOUL NOT SELF-EXISTING “SEPARABLE” ENTITY

In his A Christian Theology of the Old Testament, published while Knight was still at Knox College, New Zealand, he wrote of the creation of man and the unity, or single “entity,” of his being: CFF2 1003.1

“The result of God’s [creative] action was not a soul within a body, one that could later be extracted from that body and which could then continue to exist apart from the body, when the body finally crumbled in the dust. Man is not an amalgam of two separable entities, dust and the breath of life. He is one entity.” ²⁷ CFF2 1003.2

And in chapter twenty-six (“New Heavens and a New Earth”), under “Life After Death,” Knight wrote of the attitude of the Reformers and of the Reformation “return to authority of Scripture.” CFF2 1003.3

“It is natural that they [the Reformers] should have approached the OT at that time from the background of philosophical thought which they had inherited with all Europe, and that emerged from the renewed study of the Greek philosophers that was one cause of the Renaissance. Amongst other conceptions that were ‘in the air’ at that period was the universally accepted doctrine of the immortality of the individual soul. It has been the modern study of the OT itself, however, which has offered the Christian Church a wholly different basis for the Christian hope of a life beyond death, and one that is fully in accord with the hope which the NT proclaims.” ²⁸ CFF2 1003.4

And, Knight adds, concerning the nephesh, or soul, in the Old Testament: “The ‘Greek’ notion that God addresses merely the human soul, as if the latter were an entity separable from the body, is therefore an idea alien to the Bible.” ²⁹ This “alien” idea came, he repeats, from the “philosophy of Greece.” Knight thus accords with multiplied scores of other awakened scholars. CFF2 1003.5