Objection:
Christ said, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28. This proves that the soul and the body are two distinctly different things: the body can be destroyed, and the soul remains, and therefore, the soul is a separate entity that lives on forever after the body is dead.
Answer:
Those who teach the immortal-soul doctrine teach not only that the souls of the righteous live on but also that the souls of the wicked do. They teach that though the body is destroyed, the soul is not. But this text explicitly declares that it is possible “to destroy both soul and body in hell,” in other words, that it is possible “to kill the soul.” Indeed this is the last text in the world that the immortal-soul advocate should offer to support his belief.
But the believer in the immortality of the soul will remind us that at least the text makes clear that the body is one thing and the soul another, and therefore the soul should be considered a separate entity. The word here translated “soul” is from the Greek word psuchē; indeed, this is true in every instance where the word “soul” is found in the New Testament in the King James Version of the Bible. But there are almost as many instances where psuchē is translated as “life.” The translators, who were not inspired, who were believers in an immortal soul, varied their translation of psuchē according to their best understanding and inevitably through the eyes of their theology. We do not question their honesty, only their accuracy.
Note the following words of Christ as translated in this King James Version: “For whosoever will save his life [psuchē] shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life [psuchē] for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul [psuchē]? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul [psuchē]?” Matthew 16:25-26.
Obviously, the translators could not translate psuchē in the twenty-fifth verse as “soul” without creating a theological dilemma of the first order. In the twenty-sixth verse, “lose his own psuchē,” obviously means lose it in the judgment fires that devour the damned. But in the twenty-fifth verse, Christ states that it is possible for a man to “lose his psuchē” for His [Christ’s] sake! Thus, the translators solved the dilemma and saved their immortal-soul doctrine by translating psuchē as “life” in the twenty-fifth verse and as “soul” in the twenty-sixth. We might add that the translators of the American Standard Version (commonly known as the Revised Version) and the translators of the Revised Standard Version both translate psuchē as “life” in the twenty-sixth and the twenty-fifth verse.
Coming back now to Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” When the word “life” is substituted for “soul,” as it may most appropriately be, any semblance of an argument for the immortal soul doctrine disappears. Indeed, the text becomes one of the strongest supporting the doctrine that the day is coming when the wicked will have the very life within them destroyed, and if that does not mean final destruction, we do not know how that meaning could be conveyed in words.
