Bryan W. Ball, The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism from Wycliffe to Priestley (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2008), 235 Pps., $62.50.
Bryan W. Ball is a retired academic, holding a PhD from the University of London. He was formerly the head of the Religious Studies Department at Newbold College, England, and Principal of Avondale College, Australia. Ball has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopaedia of World Faiths. In this title, he gives an exhaustive survey of Reformation and post-Reformation thinkers who repudiated the medieval doctrine of the soul’s immortality, and chronicles the rise and development of Christian Mortalism, also known as conditional immortality or soul sleep.
Soul sleep, the author acknowledges, has always been a minority view; however, it was a significant minority view post the Reformation, one that often does not get the attention that it merits in contemporary theology. After all, some of the most respected names in Reformation and post-Reformation thought were ardent adherents to this view. Drawing from Luther (who also held this view), these writers believed that the bible taught that the soul is not a separate, immortal entity, claiming instead that conscious existence ends at death, temporarily, and then when the body is raised back to life at the eschaton, the soul – i.e. the whole person – would then be revived. They taught, moreover, that the goal of salvation is not disembodied immortality, but the bodily resurrection at the end of time.
The first chapter highlights the precursors to the mortalist position in Continental Reformation thought, found in both Luther as well as the Radical Reformationists. Ball asserts that psychopannychism was common amongst the Radical Reformation movement as well, although related to soul sleep and mortalism, cannot be strictly equated with them (37). Chapter two delineates the English origins and developments of the doctrine until 1600 in the writings of Wycliffe and Tyndale. The third chapter traces the growth and development of the mortalist doctrine in the writings of Hobbes, Overton and early English Baptists. Major seventeenth century advocates, like Milton and Locke are covered in chapter five. The ascendancy of thnetopsychism in the eighteenth century, the view belief that the soul (“psyche”) dies upon the death of the body but will be recalled to life at the Last Judgment, as held by Edmund Law, John Biddle, and Joseph Priestley is explored in chapter six. Chapter seven addresses the final abode for the redeemed, as held by Christian mortalism: a resurrected body in a new earth.
It needs to be made explicit that it was a fundamental presupposition in the minds of all adherents to the mortalist position in the period covered by this study that the bible was divine revelation. They sought to systematize the teachings of the bible regarding the after-life state, and thus not read all the texts through the lens of those that might suggest immortality of the soul. As such, they viewed as their most potent weapon, if you will, for advocation of their position, to be the bible itself. They argued that the doctrine of innate immortality stemmed not from Hebrew thought, but rather from Greek philosophy and the teachings of Plato particularly.
I must state that this book is very important to me. I have long been an adherent to the notion of soul sleep, seeing this perspective to best account for the biblical data – especially in view of such texts as I Thess 4:13-18. After all, if one is spontaneously transported to the presence of Christ at death, what need is there for the resurrection so prevalently spoken about in Scripture? Why would someone want to leave the presence of Christ in order to be ‘resurrected’ at the eschaton? Soul sleep, what Ball herein more frequently calls Christian mortalism, accounts for the entirety of Scripture much more systematically. Personally, I cannot thank Ball enough for bringing this issue to the forefront by reminding us that many of our most treasured Reformers believed in this idea. Even if you do not agree with the views he presents, the title provides important background information to the growing interest in the mortalist point of view in contemporary theological and historical circles. In sum, I would highly recommend it for courses in historical theology at a seminary level or higher, although it’s readable style might appeal to a wider audience.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA.