The Error of Body-Soul Dualism

This is Article 2 of a Six-Part series on Christian Eschatology: The Immortal Soul, Dualism, Post-Death State, and Eternal Consequences

Article 1: The Immortal Soul

Article 2: Dualism

Article 3: Sleep, not Death

Article 4: The Fate of the Unrighteous

Article 5: The Fate of the Righteous 

Article 6: The Culminated Hope

The Error of Body-Soul Dualism

Are we truly a hybrid?

As we explored in Article 1, Christianity has operated on a set of anthropological assumptions inherited from Greek philosophy—especially Plato, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Platonism. These errors, imported as doctrine, have been taught for nearly two millennia and accepted by every major Christian sect: Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. The foundational error, that of an assumed immortal soul, exists parallel to a second: body-soul dualism. Together, we know these as Soul Theory.

What is Body-Soul Dualism?

Dualism asserts that human beings are composed of two separable, independently existing parts: a mortal body and an immortal soul that exists consciously after bodily death. In most instances, this belief is entwined with a second: that the flesh is inherently corrupt and inferior, while our alleged spiritual form is pure and improved. Our spirit is effectively trapped within our bodies, released only upon the destruction of the flesh. Plato asserted that the body is a prison, that the soul pre-exists the body, and that true life is the life of the disembodied soul. This view glorifies death as a form of liberation, freeing the soul from its fleshy prison.

Dualism did not precede or follow the erroneous assertion of an immortal soul, but rather developed alongside it, drawn from the same source: Platonic metaphysics. Each depends upon and necessitates the other. The first article in this series demonstrated that Scripture does not teach an immortal soul, and that the very concept entered Christian theology through philosophical assimilation rather than divine revelation. This second article addresses the deeper problem: the dualistic worldview that made the immortal-soul error appear plausible in the first place.

Each Requires the Other

Soul Theory forms the underlying metaphysics that gave rise to Christian Hellenism. Purgatory, Limbo, soul survivalism, Heavenly spectatorship, saint-veneration, and the entire interim-state apparatus exists only because Soul Theory is left unchallenged. Dismantling dualism means tearing down another pillar that upholds superfluous Christian doctrine by removing yet another false premise used to fabricate imagined spiritual consequences.

Greek Philosophy and the Origins of Christian Dualism

Augustine, arguably the most influential theologian behind Aquinas, was heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism. He accepted dualism a priori, as well as the immortality of the soul, though it existed nowhere in Scripture. As an apologist for the Roman Church, Augustine integrated Plato’s metaphysics into the theological structure of church doctrine. With Neo-Platonism freshly injected, Augustine created a spiritual hierarchy: God, then intellect, then soul, and finally, matter. Salvation, then, became an upward journey, with the body the lowest, most inferior (and inherently corrupt) form of existence. Aquinas again dogmatized this error in the Medieval Era, just as he had the Platonic concept of an immortal soul.

Doctrine as Metaphysical Invention

With the groundwork laid, the original error that combined dualism and the immortal soul became an ever-evolving and “developing” phenomenon. Purgatory, Limbos of various stripes, and post-death immediacy all followed. In later Christian tradition, official doctrine—lacking Scriptural support—claimed that the dead experienced conscious, eternal consequences as immortal souls, that the dead are conscious apart from their bodies, and that the body is often spiritually deprecated while the soul is elevated. The so-called corruption of the flesh led to myriad theological and spiritual inventions in its own right: the paganistic elevation of virginity and celibacy and the glorification of various forms of deprivation meant to incur physical discomfort in pursuit of spiritual growth.

The Hebrew View of the Human Person 

It is important to understand that dualism, like the error of an eternal human soul, does not originate in either Hebrew theology or apostolic Christianity. It exists within Christian theology only because influential theologians infected apostolic tradition with Greek metaphysics. Since the Roman church wielded doctrinal control, often through imperial and/or monarchical force, these errors were forced onto the faithful with such repetition that they gained a false veneer of authenticity. When the Orthodox church broke away from Rome, it maintained these errors, as did the theologians of the Protestant Reformation. Greek metaphysics, it seemed, was a transmissible disease in the Body of Christ.

As we did for the presumed immortality of the human soul, let us strip away 1,800 years of “tradition” and explore the legitimate roots of Christian faith and its understanding of the human self. The Hebrew view was holistic, viewing the self and the body as a single form. There is no hint of dualism in the Old Testament. Ancient Hebrews did not divide humans into two metaphysical components, but viewed the soul as an integral part of the human form (nephesh). According to the Old Testament, humans do not have souls, but are souls.

We see this in Genesis 2:7: “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul (Hebrew: nephesh; Greek: psychē).” God did not insert a soul into Adam, but He animated the material form with His will. Adam then became a living being, nephesh/psychē, meaning creature, person, living being, or life. Neither term ever means “immortal inner essence” or any other kind of metaphysical consciousness. That animals are described using identical language means that dualism cannot be legitimate. If it were, Scripture would never apply the same word for “soul” to animals and humans, as man is above animals, animated by God’s Spirit into identity, self, covenant, and reason. Scripture does not reserve “soul” language for humans alone, which would be inexplicable if the soul were an immortal metaphysical essence unique to mankind.

What we read is that humans are embodied beings by design. The body is not a temporary shell or prison; it is part of the divine creation which God calls “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Contrary to many Gnostic, pagan, and even modern Christian belief systems, the human person is not a soul imprisoned inside a flesh-container. Instead, the person is the integrated whole.

While psychē later acquired metaphysical meaning in Greek philosophy, Scripture itself never uses the term to denote an immortal essence. Dualism simply cannot be reconciled with Hebrew anthropology.

What the New Testament Says About Dualism 

Nor does dualism find roots in the New Testament. Instead, the Gospel argues against dualism directly. There is a misconception rampant among theologians that the New Testament embraces Greek metaphysics, but this is not the case. In fact, it presses even harder into a holistic, embodied anthropology. This doctrine emphasizes the second coming of Christ and bodily Resurrection, the core doctrines that define Christian eschatology.

Recall too that Jesus uses “soul” (Greek: psuchē) to mean “life” or “self,” not an immortal or distinct essence. But no such soul can be immortal pursuant to the words of Christ, who says: “Whoever wants to save his life (psuchē) will lose it” (Mark 8:35). And again in Matt. 6:25: “Is not life (psuchē) more than food?” Most critically, Jesus tells us that the soul can die, that we should “fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28). A dualist anthropology requires that the soul be indestructible, but we know that this is not the case because Christ reveals this to us. Christ actually denies the most basic premise that dualistic anthropology requires: an indestructible soul.

The Apostle Paul’s anthropology is similarly non-dualistic. He never once describes humans as immortal souls temporarily residing in bodies. Instead, he focuses the entire Christian life on awaiting bodily resurrection, the precise opposite of death as a form of soul-liberation. Far from death being an escape from the body, it is the body itself that is redeemed when Christ comes again (Rom. 8:23). He also describes morality as applying to the whole person, not merely the body (1 Cor. 15:53–54). In his entire ministry, immortality comes as a reward in the final age, a gift bestowed upon the righteous following bodily resurrection.

Paul does not teach dualistic anthropology. Instead, he teaches Israel’s embodied eschatology, perfected in Christ.

In Christianity as it was taught by Christ and His Apostles, there was never a hope of a metaphysical, disembodied existence. Instead, hope rested in the promise of resurrection, of our physical body transformed into glorified, immortal vessel that retains our uniqueness and identity, our psuchē. If dualism were true, then resurrection would be a postscript, mere bonus content at the end, and largely unnecessary. Yet the New Testament treats resurrection as the center of Christian hope, the defeat of death, the vindication of Christ, and the transformation of human beings into immortality. A dualistic theology has no explanation for why resurrection is necessary at all. If the righteous exist as spirits in Heaven and the unrighteous in Hell, what reason would there even be for Jesus to return?

Dualism is not a harmless, metaphysical theory. By ingraining the dualist framework into Christian thought, theologians have invited doctrinal chaos. The philosophical issues that dualism projects onto pure Christianity are catastrophic. Not only are these soul-theories unbiblical, but they comprise the root of nearly every major Christian doctrinal distortion related to death and the afterlife.

This metaphysical bifurcation invites many of the same confusions as the immortal soul. To begin with, dualism requires that the soul be alive in some conscious state after death. Once you assume the soul is immortal and conscious, you must answer:

Where does the soul go now?

Is it judged?

Can it suffer?

Is it purified?

Can it intercede?

What happens before resurrection?

Scripture answers none of these because Scripture assumes none of these. Dualism invents the problem and Christian theologians perform philosophical, speculative gymnastics inventing solutions. We see the fruits of this error in the entire afterlife bureaucracy within the Roman Church. With dualism accepted a priori, Rome had no choice but to construct and invent solutions to the problems this very belief causes. By degrees—or by “development,” if you prefer—the Roman Church spent centuries altering Christian doctrine to fit within a pagan, metaphysical framework. They labelled the faithful heretics and even used imperial violence to support its many fabrications, born of their own imagination and not of Scripture. Purgatory, Limbo of Infants, Limbo of the Fathers, Immediate Heaven, Immediate Hell, the Treasury of Merit, saintly intercession, and Marian mediation all exist only because soul theory made souls conscious and mobile apart from the body. Once dualism is removed, the entire structure collapses along with its confusions and contradictions.

Similar errors persist in Protestantism. Though they fractured from their Roman roots, they took with them the foundational errors of both the immortal soul and dualism, including the unbiblical mechanisms it demands. Protestants still insist on immediate, post-death consequence in either Heaven or Hell, all without answering the obvious confusion caused with dualism and the resurrection in the Final Judgment. The so-called Rapture, Protestantism’s crown jewel of theological inventions, is likewise spawned from dualism.

At its core, dualism obscures the Gospel message. If salvation is primarily about the soul escaping the body, resurrection is demoted and the Gospel is no longer the redemptive story of death’s defeat, the renewal of creation, and the redemption of the whole human. Instead, the Gospel under dualism elevates a disembodied, immaterial existence, begging the question of why a physical resurrection is involved at all.

To be candid, dualism is simply not Christian. It is nothing more than pagan metaphysics wearing a Christian mask, marketed to the faithful from under mitres and from behind pulpits as if it were the actual Word of God.

What Happens when Dualism is Rejected?

Contrary to Soul Theory and Greek metaphysics, Scripture teaches us a simple, coherent anthropology. The human being is holistic, the combination of the body with the sentience-giving breath of God. Combined together, these two components are what comprise the living person. Thus, when the body dies, the person also dies, not simply a part of the person. There is no inner essence that “lives on.” Death, the ultimate enemy, concludes the conscious participation of all.

However, death is not annihilation, but sleep defined as unconscious, inactive rest. The human future rests in bodily resurrection. The “soul” is not immortal, nor is the body, but the entire person is made immortal through the mercy of God following Christ’s second coming. True immortality—not merely that which does not age, but that which cannot be annihilated—belongs to God alone. Human beings never possess it inherently. Instead, we believers receive eternal life as a gift at resurrection.

Dualism is unnecessary, unbiblical, and incompatible with this framework.

Why Resurrection Makes Dualism Unnecessary

But if dualism is so incompatible with the message of Christ, how is it that it feels so intuitive today? There are three primary reasons. First, as we have seen elsewhere, Western Christianity fell under the shadow of Plato and Augustine. Most Christians read and attempt to understand Scripture through philosophical lenses they inherited unknowingly. Second, Funeral piety and popular imagination reinforce dualism. Sentimental language (“she’s in a better place now”) replaced biblical anthropology (“she sleeps in Christ”). These ideas have their roots in pre-Christian times, likely to the earliest, unrecorded civilizations. Mankind has always sought to place a bandage on the sting of death, and dualism provides a panacea against the finality that death brings. Dualism feels comforting because it keeps loved ones “alive” in a conscious sense.

But biblical resurrection is far more profound and hopeful than any ambiguous, post-death consciousness. Christian theologians and trusted leaders have failed on two fronts: first, they have promoted dualism, and second, they have failed to describe the even greater peace and comfort that exists in Christ’s promise of future resurrection.

A biblical anthropology offers stronger comfort than dualism ever could. Dualism seeks to comfort us by saying that our loved ones are a kind of ghost, conscious but disembodied. They may be watching you, or perhaps not. In Roman doctrine, your loved one may even be suffering somewhere, either in Hell or in Purgatory, burning as a form of “purification.”

Scripture comforts us with the wholeness of God’s revealed truth. While we will explore the hope and promise of Christianity in Article 5 and Article 6, it is worth mentioning it briefly, as the prospect of “sleeping” will no doubt be a shock to many of us.

Our beloved dead sleeps in Christ. They do not suffer, they do not fear. They know nothing of the perils and struggles of our world. Most importantly, perhaps, is that they do not wait in torment, whether Hell or some other kind of post-death purgatory. When they wake next, it will be the voice of Jesus calling them forth. The “better place” is not absent, but merely postponed. And when we rise again to the calling of our Lord, we will be together, cocooned in a kind of love and perfection that we cannot possibly imagine: perfect love without loss, joy without sorrow, and a perfection of self that knows no disease, fatigue, pain, or injury.

This is why early Christians greeted death. They did not find peace in death as liberation from the body, but as rest until resurrection. Dualism steals this comfort, while Biblical anthropology restores it. As Christians, we must elevate resurrection to its rightful place as the culmination of God’s New Covenant with the righteous and quarantine Soul Theory to pagan metaphysics.

Dualism must be abandoned to recover the Gospel it distorted. To embrace Scripture’s teaching on death, resurrection, salvation, and judgment, we must abandon dualism entirely. This is not the abandonment of Christian doctrine, or the teaching of Scripture. Dualism contradicts both Hebrew and apostolic anthropology, is found nowhere in Scripture, introduces philosophical and theological errors, necessitates an imagined afterlife bureaucracy, undermines resurrection, and distorts the Gospel message. That so many staggering errors are its fruits is reason enough for Christians to restore the proper telos of Christianity: living a good life in imitation of Christ, to die and then ultimately live eternally through Him.

While dualism argues for all manner of various consequences to death and existence, the biblical view is clear:

Humans are mortal, embodied beings.

Death is sleep.

Resurrection is the hope.

Immortality is God’s gift, not man’s nature.

Once the false assumption of dualism is removed, the question of what follows death becomes simple and entirely Scriptural without need for creative speculation.

Only by dismantling the dualistic scaffolding inherited from Greek philosophy can we truly understand the Christian doctrine of resurrection. This reorientation is also essential as we proceed to Article 3: What Follows Death?

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