Soul Sleep: An Unbiblical Doctrine

By Hiram R. Diaz III

Is the doctrine of Soul Sleep based on a literal interpretation of the imagery of sleep, as its teachers claim? To answer this, we must look to the Bible and find out what it teaches about literal sleep, what its effects are, and whether or not it is a state of absolute unconsciousness.

Soul Sleep: An Unbiblical Doctrine examines the Bible's presentations of literal sleep and finds that a literal understanding of literal sleep in no way supports the idea that those who sleep are absolutely unconscious. And since the Bible in no way depicts literal sleep as a state of absolute unconsciousness, soul sleep advocates cannot claim they base their doctrine on a literal understanding of the imagery of sleep.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scripturalist Publications
• Release date: Feb 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386368786

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Hiram R. Diaz III

Soul Sleep: An Unbiblical Doctrine

First published by Scripturalist Publications 2019

Copyright © 2019 by Hiram R. Diaz III

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

Introduction

A Pan-Testamental Euphemism for Death

Literal Sleep

The Lack of EDC in Literal Sleep

The Lack of EDC in Parables

Non-Death Sleep Metaphors

Concluding Remarks

Notes

About the Author

Also by Hiram R. Diaz III

Introduction

Among some advocates of annihilationism there is a belief that the intermediate state between one’s death and resurrection is neither conscious suffering nor conscious bliss/comfort but absolute unconsciousness. The doctrine, referred to as soul-sleep, has appeared throughout church history, as Franz Delitzsch notes:

…in primitive times some have here and there chanced upon the thought, that the separated soul is in a state of sleep without consciousness, and without sensibility, until God wakens it up at the last day, together with the body.¹

Calvin, following Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, traces the doctrine back to the early third century, [originating] with some Arabs, who maintained that ‘The soul dies with the body, and that both rise again at the Day of Judgment.’² Some scholars, in fact, maintain that the doctrine may be found even farther back in church history in the writings of Tatian.³

The case for soul sleep, Millard J. Erickson notes, rests in large measure on the fact that Scripture frequently uses the imagery of sleep to refer to death.⁴ Thus contemporary advocates of the doctrine of soul-sleep (hereafter, SS), as well as some of their critics, typically claim that a literal understanding of this imagery [of sleep] has led to the concept of soul sleep.⁵ A literal understanding of [the] imagery, it is presumed, identifies sleep as a state of absolute unconsciousness. Samuele Bacchiocchi explains:

This characterization of death as sleep occurs frequently in the Old and New Testaments because it fittingly represents the state of unconsciousness in death.⁶

The advocates of SS believe that "[sleep and death] are characterized by a condition of unconsciousness and inactivity which is interrupted by an awakening."⁷ Bacchiocchi is clear:

There is harmony and symmetry in the expressions sleeping and awakening as used in the Bible for going into and coming out of a death state. The two expressions corroborate the notion that death is an unconscious state like sleeping, from which believers will awake on the day of Christ’s coming.⁸

Thus, literal sleep is a state of absolute unconsciousness.⁹ Yet is this the case? What would it mean for the dead to be in a state similar to literally being-asleep?

In contradistinction to contemporary SS advocates’ understanding of literal sleep as a state of absolute unconsciousness (e.g. Bacciocchi), Syrian writers as early as the fourth century believed that soul sleep was a state in "which there is the same kind of semiconscious knowledge of what is passing, as in the case of an habitual ‘light sleeper.’¹⁰ St. Ephraim, for instance, taught that the departed…are alive and have the power of reason."¹¹ Drawing parallels between a literal understanding of sleep and death, he wrote:

‘Sweet