“then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it,” (Ecclesiastes 12:7).

Many conditionalists use this verse to support the idea that the human soul ceases its conscious activity after physical death, and returns back to God. Please consider the following quotes.

• “The first man was created when the dust of the earth and the breath of God were brought together (Gen 2: 7), and just as surely as the man did not exist prior to creation, he does not exist when the spirit returns to God who gave it and the dust returns to the earth (Ecclesiastes 12:7).” (Peoples, Glen, A., Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism (Kindle Locations 583-586). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.)
• “While one may continue to “live” in one’s name or progeny, viewed as a corporate extension of one’s own soul, there is no longer any personal life or being. The “spirit [that] returns to God who gave it” (Eccl 12: 7) is not, as Platonists read it, a part of the individual’s personality, much less his essential ego, but rather the “spirit of life” (Gen 7: 22; cf. 2: 7) that God grants and, at death, takes back (e.g., Job 34: 14f.).¹Ellis, E. Earle, Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, Kindle Locations 2913-2919. Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition. The bracketed word [that] is original to the quote.

One of the critical issues about the book of Ecclesiastes is that it is not speaking of the eternal perspective. Instead, it is speaking relative to the human context and how things are seen from a rather bleak outlook, “under the sun,” a phrase that is repeated throughout the book (Ecc. 1:3, 9, 14; 2:11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22; 3:16; 4:1, 3, 7, 15; 5:13, 18; 6:1, 12; 8:9, 15, 17; 9:3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 10:5 ). Solomon laments that the “fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same,” (3:19), that they go to the same place (3:20), and that “the day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth,” (7:1). Also, he says that money is the answer to everything (10:19). Is this really the place where conditionalists want to go to support the idea that this soul is not immortal? Now, I am not discounting Ecclesiastes as it relates to this topic. It’s just that Ecclesiastes was written from a human perspective – from things seen on earth. Therefore, it will make comments that can be mistakenly interpreted by conditionalists to mean that the soul ceases to exist.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 is not a commentary on the divine, eternal nature of the soul. Instead, it’s a commentary on the futility of man’s work and is a rather depressing perspective.

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