Summing up Sellers on the Soul—Part XIII

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). This portrait was shot in 1921, the “second year of my Christian experience,” when he was “enrolled as a student in a Bible school,” i.e., Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. A believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, he was an assiduous of the Bible. His mission was to study and proclaim God’s Word through radio broadcasts, written and recorded studies, and conferences. He came to his conclusions after weighing all the Biblical and any other material that shed light on the subject. He studied Hebrew and Greek words to bring forth their historical and grammatical meanings. Study would occasionally force him to alter some conclusions, so he implored his readers to take only his latest writing to be his latest light—and to do their own studies! Sellers received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at age 18 on November 23, 1919. In 1922, after leaving Moody, he was ordained a Baptist minister. Throughout 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 his ministry with booklets, radio broadcasts, and 570 recorded messages covering most books of the Bible and many doctrinal issues. In 1971 he launched Seed and Bread, a series of four-page leaflets, 196 of which he had produced by the time a stroke incapacitated him. 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 in his  home when Sam was a boy in the 1950s), I’ve been researching Sellers’s life and thought for a book whose working title is “Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism.” I would be grateful to hear from anyone willing to share information, memories, or photos for this study.—Anthony G. Flood

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

Sellers concludes his 1939 study What Is the Soul with observations on psychikos, the adjectival form of psyche which occurs seven times in the New Testament, unlike “soul sleep” and the soul’s alleged “immortality,” two ideas without a shred of scriptural support.

“The English language,” Sellers begins, “really has no adjective that corresponds to the word soul, so the word soulish was coined many years ago in order to express the Greek adjective.” In the following concordance, note the contrast the apostles Paul and Jude draw between soul/soulish and spirit/spiritual:

But the natural man (ψυχικoς, psychikos) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually (πνευματικῶς, pneumatikos) discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14

It is sown a natural (ψυχικόν, psychikon) body; it is raised a spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon) body. There is a natural (ψυχικόν, psychikon) body, and there is a spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon) body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul (ψυχήν, psychen); the last Adam was made a quickening spirit (πνεῦμα, pneuma). Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon), but that which is natural (ψυχικoν, psychikon); and afterward that which is spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon). 1 Corinthians 15:44-46

This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual (ψυχική, psychike) devilish. James 3:15

These be they who separate themselves, sensual (ψυχικοί, psychikoi), having not the Spirit (Πνεῦμα, Pneuma). Jude 19

“It is commonly taught,” Sellers continues, “that the soul is the seat of our highest spiritual faculties, but this is not the testimony of Scripture. Man’s spirit is the seat of his spiritual faculties. . . . ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God’ (Romans 8:16).”

[A] soulish man is . . . dominated by the fact that he is a soul, that is, a sentient being. He is moved by his physical sensations. Things that appeal to his eyes, his ears, his feelings, or his emotions are readily received, but the things which appeal only to his faith, the realm in which the spirit operates, are rejected. He requires incense to please his nose, music to delight his ears, architecture to satisfy his eyes before he can get into what he calls the “spirit of worship.” He knows nothing of worshipping God in spirit and in truth; he knows nothing of the Spirit witnessing to his spirit; he can recognize no witness save those that appeal to his senses; he is a soulish man.

Sellers elaborates:

In present-day evangelism the message is usually a soulish message making a soulish appeal to soulish men. Many stories are told to make men laugh, to make men cry or to delight men’s ears. The emotional, sentimental, fleshly appeal dominates. Soulish men respond to these soulish appeals and spiritual results are claimed. Often these results are kept alive by continually ministering to their soulish desires.

One more gloss on 1 Corinthians 15:44.

The soulish body which we have now is suited for earthly spheres, but it would not do for heavenly spheres. It came from the soil, is continually renewed from the soil, and is dependent upon the soil for its sustenance. In our present condition we cannot exist apart from the soil of the earth. If we should be raised with bodies such as we now possess, we would not be suited for heavenly spheres. So, we are to be raised with spiritual bodies. That is, we will have bodies which are dominated by spiritual perception rather than by physical sensations. (My emphasis—AGF)

In the passage from James, “the word soulish (psychikos) appears between the words earthly and devilish. This should be sufficient to warn us away from any wisdom that is soulish in its character. There are many who believe something because of the way they feel about it. . . . The character of all such is soulish, not spiritual.”

In Jude 19, the “antipathy of soul to spirit is clearly demonstrated . . . . The present tendency is to allow the soul to rule. This is especially true in the moral realm where so many think of nothing else but gratifying the senses. It is also prominent in the religious realm where pleasing the senses is prominent in so much that is done under the name of Christian service.”

As for “soul sleep,” in not one of the 859 occurrences of the Hebrew and Greek words for soul is there a “suggestion, hint, inference, or intimation that the soul sleeps between death and resurrection. The word for soul and the word for sleep are never united in any passage.” Sellers takes this as occasion to declare, in any exemplary manner, where he stands on any matter.

Therefore, I am able to say dogmatically and without reservations that there is no such thing as soul-sleep taught in the Word of God. I do not believe in it. And my reason for not believing in it is not because men have called it a damnable heresy, neither because it is held by certain sects, nor because it is branded as unorthodox. I do not believe in it because it is totally foreign to the Word of God. If in my search for knowledge concerning the soul I had found such a thing as the sleep of the soul I would have believed it, proclaimed it, and have taken all the consequences that may have come from such a course. I would not care if men called it a damnable heresy and me a damnable heretic. I would not care if it was called unorthodox. But I do not believe in it, and my only reason for not believing in it is that it is nowhere to be found in the Word of God. (My emphasis—AGF)

No commentary on what the Bible has to say about the soul would be complete without addressing the question of its mortality:

The Bible never speaks of a mortal soul, and it never speaks of an immortal soul. Neither of these words appear in connection with the word soul. . . . [I]f mortal means subject to death, and immortal means not subject to death, then we can deduce the following: in the Word of God, we have plain statements that man as a living soul is subject to both death and destruction.

It will help the reader to settle the question if he asks himself if he believes in the immortality of that which man became when God breathed into him the breath of life.

The teaching of the Word of God concerning immortality is that it is acquired, even as righteousness, faith and salvation are acquired. If immortality is natural, then it is not acquired. It is evident that immortality is acquired by faith. It is God’s gift through Christ, and is to be found only in Him.

Just as Christ saves us from sin, and some day will put us beyond the reach of all sin, even so Christ saves us from death, and will someday put us beyond the reach of death. (My emphasis—AGF)

The soul that sins is not immortal (Ezekiel 18:20). Sellers’s brief definition of the soul concludes his study.

A living soul is that which the man made of the soil became when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). A dead soul is that which the man becomes when God withdraws the breath of life. In resurrection man becomes a living soul again.

The reader who has slogged through our baker’s dozen of posts on the nature of the soul has the right to ask about their significance. The answer is simple, but its elaboration will cost another series of posts:

When you die, your soul “goes” nowhere, that is, neither to heaven nor to hell.

But one day your soul—you—will be brought back to life, resurrected; if, while you were a living soul, you believed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you will enjoy eonian life (life flowing out of Him; John 3:16) as a subject of the Kingdom of God once He assumes sovereignty.

Or you will be alive on that glad day. Either way, your future home is here, on earth.

Stay tuned.

Earlier Posts on Otis Q. Sellers