by ThomasDam21 33 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
@Journeyman,
"JWs don't even believe the "soul" is something that can be "inserted" or can "fly up to heaven".
True. So out of curiosity then, what do Jehovah's Witnesses believe goes to heaven at death of one of the 144,000, if there is no such thing as the soul?
@journeyman: What you describe as JW theology, very few people actually know how to answer those 'difficult' questions. So if a kid asks a logical question, then parents often don't even know WHAT they believe because they've been trained that asking questions is wrong, and looking up answers to those questions on yourself is hard.
Unlike my kids in church, they go to Sunday school, have a pretty good knowledge about what they believe and what the Bible says. My other kid is raised with her JW mother, doesn't go to Sunday school, doesn't know at all what to believe, especially because we do go to church, she hears the things and it makes sense but in some places conflicts, she has a very hard time right now because the JW tell her a parody of what "Christendom" believes about hell and souls, then she goes to church and it actually all seems to make sense and not at all the parody that JWs hold other Christians to be.
It's a really weird thing, and something a lot of ex-JW's either experience or "don't want anything to do with religion" they'll never experience it and keep a really wrong JW idea about what churches are and do. Most churches are not at all like JW, they are not at all like what the media or the JW parodies them to be. And that is the same for most other religions, I have a Buddhist friend and when I first left JW and met him, we talked about his believes, all I knew was from that WTBTS conversion literature which I knew backwards and forwards because I was in the foreign language field for years. So I asked him if that is what he believed and he looked really weird and said, no, that's actually a really old and anti-Buddhist propaganda that people like Mao used to prosecute them. That was eye opening to me, he invited me to Temple and yes, it is not at all what the JW books told me about. So as an ex-JW, if you're interested in other people's religions and having conversations with them about it, first re-learn everything you know by visiting their 'churches' and talking to them.
So yes, the question is valid, if you don't have a soul, then 'what' goes to heaven if you're anointed. It can't be the fleshly body, which the explanation of God will just reconstruct a body, although not supported by the Bible, is a possibility, but if your body doesn't have a soul and the spirit is just your animating energy which dies when you die, then "what" goes to or becomes created in heaven, because even the JW believe that there is no 'flesh' only 'spirit' in heaven. The explanation that at the very end, God converts their soon-to-be-dead body/spirit/soul (which they claim is all the same thing) into something like a soul that then goes to heaven is a valid explanation, that actually fits within the Biblical interpretation of souls/spirits.
So yes, the question is valid
I'm not saying the question is not valid, and of course a child's question is perfectly reasonable because they (usually) want to learn and understand.
I was more perplexed by the supposed answer from the mother which, in JW terms, is completely "wrong". It's not even slightly off, as perhaps being a bit confused or missing some detail - like you say, a lot of JWs can't properly explain their own beliefs, especially in recent years. But no, it's the complete opposite of what they teach about the soul and death - as any glance at pretty much any "bible study" book they've produced in the last 50 years or more would show. It's basic "JW 101", as Americans might say - along with "what's God's name" or "who wrote the Bible".
You yourself almost kind of summed up the JW belief in the last paragraph in simple terms that could be used to explain to a child, when you said "God converts their [...]spirit into something that then goes to heaven". I would perhaps reword that as "God recreates/re-forms the person in the heavens as a spirit - with their memories, personality, etc" - to make it clearer from the JW theology perspective that strictly speaking they don't believe anything "goes up to" heaven - that humans don't have any eternal floating part of them that drifts off, and they don't take their physical body with them.
According to JW theology, what "returns to God" is the ability for a man to live again, the "breath" that He gives a human at the start of their life. In the Insight volume on Soul, it's explained as:
Eccl. 12:7: “Then the dust returns to the earth just as it happened to be and the spirit [or, life-force; Hebrew, ruʹach] itself returns to the true God who gave it.” [...] The text does not mean that at death the spirit travels all the way to the personal presence of God; rather, any prospect for the person to live again rests with God. In similar usage, we may say that, if required payments are not made by the buyer of a piece of property, the property “returns” to its owner.) (KJ, AS, RS, NE, and Dy all here render ruʹach as “spirit.” NAB reads “life breath.”)
That's also linked with Psalm 146:4 "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." (KJV) - so there is no thinking, no consciousness, that lives on separately. Only if God recreates the man - as either a spirit being in heaven or back as a material fleshly being on earth - will he live and have consciousness again.
Any JW who was even half paying attention to what they were studying should be able to answer that in brief at least, along the lines of the sentence you said, even if they can't go into detail about nephesh or ruach or whatever (which would not be necessary or meaningful to a young child anyway). But for a JW to say "a soul was inserted" that could then "go up to" heaven I just thought was... very odd.
Apologies, I'm not intending to derail this topic, but Vanderhoven did ask me to elaborate and I thought Anony Mous's comments were also worth following up on.
Great:
God recreates/re-forms the person in the heavens as a spirit - with their memories, personality, etc
How is that entity not a soul and how does it transfer to heaven. They must be transferred somehow, purely physically speaking some 'energy' must go from here to there.
Here is the problem with the non-immortal soul/spirit belief of the JW
1) The belief is that your body and your spirit and your soul are just different names for the same thing (your physical body and your personal attributes; the soul is not immortal; spirit is your life force and also not immortal). Physical bodies cannot enter heaven, when you die, your life force and your soul dies with you. Let's assume that is a true statement.
2) God recreates a "body" for you in heaven with your personal attributes, it by JW standards is considered a "soul". Since your "spirit" is your animating life force, you cannot be created a "spirit" since "spirits" have no personal attributes or will (eg. the Holy Spirit according to JW interpretation is not a person, but God's force and has no will).
3) Per the Bible and according to JW the body dies and cannot enter heaven so it cannot be the 'same thing' that was on earth, yet, JW believe the body = the soul. Thereby statement 2 and statement 1 cannot be true at the same time, it's a logical contradiction.
You can extend 2 to include people resurrected. If God did not preserve your soul, spirit or body, how will he resurrect you the way you were. "From memory" sure, but then God DID preserve an aspect of your soul or spirit if not your body. Just like converting a letter with a signature from paper to digital and then printing it out again, is still legally considered a valid signature, just because you converted it into something different, doesn't mean it is no longer "the thing".
