Questions & Answers

The Bible does not teach a pre-existence—the idea that our souls had an independent existence apart from our bodies before our birth (See Genesis 5:3, Psalm 51:5, and Romans 5:12). Lutheran theologians have sometimes debated whether each soul is a new creation from God, or whether you get your soul from God through your parents, just like your body. It's not a question Scripture answers directly, but the latter view seems to fit better with what Scripture does say.

"The immortality of the soul" isn't the way Christians prefer to express what we believe. Although souls don't cease to exist when their time on earth is finished, they can in fact die. Hell is nothing other than an unending, "living death."

Depending on exactly what is meant by the phrase, we'd also be uncomfortable with saying that our bodies are "merely shells for our spirit." In the beginning God didn't create disembodied souls and then form bodies to put them into. He did exactly the reverse—forming a body from the ground, and then breathing life into it (Genesis 2:7). At the end, there will be a resurrection of all the dead (Daniel 12:2) and a complete transformation of those believers who are still living (1 Corinthians 15:50-54). We are not going to live eternally as disembodied spirits, but as complete human beings—with body and soul together again.