What do protestants believe about what happens to our souls at death?

The_Reginator

The_Reginator

Active member
A while ago I joined "Christian Forums" but have, until tonight, largely ignored it. (I may even leave it soon.)
One post brought to mind the question posed as the title of this thread.
As Catholics we know that at the end of life we all face The Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven or hell.
We also believe in The Resurrection of the Body AND the immortality of the soul.

I had to respond to one comment where they quoted Ecclesiastes 9:5:
For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.
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As an Anglican I recited both the Apostles and the Nicean Creeds. We profess that we believe in THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, not the resurrection of the soul.
Do many protestants believe that our souls simply "go to sleep" until the return of Our Lord?????????????

Dominus vobiscum, Reg
 
I have heard of this, but have not seen any church actually believe the soul simply goes to sleep at death.

I think this is more along the lines of "It's possible to believe this...therefore some do."
 
Mormons. Seventh Day Adventists.
I note that both had mentally ill or megalomaniacal founders. From the Wiki: "Soul sleep re-emerged in Christianity when it was promoted by some Reformation leaders, and it survives today mostly among Restorationist sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mortalism#cite_note-FOOTNOTEBrandon200765_-2-98"><span>[</span>95<span>]</span></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mortalism#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMarshall200247-99"><span>[</span>96<span>]</span></a> Conti has argued that during the Reformation both psychosomnolence (the belief that the soul sleeps until the resurrection) and thnetopsychism (the belief that the body and soul both die and then both rise again) were quite common.
 
po18guy said:
Mormons. Seventh Day Adventists.
I note that both had mentally ill or megalomaniacal founders. From the Wiki: "Soul sleep re-emerged in Christianity when it was promoted by some Reformation leaders, and it survives today mostly among Restorationist sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mortalism#cite_note-FOOTNOTEBrandon200765_-2-98"><span>[</span>95<span>]</span></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mortalism#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMarshall200247-99"><span>[</span>96<span>]</span></a> Conti has argued that during the Reformation both psychosomnolence (the belief that the soul sleeps until the resurrection) and thnetopsychism (the belief that the body and soul both die and then both rise again) were quite common.
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The scriptures are actually contradictory on the subject. But it does seem that the soul dies along with the body and the 'spirit' lives on.
 
The scriptures are often hard to understand taken all by themselves. That is why we have a Church to teach us and to discern the meaning of the scriptures.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
The scriptures are often hard to understand taken all by themselves. That is why we have a Church to teach us and to discern the meaning of the scriptures.
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Christians are doing their own homework these days and that's why they don't believe in Trinity and why there's no consensus on the intermediate state. The scriptures are NOT hard to understand. All you have to do is use Strong's, Vines, Gesenius, and Thayer's as well as the interlinears.
 
Luke 23:43
In most English Bibles, the words Jesus spoke to the good thief are usually translated as something like, “I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”. Since this obviously contradicts their doctrine of “soul sleep”, the SDAs read it differently:

“Today I’m telling you that you will (eventually, at an unspecified future date) be with me in Paradise.”

You also quote a verse from Ecclesiastes. The OT view of the afterlife is quite different from the Christian view of heaven and hell (plus Purgatory, if you’re a Catholic). In the OT, Sheol is the unsegregated abode of the dead, the good and the wicked all together in the same place. a gloomy underground resting place, much the same as the Greek Hades.
 
If you s
Muckah said:
Christians are doing their own homework these days and that's why they don't believe in Trinity and why there's no consensus on the intermediate state. The scriptures are NOT hard to understand. All you have to do is use Strong's, Vines, Gesenius, and Thayer's as well as the interlinears.
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If you should should ever read this, Proverbs 3:5. "Leanest thou not on thine own understanding"
THAT is the fatal flaw of Protestantism and the elephant in their living room. And, for that reason, Protestantism is not definable, as it is an individual ideology.
 
BartholomewB said:
Luke 23:43
In most English Bibles, the words Jesus spoke to the good thief are usually translated as something like, “I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”. Since this obviously contradicts their doctrine of “soul sleep”, the SDAs read it differently:

“Today I’m telling you that you will (eventually, at an unspecified future date) be with me in Paradise.”

You also quote a verse from Ecclesiastes. The OT view of the afterlife is quite different from the Christian view of heaven and hell (plus Purgatory, if you’re a Catholic). In the OT, Sheol is the unsegregated abode of the dead, the good and the wicked all together in the same place. a gloomy underground resting place, much the same as the Greek Hades.
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I write for those lurkers who may be confused by the plethora of teachings these days. No one seems to read James 3. Their error (among numerous errors) is that "Paradise" is not heaven. Heaven was closed until Christ ascended. From 1 Peter 4:6 we know that Christ preached the Gospel to the souls in prison, IOW the holy souls awaiting their deliverance: those in paradise. That paradise was Sheol, the abode of the righteous dead, in which poor Lazarus and Father Abraham were depicted in Christ's parable (Luke 16:19-31). It is a rough analog of Purgatory, although that changes under the New Covenant.
 
The immortality of the soul was revealed at least at the time of Noah. 1 Peter 4:6. A bodily resurrection is meaningless without a soul. The restoration of the soul to the body makes the resurrection possible.
 
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AlexNY said:
Logically, if the soul is immortal, it would not have to resurrect. The belief on the immortality of the soul was held by Calvin

Logically, if the soul is immortal, it would not have to resurrect. In "Psychopannychia" Calvin postulates that the soul survives physical death. Quoting: “that the soul, after the death of the body, still survives, endued with sense and intellect,” stands in opposition to the belief of that souls go to sleep after death.
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Aha! I have found the genesis of the word "Calvin' in this discussion. Why him? Why not Tertullian or Arius?
 
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