THE SPIRIT RETURNS TO GOD.
Ecclesiastes 12:7: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” It is natural for men
to appeal first and most directly to those sources from which they
expect the most efficient help. So the advocates of man’s natural
immortality, when put to the task of showing what scriptures they regard
as containing proof of their position, almost invariably make their
first appeal to the text here quoted.
In the examination of this text, and all others of a like nature, let it
ever be remembered that the question at issue is, Has man in his nature
a constituent element, which is an independent entity, and which, when
the body dies, keeps right on in uninterrupted consciousness, being
capable of exercising in a still higher degree out of the body the
functions of intelligence and activity which it manifested through the
body, and destined, whether a subject of God’s favor, or of his
threatened and merited wrath, to live so long as God himself exists.
Does this text assert anything of this kind? Does it state that from
which even such an inference can be drawn? We invite the reader to go
with us, while we endeavor to consider carefully what the text really
teaches. Our opponents appeal to it as direct testimony. Let us see how
far we can go with them.
1. Solomon, under a series of beautiful figures, speaks in Eccl. 12:1-7,
of the lying down of man in death. Granted.
2. Dust, or the body, and spirit are spoken of as two distinct things.
Granted.
3. At death, the spirit leaves the body. Granted.
4. The spirit is disposed of in a different manner from the body.
Granted.
5. This spirit returns to God, and is therefore conscious, after the
dissolution of the body. Not granted. Where is the proof of this? Here
our paths begin to diverge from each other. But how could it return to
God if it was not conscious? Answer: In the manner Job describes. “If he
[God] set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and
his breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again to
dust.” Job 34:14, 15. This text speaks of God’s gathering to himself the
“breath” of man; something which no one supposes to be capable of a
separate conscious existence. Over against this proposition we are
compelled to mark, Assumption.
6. This spirit is therefore to exist forever. This conclusion also we
fail to see, either expressed, or even in the remotest manner, implied.
Thus the vital points in the evidence are wholly assumed.
But if the spirit here does not mean what it is popularly supposed to
mean, what is its signification? What is it that returns to God? It will
be noticed that it is something which God “gave” to man. And Solomon
introduces it in a familiar manner, as if alluding to something already
recorded and well understood. He makes evident reference to the creation
of man in the beginning. His body was formed of the dust; and in
addition to this, what did God do for man or give unto him? He breathed
into his nostrils the _breath of life_. This is the only spirit that is
distinctly spoken of as having been given by God to man. No one claims
that this, like the body, was from the dust, or returns to dust; but it
does not therefore follow that it is conscious or immortal.
Landis, p. 133, falls into this wrong method of reasoning. He says:--
“If the soul were mortal, it too would be given up to the dust, it would
return also to the earth. But God affirms that it does not return to the
earth; and therefore it is distinct from the mortal and perishable part
of man.”
The breath of life is distinct from the body, and did not come from the
dust of the ground; but to say that it can exist in a conscious state
independent of the body, and that it must live forever, is groundless
assumption.
If spirit here means “the breath of life,” how, or in what sense, does
it return to God? Landis, p. 150, thus falsely treats this point also:
“How can the air we breathe,” he asks, “return to God?” Between the
breath of life as imparted to man by God, vitalizing the animal frame,
and air considered simply as an element, we apprehend there is a broad
distinction. Solomon is showing the dissolution of man by tracing back
the steps taken in his formation. The breath of life was breathed into
Adam in the beginning; by which he became a living soul. That is
withdrawn from man, and as a consequence he becomes inanimate. Then the
body, deprived of its vitalizing principle, having been formed of the
dust, goes back to dust again.
That the breath of life came from God to man, none will deny. Do they
ask how it returns to him? Tell us how it came from him, and we will
tell how it returns. In the same sense in which God gave it to man, in
that sense it returns to him. That is all there is of it. The
explanation is perfectly simple, because one division of the problem is
comprehended just as easily as the other. It is an easy thing to turn
off with a flippant sneer an explanation which if allowed to stand,
takes the very breath of life out of a cherished theory.
But there is a grave objection lying against the popular exposition of
this text, which must not pass unnoticed. It is involved in the
question, What was the state or condition of this spirit before God gave
it to man? Was it an independent, conscious, and intelligent being,
before it was put into Adam, as it is claimed that it was after Adam got
through with it, and it returned to God? Solomon evidently designs to
state respecting all the elements of which man is composed, as is
expressly stated of the body, that they resume the original condition in
which they were, before they came together to form the component parts
of man. We know it is argued that the expression respecting the body,
that it returns to the dust “as it was,” is good ground for an inference
that the spirit returns not as it was. Every principle of logic requires
the very opposite conclusion. For, having set the mind upon that idea of
sameness of condition, and then referring us to the source from whence
the spirit came, and stating that it goes back to that source, the
language is as good as an affirmation that it goes back to its original
condition also, and must be so understood unless an express affirmation
is made to the contrary. The question is therefore pertinent, Was this
spirit before it came into man, a conscious being, as it is claimed to
be after it leaves him? In other words, have we all had a conscious
pre-existence? Is the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation repeated in
every member of the human race? Yes! if popular theologians rightly
explain this text. And the more daring or reckless spirits among them,
seeing the logical sequence of their reasoning, boldly avow this
position.
Mr. Landis (to whom we make occasional reference as an exponent of the
popular theory) recoils at the idea of pre-existence, and claims (p.
147) that the spirit does not return as it was, but acquires “a moral
character, and so is changed from what it was when first created and
given to man”! Oh! then, when Adam’s body was formed of the dust of the
ground a spirit _was created_ (from what?) and put into it. Where did he
learn this? To what new revelation has he had access to become
acquainted with so remarkable a fact? Or whence derives he his authority
to manufacture statements of this kind? His soul swells with indignation
over some whom he styles materialists, and whom he accuses of
manufacturing scripture. Thou that sayest a man should not, dost thou?
Nothing is said of the “creation of a spirit” in connection with the
formation of Adam’s body. The body having been formed, God, by an
agency, not created for the purpose, but already existing with himself,
endowed it with life, and Adam became a living soul.
Having thus artfully introduced the idea that the spirit was created for
the occasion, Mr. L. takes up this reasoning which shows that if the
spirit is conscious after leaving the body, it must have been before it
entered it, and, applying to it a term doubtless suggested by his own
feelings in view of the assumptions to which he was himself obliged to
resort, calls it silly. Nevertheless here is the rock on which their
exposition of this text inevitably and hopelessly founders.
There is another consideration not without its bearing on this question.
The words, “And the spirit shall return to God who gave it,” are spoken
promiscuously of all mankind. They apply alike to the righteous and
wicked. If the spirit survives the death of the body, the spirits of the
righteous would, as a natural consequence, ascend to God, in whose
presence they are promised fullness of joy. But do the spirits of the
wicked go to God also? For what purpose? The immediate destination
usually assigned to them is the lake of fire. Is it said that they first
go to God to be judged? Then we ask, Where does the Bible once affirm
that a person is judged when he dies? On the contrary, the Scriptures
invariably place the Judgment in the future, and assert in the most
explicit terms that God has appointed a day for that purpose. Acts
17:31.
Thus the Bible doctrine of the Judgment is directly contradicted by this
view. According to the Scriptures no man has yet received his final
judgment; yet, according to the view under examination, the spirits of
all who have ever died, good and bad, righteous and wicked, have gone to
God. For what purpose have the spirits of the wicked gone to him? Are
they there still? Does God so deal with rebels against his
government--give them Heaven from one to six thousand years, more or
less, and hell afterward? Away with a view which introduces such
inconsistencies into God’s dealings with his creatures.
How infinitely preferable that view which alone the record warrants;
that is, that the spirit that returns to God who gave it is the breath
of life, that agency by which God vivifies and sustains these physical
frames; since this, so far as the record goes, is just what God did give
to man in the beginning, since the definition of the term sustains such
an application, since this spirit, without doing violence to either
thought or language, can return to God in the same sense in which it
came from him, and, above all, since this view harmonizes all the
record, and avoids those inconsistencies and contradictions in which we
find ourselves inevitably involved the very moment we undertake to make
the spirit mean a separate entity, conscious in death and immortal in
its nature.