Denying the immaterial and immortal soul
Cottrell reduces the human spirit to mere breathed air — but the Bible distinguishes spirit, soul, and body, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (1 Thess. 5:23; Eccl. 12:7).
Por Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On February 12, 1880, the Signs of the Times was circulating in Oakland, California, already in the sixth volume of the Adventist weekly. On page 64 of that issue, an article signed by R. F. Cottrell — a frequent contributor to the paper — took aim at nothing less than the existence of the immaterial, conscious, and immortal soul.
The title of the article, "Deeply Rooted Error" (original English title, translated here), summed up the thesis: the idea that man possesses an immaterial, conscious, and immortal spirit would be an ancient deception, so deeply entrenched in the popular mind that it would prevent people from seeing what the Bible supposedly says on the subject.
Cottrell presented his argument as a battle against error: if men's minds were like blank paper, he wrote, it would be easy to write the truth on them; but false ideas must be dislodged before the truth can find a place. The problem, according to him, was the definition of "spirit": for the common believer, an immaterial, conscious, and immortal entity; for him, merely the breath of life breathed into Adam's nostrils.
A nineteenth-century rural cemetery: in Cottrell's thesis, the human spirit would be only the breath that dissipates into the air — no conscious soul, no immortality.
This was no isolated musing by a contributor. The denial of the immaterial and conscious soul was — and continues to be — a central pillar of Adventist theology, known as "soul sleep": man would die entirely, with nothing conscious surviving, awaiting the resurrection like one who sleeps without dreams. Cottrell merely defended it with rare candor: he called the doctrine upheld by the Christian church throughout the centuries a "false theory."
The absurdity
The most explicit passage of the article leaves no room for doubt. Cottrell mocks the believer who maintains the existence of disembodied human spirits: for him, it is "a kind of living entity that the Bible does not mention." And the spirit that returns to God at death, cited from Ecclesiastes 12:7, would be "merely the breath of life" — the air that God breathed into man's nostrils.
The accusation is curiously inverted: whoever believes in the immaterial, conscious, living, active, and immortal soul would have "the mind filled with a false theory." In other words, the biblical doctrine becomes the deep error to be dislodged; the Adventist novelty becomes the truth to be written on the "blank paper."
"disembodied human spirits, a kind of living entity that the Bible does not mention, and it seems impossible to make him see that the spirit which returns to God who gave it (Eccl. 12:7) is merely the breath of life that God breathed into his nostrils. The spirit, in his vocabulary, is an immaterial, conscious, living, active, and immortal entity; therefore, the clearest testimonies of the Scriptures, which plainly define the spirit of man, find no place in his mind, because his mind is filled with a false theory."
Source: Signs of the Times, February 12, 1880 — Vol. 6, No. 6, p. 64 (article "Deeply Rooted Error," signed by R. F. Cottrell).
The original passage highlighted in yellow on page 64 of the issue: Cottrell declares that "disembodied human spirits" would be "a kind of living entity that the Bible does not mention."
Why this is serious
Reducing the human spirit to breathed air is no minor theological detail: it demolishes biblical anthropology. If man is only matter plus respiration, then Christ's promise to the thief on the cross — "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43) — loses its meaning: in Cottrell's thesis, on that day the thief was nowhere, conscious of nothing, with no one.
The gravity increases when one realizes what the thesis eliminates along with it: consciousness after death and the distinction between the destiny of the righteous and that of the wicked before the resurrection. The rich man and Lazarus, in Jesus' words (Luke 16:19-31), are conscious, recognize each other, feel, plead, and argue — all after death and before the final resurrection. In the paper's doctrine, that scene would be an impossible fiction.
And there is an internal logical problem that Cottrell himself does not resolve: he cites Ecclesiastes 12:7 — "the spirit returns to God who gave it" — to prove that the spirit is only breath. But breathed air does not "return to God": it returns to the atmosphere. Only what is personal returns to the Giver. The Scripture he invokes as proof testifies against him.
Nineteenth-century chapel and cemetery engraving: for the paper, at death man would dissolve into his original elements — but Scripture says the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Finally, the thesis disarms the very Christian hope it claims to protect. If nothing conscious survives death, dying ceases to be "to depart and be with Christ, which is far better" (Phil. 1:23) and becomes a total blackout — and the resurrection, instead of victory over death, becomes a mere reassembly of parts.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Scripture distinguishes what Cottrell fuses together. Paul prays that "your whole spirit, soul, and body" be preserved blameless (1 Thess. 5:23): three realities named in sequence, not a body plus a breath. And the Word of God is "able to discern... the division of soul and spirit" (Heb. 4:12) — if soul and spirit were the same thing, there would be no division to discern.
Jesus commands us to fear not those who kill the body, but "the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28). If man were only body plus respiration, hell would threaten only corpses — and Christ's warning would be empty. There is, therefore, a "soul" distinct from the body, capable of perishing in hell: exactly the immaterial entity that Cottrell says the Bible does not mention.
John sees "under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God" — and they cry out in a loud voice, receive white robes, and hear that they should rest "a little longer" (Rev. 6:9-11). Disembodied souls, conscious, speaking, clothed, waiting: the biblical description is a composite sketch of what the paper declares nonexistent.
As for Ecclesiastes 12:7, the text says that the spirit "returns to God who gave it": the verb return presupposes a personal origin and destination — what God gave returns to God. And Peter confirms that there is a conscious spirit after the death of the body when he records that Christ "went and preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:19). The "false theory" is not in the mind of the one who believes in the soul — it is in the pen of the one who denies it against Scripture.