Month: March 2022

Psyche in Romans through Revelation: Sellers on the Soul—Part XII

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, was an industrious student of the Bible. His mission was to study and proclaim God’s Word through radio broadcasts, the writing and recording of Bible studies, and Bible conferences. He arrived at his conclusions after considering all the Biblical and any other material that shed light on the subject under consideration. He studied Hebrew and Greek words to bring forth their historical and grammatical meanings. As study forced him to alter some of his beliefs, he implored his readers always to take only his latest writing to be his latest light. Sellers received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at age 18 on November 23, 1919. Throughout 1921 he attended Moody Bible Institute; the following year he was ordained a Baptist minister. For several years in the ’20s he traveled with an evangelistic party and served as pastor in Baptist churches. By 1932, however, after his studies led him away from the rituals and ordinances (e.g., baptism, the Lord’s Supper), he left the Baptist Church, never looked back, and never joined another. He began writing pamphlets in 1935; by 1936 he was publishing The Word of Truth (17 Volumes over the next 20 years). He expanded this ministry with booklets, radio broadcasts, and 570 recorded messages covering most books of the Bible and many doctrinal issues. In 1971 he began publishing Seed and Bread, four-page leaflets, 196 of which he had produced by the time he passed away in 1992. With the cooperation of his daughter, Jane Sellers Hancock (1927-2020) and her son Rusty Hancock and the assistance of Sam Marrone (who remembers Sellers teaching at his home in the 1950s when Sam was a boy), I’ve been researching his life and thought for a book tentatively entitled “Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism.” I would be grateful to anyone who could share information, memories, or photos for the purpose of this study.—Anthony G. Flood

[Prior installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI]

From the many occurrences of psyche in the rest of the Greek Scriptures, we must confine our study of Otis Q. Sellers’s What Is the Soul? to those passages that highlight the truth that the “soul” is the human being considered in his or her capacity to enjoy life or to suffer, mentally and physically.

Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man [πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ἀνθρώπου τοῦ, pasan psyche anthropou tou] that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. (Romans 2:9, KJV)

Otis Q. Sellers believes “human soul” renders the Greek better: tribulation and anguish will be the portion of the “unrighteous” mentioned in the preceding verse.

Who have for my life [ψυχῆς, psyches] laid down their own necks . . . . (Romans 16:4a)

“Aquila and Priscilla,” Sellers writes, “jeopardized their own necks,” by beheading “for Paul’s soul,” not his life.

In 1 Corinthians 15:45a, Paul confirms the equivalency of Greek psyche to the Hebrew nephesh of Genesis 2:7:

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul [ψυχὴν ζῶσαν, psyche zosan].

“How plain it is,” Sellers comments, “that Adam was made a living soul. He was made this by God breathing into His nostrils the breath of life.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23 provides a pretext for unbiblical theories of the soul:

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit [πνεῦμα, pneuma] and soul [ψυχὴ, psyche] and body [σῶμα, soma] be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sellers believes

that many people desire just five words out of this passage—spirit and soul and body. They are not interested in its message; they care not for the truth it sets forth. They care only for the few words which they can use to support some theory. The first question that should arise when this verse is read is, what is Paul teaching? Does this passage deal with the nature of man, or is it a prayer for the blameless preservation of the whole man

that is, your spirit, soul, and body “completely [ὁλοτελεῖς, holoteleis] and entirely [ὁλόκληρον, holokleron]”

unto the coming of the Lord? Is not the condition of the soul at the coming of the Lord just as important as the condition of the spirit and body? This passage does not deal with the relationship of the soul to the spirit and body.

Continue reading “Psyche in Romans through Revelation: Sellers on the Soul—Part XII”

Psyche in Mark, Luke, John, and Acts: Sellers on the Soul—Part XI

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, was an industrious student of the Bible. His mission was the study and proclamation of God’s Word through radio broadcasts, the writing of Bible-study literature, a tape-recorded ministry, and semiannual Bible conferences. He arrived at his conclusions after considering all the Biblical and any other material that shed light on the subject under consideration. He studied Hebrew and Greek words to bring forth their historical and grammatical meanings. As study forced him to alter some of his beliefs, he implored his readers always to take his latest writing to be his latest light. Sellers received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at age 18 on November 23, 1919. Throughout 1921 he attended Moody Bible Institute; the following year he was ordained a Baptist minister. He traveled with an evangelistic party for years and served as pastor in Baptist churches. By 1932, however, after his studies led him away from the rituals and ordinances (e.g., water baptism), he left the Baptist Church, never looked back, and never joined another. He began writing pamphlets in 1935; by 1936 he was publishing The Word of Truth (17 Volumes over the next 20 years). He expanded this ministry with booklets, radio broadcasts, and 570 recorded messages covering most books of the Bible and many doctrinal issues. In 1971 he began publishing Seed and Bread, four-page leaflets, 196 of which he had produced by the time he passed away in 1992. With the cooperation of his daughter, Jane Sellers Hancock (1927-2020) and her son Rusty Hancock and the assistance of Sam Marrone (who remembers Sellers teaching at his home in the 1950s when Sam was a boy), I’ve been researching his life and thought for a book tentatively entitled “Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism.” I would be grateful to anyone who could share information, memories, or photos for the purpose of this study.—Anthony G. Flood

[Prior installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X]

In What is the Soul, Sellers has much to say about common interpretations of psyche in the New Testament. Having looked at the Gospel of Matthew, we’ll turn to salient passages in the other two synoptics as well as John and Acts.

In the King James Version, Mark 8:36-37 reads:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul (ψυχην, psychen)? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul (ψυχῆς, psyches)?

Sellers comments:

The customary sermon on this text usually contains thoughts such as the following: All the wealth of the world—the gold, the silver, the precious stones, the coal, the oil, the grain, the land, the buildings—is placed on one side of the balance, and the human soul is placed on the other side. It is discovered that the soul is worth more than all these, but the speaker has proved something that no one but a fool ever doubted. It can also be proved that one glass of water is worth more than all these. Let a man be dying of thirst in the midst of a great desert, and let that man be given the choice of the wealth of this world or one glass of water, and he will choose the water. He will not even weigh the matter.

Sellers thinks this misses the point:

This passage does not teach the value of a soul, but it does teach that it would profit a man nothing if he should gain the whole world if in doing it, he loses his power to enjoy it, his power to use it, yes, even to lose his own soul. All man’s wealth cannot purchase the redemption of his soul. (My emphasis.—A.G.F.)

. . . Men have said that God looked at the lost souls of men on earth; looked at the most precious thing in heaven; then determined that those souls were so precious that He gave His precious Son that the souls should be saved. The exact words of one such preacher were, “What exceedingly precious creatures we must be that God would give His Son to die for us.” All such teaching is a lie; it contradicts the Word of God; it denies the gospel of grace; it originates in the base pride of the depraved human heart.

Continue reading “Psyche in Mark, Luke, John, and Acts: Sellers on the Soul—Part XI”

There is no right to “opportunity,” equal or otherwise: my objection to Simon Clarke’s defense

Simon Clarke, American University of Armenia

Although the meaning of “opportunity” has evolved over the last hundred years to refer narrowly to the chances of being economically employed, it has never lost its tie to the broader idea of “circumstance” or “set of circumstances.” Losing that connection has entailed adverse social consequences. Politics, the sphere of demands for non-market, state-enforced outcomes for some at the expense of others, has driven that constriction.

In a 2005 essay for The Philosophers’ Magazine, Dr. Simon Clarke (then lecturer in philosophy, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; currently Associate Professor and Chair, Political Science and International Affairs, American University in Armenia) offered a case for what has euphemistically been dubbed “affirmative action,” governmental and corporate policies that favor hiring members of certain groups.

Clarke presupposed, but did not argue for, the alleged moral obligation on which his argument is grounded, namely, the one to improve the self-esteem of certain group members by increasing their visibility in employment.

In my 2006 rebuttal to his article (reproduced below), I made many points, to which I’d like to give a wider audience. Unfortunately I did not, however, hammer this deficiency as hard as I should have. I’ll try in this preface.

Continue reading “There is no right to “opportunity,” equal or otherwise: my objection to Simon Clarke’s defense”

“Summer of Soul”: A Harlem Cultural Festival Attendee Laments a Missed Opportunity

The following review appeared on Amazon today, but without the links. Please visit it and give it a “helpful” nod if you’re so inclined. Thanks so much!

From over 40 hours of precious historical footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival (HCF), archived for a half-century for lack of corporate interest, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson had the daunting task of selecting only two. He cannot be faulted for his choice of performances for Summer of Soul. He couldn’t please everyone.

But there was other, post-festival material available to him, and in his decisions here, I detect a narrative at work.

As I watched the documentary, I noticed that the sea of black and brown in Mount Morris Park was flecked with white. (Four years later, the venue was renamed to honor America’s self-proclaimed leader of the world’s “first fascists.”*) The fact that those few “not-of-color” folks traveled safely to and from Harlem to enjoy music is worth noting, given that they did so not many months after the post-MLK assassination riots. (They were luckier than Diana Ross’s fans whom “bands of roving youths” beat and robbed after leaving her ’83 Central Park concert [New York Times, July 24, 1983]).

HCF’s white attendees, though few, represented millions who in the preceding decade had voted with their pocketbooks to help these artists achieve a level of success that their Black fan base alone could not support.

Continue reading ““Summer of Soul”: A Harlem Cultural Festival Attendee Laments a Missed Opportunity”