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.
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.
As Sellers approaches the Greek Scriptures on the question of the soul, he’s eager to affirm the principle of interpretation he calls “divine interchange.” 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 עוֹלָם (olam) and the Greek αἰών (aion), both usually translated “eternal” or “everlasting”—which 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 olam’s “control” of aion, just as what follows is about nephesh’s “control” 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:
For thou wilt not leave my soul (נַפְשִׁ֣י, naphshi) in sheol (לִשְׁא֑וֹל, leshowl).
Because thou wilt not leave my soul (ψυχήν, psychen) in hades (ᾅδην, haden).
As hades (ᾅδης) is the equivalent of sheol (שְׁאוֹל), so is psyche (ψυχή) of nephesh (נפש). Now, hades doesn’t translate ᾅδης, but transliterates it; the same is true of what sheol does for שְׁאוֹל. The English words carry over, not the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words, but only the sounds into different symbols. And it’s the meaning we’re after.
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.
Citing the many occurrences of nephesh in Isaiah, Sellers selects for commentary Isaiah 1:14 “. . . your appointed feasts my soul (נַפְשִׁ֔י, naphshi) hateth . . .”:
In this passage [Sellers writes] the soul is used in reference to God. It is evident that “my soul” means I.
He also notes the unusual translation of nephesh in Isaiah 3:20: “The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets [or “perfume boxes”] (הַנֶּ֖פֶשׁ, hanephesh), and the earrings.”
This is a very obscure reference. It seems that perfume boxes or scentcases were called “houses of the soul.” 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 “is used in relationship to God”:
“Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not my soul (נַפְשִֽׁי, naphshi) be avenged on such a nation as this?” Jeremiah 5:9
“Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul (נַפְשִֽׁי, naphshi) be avenged on such a nation as this?” Jeremiah 5:29
“Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul (נַפְשִֽׁי, naphshi) depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited.” Jeremiah 6:8
“Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul (נַפְשִֽׁי, naphshi) be avenged on such a nation as this?” Jeremiah 9:9
“Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind (נַפְשִׁ֖י, naphshi) could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth. Jeremiah 15:1
“The Lord of hosts hath sworn by himself (בְּנַפְשׁ֑וֹ, benaphshow), saying, Surely I will fill thee with men, as with caterpillars; and they shall lift up a shout against thee.” Jeremiah 51:14
Sellers notes how the King James translators, who knew that the Hebrew for “life” is ח (chay), not נֶֽפֶשׁ (nephesh), nevertheless often translated the latter as “life.” Perhaps they feared rendering it “soul ” would expose the absurdity of their commitment to a quasiplatonic (nonbiblical) notion of the soul as a substance that temporarily inhabits the body. For example:
Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life (נַפְשְׁךָ֔, naphsheka) as the life (נַפְשְׁךָ֔, kenephesh) of one of them by to morrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. 1 Kings 19:2-3
That is, Sellers writes, “Elijah 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”—the very center of his experience of life—”from such a fate.”
In 1 and 2 Chronicles נֶֽפֶשׁ (nephesh) occurs nine times, and eight times King James’ translators rendered it “soul”; when to 1 Chronicles 5:21, they left it untranslated:
And they took away their cattle; of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of asses two thousand, and of (וְנֶ֥פֶשׁ, wenephesh) men (אָדָ֖ם, adam) an hundred thousand.
“In a number of these passages,” Sellers notes, “heart and soul are used together, but heart always comes first. The heart is connected with the motives and the soul with the actions. God’s ideal is perfect actions springing from perfect motives.”
“God breathed the word nephesh (נֶֽפֶשׁ) six times in the Book of Esther”—4:13, 7:3, 7:7, 8:11, 9:16, 9:31—“but who would know this from reading the Authorized [i.e., the King James] Version?,” Sellers asks. In the Book of Job, he finds the translators alternating between “soul” and “life” even when “soul” as that which is capable of delight is obviously meant.
It will be a surprise to many to discover in this familiar passage [Job 2:4] that Satan said, “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his soul (נַפְשֽׁוֹ, napshaw).” All Job’s possessions were gone, but he still had power to enjoy his food, his rest, his life, his God. Satan’s reasoning is that if Job’s power to enjoy these is removed, he will curse God.
The KJV for Job 2:6 is “And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life,” that is, his soul (נַפְשׁ֥וֹ, naphshaw). “Satan is permitted to touch Job’s soul until every sensation and experience that should be sweet becomes bitter, but he is not permitted to destroy Job’s soul,” that is, his capacity for enjoyment. Continue reading “Nephesh in the Rest of the Hebrew Scriptures (2): Sellers on the Soul—Part VIII”
We interrupt our series on Otis Q. Sellers’s biblical research into nephesh and psyche (“the soul”) for a refreshing prophetic pause. For today I resolved, at least to my own satisfaction, a problem that had been nagging me, and I’d like to share its resolution.
If asked what Jesus’ first miracle was, every biblically literate believer will answer, “His changing water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.”
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 “beginning” (ἀρχὴν, 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. Sellers’s thesis that King James’s 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:
And that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives (נַפְשֹׁתֵ֖ינוּ, naphshotenu, from nephesh) from death.
But, Sellers observes, life “cannot die, so it cannot be delivered from death. There can be no such thing as dead life. It is as contradictory as hot ice.”
And when I saw that ye delivered me not, I put my life (נַפְשִׁ֤י, naphshi, from nephesh) in my hands …. (Judges 12:3)
His soul, his very status as a person, not his “life.” Further, Sellers notes in commenting on Judges, the “soul (נַפְשׁוֹ֙, naphshow), can be put in jeopardy and this danger was from men” (Judges 5:18); “can tread down men of strength (5:21), “can be cast away” (9:17), “grieve” (10:16), “die” (Judges 18:25), “become bitter and are lost in death” (Judges 18:25).
The “fifty-one occurrences of the word nephesh” in 1 and 2 Samuel, are also “in perfect harmony with all the truth we have discovered this far.” He finds the same in every verse of 1 and 2 Kings in which nephesh occurs, but alights upon 1 Kings 17:21-22:
And he [Elijah] stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul (נֶֽפֶשׁ, nephesh) come into him again. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul (נֶֽפֶשׁ, nephesh) of the child came into him again, and he revived.
“In this record,” Sellers writes, “we find that Elijah prayed for the return of the child’s soul, and that the child’s 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 Soul—Part 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.—Anthony G. Flood
After citing the 17 times in Exodus that forms of נֶ֖פֶשׁ (nephesh) appear, Sellers says it’s “not my desire to pass lightly over any group of passages, yet I feel that there is nothing in the [listed] seventeen occurrences of nephesh in Exodus that contradicts any previous finding.” He singles out a few verses for examination, however, because of problems that King James’s translators created for the Bible students who came after them. Here’s an example:
The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust [נַפְשִׁ֔י, naphshi, from nephesh] shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Exodus 15:9
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 עֲגָבָה (agabah) into Moses. (In fact, He breathed it only into Ezekiel as he inked chapter 23, verse 11 of his book of prophecy, making עֲגָבָה a hapax legomenon.)
The KJV translators also misrendered נֶ֖פֶשׁ (nephesh) the two times it appears in Exodus 21:23 as “life”: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life [נֶ֖פֶשׁ] for life [נֶ֖פֶשׁ].” But, Sellers notes, “Man cannot give life or take life. Soul for soul is the divine commandment set forth here. And so it was that Jesus Christ poured out his soul [נַפְשׁ֔וֹ, naphshow, “himself,” Isaiah 53:12] that my soul,I, might be saved. Not some fraction of me, but all of me.” Continue reading “Nephesh in the Rest of the Torah: Sellers on the Soul—Part VI”
[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 “soul” and, not surprisingly, finds confirmation in the Greek Scriptures: “The lessons to be learned in Genesis 2:7 are reaffirmed in the New Testament,” 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 “is the whole man that is the soul, and not some part of man.” Here is biblical anthropology in a nutshell, rarely if ever represented in popular theology.
… [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 man—it 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 emphasis—AGF] Continue reading “The Departing and Returning Whole Man: Sellers on the Soul—Part 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.”—A.G.F.
Let’s recap the first three posts in this series on Otis Q. Sellers’s 1939 What Is the Soul?
Part I documents Sellers’s understanding of Scripture’s plenary inspiration based on its character as theopneustos (θεόπνευστος, 2 Timothy 3:16), which determines the approach to particular words.
Part II begins to survey the data of words traditionally rendered “soul”: the Hebrew נֶ֫פֶשׁ (nephesh) and its Greek equivalent ψυχή (psyche).
In Part III we show that in Genesis נֶ֫פֶשׁ (nephesh) applies to creatures that “move from place to place … [and] have sensation and consciousness” (for not all creatures do) and how the translators of the King James Version inexcusably obscured this truth.
We will now introduce the biblical figures God condescended to use to communicate truth about the soul. “Let us consider,” Sellers writes, “these two parts of living man which constitute him a living soul.”
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 “I use the word dust … 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.”)
“It may be humiliating to accept it,” he continues, “and that which humiliates is often rejected, but God has the material for making myriads of bodies, for these bodies are just so much soil.”
The following review appeared on Amazon today, but without the links. 
[Previous installments: 
We interrupt our 
