Fear him who can destroy both soul and body
So my pastor has spoken on the topic of Christian suicide before. I believe his position on this issue stems from his belief in the doctrine “Once Saved Always Saved” (ie you can’t lose your salvation once you’re a Christian). Anyway, I was listening to the Bible on my commute home last night and I heard something that may conflict with his espousals:
1Co 3:16-17 ESV Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (17) If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Now the word used here, in both cases for “destroy” is “φθείρω” or “phtheirei”. Here’s what Thayer says:
G5351
φθείρω
phtheirō
Thayer Definition:
1) to corrupt, to destroy
1a) in the opinion of the Jews, the temple was corrupted or “destroyed” when anyone defiled or in the slightest degree damaged anything in it, or if its guardians neglected their duties
1b) to lead away a Christian church from that state of knowledge and holiness in which it ought to abide
1c) to be destroyed, to perish
1d) in an ethical sense, to corrupt, deprave
Part of Speech: verb
A Related Word by Thayer’s/Strong’s Number: probably strengthened from phthio (to pine or waste)
Citing in TDNT: 9:93, 1259
The verse in the KJV is slightly different, where the first instance is rendered “defile” and the second “destroy”. RWP shows that they are conjugated the same in the autographa, but his commentary is kind of out of line, and for some reason he attributes this “temple” not to the body of the individual believer, but to all of the believers in the church at Corinth as a whole, and so he points this verse at the “church-wrecker”. Pretty much all the commentaries correct the KJV and say that it should be “destroy” instead of “defile”.
Gill’s commentary seems to be based on the KJV rendering of “defile”. His interpretation of the second destroy is “body and soul in hell”.
Clarke also says that God will “take away his part out of the book of life”.
For my part, I believe that the temple is the body of the believer, for:
Joh 14:16-17 ESV And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, (17) even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
Rom 8:9 ESV You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
as well as the preceeding verse to the one in question, namely 1Co 3:16, which explicitly states:
1Co 3:16 ESV Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
And if the body of the believer is indeed the “God’s temple”, and if anyone who “destroys God’s temple” will be “destroyed” by God, then we have a couple of possibilities.
- The person who kills a Christian is eternally damned.
- The person who kills a Christian will be bodily slain by God
If the former is true, then the “Christian” suicide may well lose his salvation, for:
1Co 6:19-20 ESV Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, (20) for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
While God does say:
Joh 10:28 ESV I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
I’m not sure that that means that they cannot choose to “jump” out of his hand (that’s a lot of thats for that). To wit:
Heb 6:4-8 ESV For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, (5) and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, (6) if they then fall away, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. (7) For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. (8) But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.
One might thereby answer with
1Co 3:15 ESV If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
but please note that the latter speaks to the person’s work, whereas the former speaks to the land itself.
However, VWS gives some valuable insight into the usage of φθείρει in the classical Greek:
Defile (φθείρει)
Rev., more correctly, destroy. This is the primary and almost universal meaning in classical Greek. In a fragment of Euripides it occurs of dishonoring a female. Sophocles uses it of women pining away in barrenness, and Plutarch of mixing pure colors. The phrase seems to be used here according to the Jewish idea that the temple was destroyed or corrupted by the slightest defilement or damage, or by neglect on the part of its guardians. Ignatius says: “οἱ οἰκοφθόροι; violators of the house (of God) shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (To the Ephesians, 16).
This fits with what Jesus said in the synoptic gospels:
Mat 18:2-7 ESV And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them (3) and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (4) Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (5) “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, (6) but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (7) “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!
And while we may find parity there, it does not necessitate the meaning of destroy in that passage. It seems reasonable to me that if they are both conjugated the same way so close to one another with the relationship they have in the passage, the word would keep the same meaning.
So let’s talk about God’s “destroying” this person. This could be his killing of the person, but everyone dies, so I’m not sure that is really a viable position. If the former “destroy” is interpreted as spiritual corruption, then perhaps God would allow the “causer” to be lead into even more corruption. But is something that is already destroyed (corrupt) able to be further corrupted? Think about the colors, and “slightest defilement”. It’s like a balloon that’s been popped; will more tears in the balloon cause it to be any more popped? No, if it’s popped it’s popped. Adding more damage to the popped balloon doesn’t do anything to it, since it is already “destroyed”. So if the “causer” is not holy, how can he be “destroyed”? He is already defiled! This line of thinking seems to invalidate the proposition that the former “destroy” is actually “corruption”, providing that there is in fact a parity in meaning between the two uses of the same word in the same sentence.
If it is not a spiritual corruption or destruction (I rule out destruction because of John 10:28), then it must necessarily be a physical corruption or destruction. If the latter means physical destruction, then it means that God’s going to end that person’s life. Everyone dies, and I don’t think that’s a viable position to take.
I guess I interpret the passage to mean physical destruction of the former, and spiritual destruction of the latter. It could conceivably mean spiritual corruption of the former, and spiritual destruction of the latter (and this would fit with Mat 18:2-7).
Comments (click to show)
Exegesis
Adam:
Let’s try this again…hopefuly it won’t blow up.
First — keep in mind the context of the entire book, Paul wrote to the Corinthians to correct heresies, divisions and the like that had crept into the church.
Second – Chapter 3 concerns divisions
“...there is jealousy and strife among you…” v3, ESV
v5-v9 Paul is addressing those who have chosen to follow either Paul or Apollos and were apparently arguing about it. Paul argues that “...neither he who waters nor he who plants is anything…” but that both “...are one…” v8 In other words, both he and Apollos are “...fellow workers…” and neither should be exalted above the other, nor above God.
v10-v15 Here Paul is discussing his building the Cor. church. He built it on a foundation (G2310, gk: themelios – a substructure, something put down) and that someone else, the church members, are building on it. He goes on to say that the foundation is Jesus Christ (v11).
If anyone builds on the foundation, Jesus Christ, with gold, silver…hay, straw..” this work will be tested in “...the Day…”, final judgment, with the fire of God that will test it. The “building” we do of God will stand and survive. The “building” we do that is not of God will be “...burned up…” but the saint will still be saved. So, he’s talkig about the work we do of God for the church, in this case the Cor. church.
So, to your point on v16-v17. They are in the context of a discussion about the whole church. The understanding of these two verses rests, in my opinion, on the Greek words translated into English as “you“in the ESV.
The first one in v16—- “do YOU not know…” is not translated directly. It is part of the word (G1492, gk: eido – to know) translated “know”, that is “you know”. The “you” is implied.
The second — “...you are…” is (G2075 – gk: este – you) is in the second person plural. So he is talking to them as a whole — not “you” singular, but “you(s) plural.
Singular Plural 1st Person I We 2nd Person You You(s) 3rd Person He, She, It TheyAs such, he is saying that “you(s),( the church body, the Cor. church as a whole) are the temple and that God’s spirit dwells in “you”, plural, (G5213, gk: humin – you, yourselves) the body as a whole.
If anyone tries to destroy the temple, that is the church body, the Cor. church as a whole, either through heresy, incorrect teaching, slander, division, physical destruction etc. (keeping in mind the context of Chapter 3), God will destroy him because the temple is holy. “And you (G5213, gk: humin – you, yourselves), [the whole church] are that temple.
So, paraphrasing his argument in v16-v17….You, all of you, know that the church as a whole is the temple of God, the place where God resides. If anyone destroys the temple, the church as awhole, through divisions, strife, false teaching etc. will be destroyed by God through some method. This is a call for unity.
He goes on to argue in v18-v23 that people should not be wise in this world as that is foolishness to God. As well, no one should boast in men (e.g. Paul, Cephas or Apollos) because everything and everyone sent by God over them is theirs, they are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.
Put simply, stop fighting becuase you are all part of the same body that belongs to Christ and God.
Given all of this, I don’t think this passage talks about destroying the believer as you argue.
Whaddya think? See you tomorrow.
T
A response
So Tom and I spoke about this yesterday at our weekly small group meeting / bible study. He presented the basic argument he’d outlined here, and I presented my own questions and challenges to his argument.
I’d like to take the opportunity to address his points in turn here:
To establish this, I think we need a couple of things: to see how this particular word is used in other places in the NT (preferably by Paul), and to see if the immediate context (rather than the context of the letter as a whole) supports this interpretation.
The Greek lexicon for ἐστέ shows this word being used in a number of contexts. It indeed is the “second person plural present indicative” of “to be”, meaning “you are”. I’ve reviewed many of these (primarily from Romans and Corinthians) and I’ve found a common pattern for their usage: they are used when a statement applies to a group of people. Implicit in this is not a “collective summary”, where one speaks of the aggregate in the singular. To contrast, if Paul were to say “All of the churches greet you”, does it mean that each church greets the church at Rome, or does it mean that Paul has gathered all of the churches together in one place and the churches all speak with one voice as a single amalgam? Yet, when Paul says in Romans 12:5 “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another”, he does have that meaning of single parts coming together as a whole.
The word used in Romans 12:5 is not ‘este’, but rather ἐσμέν (esmen): the first person plural indicative. This is because “are” is modifying “we”, of which Paul is a part, and hence the first person plural (since Paul himself is included). So Paul is including himself by saying that “we are one body in Christ”. First person.
So how does this have bearing on Paul saying “Don’t you know that you(s) are God’s temple”? Well, do you think that Paul would have excluded himself from being “God’s temple” when he included himself as being “one body in Christ”?
If “you are” means the church collectively here, it is at odds with Paul’s usage of esmen in Rom 12:5, since he would have included himself as being part of God’s temple. Unless, of course, Paul is saying that God has many different corporate temples on earth, and this is one of them. The first rub with that interpretation is that the “you” in the latter half of the verse would naturally be corporate as well. And we know that God’s spirit does not dwell over the lot of us as some kind of ephemeral blanket, but rather inside of each one of us individually. The second is the implication that if you’re not part of a local church, you can’t have the “spirit of God dwelling in you”! And Paul himself, as an ambassador, clearly did have the spirit of God, yet moved from church body to church body (building them up as he went). Was Paul without the holy spirit indwelling when he left a particular body of believers in one location of the earth to go preach the gospel? Of course not, for:
Given that the spirit of God dwells in the individual believer, rather than corporately, that would lead us to believe that “God’s temple” is referring to the individual believer (all of them individually, hence the plural form). And if each one is God’s temple, then the idea that this is somehow talking about the Corinthian church falls apart.
This argument is a response to
Also, with regard to the immediate context – here are the preceding verses:
A number of points are packed in here:
All of these things speak of the individual believer, not the church as a whole. Salvation is an individual thing, not a corporate thing. The works of other people in the church are not credited to us, but rather our own works. The indwelling is an individual thing, not a corporate thing.
These things all lead us to believe that God’s temple is the individual believer. Both the context and the word as it is used in the text.
Let me speak a little bit about how we read scripture. Some people have their doctrine, and they will pull scripture to support it. Satan pulled scripture to support the doctrine he was attempting to tempt Jesus with. It’s important that we use exegesis rather than eisegesis. We pull out of scripture what it reasonably says in it’s context. We try and square this with the rest of scripture first, and our own theology and doctrines second. If you put your own theology or doctrines above the very word of God, you make an idol of yourself and you are ruled by worldly wisdom rather than being obedient to the spirit of God.
I’m not saying that you have to square all of scripture the second you understand what it’s saying. But the last thing you want to do is deny the truths plainly revealed in scripture after careful exegesis because they don’t square with your doctrine. If you do that, you’re not being teachable. And what better teacher is there than the word of God? Would you rather rely on your pastor, or some preacher you heard on the radio, or the prevailing doctrinal winds of the present age? I certainly hope not.
I will leave you with this: