What we believe about life after death
is closely related to what we believe about God, about what
it means to be human, about the significance of what Jesus
Christ has done for us, and about our salvation. It is
neither necessary nor possible for us to know
everything about
the spirit realm or the afterlife, but it is important that
what we do believe about it is sound.
The LDS Church rightly affirms that
when our mortal bodies die, we continue to exist as spirits
while we await our future resurrection from the dead. It
also teaches that the spirits of the righteous and those of
the wicked will be separated from one another (Gospel
Principles, 241-43). These two points of doctrine
are taught in the Bible (e.g., Luke 16:19-31; 2 Corinthians
5:6-8; Philippians 1:21-24; Hebrews 12:23; Revelation
6:9-11). However, other aspects of LDS doctrine about the
spirit world do not fit with the teachings of the Bible.
Some of the issues here may seem of interest only to
professional theologians, such as whether spirit is a form
of matter. However, when these seemingly academic issues are
put into the larger perspective of the whole belief system
of the LDS religion, they turn out to be of extreme
importance.
A. What Are
Spirits?
1.
The LDS Church
teaches that all spirit is a refined form of matter.
The LDS Church teaches that spirits are beings with bodies composed of spirit, a finer form of matter. In a revelation given in 1843,
the year before he died, Joseph Smith stated: “There is no
such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but
it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer
eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we
shall see that it is all matter” (D&C 131:7-8).
Joseph Smith did not originate the idea
that spirit is a more refined or purer form of matter. The
idea has been around for many centuries and was a common
enough view in Joseph’s culture. Even the very adjectives
that Joseph used to describe spirit,
fine and
pure, were
conventional in his day. For example, Noah Webster’s
American Dictionary
of the English Language (1828) gave as one definition of
the word spirit,
“Something eminently pure and refined” (779).
The idea that spirit is a kind of
“material” substance is controversial and arguably
inconsistent with the Bible, but in and of itself may not be
a destructive doctrine. It is what Joseph Smith did with
this teaching that raises the most serious problems. He
taught not only that all spirit is matter, but that all
spirit is composed of
eternal elements and that man is
co-eternal with
God:
“Ye were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth…. Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be…. For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy” (Doctrine and Covenant 93:23, 29, 33).
Now we begin to see the radical nature
of Joseph Smith’s doctrine. The above revelation, dated 1833
(a decade before his statement that all spirit is matter),
asserts that humans are spirit beings that have existed
since the beginning of creation alongside God the Father and
Jesus Christ. Mormons traditionally understand this passage
to mean that all beings, including God, Christ, angels, and
humans, are uncreated beings originating as “intelligence”
and composed of “eternal” elements. Joseph’s later
revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 131 (quoted at the
beginning of this section) tweaked this doctrine by
explaining that spirit is simply another form of matter,
more refined and pure than physical things.
It is crucial to understand that the
Mormon worldview includes God in this doctrine that all
beings, both spiritual and physical, are composed of the
same eternal elements, which Joseph called “matter.” The
uncreated, eternal reality, according to Joseph’s developed
worldview, is not God: it is, rather, the eternal
“intelligence” or “elements” from which all things,
including God, originate. Thus, a year after his revelation
asserting that all spirit is matter, Joseph explicitly
denied that God has always been God:
“In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see… Here, then, is eternal life: to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you—namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345, 346-47).
Here is where Joseph Smith’s supposed
“revelations” concerning the nature of spirit and matter
took him. Having taught that all beings, from God to humans,
have existed from the beginning and are composed of the same
uncreated, eternal elements, and having broken down the
distinction between spirit and matter, Joseph had created a
new worldview in which “intelligence” or the eternal
“elements”—rather than God—were the ultimate, self-existent
reality. It was a short step, if a step at all, from that
premise to the conclusion that God himself was not eternally
God but was a being who became God. It was just another
short step to the conclusion that if God could start out as
a being composed of the same elements as human beings and
become God, then we could do the same.
We will be addressing directly these
ideas that God was once a man like us, that he then became
God, and that we can also become God just as he did, in our
response to chapter 47 of
Gospel Principles—the
final chapter of the book. It is crucial at this point,
though, to understand that there is a lot at stake in this
seemingly arcane issue of the relationship between spirit
and matter. In the LDS doctrinal system, this is a key
premise of its doctrine that we can become Gods in the same
way that our own God became one.
2.
The LDS Church
teaches that human beings have both “spirit bodies” and
“physical bodies.”
In an undated statement, probably from
about 1842 or 1843, Joseph Smith is reported to have said,
“That which is without body or parts is nothing. There is no
other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones” (Teachings
of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 42).
The inclusion of this statement in the
Teachings book, a
recent official curriculum published by the LDS Church,
shows that they accept this statement as part of Joseph
Smith’s teachings. However, the statement is confusing since
it implies that spirits who have not yet received physical
bodies are “nothing.” It also implies that the Holy Ghost
(the preferred term among Mormons for the Holy Spirit) is
not a God, since Joseph Smith taught at the time, and the
LDS Church still teaches, that the Holy Ghost does not have
a physical body. “The Father has a body of flesh and bones
as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has
not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.
Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us”
(Doctrine and Covenants 130:22).
The current teaching of the LDS Church
is that human beings have two bodies: a “spirit body,” which
we had before our physical births and which we will always
have, and a “physical body,” which we have in this mortal
life and which in the future will be resurrected and
permanently joined to our spirit body. Both the spirit body
and the physical body are composed of matter and have
essentially the same size, shape, parts, and features, but
whereas we can see and touch the physical body we cannot as
mortals see or touch spirit bodies. Note the following
statements from General Authorities of the LDS Church, all
quoted from conference editions of
Ensign, the LDS
Church’s official magazine:
“We came into this life to acquire a physical body” (Russell M. Nelson, April 2005).
“In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World” [an official statement of the LDS Church leadership], Nov. 1995).
“Our spirit body has the same shape and form as the physical body. The spirit body then has arms, legs, a head, and a mind” (Eldred G. Smith, Oct. 1964).
“You and I are dual personages, possessing a spirit body which dwells in a physical body. Death is the separation of that spiritual body from the physical body” (Milton R. Hunter, April 1949).
As Eldred Smith’s comment indicates, in
LDS theology the spirit body and the physical body look
alike and have the same form and parts. According to
Gospel Principles,
“Spirit beings have the same bodily form as mortals except
that the spirit body is in perfect form (see Ether 3:16)”
(242).
3.
The LDS Church
teaches that animals and plants also have spirit bodies—and
that all animals will be resurrected from the dead.
In the Book of Moses, a revision of the
early chapters of Genesis produced by Joseph Smith in 1830
and early 1831—within the first year after publishing the
Book of Mormon—Joseph taught that God created all things
spiritually before he created them naturally in the earth.
“For I, the Lord God, created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth. For I, the Lord God, had not caused it to rain upon the face of the earth. And I, the Lord God, had created all the children of men; and not yet a man to till the ground; for in heaven created I them…. And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word…. And out of the ground made I, the Lord God, to grow every tree, naturally, that is pleasant to the sight of man; and man could behold it. And it became also a living soul. For it was spiritual in the day that I created it; for it remaineth in the sphere in which I, God, created it, yea, even all things which I prepared for the use of man; and man saw that it was good for food” (Moses 3:4-5, 7, 9, emphasis added).
This passage teaches that in some sense
all human beings—“all the children of men”—existed “in
heaven” before God made the first man, Adam, on the earth.
However, it does not explain what this means. It is
noteworthy that the text presents God as saying that he
“created” human beings—and everything else—“spiritually.”
This does not fit well with the LDS Church’s later view that
we were God’s spiritual
offspring in
heaven. Nevertheless, for the first time Joseph was
promulgating the idea that human beings existed in some way
“spiritually” in heaven before becoming “living souls” here
on earth. This idea eventually developed into the full-blown
doctrine of “preexistence”—that all human beings lived in
heaven as literal spirit children of God even before the
formation of the physical universe.
Two years later in 1832, Joseph offered
a comment on the “beasts” in the Book of Revelation, in
which he indicated that the spirits of animals look like
their physical forms:
“They are figurative expressions, used by the Revelator, John, in describing heaven, the paradise of God, the happiness of man, and of beasts, and of creeping things, and of the fowls of the air; that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal; and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual; the spirit of man in the likeness of his person, as also the spirit of the beast, and every other creature which God has created” (Doctrine and Covenants 77:2).
On the basis especially of this text,
the LDS Church teaches that all plants, animals, and human
beings existed in spirit form with their own spirit
bodies—looking essentially like they look here—in heaven
before the formation of this world:
“All living things—mankind, animals, and plants—were spirits before any form of life existed upon the earth (Gen. 2:4–5; Moses 3:4–7). The spirit body looks like the physical body (1 Ne. 11:11; Ether 3:15–16; D&C 77:2; D&C 129)” (“Spirit,” in The Guide to the Scriptures).
Consistent with this doctrine that all
living things have spirit bodies, the LDS Church teaches
that all animals will be resurrected to immortality along
with human beings, a doctrine at least implied in one of
Joseph Smith’s early revelations:
“And the end shall come, and the heaven and the earth shall be consumed and pass away, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. For all old things shall pass away, and all things shall become new, even the heaven and the earth, and all the fulness thereof, both men and beasts, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea; And not one hair, neither mote, shall be lost, for it is the workmanship of mine hand” (Doctrine and Covenants 29:3-5).
The notion that animals have spirit
bodies in addition to their physical, earthly bodies is even
more highly problematic than the idea that humans have two
such bodies (which we will critique below). At least in
Mormon theology there is a reason given for human spirits to
come to the earth as physical beings: they need the physical
bodies to experience testing and mortality so they can
become immortal and potentially become exalted beings or
gods. What do spirit bats or spirit crawfish gain by coming
to earth in mortal, physical bodies? They were apparently
already flying or swimming happily in the spiritual realm,
in no danger of ever dying. The LDS Church denies that
animals can become gods, so what is the point of their
experiencing the travails of biological life on earth? This
is just one of the many problems inherent in this doctrine
that all animals have spirit bodies with which they existed
and will exist again in heaven.
From a biblical perspective, animals
are just that: animals. They are biological organisms. Their
life begins in their physical conception and birth and ends
with their physical death. The Genesis creation account
states that God caused animals to be brought forth
from the earth
(Genesis 1:24-25). They are literally of earthly,
terrestrial origin. The human desire for immortality, for
relationship or connection with the divine, for experiencing
the transcendent—this desire distinguishes us from the
animals and is a mark of our unique creation in the image of
God (Genesis 1:26-27).
Many Christians—not just
Mormons—entertain the possibility and may even hold dear the
hope that God will re-create their beloved pets in the new
heavens and new earth. There is nothing in the Bible to
preclude this idea, nor is there anything that would clearly
or directly support it. I see nothing theologically faulty
about holding this opinion. However, the LDS doctrine might
be viewed as this innocent enough wish to be reunited with
the family dog in the resurrection run amuck. Again, it is
important to put this doctrine into the larger context of
what is the quite distinctive Mormon worldview. In that
theological system, all living beings come from eternal
matter/spirit, taking their present forms as stages in their
development toward perfection. This is what the LDS Church
teaches about all
living beings, from dogs to Gods. Whatever one may think or
hope about pets in the new creation, the Mormon worldview in
which all animals are primordial spirit beings temporarily
residing on earth is radically different from the biblical
worldview in which the only eternal, uncreated Being is God
himself (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 90:2; Romans 1:19-21; etc.).
This is the larger theological context in which we need to
examine the LDS doctrine that all human beings existed with
spirit bodies in heaven before starting life here on earth
in physical bodies.
4.
The Mormon doctrine
of human “spirit bodies” is both unreasonable and
unbiblical.
We have provided a great deal of
background and context to the Mormon view of human “spirit
bodies” in order to approach this subject in the clearest
possible context. Now we will examine this idea directly and
explain why it is simply not a tenable doctrine.
Again, Mormons are taught that human
beings have two
bodies simultaneously—a physical body of flesh and a
finer but also material body of spirit that looks just like
that of a human being. This doctrine leads to some
intriguing and problematic implications:
- that in each human being, two “bodies” are occupying
the same space at the same time
- that when a human being is a small child, it has a
child-sized physical body but is inhabited by an
adult-sized spiritual body
- that a human being has four eyes, four ears, two
mouths, twenty fingers, and so forth (since he or she
has two sets of every body part)
- that spirits have such features as eyelashes (which
function in the physical body to keep dust out of the
eyes)
- that spirits have bodies designed to listen to
sounds (vibrations in air) and talk (create such sounds
with the mouth); eat and drink; digest foods and
eliminate waste; detect odors; pick up, carry, and
manipulate objects; walk, sit, and stand; engage in
sexual relations; and produce offspring
The biblical writer who has the most
developed doctrine concerning the relationship between the
physical and spiritual aspects of human nature is the
apostle Paul. He distinguishes these two aspects using a
variety of terms:
- “outer man,” which is “seen,” and “inner man,” which
is “unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18; Ephesians 3:16)
- "flesh” and “spirit” (1 Corinthians 5:5; 2
Corinthians 7:1)
- “body” and “spirit” (1 Corinthians 5:3; 7:34;
Colossians 2:5; possibly Romans 8:10)
- “body” and “mind” (Ephesians 2:3)
In Romans 7:22-25 Paul uses several of
these terms, contrasting the “body” or “flesh” with the
“mind” or “inner man.” Thus, in Paul’s doctrine, human
beings have two aspects: the body, flesh, or outer man which
is seen, and the mind, spirit, or inner man which is unseen.
When a believer in Jesus Christ dies, he becomes “out of the
body” or “absent from the body” but “present” or “at home”
with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6-9). When Paul speaks about
the “body” of a human being, he
always means the
physical, flesh-and-bones body. The Bible never uses such
expressions as “spirit body” or “body of spirit”; these are
modern expressions that Mormons and other religious groups
(such as Jehovah’s Witnesses) use to articulate their
doctrine. The Bible uses the Greek word
sōma (“body”)
about 278 times, about half in the Greek translation of the
Old Testament and half in the Greek New Testament, and never
in reference to spirits, angels, or God. Nor does the Bible
ever speak of a human being as possessing two personal or
literal “bodies” (not even Christ). The human spirit or soul
is not a body; it is something that the Bible
contrasts with
the body (in addition to Paul, see Isaiah 10:18; Micah 6:7;
Matthew 10:28; James 2:26).
B. Salvation
and the Spirit World
According to current LDS doctrine,
there are “two divisions or states in the spirit world” to
which the spirits of human beings go upon death. The first
is a blessed paradise
for the righteous who have sufficiently prepared themselves
in faith, obedience, and purity to obtain access to it. The
second is spirit
prison, which is for “those who have not yet received
the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Gospel
Principles, 242, 244), that is, who have not been duly
baptized into the true church (which today is the LDS Church
alone) and lived faithfully to their commitments as members.
Those in paradise are organized as the Church, and
priesthood holders (men) from paradise are sent to the
spirit prison to preach the gospel there:
“But behold, from among the righteous, he organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothed with power and authority, and commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness, even to all the spirits of men; and thus was the gospel preached to the dead” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:30).
The Bible also divides the state of the
dead into two realms or conditions, one for the righteous
(the redeemed) and one for the unrepentant wicked, most
famously and colorfully in Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the
rich man (Luke 16:19-31). However, as Jesus’ parable
illustrates, in the Bible these two realms are not places of
spiritual growth or advancement, nor is the abode of the
wicked a place of repentance. To the contrary, the wicked
are under condemnation awaiting their resurrection to final
judgment while the righteous are in a blessed state of
awaiting their resurrection to final glorification (John
5:28-29). As we will show in more detail below, the Bible
teaches that this life is the only time for repentance and
reconciliation to God.
1.
Mormon doctrine
falsely limits paradise to baptized, faithful members of the
true (LDS) church.
As we have seen in previous chapters,
the LDS Church denies that human beings are saved by grace
alone through simple trusting acceptance of God’s mercy and
forgiveness based solely on Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
The LDS Church does claim to teach salvation by grace.
However, LDS doctrine maintains that full, individual
salvation, including the hope of living with God the Father
forever in his kingdom, depends on persons being baptized
into the right church by the right people, receiving the
gift of the Holy Ghost by the right people laying their
hands on them, and living according to all the commandments.
A sincere individual who believes in Jesus Christ as his
Savior has not met these requirements.
Since, according to the LDS Church,
paradise is only for those who lived faithful lives in
mortality, believers in Christ who do not meet this standard
cannot go to paradise when they die. This conclusion leads
to the question about what happened to the repentant thief
who was crucified alongside Jesus.
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise’” (Luke 23:39-43 ESV).
This man clearly did not have the
opportunity to get baptized, have hands laid on him, obey
various commandments, or live for any length of time as a
serious follower of Christ. Yet Christ assured him that he
would go that very day to paradise. How is this to be
explained?
In 1843, Joseph Smith sought to explain
away the verse by denying that it referred to paradise at
all! Here is what he said:
There has been much said by modern divines about the words of Jesus (when on the cross) to the thief, saying, This day shalt thou be with me in paradise. King James translators make it out to say paradise. But what is paradise? It is a modern word: it does not answer at all to the original word that Jesus made use of. Find the original of the word paradise. You may as easily find a needle in a haymow. Here is a chance for battle, ye learned men. There is nothing in the original word in Greek from which this was taken that signifies paradise; but it was This day thou shalt be with me in the world of spirits: then I will teach you all about it and answer your inquiries (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 310; History of the Church 5:424-25).
How can we understand Joseph’s remarks
here to be anything but mistaken? Here is a transliteration
of the Greek text of Luke 23:43, followed by a literal (word
for word) rendering in English:
kai eipen autō, amēn soi legō, sēmeron met’ emou esē en tō
paradeisō.
“And he said to him, Amen to you I say,
today with me you shall be in the paradise.”
Paradise is simply an Anglicized form of a
transliteration of the Greek word
paradeisō. It
answers to the original word as much as any English word
possibly could do so. Technically, it is not even a
“translation” of the Greek word at all; it is the Greek
word, transliterated
for English readers (that is, represented using English
letters and grammatical form).
The point here is not merely that
Joseph made a mistake on a picayune issue about the Greek
text of the New Testament. The point is that his
theology—and the current theology of the LDS Church—does not
hold up when biblical texts like Luke 23:43 are taken fairly
into consideration. In the New Testament, paradise is not a
staging ground for evangelizing the rest of the spirit
world. It is a heavenly realm (2 Corinthians 12:2-4) and an
abode of eternal life for all God’s redeemed people
(Revelation 2:7). Even the
Encyclopedia of
Mormonism acknowledges that in these two texts
“paradise” appears to refer to what Mormons call the
celestial kingdom (3:1062). There is no reason, other than
doctrinal assumption, for thinking it means anything
different in Luke 23:43.
2.
“Spirit prison” in
the Bible is a place of judgment for wicked angels, not for
a place for non-Mormon human beings to seek salvation.
There is only one explicit reference in
the Bible to spirits in prison, namely, Peter’s statement
that in the spirit Christ
“…went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water” (1 Peter 3:19-20 NRSV).
This verse ranks alongside 1
Corinthians 15:29 (discussed in
our response to chapter 40 of
Gospel Principles)
as one of the most widely discussed and controversial verses
in the New Testament. However, the best interpretation of 1
Peter 3:19 is that these “spirits” are the “sons of God” who
sinned with the “daughters of men” in the time immediately
preceding Noah’s flood (Genesis 6:1-4). That is, these
spirits were not the departed spirits of human beings, but
fallen, wicked spirits who corrupted the human race,
contributing to its eventual judgment in the flood in which
only Noah and his family were spared (Genesis 6:5-8). The
apostle Peter refers to this same incident in his other
epistle:
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [Greek Tartarus] and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly…” (2 Peter 2:4-5 ESV).
In this passage, as in 1 Peter 3:19-20,
the apostle refers to wicked beings that were consigned to
some sort of spiritual realm of confinement and judgment
(called a “prison” in 1 Peter and “Tartarus” in 2 Peter). In
both passages these wicked beings are mentioned in
association with or close proximity to Noah and the flood.
Both passages also make a point of mentioning how many
people were saved in the flood (1 Peter 3:20 says eight; 2
Peter 2:5 says Noah and seven others). The wicked beings are
called “spirits” in 1 Peter and “angels” in 2 Peter. Both
passages in 1 and 2 Peter are drawing on interpretations of
Genesis 6 already circulating within Judaism in the first
century (see also Jude 6). This makes it reasonably certain
that “the spirits in prison” in 1 Peter 3:19 refers to
demonic spirits or fallen angels, not to the departed
spirits of non-Christian or non-Mormon human beings.
Once this point is recognized, we can
see that 1 Peter 3:19 gives no support to the idea that the
billions of departed human beings who never heard the LDS
gospel will have departed Mormon missionaries from paradise
come to them in “spirit prison” to preach the gospel to
them. The spirits in prison were not innocent people that
had never had an opportunity to obey God, but were fallen
angels who had been “disobedient” (as verse 20 states
explicitly) to God and therefore were deserving of their
judgment. The proclamation that Christ made to those wicked
angelic spirits was not a message of hope and salvation
for them, but of
hope and salvation for those whom such wicked angels had
been deceiving for millennia. That is, Christ made a
proclamation of victory over those spirits, announcing his
triumph over the devil and his minions through Christ’s own
resurrection. This is precisely the climactic truth that
Peter affirms at the end of the passage: “…an appeal to God
for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of
God, with angels,
authorities, and powers made subject to him” (1 Peter
3:21-22 NRSV).
In addition to 1 Peter 3:19, Mormons
view 4:6 as teaching such an opportunity for salvation after
death: “For the gospel has for this purpose been preached
even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in
the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to
the will of God” (1 Peter 4:6 NASB). Mormons commonly
understand this passage to refer to a preaching of the
gospel in the afterlife to departed human beings who did not
get an opportunity to hear the gospel in this life. But this
is definitely a misunderstanding of Peter’s statement.
Notice the verb in the first part of
the verse: “the gospel
has for this
purpose been preached.”
Peter does not say that the gospel is being preached or that
it will be preached, but that it “has
been preached” or “was
preached.” The verb is a simple past-tense verb and
indicates that the preaching to which Peter refers is from
his point in time, when he was writing, a thing of the past.
Whatever this verse means, it is not referring to an ongoing
ministry of preaching the gospel to the departed in the
afterlife. The postmortem salvation interpretation would
have us understand that these people first died and then had
the gospel preached to them. However, the correct
understanding is the reverse: they had the gospel preached
to them, and then they died. That is, Peter does not say,
“The gospel will be preached to those who die,” but rather,
“The gospel has been preached to those who are dead.” Peter
is here addressing a common concern among Christians in the
first century, namely, the salvation of departed Christians.
He is assuring the living Christians that those who died
after the gospel was preached to them may have been killed
physically but they were alive spiritually and secure in
God’s care.
3.
The Bible
consistently teaches that eternal salvation depends on a
person’s relationship with God in this mortal life, not on
decisions we make in the afterlife.
In many different ways, the Bible
teaches that this mortal life is when people must be
reconciled to God if they are to be assured of eternal life.
The general rule is stated forcefully: “it is appointed for
man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews
9:27 ESV). That judgment will be based on the works that
people do in this life. Thus, the Bible states repeatedly
that God judges and will judge people according to their
works (Psalm 28:4; 62:12; Proverbs 24:12; Isaiah 59:18;
Jeremiah 25:14; Ezekiel 36:19; Matthew 16:27; Romans
2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:9; 11:15; 2 Timothy 4:14; 1 Peter 1:17;
Revelation 2:23; 20:12-13). That is why the apostles
urgently pleaded with people, “be reconciled to God” (2
Corinthians 5:20)—because this life is the time to do so. It
is why Paul was so “eager to preach the gospel” to the
Romans, “for it is the power of God for salvation to
everyone who believes” (Romans 1:15-16).
According to Jesus’ parable of Lazarus
and the rich man, those who are wicked and unrepentant in
this life have no reprieve in the next (Luke 16:19-31).
Jesus warned that many people were in this life on a broad
road that leads to destruction while a few were on the
narrow road that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14; Luke
13:23-24). Even many people who claim to be Jesus’ followers
will find when they appear before him on Judgment Day that
he will say to them, “Depart from me” (Matthew 7:21-23).
4.
Although we do not
know everything about what happens to those who have not
heard the gospel, we know that God will be just with them
and that this mortal life is the time for sinners to hear
the gospel and repent.
Many people—by no means only
Mormons—worry that if we deny that people in the afterlife
will be given an opportunity to hear and accept the gospel,
we are implying that absolutely everyone in history who does
not hear the gospel is automatically damned. If Jesus Christ
is the only way to salvation, as the Bible clearly teaches
(Matthew 11:25-27; John 14:6; Acts 4:12), then what happens
to those who have not heard of Christ? What about people who
lived before Christ came, or before missionaries reached
them with the gospel? What about children who die in the
womb or as infants or young children?
Let’s start with that last question, as
we can give a definite (and comforting) answer here. Recall
all of those biblical texts that we just cited in which God
says he will judge people according to their deeds or
works—based on what they have done. Although that’s not good
news for people who have committed acts of sin, it raises a
question about those children who die in the womb or before
they are old enough to know right from wrong. Will they be
condemned to eternal separation from God? I believe we can
confidently answer no to this question. The Bible clearly
recognizes that such small children do not know right from
wrong and are not yet capable of discerning or doing
anything good or evil (Deuteronomy 1:39; Isaiah 7:15-16;
Romans 9:11). If they cannot do anything deserving of
condemnation, they will not be condemned, for the God of all
the earth will do right (Genesis 18:25). It follows
logically that such small children will be accepted into
God’s eternal kingdom. We need not fear for their eternal
future. By the same principle, the mentally retarded or
disabled and any others of similar condition who are
incapable of making morally responsible choices will not be
in danger of eternal condemnation.
As for people who lived before the
coming of Jesus Christ, the Bible clearly teaches that such
people could and were saved if they had faith in the true
God who had revealed himself to the patriarchs and to
Israel. For example, Paul cites both Abraham and David as
ancient figures from the Old Testament who were made right
with God and assured of his forgiveness and of eternal life
through their faith in God’s promised grace (Romans 4:1-8).
Nothing in the Bible suggests that these men knew the name
of Jesus or the details of how he would come and atone for
their sins, but through their faith in God’s mercy they were
reconciled to God on the basis of the sacrifice that Christ
would later make for them (see Romans 3:24-26). This means
that knowledge of the name of Jesus or the specific facts
about how he redeemed us from sin and death is
not an absolute
prerequisite for all people for their salvation. God can and
has saved many people who never heard of Jesus Christ per se
but did hear about and trust in God (the same God who we
know from the New Testament became incarnate as Jesus
Christ) to be merciful to them.
Finally, then, what about people who
not only never heard of Jesus but also never heard of the
God who revealed himself to Abraham and his descendants? The
Bible does not address this question as directly or fully as
we might like, but it does establish certain parameters that
should guide our thinking on this question:
- Jesus is the only source of salvation (Matthew 11:25-27; John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Again, Old Testament saints were saved without knowing Jesus’ name or exactly what he was going to do, but they were saved by Jesus.
- God will
judge people based on what they do know, not what they
don’t know. No one will be condemned for failing to
believe in Jesus or God if they never heard of him. They
will be condemned for their sins, according to their
works (as explained above), unless God mercifully saves
them by his grace.
- Jesus came
into the world to bring salvation, not to bring
condemnation (John 3:17). It would make no sense to
think that most non-Christians will be saved by default
unless they hear about Jesus and then fail to believe in
him. In other words, the gospel is not a message of
condemnation to people who were already saved, but a
message of salvation to people who were otherwise
condemned.
- All people
(excluding infants, etc.) are able to know that there is
one God who created the world and to whom we are all
accountable. This is the clear teaching of Paul, for
example, in Romans 1:18-2:16. The problem with most
people isn’t that they don’t know anything about God,
but that they suppress the truth about God they do know
(Romans 1:18).
- Those who
know about God’s revelation in Scripture and in the
preaching of the gospel but reject it have a greater
culpability than those who have never been exposed to
that revelation. The eternal condemnation of the
wicked is not the same for every individual; God is
just, and some people will receive far more severe
punishment than others (Luke 12:47-48). The worst
position is that of the professing Christian who is not
really trusting in Christ or who abandons faith in
Christ (Hebrews 10:26-27; 2 Peter 2:20-22).
- The
non-Christian world as a whole is in spiritual darkness
and without genuine hope. That’s why Paul and the
other apostles took the gospel to all the nations (Acts
26:18; Ephesians 2:12; Colossians 1:13-14).
- We do not
know what is in people’s hearts and cannot pronounce
judgment on them. Only God knows what is in people’s
hearts (1 Kings 8:39; 2 Chronicles 6:30; Psalm 44:21;
Acts 1:24), and he is the only eternal Judge (James
4:12). We know that many people are spiritually lost,
but we do not know definitively who they are, much less
what their final outcome will be.
- The church is
responsible to preach the gospel to people of all
nations so that they may be made right with God
(Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20; Romans 1:16-17). It is not our
responsibility to judge what is in people’s hearts, but
it is our responsibility to share the gospel with people
everywhere. Our working assumption must be that people
who have not heard the gospel need it—that Christ came
into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).
For Further Study
Boa, Kenneth D., and Robert M. Bowman
Jr. Sense and
Nonsense about Heaven and Hell. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2007. Available from IRR.
Miller, Craig. “Did Emanuel Swedenborg
Influence LDS Doctrine?” This article is available on
another site.
Wilson, Luke P. “Does
the Bible Teach Salvation for the Dead?” An earlier IRR
article that includes a good discussion of 1 Peter 3:19.