In debate, the newspaper buries the immortal soul
The newspaper celebrates the debate won by the mortalist thesis: man would sleep in the grave and the wicked would be annihilated. But Christ distinguishes body and soul — and Paul hopes to be with Him.
By Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
March 11, 1880. Issue number 10 of the sixth volume of Signs of the Times, the Adventist weekly founded by James White and published in Oakland, California, by the Pacific Adventist Publishing Association, reaches the hands of its readers. Six years in circulation: the paper is no longer a pamphlet by newcomers — it is the consolidated organ of a movement that presents itself to the world as the bearer of long-forgotten truths.
On page 113, under the section heading "The Literary Society," the editors publish an extract sent by a friend, transcribed from the newspaper Advocate of March 6. It is the account of a debate sponsored by the Gilroy Literary Society on the following resolution: "Resolved: that man is mortal." Two pulpits, two sides, three judges — and the paper insists on recounting every detail.
For the affirmative — the thesis that man is mortal — spoke E. A. Briggs. For the negative, in the absence of Mr. Van Schaick, Mr. Dryden alone filled all the time allotted to the opposing speakers. And the periodical underscores the detail that serves as its trophy: the three judges appointed to decide the debate "were not Adventists — not one of them," and yet they gave a unanimous victory to the affirmative. The Methodist minister who had defended the negative agreed to debate the question once more — but insisted that, next time, there should be neither judges nor a decision.
Note well: this is not an article signed by the editors, nor a doctrinal editorial. It is a debate report, reprinted from another newspaper and published with evident approval — an apologetic trophy. But the endorsement is unmistakable: by printing the victory of the mortalist thesis before neutral judges, the Signs of the Times paper adopts it as its own. The Briggs statement quoted below is the heart of the winning argument: a verbal accounting — counting the occurrences of the words "immortal" and "immortality" in the Bible — to conclude that man possesses no immortality whatsoever.
Nineteenth-century debate hall with two pulpits, like that of the Gilroy Literary Society, where the resolution "man is mortal" was discussed in 1880.
The absurdity
Read carefully the sentence that sums up the mortalist thesis — and that the paper chose to immortalize in its pages as proof of victory:
"Immortality is used five times, but in each case it is mentioned as something man does not possess, or that belongs to God exclusively."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 6, no. 10, March 11, 1880 — p. 113.
The original English passage, underlined, on page 113 of the Signs of the Times of March 11, 1880 — the statement by E. A. Briggs that sums up the mortalist thesis of the debate.
Why this is serious
The sentence does not come alone: it is the tip of an entire doctrinal package, laid out in the very speech that the paper celebrates. Briggs goes on to affirm that the Bible would teach that the dead sleep in the grave, where "there is no knowledge, nor skill," until the resurrection, when all will be judged and the wicked will suffer "the second death, from which there is no restoration." Mortalism, the unconscious sleep of the soul, and the annihilation of the wicked — the three pieces of Adventist anthropology, presented all at once as champion theology, before judges whom the paper itself admits are not Adventists.
The method of the argument is verbal accounting: the word "immortal" would occur only once in the entire Bible — and as an attribute of God; "immortality," five times — always as something man does not possess. Therefore, it is concluded, man is not immortal. The trick lies in confusing the occurrence of a term with the reality that Scripture teaches through other words and other scenes. The Bible does not function as a dictionary of occurrences: it teaches the conscious survival of the soul without needing to stamp the word "immortal" on every passage — just as it teaches the Trinity without using the term.
The pastoral consequences of this thesis are devastating in both directions. For the believer, it robs him of the apostolic consolation: Paul desired "to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better" — but if death is total unconsciousness in the grave, there is no "being with Christ" at all, only a sleep of millennia until the resurrection. For the wicked, the "second death, from which there is no restoration" dissolves judgment into painless extinction: no conscious existence after death, no eternal punishment, no urgency — only nothingness. Hell becomes a blackout, and Christ's solemn warning becomes a bluff.
Nineteenth-century gravedigger's tools in a period engraving: the shovel and the pickaxe that the debate's thesis reserves for the human soul — buried in the grave until the resurrection.
And there is the trophy itself: the paper celebrates the victory before human judges as if the doctrine were decided by a vote in a literary society. Three "non-Adventist" men rendered the verdict — and the periodical displays it as a seal of truth. But the Christian faith is not determined by majority vote: "the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), and no jury in Gilroy has jurisdiction over what Christ affirmed.
The verdict of the Scriptures
Jesus Christ demolished this thesis with a distinction: "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). If the soul died together with the body, the distinction would be meaningless — killing the body would be killing everything. Christ Himself affirms that there is in man something that murderers cannot reach — and that this something can perish in hell, which presupposes conscious existence after death, not instantaneous extinction.
The apostle Paul expected immediate and conscious presence with Christ: "having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better" (Philippians 1:23). Depart to where, if death were total unconsciousness? And to the Corinthians he wrote that he preferred "to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). To be present is a verb of conscious presence, not of nonexistence. A sleep of millennia in the grave would not be "far better" than serving Christ here.
And John, in Revelation, sees "under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God," and they "cried with a loud voice" (Revelation 6:9-10). Souls of martyrs — dead, yes — conscious, speaking, asking, crying out for justice. No counting of occurrences erases this scene: the Bible shows the dead in Christ alive and conscious before God. The resolution passed in Gilroy was defeated in the court of the Scriptures — and the soul that the newspaper buried is still alive.