Although the meaning of āopportunityā 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 ācircumstanceā or āset of circumstances.ā 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 Philosophersā 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 āaffirmative action,ā 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 Iād like to give a wider audience. Unfortunately I did not, however, hammer this deficiency as hard as I should have. Iāll try in this preface.
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 āQuestloveā Thompson had the daunting task of selecting only two. He cannot be faulted for his choice of performances for Summer of Soul. He couldnāt 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 Americaās self-proclaimed leader of the world’s āfirst fascists.ā*) The fact that those few ānot-of-colorā 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 Rossās fans whom ābands of roving youthsā beat and robbed after leaving her ā83 Central Park concert [New York Times, July 24, 1983]).
HCFās 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.
As Sellers approaches the Greek Scriptures on the question of the soul, heās eager to affirm the principle of interpretation he calls ādivine interchange.ā It is a theological principle, that is, it is based, not on an empirical study of linguistics, but rather from the worldview he derived from his study of the Bible.
On this blog we explored what Sellers means by this principle as it pertains to the Hebrew ×¢×Ö¹×Öø×ā (olam) and the Greek Ā Ī±į¼°ĻĪ½ (aion), both usually translated āeternalā or āeverlastingāāwhich obscures the idea of flow at the root of both words. Those who wish to review that discussion should take the link to the first post in that three-part series. It was about olamās ācontrolā of aion, just as what follows is about nepheshās ācontrolā of psyche.
These words are identical in meaning in the Word of God. Whatever nephesh means, as gathered from divine usage in the Old Testament, is also the meaning of psyche. This is established by the fact that the Holy Spirit uses these two words interchangeably, a fact that would overrule the contrary opinion of any scholar. In Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27 we find the following:
Otis Q. Sellers, “What Is the Soul,” Grand Rapids, MI 1939. Cover shown here is that of the reprint, Los Angeles, dated no earlier than 1963 when zip codes were introduced.
This is a very obscure reference. It seems that perfume boxes or scentcases were called āhouses of the soul.ā Whether this is used because of the connection of the soul with the sense of smell, or its connection with the breath, would be hard to say.
Again, many times nephesh occurs in Jeremiah, and six times it āis used in relationship to Godā:
That is, Sellers writes, āElijah had slain the prophets of Baal, and Ahab threatened to make the soul of Elijah as the soul of one of them. Elijah flees in order to save his soul”āthe very center of his experience of lifeā”from such a fate.ā
āIn a number of these passages,ā Sellers notes, āheart and soul are used together, but heart always comes first. The heart is connected with the motives and the soul with the actions. Godās ideal is perfect actions springing from perfect motives.ā
We interrupt our series on Otis Q. Sellersās biblical research into nephesh and psyche (āthe soulā) for a refreshing prophetic pause. For today I resolved, at least to my own satisfaction, a problem that had been nagging me, and Iād like to share its resolution.
If asked what Jesusā first miracle was, every biblically literate believer will answer, āHis changing water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.ā
This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him. John 2:11 (KJV)
John, carried along by the Holy Spirit, called that displacement of liquids the ābeginningā (į¼ĻĻį½“Ī½, archen), so it falls to the faithful believer to believe that.
In this post we select for examination verses in the Hebrew scriptures, following the five books of Moses, that illustrate Otis Q. Sellersās thesis that King Jamesās Bible translators were allergic to the truth of nephesh, a truth they obscured whenever it threatened some doctrine of the Church of England. He lists every verse in which nephesh appears, but singles out only some for emphasis, starting with Joshua 2:13:
But, Sellers observes, life ācannot die, so it cannot be delivered from death. There can be no such thing as dead life. It is as contradictory as hot ice.ā
The āfifty-one occurrences of the word nepheshā in 1 and 2 Samuel, are also “in perfect harmony with all the truth we have discovered this far.ā He finds the same in every verse of 1 and 2 Kings in which nephesh occurs, but alights upon 1 Kings 17:21-22:
āIn this record,ā Sellers writes, āwe find that Elijah prayed for the return of the childās soul, and that the childās soul came into him again. From this it would appear that the soul was some part of the child that had gone somewhere, and at the petition of Elijah it returned to the child again. But this is repugnant to Genesis 2:7 where God tells us so plainly just what a soul is. Continue reading “Nephesh in the Rest of the Hebrew Scriptures (1): Sellers on the SoulāPart VII”
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, was an assiduous student of the Holy Scriptures. His business in life was the study and proclamation of God’s Word through radio broadcasts, the writing and distribution of Bible-study literature, a tape-recorded ministry, and semiannual Bible conferences throughout the United States. 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 constant study forced him to alter some of his beliefs, he asked 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 (Chicago); the following year he was ordained a Baptist minister. He traveled with an evangelistic party for several years and served as pastor in Baptist churches. By 1932, however, after his studies led him away from the rituals and ordinances (such as 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 of his passing 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 the Marrone 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.āAnthony G. Flood
Sellers comments: “‘Lust’ is indeed a strange rendering for nephesh. ‘My soul shall take her fill of them,’ would be a more accurate translation.”
Strange, we add, for had God wished to communicate the idea of lust, He could have breathed the word ×¢Ö²×Öø×Öø× (agabah) into Moses. (In fact, He breathed it only into Ezekiel as he inked chapter 23, verse 11 of his book of prophecy, making ×¢Ö²×Öø×Öø× a hapax legomenon.)
[Previous installments of this series on Otis Q. Sellers on the soul: I, II, III, and IV.]
Sellers continues to mine Genesis for what it teaches about nephesh, traditionally translated āsoulā and, not surprisingly, finds confirmation in the Greek Scriptures: āThe lessons to be learned in Genesis 2:7 are reaffirmed in the New Testament,ā specifically 1 Corinthians 15:45:
And so it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul.
Sellers also finds in Genesis an implicit equation: A + B = C
The Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth.
[The Lord God] Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
Man became a living soul.
From these statements Sellers infers that it āis the whole man that is the soul, and not some part of man.ā Here is biblical anthropology in a nutshell, rarely if ever represented in popular theology.
ā¦ [I]t was the original man made of the soil that became a living soul. The spirit is possessed by man, but it is no part of manāit is a part of God. By it the original man became something he was not before. What he became depends for its continuance upon God. Man has not been changed into divine spirit. He only has this dwelling in him at the pleasure of God. It may be withdrawn, and if it is, man sinks back to the soil from whence he came. If this happens, man is no longer a living soul, he becomes a dead soul. In view of this, how glorious is the fact of resurrection. [My emphasisāAGF] Continue reading “The Departing and Returning Whole Man: Sellers on the SoulāPart V”
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), his one-time New York rep Gabriel Monheim (1936-2015), and long-time friend (of them and me), fellow Christian Individualist Michael Walko, Los Angeles, December 21 or 22, 1973. Photo courtesy of “Jersey Mike.”āA.G.F.
Letās recap the first three posts in this series on Otis Q. Sellersās 1939 What Is the Soul?
Part I documents Sellersās understanding of Scriptureās plenary inspiration based on its character as theopneustosĀ (ĪøĪµĻĻĪ½ĪµĻ ĻĻĪæĻ, 2 Timothy 3:16), which determines the approach to particular words.
We will now introduce the biblical figures God condescended to use to communicate truth about the soul. āLet us consider,ā Sellers writes, āthese two parts of living man which constitute him a living soul.ā
First, there is the body: it was created out of something already in existence [but also created], that is, the dust or soil of the earth. A man may love his body, care for it, protect it and nurture it, yet it is just so much soil, and at death it must return to the soil from whence it was taken.
(In a note, Sellers explains that āI use the word dust ā¦ although the word soil is preferred. To us dust means soil without moisture, powdered fine. This does not fit the Hebrew word here, but our word soil seems to fit it perfectly.ā)
āIt may be humiliating to accept it,ā he continues, āand that which humiliates is often rejected, but God has the material for making myriads of bodies, for these bodies are just so much soil.ā
The following review appeared on Amazon today, but without the links. 
[Previous installments:Ā 
We interrupt our 
