It is evident from the passages cited that Christ and his apostles did more to illustrate and confirm the belief in the immortality of the soid, as cherished at the pres- ent day, than hail been done by any nation, even the Jews iuihided. " He first gave to it that high practical iiitiTcst whioli it now possesses;" and it is owing to Christianity that the doctrine of the soul's immortality has become a common and well-recognised truth— no mere result of speculation, as are those of the heathen and Jewish philosophers, nor a product of priestly in- vention— but a light to the reason, and a guide to the conscience and conduct. '• The aspirations of philoso- phy, and the materialistic conceptions of popular my- thology, are found in the Gospel transmuted into a liv- ing, spiritual, and divine fact, and an authoritative influence, not only touching the present life, but gov- erning and directing it."
V. Christian Views In the early Christian Church
the views on the immortality of the soul were very va- ried. Tliere were none that actually denied, far from it, nor even any that doubted its possibilitj'. " But some of them, e. g. Justin, Tatian, and Theophilus, on various grounds, supposed that the soul, though mortal in itself, or at least indifferent in relation to mortality or immortalitj', either acquires immortality as a prom- ised reward, by its union with the spirit and the right use of its liberty, or, in the opposite case, perishes with the body. They were led to this view partly because they laid so much stress on freedom, and because they thought that likeness to God was to be obtained only by this freedom ; and partly, too, because they supposed (according to the trichotomistic division of human na-
ture) that the soul {4>vx>'l) receives the seeds of immor- tal life only by the union with the spirit (irviiifta), as the higher and free life of reason." This view was also afterwards introduced into the Greek Church by Nicho- las of Methone (compare Hagenbach, Doctrines, ii, IG). "And, lastly, other philosophical hypotheses concerning the nature of the soul doubtless had an influence. On the contrarj^ Tertullian and Origen, whose views differ- ed on other subjects, agreed on this one pomt, that they, in accordance with their yjcculiar notions concerning the natiure of the soul. Inoked upon its immortality as essen- tial to it" ( Ilagenbadi, i, 158). " The schoolmen of the Middle Ages in the Western Church considered the im- mortality of the soul a theolof/ical truth ; but their chief leaders, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, were at is- sue on the question whether reason furnishes satisfac- tory proof of that doctrine. ... As Anselm of Canter- bury had inferred the existence of God himself from the idea of God, so Thomas Aquinas proved the immortality of the soul, in a similar manner, by an ontological argu- ment: 'Intellectus apprchendit esse absolute et secun- dum orane tenipus. Unde omne habens intellectum naturaliter desiderat esse semper, naturale autem dcsi- derium non potest est inane. Omnis igitur intellectua- lis substantia est incorruptibilis' (compare Engelhardt, Dogmengesch. ii, 123 sq.). On the other hand, Scotus, whose views were more nearly allied to those of the Nominalists, maintained : « Non posse demonstrari, quod anima sit immortalis' {Comm. in 31. Sentent. bk. ii, dist. 17, qu. i ; comp. bk. iv, dist. 43, qu. 2). Bonaventura, on the contrary, asserted: 'Animam esse immortalem, auctoritate ostenditur et ratione' {De Nat. Dear, ii, 55). Concerning the further attempts of Moneta of Cremona (13th century), William of Auvergne (bishop of Paris from 1228 to 1249), and Kaimimd Martini {Pugio Fidei adv.Maur. p. i, ch.iv), to prove the immortality of the soul, compare jMiinscher, Dogmengeschichte, ed. by Yon Colin, p. 92 sq." (Hagenbach). On the views since the Eeforroation, see Soul, Ijlmoutality of.
YI. Philosophical Argument.— There are many writ- ers, both in philosophy and theology, who deny that the immortality of the soul can be proved apart from revelation. E. Stithelin {Foundations of our Faith, p. 232) says : " We might take up a line of argument used by philosophy both in ancient and modern times— from Socrates down to Fichte— to prove the immortality of the inner being ; an argument derived from the asser- tion that the soul, being a unity, is, as such, incapable of decay, it being only in the case of the complex that a falling to pierces, or a dissolution, is conceivable." " But," he continues, " the abstruse nature of this meth- od leads us to renounce a line of argument from which, we freely confess, we expect little profitable result.^ For, after all, what absolute proof have we of this unity of the soul? Can we subject it to the microscope or the scalpel, as we can the visible and tangible '? It must content us for the present simply to indicate that the instinct and consciousness of immortality have nothing to fear from the most searching examination of the rea- son, but find far more of confirmation and additional proof than of contradiction in the profoundest thinking. Fiu-ther, that this instinct and consciousness do actually exist, and are traceable through all the stages and ram- ifications of the human race, ... is confirmed to us by oiu: opponents themselves . . . that there is in man something which is deeper and stronger than the max- ims of a self-invented philosophy, namely, the divinely- created nobihty of his nature, the inherent breath of life, breathed into him by God, the relation to the Eter- nal, which secures to him eternity." Watson (l7isti- tutes, ii, 2) goes even further, and declares that nowhere else but in the Bible is there any " indubitable declara- tion of man's immortaUty," or "any facts or principles so obvious as to enable us confidently to infer it. All observation lies directly against the doctrine of man's immortality. He dies', and the probabilities of a futiire life which have been established upon the unequal dis-