Apologetics and Evidence

In her book,   The Most Important Decision You Will Ever Make , Joyce Meyer teaches that the gospel is that Jesus had to die spiritually, go to hell and become spiritually dead, that Jesus separated from God the Father on the cross, and that Jesus was the first born-again man from the dead. This is a common teaching in the Word of Faith movement, [1]   which seems (unfortunately) to creep into the minds of those who began their journey in sound doctrine but veer off because of such false teachers. Meyers writes in the latest edition of her book, “He became our sacrifice and died on the cross. He did not stay dead. He was in the grave three days. During that time, he entered hell, and defeated Satan.” [2] On the following page she begins to elaborate, “He committed His Spirit to the Father and died. So they put Him—that is, His body—in a grave. And His spirit went to hell because that is where we deserved to go… There is no hope of anyone going to heaven unless they believe thi...

This conversation seems like it should begin with a discussion on the soul. A disembodied soul is the description for what happens when a person dies and is simply without a physical human body. This state of existence will be the case until the event of the Resurrection of the saints.   In both Cartesian dualism and anthropological hylomorphism schools of thought, the disembodied state of the soul takes place. When we die, our souls leave our bodies. Dualism is the idea that the soul and the body are separate things, and the hylomorphic idea is that a soul and a body are not separate things, but a unity. As in, your soul could not fit into the body of another person. Your soul is essentially custom fit to your body.  What makes this interesting is that there are things that neither school of thought can answer very well, but there are questions that both answer very well. For one, there is a big question concerning dualism, which is about the Resurrection of the dead. For ins...