Belief in the soul’s immortality among all
peoples is usually closely connected with religion and comprises an essential
part of almost all religions known in history. This points
to the fact that the idea of the soul’s immortality goes into the consciousness
of man with its roots. In the opinion of many profound thinkers of ancient days
as well as of recent (Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Pascal), the idea must be
recognized as native to man’s spirit. The religious conviction that the
alliance uniting God with man cannot be destroyed after the death of man, but
is an eternal union, belongs to the most firm convictions of religion, without
which it would not have a vital force. Faith in immortality is as ancient as
man himself and his religion.
In defense of
this belief there are also intellectual considerations, which are called
proofs. Proofs of the immortality of the soul are divided into teleological,
philosophical, ethical, and historical (from the universality of belief in
immortality held by all peoples).
The teleological proof is drawn from the
attributes of God, mainly the attributes of His personality, goodness, justice,
and omnipotence.
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The philosophical proof is inferred from the properties or nature of
the soul itself.
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The ethical proof is based on the demands of our ethical conscience.
·
The historical is drawn from the history of mankind.
For people who believe in god, the most
convincing proofs of the immortality of the soul are the teleological proofs.
If God is a living Personality, possessing attributes of All-Mightiness,
All-Goodness, and unconditional justice, then, in creating people, He could not
have created them deprived of immortality. Therefore, the conscience of a
believer has an immovable conviction in the truth of the soul’s immortality. If
there is a God, there is also immortality of the soul.
The philosophical proof of immortality
complements the teleological and comes to the aid of the believer when he meets
with objections from theories denying a personal God (i.e. materialism,
atheism, pantheism).
Spiritual and
physical phenomena present in themselves something substantially heterogeneous
(or different in nature), not comparable one to another. Just as you cannot
infer physical attributes from spiritual attributes, so also you cannot infer
spiritual attributes from physical. What kind of chemical, physical, or, in
general, material attributes can be found in such psychological phenomena as
faith, hope, justice, love, kindness, etc.? It is impossible, from a materialistic
point of view, to explain psychological phenomena. The consciousness of a man
represents in itself a complete oneness, while the brain, to which materialists
want to attribute a consciousness, represents a multitude of material particles.
The brain is only an instrument of which the soul makes use, but it is not the
soul itself. And when the brain and man’s body, in general, is destroyed, there
is no logical basis on which to affirm that the soul must also be destroyed. It
does not have to be manifested in a dead body or in a destroyed brain, but can
exist also separately from the body and from the brain.
The body cannot
live separately from the soul, but from this it cannot be deduced that the soul
cannot live separately from the body in a different world which is unknown to
us, but whose existence we have no basis for denying. We can believe in the
existence of a different life, another spiritual world, or we can disbelieve in
it, that is, we can believe there is not a spiritual world. Nothing can
interfere with our belief. We have many more reasons for making the assertion
that the psychological differs from the physical. Likewise in stating that the
soul can live without the body, we again have more reasons than in conjecturing
the destruction of the soul at the time of the destruction of the body.
From the
materialistic point of view, which denies the existence of the soul as a
separate element, that is, a separate substance, it is impossible to explain
the fact of the constant identity of our self-consciousness. If our spiritual
phenomena represent in themselves only the union of material particles, then
how can the continuity of our consciousness throughout our whole life be
explained with the change of material particles which undoubtedly takes place
in our bodily organism? Therefore, it is highly improbable that the basis of
our personality would be composed of constantly changing matter.
The ethical
proof of the soul’s immortality is summarized in pointing out that man, representing
in himself an intellectual, ethical personality, cannot have only a temporary
meaning during his life on the earth. The aim and ethical designation of man as
a personal being consists of his attaining the fullness of his personal
spiritual perfection and taking his place in the proper relationship to the
eternal personal God. It follows that his purpose cannot be terminated by time.
The denial of God and the immortality of the soul transforms
man into a highly qualified form of cattle. Faith, however, in God and the
immortality of the soul, in the way of which nothing can stand, places before
man the possibility of endless perfection until union with God is reached.
By ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect — that is the
ideal furnished to man by God Himself.