Corrupting Pollutants

It has been noted that "the Christian Platonists gave primacy to revelation and regarded Platonic philosophy as the best available instrument for understanding and defending the teachings of Scripture and church tradition."

Plato himself had been convinced that there exists an immortal soul. Significantly, one of the most prominent false teachings that crept into "Christian" theology is that of the immorality of the soul. Accepting this teaching can in no way be justified on the grounds that doing so made Christianity more appealing to the masses. When preaching in Athens, the very heart of Greek culture, the apostle Paul did not teach the Platonic doctrine of the soul. Rather, he preached the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, even though many of his Greek listeners found it hard to accept what he said. -Acts 17:22-32.

Contrary to Greek philosophy, the Scriptures clearly show that the soul is not what a person has but what he is. (Genesis 2:7) At death, the soul ceases to exist. (Ezekiel 18:4) Ecclesiastes 9:5 tells us: "The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten." The doctrine of the immorality of the soul is not taught in the Bible.

Another deceptive teaching had to do with the position of the prehuman Jesus, the notion that he was equal to his Father. Explains the book The Church of the First Three Centuries: "The doctrine of the Trinity . . .had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures." what was that source? The doctrine "grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers."

Next time: Continue with Corrupting Pollutants
Watchtower, 1999