An Early Witness Puts 'Soul Sleep' to Rest

Just as Jehovah's Witnesses believe, I grew up believing that when a person dies, he or she remains in an unconscious state until the resurrection of the dead. I believed our souls could not survive the body. I believed this to be the biblical understanding, and that Christians believed this until pagan philosophy infiltrated the Church, certainly by A.D. 325 at the Nicene Council.

The orthodox Christian understanding (which I now hold) is that the soul indeed survives the body and awaits the resurrection, in which our souls are reunited with our resurrected, glorified bodies.

This morning, I was re-reading St. Clement's epistle to the Romans, and I came across a passage that struck a chord with me several years ago. Clement, who lived from A.D. 30–100, is likely the associate of the apostle Paul (see Philippians 4:3). He was the fourth bishop of Rome, following Peter, Linus, and Cletus.

His letter is quite early, dated at A.D. 97 at the latest—way before the "evil" influences of the emperor Constantine. The letter possibly could have been written while the apostle John was alive. Here is a passage I want to share with you:

But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience.

Clement describes the apostles as being in his "own generation," and upon their deaths, Peter and Paul (1) "departed to the place of glory" and (2) "went into the holy place." These would be strange descriptions if he believed in soul sleep. Neither did he act like he was introducing a new doctrine. He wasn't even attempting to explain the state of the soul at death. He merely wrote of martyrdom and spiritual heroes.

No longer must I contrive excuses for St. Paul, for example, when he speaks of being "absent from the body" and "at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). The natural meaning of his words are perfectly reasonable when I consider the beliefs of the early church—even those who personally knew the apostle. If this is the same Clement that is mentioned in Scripture, Paul called him a fellow laborer whose name was written in the book of life.

One thing that my Jehovah's Witness friends—and I myself, years ago—misunderstood is that Catholics do not believe that our reward is merely "when you die, you go to heaven." Instead, Catholics teach that our ultimate reward will involve the bodily resurrection, when our souls are reunited with our bodies.

The dispute boils down to whether the soul exists consciously during the interim. While that is the dispute, it was not a dispute during the time of the apostles and in the first generations of the Church. It was taken for granted.