CHRIST OUR LIFE
THE SCRIPTTRAL ARGUMENT FOR IMMORTALITY THROUGH CHRIST ALONE.
BY CHARLES F. HUDSON,
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“He that eats of this Bread shall live forever." — John 6:58.
"Who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence."
— Colossians 1:18.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
1860.
PREFACE
The present essay is an enlarged form of a single chapter of a previous work, and is designed to meet the convenience of those who rely, for their views of future life upon their reading and interpretation of the Scriptures.
From the brief space allotted to this argument in the larger work, where it followed a detailed discussion of the difficulties which attend the doctrine of endless life in misery, a reviewer took occasion to surmise that the writer confided mainly in extra-scriptural objections against that doctrine. It is proper here to reply that the argument thus criticised was purposely made compact, lest it should appear laboured. For, in so grave a question, any plain verdict of the oracles of truth ought to be easily made out. And the writer thinks that the main feature of that argument — the silence of the Scriptures respecting the immortality of the soul or of the race — was misapprehended by this reviewer, and has been unnoticed by all others except one who is alluded to in the following pages.
Again, any long received doctrine gathers round itself much extra-scriptural support; linking itself in with all adjacent theology; giving shape to all our modes of thought on kindred topics; and acquiring a traditional momentum. Thus an opinion supposed to have been originally imparted by revelation may come to rest in habits of thought which are virtually an unconscious rationalism. Hence, when the writer found more than twenty theories for reconciling a supposed eternal suffering with divine justice, for not more than two or three of which any scriptural support was even alleged, he might well examine them as the most effective way of appealing to the revelation.
We may also remark, without pretending to adjust the relations of Reason and Revelation, that every one will and must bring his peculiar opinions on various matters into his interpretation of the Scriptures. For instance, many insist that the phrase “everlasting punishment," occurring in Matthew 25:46, implies the immortality of the lost, because they say that eternal death in the literal sense can not be eternal punishment. Such persons should certainly allow us to examine that question at its own tribunal of Reason.
For the reasons thus indicated the writer doubts if an exclusively scriptural argument will prove satisfactory to very many, however clearly it may appear to be made out. Scores of questions will rise, involving all the ramifications of the subject, theological, metaphysical, historical, and practical. Many of these we have endeavoured to answer elsewhere. Yet if the present treatise shall help the thoughts or inquiries of any reader, into any true view of the work and worth of our only Saviour, it will not be offered in vain.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1860.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1
STATEMENT OF VIEWS.
What is Redemption? Christ a Life-giver.
Man a Probationer for Immortality.
Death not of Natural.
Loss of Immortality is Punishment.
What is Eternal Life? "Annihilation."
Strict Interpretation
CHAPTER 2
IS THE IMMORTALITY OF MAN DIRECTLY ASSERTED IN THE SCRIPTURES?
Examination of Luke 20:35-38.
Do the Expressions, “Neither can they die any more; "and, "For all live unto him” apply to all Mankind?
Examination of 1 Corinthians 15:22
CHAPTER 3
IS THE IMMORTALITY OF ALL MEN ASSUMED IN THE SCRIPTURES?
Statement of Tillotson, Vinet, and others.
The Divine Existence admitted to be Assumed.
But with constant Expression and Mention.
The Immortality in question never named.
Why this Difference?
CHAPTER 4
IS THE IMMORTALITY OF MANKIND IMPLIED IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE SCRIPTURES?
Example of Reasoning from Matthew 10:28.
Examination of Genesis 1:26, 27.
Genesis 2:7.
1 Samuel 20:3.
Ecclesiastes 3:21; 12:7.
The Argument is mostly from the Old Testament, and lacks Illustration from the New Testament.
Answered from Isaiah 57:16
CHAPTER 5
IMPORT OF THE SENTENCE OF DEATH.
Acquired Double Sense of most Important Scriptural Terms.
Examples, from Origen, Augustine, Chrysostom, Stier, Edwards, Dr. Post, and others.
Tholuck's Statement of a Metaphorical Sense of "Life" and "Death."
Examination of Genesis 2:17.
Deuteronomy 30:15, 19.
Ephesians 2:1, 5; Colossians 2:13.
Romans 6:11; Galatians 2:13.
Romans 8:10.
1 Timothy 5:6.
Revelation 3:1.
Other Examples and Proofs of the Figure of Prolepsis.
"Spiritual Death” no Sign of Immortality
CHAPTER 6
THE GENERAL TENOR OF SCRIPTURAL LANGUAGE.
Synopsis of Various Expressions.
"To Live."
"Living."
"To Live forever."
"Life."
"Everlasting Life."
"To Die."
"Death."
"Second Death."
"To Destroy."
"Destruction."
"To Perish."
"Lose.”
"Perdition."
"To Consume," etc.
"To Save."
“Joy," etc.
Passages supposed to imply Misery as a Finality, or as Eternal.
The Question of a Literal or a Metaphorical Sense, examined
CHAPTER 7
SEVERAL TERMS AND PASSAGES,
Examination of John 6:51.
John 17:3;
Romans 8:6.
John 14:19.
"Everlasting Life."
"Immortality."
"Death."
"The Second Death."
Excision.
"Anathema."
"Destruction."
Matthew 10:28.
Isaiah 10:17, 18.
Acts 3:23.
"Gehenna."
"Corruption."
"Devour," etc.
John 15:6.
1 John 2:17
CHAPTER 8
PASSAGES SUPPOSED TO IMPLY THE IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST
A Key-note of the Doctrine in question, 2 Corinthians 5:11.
Examination of Psalm 83:17.
Isaiah 33:14.
Isaiah 66:24; Mark 9:43, 44.
Mark 9:49.
Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17.
Matthew 8:12; 13:42; Revelation 22:15.
Matthew 18:8; 25:41; Jude 1:7.
Mark 3:29; Hebrews 6:8.
Jude 1:6.
2 Thessalonians 1:9.
Matthew 25:46.
John 3:36.
Revelation 22:14.
2 Peter 2:17; Jude 1:13.
Luke 16:23, 24.
2 Peter 2:4.
Romans 2:8, 9.
The Apocalypse; its Place in the Canon,
Revelation 14:10, 11.
Revelation 19:3.
Revelation 19:20; 20:14.
Revelation 20:10
Note to p. 110. Eternal Death is Eternal Punishment
CHAPTER 9
COLLATERAL ARGUMENT. — CONCLUSION.
Josephus and the Pharisees.
Judith 16:17.
Jewish Opinions.
Early Christian Doctrine.
The Safe-side Argument.
Truth alone Safe.
Changes in Theology.
A Passage from Isaac Taylor.
SOME ACCOUNT OF AUTHORS CITED.
The remarks derived mainly from Horne's Introduction.
Abarbanel, Isaac; a Jewish Rabbi, died in 1508. Though an opponent of Christianity, "his writings are much valued by Christians."
Beausobrb and L'Enfant. Le Nouveaa Testament, avcc des Notes literales. 1741. " Very valuable, and contains many excellent and judicious observations, briefly expressed."
Bede, the Venerable; of the 8th century. " Deeply versed in Greek literature." Calovius, Abraham; a learned Lutheran divine of Prussia; died 1686.
CHRYSOSTOM, John Baptist of Constantinople, d. 407. "Emesti is of opinion that none of the productions of the fathers are equal to those of C. on St. Paul's Epistles."
Clerc, John le; b. 1 600, d. 1 700. His Translation and Commentary are highly commended by Bp. Watson. Cocceius, John; b. 1603; d. 166d. "On the N. T. he abounds in valuable illustrations/'
Cradock, Samuel, a Nonconformist divine, d. 1706. " His commentaries are still extremely valuable." (Orton.)
Critici Sacri. (The Sacred Critics.) In 9 vols., folio. First published, London 1660, under the direction of Bp. Pearson and others. Includes the notes of Grotius, Vatablus, Drusius, Munster, Castaiio, Clarius, Junius, and Tremellius, besides others on particular books.
Daubuz, Charles, a French Protestant, d. in Yorkshire, 1740. His Commentary on the Apocalypse is "an elaborate and useful work, of which later writers have not failed to avail themselves.”
Diodati, John; an Italian divine and reformer; b. 1576; d. 1638. His Annotations largely introduced into the "Assembly's Annotations."
Euthymius, Zigabenus; a monk of Constantinople; Born about 1116.
Fagius, Paul; b. 1504; d. 1550. See Critici Sacri. " From Paul to Paul, no one appeared like Paul; — for confutation of the Jews.
Gill, John; b. 1697; d. 1771. "In rabbinical literature Dr. G. has no equal, and he has hence been enabled to illustrate many important passages of Scripture."
Hammond, Henry; d. 1660. His commentary Latinized by Le Clerc.
Jarghi, Solomon; called also Rasciii; b. 1104; d. 1180. "One of the learned Jewish expositors."
Jonathan, author of a Targum or Paraphrase of various books of the O. T. Probably of the school of Hillel, a short time before Christ.
Kimchi, David; d. 1240. The most valued of the Jewish commentators. Lucas, Brujrensis. His commentary on the Gospels, 3 volumes, folio, Antwerp, 1606, is "scarce and valuable." (Dr. Harwood.)
Lyra, Nicholas de; a converted Jew, d. 1340. " He deservedly holds a distinguished place among commentators." " Nisi Lyra lyrasset, Lntherus non saltesset."
Maimonides, Moses; called also Rambam; b. 1131; d. 1205. "From Moses to Moses there was none such as Moses."
More, Henry, Platonist and divine, d. 1687. Wrote on the Apocalypse.
Ecumenius, Bp. of Tricca, in Thessaly, near close of 10th century. " His work is a judicious compilation from Origen, Chrysostom, Eusebius, and others."
ONKELOS; lived probably still earlier than Jonathan. His Targum "is of great use in determining the meaning of the Hebrew text." (A. Clarke.)
Patrick, Simon; b. 1626; d. 1707. The "four volumes of Patrick, Lowth, and Arnald contain the best commentary on the O. T. and Apocrypha which we have in the English language." (Bp. Watson.)
Pirie, Alexander; a Scotch dissenting minister; d. 1804.
Piscator, John; a German divine, d. 1546. See Critici Sacri.
Pricaeus, John; Prof, of Greek, in Florence; b. 1600; d. 1676. See Critici Sacri.
Schlicnting, Jonas de Bucowic, d. 1661. One of the "Fratres Poloni," or Socinian writers.
Theodoret, Bp. of Cyrus or Cyropolis, in Syria; b. 386; d. 457. Chiefly follows Chrysostom, but has added many new and striking observations of his own.
Theophylact, Bp. of Bulgaria, 11th century. Follows Chrysostom, but his Scholia on the Gospels, Acts, and Paul's Epistles " are particularly valuable."
Vatablus, Francis; Prof, of Hebrew in Paris, d. 1547. See Critici Sacri. " Ingenious and Learned." (Lempriere.)
Vitringa, Campogius; b. 1659; d. 1722. "To his elaborate commentary on Isaiah all subsequent commentators have been deeply indebted."
Wetstein, John James; d. 1754. "Almost every modern commentator of note has availed himself of the previous labours of Wetstein."
Witsius, Hermann; b. 1626; d. 1708. Author of the "Economy of the Covenants," and well versed in Hebrew literature.
Zanchius, Jerome; Professor of Theology at Strasburg and Heidelberg; d. 1570. See Critici Sacri. "His numerous works display great erudition.”
CHAPTER 1
STATEMENT OF VIEWS
The question is often asked, Wherein consists the redemptive work of Christ? What is the bondage, condemnation, and death, from which he is our appointed and only Deliverer? What is the disability and mortal sickness instead of which he offers us strength, health, and life? In the supposition of an absolute immortality contained or assured within the compass of man's being, we think the import of Redemption is a difficult problem. For, a true personal and rational immortality seems to imply the perpetuity of the proper faculties of man — reason unimpaired, and responsible, un-fated free-agency. If these were not lost or forfeit in man's fall, they are not now due to any special grace or gift of Christ. If the penalty of sin consists in a just but ceaseless suffering entailed upon these faculties by the first sinful act, then what is the sacrifice of Christ? Does it atone for an infinite guilt already contracted? If, on the other hand, we suppose the eternal suffering of the lost to be not due to the sins of this life, but their natural effect, in a process of on-going sin, — then for what does Christ atone? And in the hour of conversion what does the Saviour do and accomplish for the penitent? Is the change which makes one member of life a new legal relation to offended justice? Or, is it simply a changed love and affection? Has not the prevailing view of man's immortality suggested the conclusion of many, that man retains the power of self-salvation, and that Jesus was but a Teacher and Martyr?
The nature and destiny of man are also connected, in our theology, with questions touching the nature of Christ and the love of God. Too often has a supposed infinite guilt in man been offered as proof of the divinity of the atoning Saviour, or inferred as a conclusion there from. The reasoning maybe valid enough; but, with the multitudes who have denied the proper infinitude of human guilt, it could only be a stumbling block and an offence. Those who held the infinitude of the guilt might indeed see an infinite mercy and love in the offer of a ransom.
But several theories of the infinitude of the guilt are now generally discarded, and a milder view is taking their place. The lost, it is now thought, will render themselves wretched with perpetual sinfulness. But, though thus exposed to endless woe, they have not yet deserved it. Justice does not yet shield and sanctify their doom. And the doom is such as might move a heart of adamant to the rescue. Thus the old proof of God's infinite love, as well as of Christ's infinite nature, is lost and gone. If these can not be newly demonstrated, as undoing an infinite guilt and calamity, we must exalt the love and the nature in the infinite boon which they bestow. " God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life." Shall our theology suffer any detriment, if the words here contrasted be strictly taken? It was a fond argument with Athanasius for Chris's divinity that he has the power of life and immortality; and this same power of Christ was the fond meditation of Socinus. Does not this close and dear agreement amid their differences invite Christians to repose in Jesus, and magnify his name, for that which he may be to us? And is not this the true way of our knowing what he is in himself?
And just now, when not only mercantile views of the Atonement are given up, but many tell us that Redemption is simply a work of persuasion to the early good use of powers that can never perish, we may be excused for offering another view.
Believing that the early Christians made a special account of immortal life itself as a forfeited boon restored by Christ, we may inquire into the scriptural grounds of that opinion. And without denying any other feature of the work of Redemption, — any attribute of Jesus as a Sacrifice, Propitiation, or Lamb of God, as Justifier and Advocate, - may we not insist that he is also and strictly a Life-giver? — that as the Great Physician he arrests the power of disease preying upon our inmost life? that as the First-born from the dead, the Resurrection and the Life, the Bread of Life coming down from heaven, he not only reveals but bestows Immortality, and that as an all-embracing boon, to those who receive him?
This view includes several particulars, the statement of which may best introduce the discussion.
1. We regard man as created not absolutely immortal, but in a certain sense for immortality; i.e., immortality was his natural and proper destination. He was designed to be immortal in the same sense in which he was designed for eternal life; or as "the chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." In this view we maintain that the guilty failure of eternal life brings the penal forfeiture of immortality.
This, however, is matter of opinion, not essential to the main argument; as is also the doctrine of an intermediate state.
3. We regard the loss of immortality not only as penal, but as an eternal punishment. And that, too, whether the soul perishes by special judgment and divine interposition, or by the laws and conditions of its dependent being.
4. We regard the differences of individual guilt, deserving "many stripes," and "few stripes," as no argument for the endless or infinite suffering of any. For, all such differences may be met in the processes of the "second death" itself, whether such processes be natural, or inflictive and supernatural.
We protest against the frequent representation of our views as if we held no future judgment of the wicked. We are often met with the Epicurean inference, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." But there are very few among us who hold that any person will wholly die to-morrow. We claim to be specially fond of the words of the Bible in general, and of the doctrine of resurrection in particular. We have not so easily forgotten what is said of "the resurrection, both of the just and unjust;" and of the "resurrection of condemnation." And the few who regard this resurrection and judgment as dramatic and forensic, insist that the shame of such a failure to live, poorly compensates the lost for any escape from the seen and felt terrors of a grand judgment scene and its results. Our opponents should not ignore our general belief in this matter, lest they encourage the careless and reckless by abating the force of a prevalent opinion that great wickedness must bring great woe.
5. We disclaim the representation that "eternal life," in our view, signifies mere eternal existence. We certainly believe in eternal blessedness; and we think this implied in the phrase "eternal life." For, all real life, according to its proper laws, is joyous, and can not be otherwise. "Blessedness," or well-being, is the natural and legitimate adjective sense of the phrase in question. "Eternal being" is its substantive import We insist on this part of its meaning, as implying that they who have not "eternal life" do not" live forever." Hence, so far from narrowing and restricting the sense of this phrase, — so frequent and chosen in God's word, — we take it to mean more than is usually understood by it.
6. The view we hold is commonly called a doctrine of "annihilation." We shall spend no time in quarrel with this word, though we prefer the scriptural term "destruction." But when our opponents repeat the hackneyed saying, that no particle of matter was ever known to be annihilated, and thereupon fetch inferences against us, we ought to say that no labour need be thus wasted. We take the word in question in the same general sense in which our opponents often use it, — the perishing of distinct, individual being. Grant that atoms are not destroyed; yet the common argument for the imperishableness of spiritual substance, it has been conceded, would prove also the immortality of brute souls, if not of all life. But in fact we are no better acquainted with spiritual substance than with material substance. It is not settled whether human souls are continually and directly created for human bodies, or are derived otherwise.
And even if souls shall not die by metaphysical annihilation, who knows that the rational faculties, so wondrously varied and complex, do not betray a spiritual organism that may perish by derangement and such disintegration as shall destroy its individual being? This is certainly as credible as that the tide of spirit life should yield a broad stream of souls unfitted for immortal being, doomed to hopeless sinfulness and woe, forbidden by the justice or the wisdom of God to sink back to the nothingness from which they sprung. Let not a rigid sense of a word we do not choose stand in our way. He who has not fathomed the depths of an atom, ought not to say that a soul born of yesterday can never die.
7. In the interpretation of the Scriptures we may be regarded as literalists — or as holding a strict construction. To this it might be said that a strict construction is proper in the question whether there shall be an End of Evil. We prefer to say, however, that while the Scriptures contain all the metaphors and other tropes which are found in other books, we regard the ordinary sense of words as prima face their true sense, in the Scriptures as elsewhere. That is, the obvious sense, which first strikes the mind and is most likely to shape the thought, claims the first attention as lying in the direction of truth; and it is to be overruled only by special considerations.
The main question before us is, What is the historical sense of the words employed in the Bible? Are the terms Life and Death, when applied to man's final destiny, to be taken in a metaphorical and unusual sense, or in the more literal sense which they bear in ordinary discourse?
CHAPTER 2
IS THE IMMORTALITY OF MAN TAUGHT IN SCRIPTURE?
The argument for the eternal suffering of the lost is of two kinds: 1st, Direct; when it is claimed that unending misery is explicitly asserted, as in Revelation 20:10. 2d, Indirect; it being supposed that certain expressions imply endless woe; or that the Scriptures regard man as immortal, and that therefore the unsaved will ever suffer.
The last-named supposition demands our first attention. Is the immortality of all men, in soul or otherwise, a doctrine of the Bible?
This doctrine is claimed as scriptural in three different ways: 1st, It is said to be directly and plainly asserted, 2d, It is claimed as that which the Scriptures assume or take for granted, as a primary truth of religion, without naming it in explicit terms. 3d, It is inferred as being implied or involved in certain expressions of the Bible. These three views will be examined in their order.
A single direct assertion in the Scriptures that all mankind are finally exempt from death, is claimed in the following passage: —
Luke 20:35-8 : " They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; (36) Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. (37) Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (38) For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him.” Compare Matthew 22:30-32; Mark 12:25-27.
On the last expression Alford thus remarks: "We have in this argument even a further generalization than in Matthew and Mark. There, it is a covenant relation on which the matter rests; here, a life of all, living and dead, in the sight of God, — so that none are annihilated, — but in the regard of Him who inhabits Eternity, the being of all is a living one, in all its changes."
And an opponent of our view, after treating the passage at length, says: "I revert, then, with unimpaired confidence, to my conclusion, that the words of our Lord, Neither can they DIE ANT MORE,' constitute a direct and positive declaration of the immortality of the human race." He thinks “this passage is of especial value, inasmuch as it is peculiarly distinct, comprehensive, and emphatic;" and remarks: "Now if all men be by nature immortal, the immortality of the righteous can not in any peculiar sense be said to be the gift of Christ to them." (J. H. Hinton, Athanasia, pp. 442, 443.)
The argument offered to show that the emphatic expression includes all mankind is this: 1. The matter in dispute between Christ and the Sadducees was the resurrection, the avaaraaic (anastasis), which may signify "future life." 2. The case adduced by the Sadducees — the woman who had seven husbands, and the husbands themselves — does not indicate that righteous or saved persons were specially intended. 3. In verse 38 the general expression is used: "For all live unto him." 4. The expression "accounted worthy" (KaraujdevTec, kataxiothentes) does not denote moral qualification, but the simple fact of such a destination. 5. The limitation of the passage to a class will, "if all exist," make the righteous alone incapable of marriage in the world to come.
To this we reply (1.) Granting, for argument's sake, that hfoaraaic (anastasis) signifies "future life," it is in fact most commonly applied to the destination of the righteous, as if their resurrection were alone worthy of the name. Thus Paul says:
“If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead" (Philippians 3:11). Here the peculiar Greek word lcoHumunc (exanastasis) may simply express the primary importance which pertains to the destiny of the saved throughout the Scriptures. The resurrection of the unjust is distinctly mentioned in but four or five instances in the Bible.
(2 The destiny of the lost was not likely to be considered in the argument with the Sadducees. The case did not require it. They would naturally propose an example of those who in the resurrection should be good subjects of marriage, if there were such a thing in "that world.” They probably did not dream of marriage in Gehenna, especially for the Jews who prided themselves in being the seed of Abraham and the children of the kingdom.
(3 The word "all" in verse 38 may refer to those who are the subjects of discourse, — "the children of God," etc., — or even to the patriarchs just named. "For they all live unto him." The Peschito Syriac, as translated by Dr. Murdock, supplies the pronoun "they," which the Greek admits whenever the context can suggest it.
And the expression "to live unto God" more naturally applies to the righteous alone. In Romans 6:10, 11, it can have no other sense: The risen Christ "lives unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Here Estius explains of "a life glorious, and immortal, and worthy of God who is immortal." So in Galatians 2:19: "For I through the law am dead to sin, that I might live unto God;" upon which Euthymius remarks: "That is, an unfailing life;" though he had said, on Luke 20:36, that " it is in the nature of the soul to live." In Romans 14:7, 8, an equivalent phrase is used, apparently of Christians. "For none of us lives unto himself, and no man dies unto himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." With this compare the phrase in 3 Maccabees, § 16: "They who die for God live unto God."
The phrase has also a historical interest as continually recurring in the "Shepherd" of Hermas, and used of the righteous alone. This book was written probably about AD 140. It was read by the churches of Greece as late as the time of Jerome. Clement and Origen bestow upon it the highest praise. Chevalier Bunsen calls it "one of those books which, like the Divina Commedia and the Pilgrim's Progress, captivate the mind by the united power of thought and fiction, both drawn from the genuine depths of the human soul." Though we do not regard the book as inspired, yet its peculiar use of the phrase "to live unto God" — never in the Scriptures applied to all mankind unless in the passage in dispute — has great force as showing how the earliest Christians understood the divine oracles. The same phrase is also applied to the righteous alone by Tatian: "Live unto God, by the knowledge of Him" (Adv. Graec. c. 11); and by Irenaeus: "They who walk according to the flesh can not live unto God" (Adv. Haer. 1. 5. c. 11, § 1). Ignatius frequently uses the phrase, "to attain unto God," which is similar, if not equivalent.
And even Origen takes the phrase in Luke 20:38 as applying to a class: "For they all live unto him; which was no ordinary praise rendered to the patriarchs; our Saviour testifying not only that they live, but that such life as they have they live unto God, and to none other." (In Matthew, tom. xvii. c. 3G.)
(4 The phrase" accounted worthy" we think admits the ethical sense even in those passages of the classic writers, and in 1 Timothy 5:17; Hebrews 3:3; 10:29; 1 Thessalonians 1:5, which our author adduces; even though this sense may not be in these cases emphatic, Schleusner, whose Lexicon he cites, is regarded as an industrious compiler, but not as good critical authority; and he is not supported by Passow, Bretschnider,.Wahl, or Robinson. The same verb, or its root, also occurs in Luke 7:7; 21:30; Acts 5:41; 15:38; 28:22; and 2 Thessalonians 1:11, where its moral import is undeniable.
Again, the expressions "equal unto the angels” and "the children of God" were not likely to be applied to all mankind without special intimation of the fact, and of their being used in a very ordinary sense. The former phrase does not elsewhere occur in the Scriptures; but the latter is frequently used, or its equivalent, "the sons of God," as it might be here translated, (Matthew v. 9; John 1:12; 11:52; Romans 8:14, 16, 19, 21; 9:8, 26; Galatians 3:26; Philippians 2:15; 1 John 3:1, 2, 10; 5:2; and Genesis 6:2; Job 1:6; 38:7; Hosea 1:10,) always with reference to the righteous. The expression cited by our author from Acts 17:28 — where Paul quotes one of the Greek poets saying that mankind are the "offspring" of Jove, and thus argues the being of Jehovah — can by no means affect the usual sense of the phrase in question. And Alford, following Meyer, while denying that the phrase "children of God" is specially used "in its ethical sense, as applied to believers in this world," yet affirms the metaphysical sense as denoting the essential state of the blessed after the resurrection: — "they are, by their resurrection, essentially partakers of the divine nature, and so can not die."
And the expression "that world" has a special significance. It is doubtless the same with the Hebrew phrase for" the world to come" (olam kabba), and (aion mellon) of Hebrews 6:5. The phrase in Hebrews 2:5, also translated "the world to come," is probably equivalent, certainly no less comprehensive. But the context and parallel passages (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1, 27; Isaiah 65:17; 66:22) go to show that this "world to come" does not include an eternal world of sin and woe, as does the common notion of it. And the frequent if not the general use of the phrase among the Jews makes it the same with the kingdom of heaven, or the final abode of God's people.
Thus the Targumist on Jeremiah 51:39: "They shall die the second death, and shall not live in the world to come, saith the Lord." And on verse 57: "They shall die the second death, so as not to enter in the world to come." In the Mishna, which is the "text” or older and more valuable portion of the Talmuds, it is often said that such an one is "worthy of the world to come;" and the phrase frequently occurs in the Jewish writers. (See Schoettgen, HoraB Heb. et Talm., on Luke 20:35; Wetstein, Comm. in loco.) Other Jewish expressions confirm this sense of the phrase. Thus Rabbi Jochanan said: "Whoever walks four steps in the land of Israel is assuredly a child of the world to come." And R. Abhu:" Even a Canaanitish servant girl that is in the land of Israel is assuredly a daughter of the world to come." (Chetuboth, f. 3, 1.) Menasseh Ben Israel (De Resur. Mort., 1. 2, c. 8) explaining that adage of the ancients, "All Israel shall share in the world to come," says: "That is, they who shall rise will enjoy the blessedness of the world to come." (This Rabbi with some others held that the denial of the resurrection is punished with non-resurrection.) R. Hezekiah (Midrash Coheleth, c. 2) says: “Every law which you learn in this world is mere vanity compared with the law of the world to come." A Talmudist (Sanhedrim, c 11): "They shall have no part in the world to come; that is, in the days of the Messiah." The Targum of Jonathan, on 1 Kings 4:33, distinguishes between "this world, and the world to come, of the Messiah." And on 1 Samuel 25:29: "The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living, in the world to come." With which compare the Zoliar (on Genesis, f. 5, 2): "What is the day of the Sabbath? A figure of the land of the living, which is the world to come, the world of souls, the world of consolation." And this notion of "the world of souls" is carried still further by Maimonides (Halachoth Teschuba, c. 8): "In the world to come there is no body — nothing corporeal — but only the disembodied souls of the just." (See Witsius, Diss, de Seculo Hoc et Future, §§ 4, 14, 21, 22.)
On the phrase as occurring in Mark 3:29 we shall speak hereafter. It is sufficient here to remark that the unpardonable nature of a sin in the "world to come" need not imply the immortality of those declared to be "worthy of death." (Romans 1:32.)
(5.) To the last point of our author's argument — that the distinct assertion of the celibacy of the righteous in the world to come would suggest future marriage among the wicked — we hardly need reply that it would be so if the contrast were at all sustained. If the lost, as well as the saved, were said to live in the world to come; if they were described as enjoying any of the comforts of life; if the Scriptures gave us any sketch or glimpse of society in the second death; if they who sow to the flesh were said to reap "in-corruption," and not "corruption;” or, if the curious Sadducees had inquired about two future states, instead of marriage in the present and the future; — then the suggestion offered would be legitimate. As the case stands, the reader will say if it is not far-fetched.
The phrase "equal unto the angels," we remarked, does not recur in the Scriptures. Mark's expression, however, "as the angels in heaven," strongly intimates that the equality is not merely in rank, if it be that, but in blessedness. The Greek word employed by Luke may mean, “on a par with the angels." And an equivalent expression is used by Philo, thus: "For Abraham, leaving mortal things, is added to the people of God and reaps immortality, being made equal to the angels; for angels are the army of God, bodiless and happy souls." (De Abele et Cain., c. 27.) And the Zohar (in Genesis f. 66, col. 262): "In the appointed time, which is known to me, I will raise up the just, and restore thee thy body, which shall be renewed and holy as in Paradise; that ye may be as the holy angels."
This expression, then, as well as the others we have examined, applies to the righteous alone. There remains one other expression, in which lies the point of the controversy, and on which our author specially insists as the connecting link of his argument. "Neither can they die ant more." If, as he claims, the other phrases describe all mankind, his inference of universal immortality is irresistible. But if we have shown that the other expressions all refer to the righteous alone, then, by the common principles of interpretation, the immortality of the righteous alone is here specially and exclusively declared.
"Neither can they die any more" — is no complex or ambiguous expression. It properly describes eternal exemption from death, decay, dissolution — and nothing else. "Happiness" is not here described, but is left to be inferred. The phrase denotes "mere" immortality, if such a thing can be, as plainly as any other in the Bible. And it occurs not as the direct and proper reply to the Sadducees' question, so that it should be explained by any word or opinion of theirs, but is additional to the proper answer; it is contributed, from Christ's own thoughts and knowledge, as a special statement of the future condition of the subjects of his discourse. For its explicitness and strength it is unequalled in the Scriptures; so that, in comparison with other expressions, we may say in the words of Isaac Taylor: "If yet there were room for a form of affirmation which might seem to comprise all others, to grasp the very idea of endless existence, and to exclude ambiguity we find it in our Lord's declaration concerning those who should be 'deemed worthy to obtain ' part in the future life: ‘They can not die any more, being on a par with the angels.' The terms carry the idea of an abstract, or of a physical impossibility of undergoing dissolution or extinction: such are to be made heirs of indestructible existence." (Saturday Evening, pp. 458, 459.)
That this is the special destination of the righteous will follow, we said, from the common principles of interpretation. If it had been said, “For they can not die any more," then the special application of the phrase might be doubtful; we might then have a general reason — a fact understood by those not Sadducees — adduced to support the reply already given. The sense then might be, "There will be no marriage of the righteous beyond the resurrection, for the common immortality of man will not require it." But the "for" — the reason that supports Christ's averment — comes significantly later in the argument:
"Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels," etc. Facts which concern the righteous alone are assigned as the proof of their immortality. This feature of the passage decisively cuts off all argument from it for the immortality of the wicked; and, we think, plainly forbids the idea itself.
TVe are aware that the writer last quoted argues for "the proper immortality of human nature;" but, plainly, he must do so not as an interpreter, but as a metaphysician. He may say that the immortality of the individual implies that of the species; that if the martyrs and other holy men are "to be made heirs of indestructible existence," so are their persecutors — for "human nature" is one substance. But the argument clearly travels out of the record, and does not hold with the writer's own exegetical expressions.
We may conclude this examination by applying to the eternal existence of the righteous as a class the words of Mr. H.: “As a scriptural declaration of this important fact, this passage is of especial value, inasmuch as it is peculiarly distinct, comprehensive, and emphatic."
Another passage that here deserves attention is —
1 Corinthians 15:22: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
The last clause is more commonly applied to all mankind by those who hold the final salvation of all. As thus claimed, we have examined it, with Romans 5:18, elsewhere. (See "Human Destiny," pp. 95-102.) We think the verse applies to the subjects of Paul's previous discourse, the pronoun being contained in the verb, as in Luke 20:38: "For as in Adam they all die, even so in Christ shall they all be made alive." Thus understood, the harmony of the passage with vs. 45-58 appears at once.
But if we apply it, with orthodox writers, to the general resurrection, then the phrase "shall be made alive" must certainly be taken in a literal sense. And the same word, sometimes rendered "to quicken," may then be used in its proper sense in the other passages where it occurs : John 5:21; 6:63; Romans 4:17; 8:11; 1 Corinthians 15:36, 45; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Galatians 3:21; 1 Timothy 6:13; 1 Peter 3:18. (We include 2 Corinthians 3:6, because we think the context there justifies both the ethical and the literal sense.)
If now we apply 1 Corinthians 15:35-58 to the immortal resurrection of the righteous, the question rises at once, How are the wicked raised up? And with what body do they come? The Scriptures nowhere recognize a resurrection of pure, unclad soul. (See Olshausen, on verses 19, 20.) The resurrection in a "spiritual body," and to "in-corruption," is here made the special prerogative of the saved, while the lost are elsewhere said to be raised "to condemnation," and to "reap corruption." And the early Christians were accustomed to speak of physical immortality as a fruit of the divine Spirit. Thus Irenaeus: "Now we have a part of that Spirit, for the preparation and perfection of in-corruption; we being accustomed by little and little to receive and bear God. Which also the apostle hath called an earnest; that is, a part of that honour which is promised to us from God. If therefore this earnest (or pledge) dwelling in us, hath made us already spiritual, the mortal also is swallowed up of immortality." (Adv. Haer., I. 5, c. 8, § 1.) And Novatian: " This is that which the Holy Spirit doth in us; namely, to bring and lead on our bodies to eternity, and the resurrection of immortality; which in itself it accustoms us to be mingled with the heavenly virtue." (De Trinit., c. 29.)
Now let it be clearly shown that the lost inherit an immortal body which is not a spiritual body, that they who have not the Spirit are nevertheless " quickened" into some immortal life; and then, but not until then, may their power of eternal guilt and their capacity of immortal woe be proven.
CHAPTER 3
IS THE IMMORTALITY OP ALL MEN TAUGHT IN SCRIPTURE?
We shall not confine the discussion of this question to "the immortality of the soul," in the technical sense of that expression. It is so employed in some of the opinions presently to be cited; but we wish to treat the general question, Is the immortality of all men, in any way, an assumed doctrine of the Bible? not inquiring whether the supposed immortality lies in the nature of the soul, or depends on the resurrection, or otherwise rests in the power and purpose of God.
This discussion is made necessary by the statements of more than one writer. Says Arch Bishop Tillotson: “The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible." And Vinet: " The doctrines of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are every where taken for granted in his [Christ's] words, but are never proved."
And, Dr. Proudfit: “That best and brightest of revelations announces, not an immortal soul (that is everywhere taken for granted in the New Testament), but an immortal man."
1 Sermon 100; Compare Sermon 166.
2 A Characteristic of the Gospel, Miscellanies, New York, 1850, p. 223.
3 Homeric Ideas of the Soul and a Future Life, Bibliotheca Sacra, October, 1858, page 804. Compare the Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 1860, page 600.
Such are frequent statements of a common opinion. The following words of Olshausen will serve partly to challenge the opinion, and partly to suggest the silence of the Scriptures in this supposed assumption. He says: The Bible knows not either the expression ‘immortality of the soul' (God is he ‘who alone hath immortality’ 1 Timothy 6:16), or the modern doctrine of immortality." (Comment on Luke 16:24-26.) Again: “The doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the name are alike unknown to the entire Bible." (Comment on 1 Corinthians 15:19, 20.) To which we may add the remark of Dr. Miiller: "The Christian faith in immortality is indissolubly connected with the promise of a future resurrection of the dead." (Chronological Doctrine of Sin, 2:318.)
The ground of the present claim of immortality as assumed in the Bible, is plainly this, — that it is a primary religious truth, generally believed, and thus needing no explicit revelation. Some of the writers above cited speak of the general prevalence of the belief. And we know that there must be first truths, or axioms, in religion no less than in mathematics; else nothing whatever, not even a revelation itself, could be proven. And Immanuel Kant seems to reckon -the doctrine in question as one of three such primary truths. He makes "the assumption — as the practical interests of morality require — of God, Freedom, and Immortality."
Now when any doctrine not explicitly named in the Scriptures is said to be there assumed, there are but two modes of procedure. We may either deny the alleged assumption and demand proof instead; or, we may compare the supposed doctrine with admitted doctrines, and ask how they are severally treated in the Scriptures. We choose the latter method. And we do so the more readily because the materials for the comparison are offered to us by those who claim the assumed doctrine; viz., the existence of God, and the responsible freedom of man. Each of these doctrines we admit to be contained in the Scriptures, and they are truths of primary importance. For the desired test of comparison we could ask nothing better.
1 Critique of Pure Reason, Bohns ed.; p. 135:What Kant seems to say of about immortality we ourselves affirm of conditional immortality.
They are contained — but how? Are they directly asserted and made the burden of propositions? Or, are they expressed indirectly, being named, mentioned, alluded to, or otherwise spoken of as if true? Or, are they left unexpressed, like that name of the Divine Being which the Jews held unutterable, ever supplied by the thought? And if unnamed, are they implied, or involved and enfolded in words of Scripture which fairly contain and prove them?
For answer, we find that man's freedom is not indeed directly asserted, except as in the New Testament it is declared complete in Christ Yet the command to "refuse" the evil and "choose" the good, and others equivalent, addressed to man as man, do not only imply his responsible freedom, but very plainly express it. And acts of choice are constantly mentioned in the Scriptures. The verb really names the power, though in the concrete. The use of the noun which abstractly defines it would not make this doctrine of the Bible more certain or clear. The doctrine is strictly assumed — that is, taken for granted; not silently, not by suggestions and implications, but with proper and plain mention and living description which none can mistake.
If now the Scriptures said nothing of "the immortality of the soul," or of "man's immortality," and yet spoke of man or his soul as “living forever," "never dying," and the like, their treatment of this supposed doctrine would be the same with that of man's freedom. But they contain no such expressions. They do not assume the doctrine thus.
The divine existence, as a term for our comparison, is still more important. It is sometimes associated with man's immortality, as if these were the two main pillars of all religious truth. And if equally true, they are equally important to man, as we shall presently insist. And if alike true and important, we should expect them to receive similar treatment in the Scriptures. If either of them is expressly asserted, or is assumed, with frequent mention and allusion, or is left nameless as too clear to need expression, or to be inferred by implication, we might expect the same of the other.
What are the facts? The existence of God is indeed assumed in the Bible. It is never there expressly asserted, or stated as a main proposition. In one instance it is stated indirectly (Heb. 11:6), but here the nature of faith is the point at issue. In other cases the being of one God is asserted against the polytheist or the idolater. Still the existence of some God — even if as "the Unknown" — is taken for granted as too clear for argument; it is supposed as a first truth of the religious consciousness, to prove which would be preposterous. The Bible never goes into debate with the atheist He who says in his heart, "there is no God," is not plied with logic, but is left in the primary school of experience. Whatever proficiency he may have made in morals, he has yet to learn his first lesson in religion — he has yet to acquire a sense of the divine.
But so far from being tacitly assumed in the Scriptures, the existence of God is there constantly named, and alluded to, and expressed in various forms of speech. It stands out, in bold relief, on almost every page. It meets the reader at every turn.
In two short books alone is it unmentioned; and their silence respecting it has caused perplexity, seeming to impeach their inspiration unless it could be explained by special reasons. One of these books — Esther — is a historical episode; the other — the Song of Solomon — is an allegory; as such they hold their places in the sacred canon. In every other book the doctrine of God's existence is the apple of gold in the picture of silver.
It is the Mountain of Light that illumines the volume. It is the central truth, that makes the Bible a Discourse of God — the Word of God. It is the Shekinah that imparts sacredness to the Book so that even sceptics have approached it reverently, as standing on holy ground. And lest this one great truth should weary the devout reader with monotony, it appears in endlessly varying forms, in manifold names of the Divine Being and of His glorious attributes. And, to arrest the attention and invite the study of reluctant men, the Bible yields a thousand expressions of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God. If we strike out from the record all those passages which tell of His being and His works, we reduce the dimensions of the volume almost by half; we make it a book without sense or meaning; we exchange its radiant light for midnight darkness.
But if we expunge from the same book all those passages in which the proper immortality of the soul or of man is mentioned or expressly assumed, we leave the volume untouched; it remains as it was. It might have been written just as we have it, and the Revelation would have been just as complete as it is, if the sacred writers had conspired, with uniform consent, to avoid all reference or allusion to that doctrine which is sometimes called a cardinal truth of all religion.
Whence this contrast in the scriptural treatment of these ideas? Will it be said that the immortality of man is sufficiently clear to his unaided reason? That nature teaches it plainly enough, so that we may bring it with us to our reading of the revealed Word? But that truth ought to be surpassingly clear to human reason, which need not he even named in a Revelation, And if we suppose the more obvious truth to be named less frequently because more obvious, then the supposed immortality should be a thousand-fold clearer than the existence of God; nay, clearer beyond all comparison, as any large number is incomparably greater than nothing. For, as we have seen, the Scriptures speak a thousand times of God's being, but never of man's immortality.*
1 One writer has objected to our argument, as if the comparison should have been made between the immortality of God, and that of man, in their scriptural treatment. (Human Destiny; Negative, by Sylvanus Cobb, pp. 193195.) We reply that not only is our comparison required by the alleged assumption, but if we accept the comparison he offers, we shall find God's immortality, or — which is more — his eternity, expressly mentioned eighteen or twenty times; and scores of instances in which his glory and the like are called eternal; besides many examples in which his undying nature or self-existence is plainly suggested by the phrases “as I live" and "the living God." (Ibid. Rejoinder, p. 426.) Thus, again, we find that which is assumed in the Scriptures repeatedly mentioned and expressed.
That the alleged immortality is thus clear past all shadow or dream of doubt, will hardly be claimed. But granting, for argument's sake, that it is too clear to need explicit mention in the Scriptures, we only encounter a new difficulty. For the revelation which God should make to man is of necessity given in man's language. And it must be conveyed not only in the several words which men use, but also in the current forms, phrases, and proverbs of human speech, so far as these arc not false, or such as should be corrected or modified by the revelation. The Scriptures abound in expressions not created but adopted in the processes of inspiration. But if man's immortality were a first truth of human reason, it must be a most cherished sentiment, and must give rise to many common expressions — household words of natural theology. In fact, whenever and wherever the doctrine has obtained it has thus unmistakably shown itself in men's words. Why, then, are these expressions altogether avoided or ignored in the Bible?
Why should the Holy Spirit — so ready to catch the language of the mortals who were to be taught the way of life — have failed to conform to their style of thought in this most important item of their immortal nature? Why, if God has told men that they must enjoy or suffer forever, has he never urged his invitation or his warning in the name of the immortality he has given them? Such a gift, surely, would be pre-eminently worthy of sacred mention, to those who think and say so much of their supposed possession of the boon. Did He not desire them to be grateful for that which should so liken them to Himself?
Such are our difficulties, on the supposition that the alleged immortality is a primary truth, too clear to need special revelation or scriptural mention. But mankind have not only talked about immortality — they have also inquired and doubted much.
Made for immortality, we find in the ruins of man's nature, through all history, some sentiment of the birthright he had lost. Subject to death, he yet finds, or thinks he finds, some remnant within him of that which is too good to die. Hence that Question of Ages, "If a man die, shall he live again?" But when this question came to be answered, and life and immortality were brought to light by one who did gain a signal victory over death, there was not a word uttered of that immortal nature respecting which there had been so much inquiry. He who had “the words of eternal life" never said that all men were to live, or to exist, forever. He never spoke of the life which he gave as an attribute or quality of some other endless life which they already possessed.
Some may think the silence of the Scriptures is in part accounted for by the prejudices and Narrowness of the Jewish mind. The Jews, it may be said, were too full of national conceit, and too un-philosophic, to think of an immortal nature in man, good for all nations and all men. But supposing this were true, Paul, surely, suffered no such lack of culture or of catholicity. The Apostle of the Gentiles, who could quote "their own poets," and fetch an argument from their polytheistic worship, surely was not ignorant of their doctrine of immortality. Many of them held the immortality of the soul, or of all men. If he thought they justly asserted a universal immortality, but that they erred respecting the nature or method of it, why did he not recognize their half of the truth, and establish it by duly correcting and completing it? When some mocked at the resurrection of the dead, why should he say nothing of immortality except on that condition, and then only as if it were the burden of the gospel for them that believe? (1 Corinthians 15:50-58.)
One other explanation of the silence o the Scriptures respecting man's proper immortality may yet be offered. This doctrine, it may be said, is not so important as that of the divine existence. We grant that man's immortality is not of as much account to the universe as God's existence. All nations are as the dust of the balance, compared with Deity. "He sits upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers before Him." Out from the rolling ages of eternity and from the revolving worlds of countless nebulae, a thousand human races might become extinct, and God's work still be infinite and his reign yet wide as the universe. And, therefore, if the Bible were a volume of diplomatic documents and messages exchanged between two deities (supposing there were such), — state-papers relating to some general welfare, — then it might contain a bare allusion to our existence, and its silence respecting our immortality would mean nothing.
But the Bible is no such book. It is a special revelation from the Supreme God to the sons of Adam; made for their special instruction and benefit; designed so exclusively for them that it seems to make our earth the centre of the universe, and our astronomy must be learned from other sources. Now this confined and exclusive feature of the revelation is just and proper, because the question of immortality is as important to man as all worlds beside, and as the being of God himself. It is of the same account to ourselves, whether we may die to God, or God be dead to us.
Our future welfare is as much affected by one question as by the other. If it be said that faith in God is essential to man's present moral welfare, and that faith in immortality is not, we reply that atheists, no less than they who deny all immortality, have sometimes exhibited a moral life. If it be said that the two great truths must be revealed in their special times and seasons, we reply that the fullness of time for each has come, and "life and immortality" have been "brought to light." But the completed revelation says nothing of the immortality of the soul, or of mankind.
The sum of the argument is this: The alleged immortality, along with the existence of God, is said to be assumed in the Bible, as a primary religious truth. We have found that one of these doctrines is thus assumed. But of this the Scriptures, make mention constantly; of that, never. If that is silently assumed, it ought to be surpassingly clear and unquestionable.
But if so clear, the more is the marvel, as men commonly speak and as inspired men write, that it is not mentioned. Yet because it is not so clear and has been much doubted, the more did it need mention. And if Jewish prophets and evangelists were unequal to the task, Paul had special capacity and opportunity for naming and fairly stating it. And it is, to man, as vital and needful for revelation, if true, as God's existence. Still it is not named. We therefore ask if the "taking for granted" of man's proper immortality is not extra-scriptural, — an assumption out of the Bible, and foreign to it.
CHAPTER 4
IS THE IMMORTALITY OF MANKIND IMPLIED IN THE SCRIPTURES?
The argument of the preceding chapter would be deemed conclusive, we think, if the alleged immortality had not become associated with various passages, as though it were involved or implied in them. Upon these we now proceed to remark, with a particular examination of some of them.
We may introduce this discussion with an instance of the wonderful facility with which the immortality of the soul is sometimes inferred from the Scriptures. In Matthew 10:28 our Saviour wants men to fear not any human power, but “Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Yet this very passage has been adduced ever since the time of Tertullian (De Resur. Camis, 101:35) as suggesting or even proving the soul’s immortality. And a late writer, having just spoken of texts “in which the soul is declared to be immortal,” says that here “ the Saviour’s argument is. Know therefore that ye possess immortal souls, which come not under the power of men, but are subject to the power of God alone;” and concludes: “This text, therefore, must continue to stand as the testimony of the Son of God in favour of the soul’s immortality, and his solemn condemnation of the soul-ruining errors of the annihilation and Sadducean doctrine.” (Landis, Immortality of the Soul, pp. 179181.)
The argument evidently turns on the declaration that mail can not destroy the soul: Therefore it does not become extinct with the dissolution of the body. Therefore, it is inferred, it lives on after the final judgment and in the second death, and will never perish, under whatever torment, while God’s own eternity holds out When such reasoning is indulged in the face of the express terms of Christ’s solemn warning, can we wonder at any belief prevailing among men?
We may dismiss, with this passage, a host of others associated with the prevalent doctrine, but which can only show what we also hold, — that the perishing of the lost is not complete in their physical death. That the soul should exist without the body proves it no more immortal than uncreated. Even if there were no judgment, no crisis after death, still the continuance of the un-blest and unsanctified soul after the dissolution of the body, for whatever period and with whatever evil activity, is no proof of its immortality. The old Stoics, who were as rigid moralists as any out of Christendom, actually held that guilty souls would perish long after the bodily death. Much more, if there be a special execution of sentence against the ungodly, a fearful “judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries,” may we safely say that a short interval of existence after physical death yields no argument for their interminable life.
“Where an inch is given an ell is taken,” illustrates a vice in the logic of men no less than in their propensities. Because the final vengeance is not executed at once, our reasoning are apt to “gain the time,” and we think that, once out of the body and yet in being, the soul can sustain all the forces that work upon it beyond. We forget that saying of the ancients; “The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind fine;” which has its parallel in that of Paul: “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction.” (Romans 5:22.) But let us proceed to the passages in question.
Genesis 1:26, 27: “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness; and let him have dominion,” etc: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.”
The argument from this passage for an absolute immortality is sometimes supported by appealing to Wisdom 2:23, thus: “God made man incorruptible, and to the image of his own eternity made he him.” But the true reading is, “God made man for in-corruption and to the image of his own nature.” See Debt and Grace, p. 166) And the sense of conditional immortality is required by the context.
When Dr. Dwight remarks: “Annihilation could not have been the thing threatened [in Genesis 2:17] because it was certainly no part of the design of God in the creation of Adam” (Works, 1:425), — we need only reply, Truly; but neither was eternal misery, nor any sin or evil that man has incurred, part of God’s design; for none of these things are part, or proper result, of the divine image in man.
Time would fail us to tell the various views that have been given of the passage. With the son of Sirach, as above quoted, seem to agree Tatian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Athanasius. Others have explained the divine image by the lordship or “dominion” given to man over the brutes. See the context and compare Genesis 9:2-6; 1 Corinthians 11:7. Thus Philo, and various Jewish doctors; Theodoret, Chrysostom, and Basil: Others explain it of personal and moral being, or personality, which is perhaps the best summary of its import. Nitzsch remarks: “A personal being; but this personality neither implies absolute immortality, nor absolute freedom, but indicates that man’s fundamental destiny is to know Him of whom and by whom he is,” etc: (Christian Doctrine, § 91.) Personal being does imply certain intellectual and moral faculties; capacity for holiness, which is our nearest likeness to God.
But man has certainly lost his integrity and holiness. And Paul speaks as if this loss had affected the divine likeness of man: “Put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” (Colossians 3:10; compare Ephesians 4:23, 24.) Augustine speaks of the “image of Him who created us, which Adam lost by sin;” and with him concur most of the Fathers, Nor can we infer from James 3:9 “Men, which were made after the similitude of God,” that we still retain what is most intended by the words in Genesis 1:26, 27. Besides that which is essential to humanity, says Bishop Bull, “the Church of God hath ever acknowledged, in the first man, certain additional ornaments, and as it were complements of the divine image, such as Immortality, Grace, Holiness, Righteousness, whereby man approached more nearly to the similitude and likeness of God. These were (if I may so speak) the lively colours, wherein the grace, the beauty, and the lustre of the divine image principally consisted. These colours faded, yea, were defaced and blotted out by man’s transgression.”
(State of man before the Fall, Works, p. 1163. The treatise gives ample citations from early writers, and is well worth study.)
It is plain that we can no more infer absolute immortality from Genesis 26, 27, than unfailing holiness or blessedness. “That the soul is naturally immortal,” says Richard Watson, “is contradicted by Scripture, which makes our immortality dependent on the will of the Giver.” (Institutes 2:83.) And will it be given to those unworthy of it? We read that God’s “divine power hath given to us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, ... that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:3, 4.) These words are taken by good interpreters with reference to the inmost nature and being of those who receive Christ; as if true life and godliness joined us closer to God and leavened us with his own imperishable life. Compare 1 Peter 1:23; John 1:12, 13; the phrase “sons of God” as already examined; and many passages representing Christ as a Life-giver.
Now if to be “in the divine image” and to be a “partaker of the divine nature” are the same thing, and each includes immortality, then immortality has once been forfeited, and is no more of nature, but of grace. And if the “divine nature” signifies more than the “divine image,” as few will deny, we may believe that the immortality of the Adamic nature was simply conditional, and that it becomes actual and secure only in Christ.
Genesis 2:7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
The usual argument from this passage turns on the phrase “a living soul.” But the same Hebrew phrase is applied to the brute creation in chapter 1:20: “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life”. And in verse 21: “God created great whales, and every living creature that moves.” And in verse 30: “To every thing that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life (nephesh chajah) I have given every green herb for meat.”
And in chapter 8:22 a still stronger expression is used: “All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of lives (nishmath ruach chajim) died.” The phrase simply means, “a living creature,” and is so understood by various writers. Thus Augustine (Epistole, 3:205). Theodoret regards the opinion that the soul was inbreathed as a part of the divine essence, an impiety and blasphemy; and explains the passage of the facility with which God creates. And the contrast in which the phrase is used in 1 Corinthians 15:45, and the argument of Paul in that chapter, show rather that Adam, and we in him, are not exempt from death, and our immortality requires another Life-giver. “And so it is written. The first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” The Greek is the equivalent of the Hebrew nephesh chajah; and it is worthy of notice that the term rendered “natural” in verse 44, 46, is really “psychical” or “soul”. That is, the Adamic body and the resurrection body are contrasted in terms of soul and spirit. The contrast which is also made between them as “corruptible“ and “incorruptible” must agree with this, not to say that one follows from the other. In either case the phrase “living soul” yields no argument for immortality.
1 Samuel 20:3: “As the Lord lives, and as thy soul lives.” This form of the Hebrew oath is sometimes cited in proof of the received doctrine. We might reply with the doubts of good scholars, whether the term “soul” had at this time acquired its modern sense; whether “thy soul” is not a periphrasis for “thou” or “thyself.” Yet that would not affect the main argument, which is that the same term “lives” is here applied to man and to God. But if this was understood as stating man’s immortality, the wonder is that so important a fact was named or mentioned in no other way. As a form of oath the sentence may have its parallel in the modern asseveration: “As surely as I live.” Or, it may signify one’s hope of life, or of the divine favour; as we now say, “So help me God;” or, “As I hope to live.” But as God is necessarily self-existent, and “alone hath immortality,” we think the passage yields no valid argument for the absolute immortality of the suppliant who thus adjured his fellow-man.
Ecclesiastes 3:21: “Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth.”
The previous verses and the whole context show that this is not a didactic statement, but the question of one who doubts or desponds. “That which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts.” “A man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place.” (Verses 19, 20.) And the 21st verse might be read: “Who knows that the spirit of man goes upward?” etc: The passage is, we think, a statement of the Epicurean philosophy, one of the follies which Solomon gave his heart to know. The 22nd verse seems to us another way of saying: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”
Ecclesiastes 12:7: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.”
If this passage is applied to all mankind, the expression “shall return unto God” will as much prove the final salvation of all as their immortality. At the most, it can only indicate a future judgment. And it may simply describe man as reverting to that which he was before his birth, the spirit falling back to the power which produced it. In this view it may be compared with a passage of Justin Martyr: “As the personal man does not always exist, and body and soul are not even conjoined; but, whenever this harmony must be dissolved, the soul leaves the body and the man is no more; so likewise, whenever it is necessary that the soul should no longer be, the vital spirit leaves it and the soul is no more, but itself returns again thither whence it was taken.” (Dialogue 100: Trypho, 100:6.)
Such is the class of passages commonly adduced as indicating the immortality of the soul, or the general immortality of man. It is worthy of remark that such supposed proofs are usually taken from the Old Testament, while life and immortality are brought to light by Christ in the gospel dispensation. If now such passages did imply the alleged immortality, we should expect them to be supported and almost superseded by plainer passages in the New Testament. The fact that no passages are even adduced from the New Testament as stating a general immortality, would almost neutralize any apparent proof derived from the above passages. If a general future life is not illustrated by the noonday sun, a supposed demonstration of it by the dim twilight must be considered fallacious.
We have purposely omitted several passages sometimes offered, which may fairly indicate the future life or the immortality of good men. To infer the immortality of the soul from such passages is to theorize — not to interpret. The reader will also recollect that we reserve the passages supposed to imply the immortality of bad men. We are now considering the alleged proofs of the immortality of the soul as such, or of man as man.
And we may properly conclude the present chapter by adducing a passage plainly declaring, we think, that the soul can not ever endure under God’s displeasure:— Isaiah 57:16:” For I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth; for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.”
The Hebrew hataph here rendered “should fail,” is used to describe the languor or feebleness of cattle in Genesis 30:42. It is rendered “overwhelmed” in Psalm 66:2; 77:3; 103: title; 143:3; 143:4. It also occurs in Psalm 107:5: “Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.” Lamentations 2:11: “The children and the suckling swoon in the streets of the city.” 5:12 “When they swooned as the wounded,” etc: 5:19: “That faint for hunger.” Jonah 2:7: “When my soul awake within me.” The Vulgate renders by deficere (to faint, to fail) in Psalm 127:3; 142:3; Lamentations 2:11, 12, 19. The radical sense of the word describes the apparent darkening and clouding of the mind when the senses and consciousness fail: Applied to the “spirit “and the “soul” it shows that their native strength would yield under God’s frown. Will the soul revive from that swoon by its own force? or, will God restore it to consciousness and to torment forever?
CHAPTER 5
IMPORT OF THE SENTENCE OF DEATH
Evert one has observed the double sense in which the most important words of human language are now often applied to human destiny. “Life,” “death,” and the corresponding term? are supposed to have not only their ordinary sense, but in the Scriptures a special sense; as if they might all be used both affirmatively and negatively of the same subject. One of our hymns tells us of “a never dying soul” that “may forever die.”
And, to avoid the appearance of contradiction, the Marks of quotation are often needed, or really intended, to show in which sense the critical word is used. The distinction might then be represented thus: The souls of the lost will live forever; but, in the scriptural sense, they will not “live forever.” They will live eternally and everlastingly; but they will not have “eternal life.” Sometimes, however, as if by a slip of the pen, we are told of the eternal life of the wicked; but it is immediately added that the life is unworthy of the name. They are immortal, but they will not have “immortality” in the highest scriptural sense.
Passing to the other class of words, and shifting the Marks of quotation, we find that the wicked will “die” and yet not die. They will “perish” and be “destroyed,” and yet never perish nor be destroyed. Their souls will suffer an “everlasting destruction” and a “second death” in which there is strictly neither destruction nor death. The adversaries of God are “devoured” with a “consuming fire” that neither devours nor consumes.
Hence the infinite significance of the Marks of quotation in connection with the term life, either expressed or implied, may be fairly represented thus: —
To “live forever” is eternal joy. To live forever — may be endless woe.
And lest this should seem a severe and unauthorized statement, we give a few examples of the double sense in which scriptural terms have been taken.
Origen, maintaining the metaphorical sense of the phrase “eternal life,” yet recognizes its literal sense so fully that he finds two kinds of eternal life. Having remarked, ort John 17:3, that “the substance of eternal life consists in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ,” he says: “I think it not without reason that to ‘eternal life’ is added, ‘in Jesus Christ our Lord;’ but that he would have it known that eternal life alone is one thing; and eternal life in Christ Jesus, another thing. For they also who rise to shame and everlasting contempt shall have eternal life; yet not in Christ Jesus, but in shame and everlasting contempt; whereas the righteous, who rise to eternal life, shall have eternal life in Christ Jesus.” (Apud Eufinum, in Ep. ad Romans 1. 2, § 5; 1. 6, § 6.)
Augustine speaks of the lost as “miserably subsisting in eternal death, without power to die.” (Enchirid. ad Laurent. 101:1 1 1.) Though he elsewhere says of their state: “It is without doubt extremely difficult, indeed hardly possible, expressly to affirm what it is. For, as they who languish under it can not properly be said to die, so neither can they properly be said to live.”
Tatian speaks of the soul as “receiving death in immortality, through punishment.” (Ad Graecos, 101:13.) He also says: “As we who can now easily die shall hereafter receive either immortality with pleasure, or pain with immortality; so likewise the daemons, abusing their present life unto sin, ever dying while they live, shall again have the same immortality.” (101:14.)
Chiysostom comments on Genesis 2:17, thus: “But when you hear that there is a death of the soul, do not think that the soul dies; for it is immortal: And the death of the soul is sin, and eternal punishment. Wherefore Christ says: ‘Fear not,’ etc., Matthew 10:28.” (De Resurrection Jesu Christi, 101:4.) He also speaks of the soul as incorruptible, yet by sin corrupted and given as a prey to the immortal worm, which could not touch it unless found corruptible; and of covetousness as abiding when wealth has perished, “the corruption becoming a cause of in-corruption; the enjoyment passes, but the sin remains incorruptible.” (In Epistle ad Ephesians, Homily: 24:101:5.) He also names an ‘immortal death.’
On Hebrews 10:27 — “which shall devour the adversaries “ — Theophylact remarks: “He did not say consume, but devour, that is, eternally.” He seems to be followed by Cocceius and Calvin who make the same distinction
thus: Shall not consume them; “ though the term they employ (non consumet) is the same Latin word occurring in Hebrews 12:29 : “Our God is a consuming fire” (ignis consumens).
The elder Edwards speaks of the wicked as “left behind to be consumed,” when the saints are glorified; and yet to “be tormented to all eternity, and never be consumed.” (History of Redemption, pp. 505, 6, Tract Soc.’s Ed.)
William Ames speaks of the “consummation of death” as an “incorruptibility of the damned, their immortality in death, and unto death.” (Marrow of Theology, 1. 1, 101:16, § 6.) Truly does Dr. Dick say, “The final loss of a being destined to live forever is an awful thought.” He calls it a “living death,” a “destruction” not of persons, but of happiness. (Theology: Lecture 46.) Matthew Poole paraphrases the “eternal life“ of Matthew 25:46 as not signifying mere eternal existence, “for so the worst of men shall live eternally.” And Matthew Henry, on 2 Thessalonians 1:0, says, “They will be always dying, and will yet never die.” Stier enlarges on the blessed “Words of Jesus” by saying “Gehenna opens to receive the eternally corrupting and burning, who in dying shall never die.” (Matthew 5:29, 30.) He also explains Mark 9:49 of a fire that “assuredly never completes its work of destruction, yet this is alone what, as pure tire, it is aiming at; and that those who bum in it are never consumed by it, but unceasingly endure it, does not arise from the fire, but from the undying worm.”
Thus he makes the loathsome worm, as Chrysostom made corruption, the cause or sign of in-corruption; though this is a sacred word, denoting a special and divine work. But such a view agrees with what he says on Matthew 22:31, 32: “The Lord preserve us from having to experience the consuming fire of the living God, as the dead who can not die.” De Sola, a Jewish writer, speaks on Genesis 3:22 less fearfully, though very incongruously: “It is in mercy to himself that he was prevented from completing his own misery by combining a corrupt body and an impure mind with everlasting life.” Luther Lee, one of our opponents, repeats hypothetically the double sense which we found in Origen: “If eternal life means only eternal conscious existence, then endless torment would be eternal life.” (On the Soul, p. 173.)
Well might another opponent emphasize the distinction thus: “At this fearful aspect of destiny, human nature pauses, and feels that, alas! Immortal is is not Life! Her ravishment with the hope of an immortal existence disappears; she stops, and, in anxious misgivings for the race, inquires: ‘What must be the eternity of spiritual destinies already here begun?’ From the presages of nature she starts back with fear, and is almost ready to let fall from her lips the cup God has proffered of immortal existence.” (T. M. Post, Bib. Repos., October 1844, p. 316.)
Yet, the same writer asks: “How much shall God subtract from the years of eternal life, that he may limit the ages of everlasting sorrow?” In a connection which invites us to understood an “eternal life” of the lost. (New Englander, May, 1856, page 180.) And a few pages after we read of “the spiritual essence still immortally subsisting, immortally to die” (p. 192).
By a little, yet painful industry, such subtleties, if not contradictions, might be multiplied indefinitely. A single passage from Augustine may be added as a climax, showing what horrors grow out of the distinction. He says: “Since God is the life of the soul, sin is the death of the soul: For the soul that sins, it shall die; but he that doeth justice and righteousness shall live and not die. The soul is so immortal, that it can die; so mortal, that it may not die. In immortality it is mortal; and in mortality it is immortal: Wherefore to the lost there is a death without death; an end without an ending; wasting without decay (finis sine fine; defectus sine defectu); in which both the death shall ever live, and the end ever begin, and the wasting fail of decay. Death shall destroy (periraet), and not extinguish; pain shall torment, and the terror not expel the sufferer; the flame shall consume, but not dispel the darkness. For in the fire there shall be darkness; in the darkness, fear; in the combustion, pain. The wicked, thus committed to the flames of hell, shall, in their punishments, feel the pangs, and in the anguish of their pain be-smitten with fear, which they shall ever bear and ever dread; because ever in torments without end, they shall live without hope of pardon or mercy, which is misery heaped upon misery. For if, after as many thousands of years as are the hairs upon the heads of all who have ever lived and shall live, they might hope for an end of their punishments, they could bear them far more lightly. But because they have no hope nor shall have any, they shall pine with despair and hardly grapple with their pains (ad tormenta non sufficient).” (De Spiritu et Anima, 101:56.)
We do not allege the physical torment here described as a part of modern opinion, though it was so but a few years since. Yet we think the relief sought in the transfer of punishment from torture of body to torture of soul is only apparent. “The spirit of a man sustains his infirmity; but a wounded spirit, who can bear?” And we ask, what warrant is there for all this description of immortal death?
IMPORT OF THE SENTENCE OF DEATH.
We might remark how suspicious it is rendered by its plain appearance in Origen, who first introduced allegorical modes of interpretation into the Christian church. He firmly held, with Plato, the proper immortality of the soul: And both in this opinion and in his love of allegory, he was preceded by Philo, of whom Mosheira says: “It is notorious that this Jew was smitten with such a partiality for the Platonic precepts, which at that time were- publicly taught at Alexandria, that he does not hesitate on every occasion to drag in Moses as entertaining the opinion of Plato.” In Philo we discover such facility of reasoning that he thinks Nadab and Abihu “so die that they live;” and finds “proof of their immortality in that it is said, They died before the Lord; that is, they lived.” He uses the phrase, “live ever dying,” and speaks of evil as “an immortal thing, which no death can erase.”
But without insisting on this probable origin of the dire immortality in question, we will proceed to the supposed scriptural indications of it. The metaphorical sense of the term life and death is asserted by Tholuck, thus: Life denotes in the Old Testament the aggregate of all good: death of all evil. We hare an instance in Moses’ declaration, Deuteronomy 30:15: ‘See I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil.” He compares Jeremiah 21:8; Ecclesiasticus 15:17 and other passages. And coming to the New Testament he says: “Here, by almost all the -different writers, the words are employed in the emphatic metaphorical sense of life in God, and life without God: Most commonly it is true, by John and Paul: E.g., Matthew 8:22; Luke 10:28: 16:32; John 5:24, and many more. 1 John 3:14; 2 Corinthians 2:16; Romans 6:21; 7:5, 24; 8:2, 6; 1 Timothy 5:6; Romans 7:9; 8:13; Ephesians 5:14; James 1:15; 2:17, 20, and numerous others.” (Commentary on Romans 5:12.)
A glance will show that the argument from these passages must be — as it is designed to be — merely negative. They can only be offered to show that the sinner still living is, in a certain sense, called “dead;” they say nothing of any eternal continuance in such metaphorical death; and “life without God,” or “death in sin,” is plainly no cause of immortality. Yet with a strange facility Augustine seems to deduce the immortality from the death. Setting out with the liveliest illustration of the dependent and so far mortal nature of the soul, he says: “The life of thy flesh is thy soul; the life of thy soul is thy God. As the flesh dies with the loss of its soul, which is its life; so the soul dies with the loss of its God, who is its life. Certainly, therefore, the soul is immortal: Immortal, evidently, because it lives even when dead. For what the apostle said of the voluptuous widow may also be said of the soul if it has lost its God: ‘She is dead while she lives.’ “ (In Johan. Evangelical Tract, 47:8.)
If the apostle had said, “She lives while she is dead,” the patristic argument would have force; just as we augur an unfailing life for him of whom Christ says: “Though he were dead, yet shall he live.” But when death is predicated and immortality is inferred, the boldness of the logic is certainly striking and the reader must judge of its soundness.
But let us examine the principal passages supposed to show a metaphorical sense of the term death, beginning with one of primary importance, often adduced.
Genesis 2:17: “In the day that thou eats thereof, thou shalt surely die.” The Hebrew phrase is, “Dying thou shalt die,” which is precisely the opposite to the commentaries above cited: “They will be always dying, and yet never die:” and, “Who in dying shall never die.” And so palpable a contradiction might excuse us from further argument. But when divines have thus unsaid the divine words, we may pause to consider them.
The whole argument for immortality here turns on the fact that God fore bore to execute a literal death “in the day” of man’s transgression. And in the space for repentance thus granted the sentence has come to mean three very different things: “death temporal, death spiritual, and death eternal;” the first being literal, the second metaphorical, and the last deathless; as if it were said, “Dying thou shalt not die.” By such methods has human wisdom sought to save the divine veracity. And with such poor: success as might have been expected. For, to say nothing off the fact that the temporal death did not occur on that day, nor within 930 years, the now prevalent opinion is that physical death is a law of man’s nature, and therefore no part of the penalty.
Again, theologians are more and more conceding that spiritual death, as consisting in a sinful states should not be called a penalty, lest God should seem to punish sin with sin. There remains only the “eternal death;” and eternal misery was certainly not suffered nor even begun “in that day.” Thus the triple explanation of the sentence has exhausted itself, leaving the original difficulty as great as ever.
Which is not very great. The true sense is suggested, we think by several passages in which the fact of impending death is anticipated as already present. Adam was judicially and virtually dead in the day that he sinned. His life — all the life he had was forfeit. He was under sentence of death, — a subject, an heir, a son of death. If he should live on even for a day, that would be simply a delay of execution. If his life were finally spared, that would be impact of amnesty, and pardon. Short of this he must at some time die; whether soul and body together, or by instalments of a first and second death, it signified little.
There might be reasons, in the divine economy, why the physical dissolution should be distinguished from the final and utter death; the first being the common lot of’ a fallen race, the second the special doom of the unrepentant, coming upon them as a final overthrow and judgment.
Now the anticipation of physical death as already present is one of the commonest figures of speech. Thus, when one is falling from a precipice, or has taken deadly poison, or has provoked a mortal enemy, or has committed a capital crime, we say, “He is a dead man!” nor do we take back our words, though he should happen to live on yet many days. Just so said the affrighted Egyptians, when the angel of death had smitten their first-born: “We be all dead men;” and the trembling Israelites, when the troop of Korah was destroyed: “Behold, we die; we perish; we all perish.” And God himself employs similar language in addressing the presumptuous Abimelech: “Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken.” A phrase similar to that in our text occurs in Exodus 10:28: “Get thee from me; take heed to thyself; see my face no more; for in that day thou, sees my face, thou shalt die.” Yet Pharaoh would not have falsified his words, if Moses, incurring his wrath, had lived many days under sentence of death. Still more in point is the passage in 1 Kings 2:36, 37, where Solomon gives charge to Shimei respecting the tenure of his once forfeited life: “It shall be that on the day thou goes out, and passes over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die.” The last phrase is the same as in Genesis 2:17: “dying thou shalt die.” And the expression “thou shalt know for certain” makes no difference, since Shimei knew his danger on the fatal day no more certainly than before. The circumlocution is simply emphatic Now who supposes that this man, forfeiting his life anew in pursuit of two fugitive servants, flying from Jerusalem to Gath and from Gath to Achish, must be arrested, tried, and executed, all on the very day of his trespass, to make good the threat of Solomon? His last words tell his evident meaning: “Thy blood shall be upon thine own head.” As if he had said, “You are a doomed man.”
This interpretation of our passage is no novelty, but is amply sustained by early versions and able commentators. The Greek of Symmachus renders the phrase, “Thou shalt be mortal” and the Syriac likewise; which sense is approved by Chrysostom, [1] Throdoret, Jerome, Ambrose, the Venerable Bede, Grotius, Drusius, Diodati, Knapp, Cahen Ainsworth, Patrick, D’Oyly and Mant, Henry, Dr. Payne. [2] The Arabic version gives, “Thou shalt deserve to die.” And the same view, of necessity or desert, is given by Augustine, Anselm, Nicolas de Lyra, Cornelius h, Lapide, Bonfrerius, Schott, Rosenmiiller. The Targum of Jonathan gives a like sense: “Thou shalt be subject (or liable) to death”; in which concur Isidore of Pelusium, [3] Bechai, Nachmanides, Selig Newman. Fagius cites from Hebrew doctors the sense of immediate death, averted by repentance; and says that they deny not the twofold death of which Yatablus speaks: “Thou shalt be subject to death, both of body and soul.” The “learned” Steuchus Eugubinus speaks of true blessedness and eternity as not separated, and says that Adam might have been immortal, soul and body; but falling, he lost all, blessedness and immortality.” [4]
Clarius and Tirinus speak of the death as beginning in disease: “Say rather that Adam then begin to die; that is, by a lingering death of inward wasting and decay.” And a similar view is given by John Locke, [5] and by Adam Clarke. Dr. Muller remarks that “the real kernel point in this punishment of sin is physical death;” and that “the-account of the execution of the judgment (chapter 3:9) manifestly lays the greatest stress upon the exclusion of the fallen man from the condition of imperishable life (vs. 22, 24).” [6]
6. Christian Doctrine of Sin, 2: 320.
For still other reasons we must regard a literal death as intended in Genesis 2:17. Adam had probably witnessed, or would soon witness, the death of animals, and would be very apt to understand the word accordingly; especially as no distinction was made between his body and soul in respect to mortality. He would be further likely to apprehend the dissolution and end of his being when the sentence was pronounced: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” And still more when it was executed: “And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” Driven forth from Paradise, to labour, and toil, and pine, and at length to die, hearing not one word of exemption from death save from the serpent that had deceived Eve, that reason or right had he to think that he retained any, immortality whatever? If he still looked for immortal life, must it not have been as the free gratuity of a pardoning God, in the promised seed?
Was he fairly warned, if the threatened “death” meant an evil, so immense that the literal death of his being would be an infinite relief? May we not say with John Locke: “It seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and direct words, that by ‘death’ should be meant eternal life in misery” [1] Thus far, at least, we have found no reason to dispute the remark of Isaac Watts: “There is not on place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word ‘death,’ as it was first threatened in the law of innocence, necessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either to Adam, the actual sinner, or to his posterity.” (Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, q. 11, § 3.)
1. Reasonableness of Christianity, § 1. Professor Hovey (State of the Impenitent Dead, § 6) argues against our exegesis on the ground that such a figure as we suppose would not suit the- formal announcement of a law and its penalty. He does not notice our authorities; and we think his objection lies more against the figure of speech which he must assume, than against our exegesis. In modern legislation—made into a special branch of government; and a special business of a deliberative assembly — formality is natural. But it was not required in Gods personal and earnest warning against transgression.
Yet another reason may be given for the strict interpretation of our passage. “Many of the Fathers looked upon the expulsion of Adam, from Eden as a merciful dispensation that man might not be perpetuated in a state of sin.” And likewise modem writers. [1] The reason is as good against eternal sinfulness in one place as another; in the soul as in the body; even in hell itself — for sin is no less to be abhorred and pitied, it no less invites a ‘coup de grace’ [2] there than elsewhere.
Deuteronomy 30:15, 19: “See, I set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.” “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” These expressions, supposed to denote a figurative sense of the words in question, should be compared with the context. Thus in verse 18 it is said: “I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passes over Jordan to go to possess it.” And in verse 20: “That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him; (for he is thy life, and the length of thy days;) that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Whether the passage be limited to the earthly life of the Israelites, or taken as a type of man’s final destiny, the literal sense of the terms life and death seems plainly taught. And it makes nothing against this sense, that life is called good and a blessing, or that death, “the last enemy,” is called evil and a cursing, Nor is death, cutting off all light and joy, less really an evil because something infinitely worse can be imagined or believed.
The mistake of those who argue a metaphorical- sense is in taking “good,” “evil,” etc., as definitions, when they are really epithets. Life is the great good; death the great evil. The expression, “For He is thy life,” etc., is worthy of notice because we shall find similar expressions in the sequel: The sense evidently is that God is the source and cause of all our life. We live in him.
Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60: “Let the dead bury their dead.” Bengel, one of the best critical interpreters, explains this passage in part by the figure of anticipation, as we have taken Genesis 2:17. He says: “The dead we bury are in part those who shall themselves also soon die, mortals, subject to the law of mortality;” “called dead as more fit for burying than to announce the kingdom of God;” and he compares Romans 8:10; Luke 20:34; Matthew 9:24 (“The maiden is called not dead because she will soon be alive “); John 11:4. “So in a time of pestilence the dead are buried by those soon dead; and the condition of man, age after age, is not far different.”
He further interprets the phrase partly in a hypothetical way, of those already dead. As if Christ had said: “Follow thou me by all means; even if the dead are left to the dead, or remain unburied.” There is a severe hyperbole in this view, though there are some fair reasons offered to support it. The consecration of the Christian is like that of the priest, or of the Nazarite, who might not touch the dead, Leviticus 21:11; Numbers 6:7. And examples are cited from Philo and other writers, of those in holy office who refused to mourn for their dead until their sacred duties were discharged. (See Pricaeus and Wetstein.) But though this view of the passage is plausible, and is adopted by Kauffer, we can not think it sustained.
To the view first given we would simply add the moral element. We think that Christ regards the lovers of this world as the heirs of death. We may compare Wisdom 2:24, where death is called Satan’s doing, and it is added, “They follow him that Are of his side.” In the same way Abarbanel says: “The wicked in their lifetime are called dead, and their soul is to be destroyed with the ignominy of the body, and will not have immortality or eternity.” (Summary of the Faith, chapter 24.) On the other hand, “The righteous even in their death are called the living; therefore they do not see corruption. And this is mystically indicated by the fact that holy flesh is never corrupted.” (Jalkut Rubeni; in Schoettgen, Horae Hebrews et Talm.)
The metaphorical sense of the term “dead” certainly can not be made out from this passage. The anticipation of the future as present is indeed a figure of rhetoric, commonly called prolepsis, which we shall find a convenient name. But it leaves the literal sense of words intact. It pictures a coming event, casting its shadow before.
Ephesians 2:1: “Dead in trespasses and sins.” (Comp. verse 5, and Colossians 2:13.) This expression is understood by so many able commentators as a prolepsis, that we need not waste words upon it. We think it plainly suggested, if not required, by the context. The Christian hope had just been connected with the resurrection and glorification of Christ, “in the heavenly places” (chapter 1:18-20). Read, then, vs. 5, 6: “Even when we were dead in sins, hath [God] quickened us together with Christ and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Here the resurrection is anticipated; as also in Colossians 2:12; 3:1. Contrasted with this future life appears the death under whose power and sentence men are brought by sin. Hence the paraphrase of Chrysostom: “Ye did lie under sentence of death.” This was because of trespasses and sins. The dative case, either with or without the preposition h (en), is known to express the relation of cause.
This view is given, in one or both of the passages, by Theodoret, Jerome (“mortui per peccatum”), Theophylact, Erasmus, Zwingli, Vatablus, Zanchius, Piscator, Calixtus, Schlichtingius, Beausobre and L’Enfant, Michaelis, Bretschneider (“morti ob noxii peccati caus” Lexicon of the New Testament), Wahl, Flatt, Kauffer, Meyer (“certo morituri”), MacKnight (“doomed to death on account of trespasses and sins”).
The relation of sin as a cause, and not a mere state, is also allowed by Euthymius, who says through, and Doederlein: “miseri propter peccatum” (on account of sin).
Strikingly similar to these passages is Ezekiel 18:24: “In his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.” The entire chapter shows that righteousness is regarded not as a state, but a way, of life; and likewise sin a way of death. Compare John 8:21, 24. Still more important is the parallel expression in 1 Corinthians 15:17: “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” But Paul does not question the sincerity of the repentance and faith of the Corinthians. His whole argument is that however free they may be from the practice of gin, its penalty of death is removed only by the power of the risen Christ. If there is no resurrection of the dead, they were still under the doom of death. Compare version 19, and Psalm 73; The idea of immortality in sinfulness, as resulting from the non-resurrection of Christ, is as abhorrent from Paul’s mind and reasoning as it is in itself horrible.
1. That the modern view of “spiritual death” was not generally received by the early Christians, is indicated by the fact that Tertullian severely censures those “heretics” who “pervert the resurrection of the dead plainly declared, by a figurative sense, asserting that death itself also is to be understood spiritually; for that this is not real death which we see, — the separation of body and soul,— but ignorance of God, by which a man dead to God lies in error as in a sepulchre.” (De Besur. Gamis, 101:19.) Some of these persons held that resurrection takes place in baptism; others, at death. They all deny what is now more or less overlooked or doubted, — a future resurrection of the dead.
Romans 6:11: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Compare Galatians 2:19.) Theodoret explains: “Show your members dead indeed to (by?) the power of sin, but embrace the life of Christ, whereby you shall attain immortal life.”
And Euthymius: “It may be taken as when we say of one whom we have well known, He is dead in the flesh, but he lives in spirit.” If, however, we grant a metaphorical sense of the term decide it describes Christian life rather than spiritual death.”
Christians are certainly not “dead in sin.” But if we translate the phrase “dead to sin,” the sense of the term dead will not be figurative, but quite literal: Christians have no life in the direction of sin. Their love for it has died out, and their capacity for it is dying out. They have too much of the life that quickens to retain much of the life that kills.
And the context shows how closely even this special sense of the term dead is connected with physical death, and contrasted with the future life. The Christian life from first to last is explained by its vital source and cause. In verse 10 we read that Christ “died unto sin;” certainly not in a moral sense, for he was never in sin. But he died for sin, that we might not die in sin. He paid the first instalment of its debt that we might not pay the second. Hence the allusion in verse 7 to the Jewish notion of death as atoning for the sins of life: “He that is dead is freed from sin.” But, says Paul, “If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (ver. 8).
And we can die with Christ only in body, or in such an incapacity for sin that physical death, as a less evil than sin, shall seem to add us as companions of Christ’s journey through the grave. As Christ now “lives unto God,” the phrase plainly denoting Lis immortal life, so may his followers reckon themselves, by anticipation, “alive unto God.” And thus the alternation between the Christian life and the Christian hope, which runs through the chapter, is easily explained.
Romans 8:10: “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life, because of righteousness.”
But the body certainly can not be spiritually dead, and the proleptic sense of the term is evident. Hence Augustine remarks: “It has seemed to me much better to say that the body is called dead because it is now under the necessity of during, which it was not before sin.” (Betractt 1, 1, chapter 26.) And Fritzsche, in his able and learned commentary: “It is indeed most certain that‘ life,’ and ‘death,’ and the ‘quickening’ of mortal bodies, (verses 10, 11,) should be explained literally, with Beza, Calovius, Vitringa, Turretin, Ruckert, Beiche, Usteri, and others.” The figurative exegesis he regards as a “strange perversion of Paul’s words;” and the mixed interpretation — of ver. 10 figuratively and ver. 11 literally — as none at all: He cites Arrian speaking of the body as naturally dead; and refers to Genesis 20:3; 1 Timothy 5:6. To the names he gives we may add, as endorsing the proleptic sense, Calvin, Yatablus, Zegerus, Estius, Menochins, Toletus, Parens, Gromar, a Lapide, Beausobre and L’Enfant, Bengel, Flatt, Whitby, Hammond, Clarke, the “Five Clergymen,” Alford, Bretschneider, Wahl, Kauffer, Meyer, Tholuck.
1 Timothy 5:6: “She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.” We shall not strenuously affirm the proleptic sense of the term dead in this passage, if only Augustine’s inference of immortal life is not insisted on. Yet we have found Fritzsche citing this as an example; and not without reason. Chrysostom uses a very similar phrase in the proleptic sense: “The righteous man expiring is not dead, but sleeps. For he who waits to be conveyed on to a better life, sleeps. But he who is to be led away to immortal death has died while he lives, and is but dead.” (Exposition in Psalm 113, chapter 6. The “death” would seem more like itself if it were not called “immortal.”)
Euthymius, on our passage, asks: “How? Because in the present life she seems to live, but has lost eternal life. She is therefore dead through sin, as respects that life.” And Pricaeus cites a very similar passage from Juvenal: “He who is worthy of death is perished (peril), though he feast upon a hundred oysters.” (Sat 8.) Upon which the scholiast says: “He who is worthy of death is to be held as if he had already perished, though he live sumptuously every day.” We may also compare Galatians 6:8: “He that sows to the flesh,” etc.; and Ecclesiasticus 19:3 : “He that joins himself to harlots will be reckless; Rottenness and worms shall inherit him; and he shall be lifted up for a greater example; and his soul shall be taken away out of the number.”
Revelation 3:1: “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou lives, and art dead.” Here, again, we shall not insist. But Wahl (Lexicon of the New Testament) gives this passage as an example of prolepsis (“Devoted to eternal death”); and the phrase in ver. 2, “Strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die certainly supports the view.
Among the passages alleged by Tholuck and others as showing a metaphorical sense of death, are James 2:17, 20: “Faith without works is dead;” Hebrews 6:1; 9:14: “Dead works;” Romans 7:6: “The law being dead;” and verse 8: “Sin was dead.” Here, however, death is predicated not of persons, but of things; which certainly can not be “spiritually dead,” or “dead in trespasses,” etc., as that phrase is commonly understood. And the metaphor, if it be such, grows out of the conception of things that have force and power, as “vital,” “living;” and, again, as “dead” when they have lost their power. A law that is invalid is a “dead letter;” and the parchment that contains it is waste paper. All things that; grow out of date or obsolete, may be very properly said to lose all the life they ever had; and the forms in which they were embodied in due time crumble away and vanish, or remain only as monuments, “ruins” of that which is no more. Nothing could be more like literal death.
In one of the instances adduced the metaphor is too manifest for doubt. “Awake, thou that sleeps, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” Ephesians 5:14. Compare Isaiah 40:1. But whether the figure is that of spiritual torpor, or of national decay, or of one of those derived from the other, maybe queried.
The example in Luke 15:24, 32 : “This my son was dead and is alive again,” is clearly not of metaphorical death, but either of supposed death, or of relative loss: “dead to me.” Compare the following phrase, and ver. 27.
In Romans 7:9 is a somewhat similar use of the term dead, resting on the discovery of one’s relation to divine law. “I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” I.e., I found myself under sentence of death, and sin in active force, to slay me (vs. 10, 11). The forensic element which enters largely into this chapter, makes this drama and prolepsis the more natural.
On John 5:24, with which compare 1 John 3:15, Winer remarks: “The expression ‘hath everlasting life’ might be appropriately applied to one who is not as yet in the enjoyment of eternal life, but who, in the certain hope of attaining it, is already as it were in possession of it.” (Grammar of N. T. Dictionary, p. 281.) And Bretschneider: “The perfect tense, hath passed from death unto life,’ is used because the speaker conceives of the future as already past.” (Evang. Pietismus, p. 259.) The future is also thus anticipated, we think, in John 11:25: “Though he were dead;” Romans 5:15 : “For if through the offence many be dead;” 2 Corinthians 5:14: “If one died for all, then were all dead;” Romans 8:30 : “ And whom he justified them he also glorified; “ Hebrews 12:23 : “The spirits ofjust men made perfect; “ compare chapter 11:40 : “That they without us should not be made perfect.”
1 See Kauffer, on the scriptural sense of “Eternal Life”, Dresden, 1838, p. 67, note. We have derived much aid from this work in the present chapter. The author maintains the literal sense of the phrase in question; but he seems to regard the death which sin brings as cither not literal or not eternal, and gives the restorationist view, pp. 47, 88, 188.
1 Chrysostom is so familiar with this anticipation of the future as present that in one instance he suggests it as a possible solution of the difficulty that some have found in Luke 23:48, where the usual punctuation gives us: “Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Christ was not regarded as entering into glory until his resurrection and ascension. (John 20:17.) Hence the common view that the term “Paradise” in this instance denotes the happier condition of the righteous dead previous to the resurrection. But Chrysostom knows the word in no such sense; and remarks that in saying “Today” Christ may express the absolute certainty of the final salvation of the penitent. As if he had said, “Thou art a saved man; thou hast even now an inheritance in Paradise.” (De Cruce et Latrone.)
The punctuation which connects the adverb with the time of Christ’s promise: “Verily I say unto thee today, Thou shalt be,” etc., is often objected to as making it superfluous and unmeaning. But the circumstances in which this assurance was given were such as would render this rending very significant. “Even today, when it seems all so unlikely, and my claim of such power over death may seem so weak, yet I declare thou shalt be with me in the Paradise of God.” See this view given at large by H. L. Hastings, “Forever with the Lord.”
Here we may note some of the reasons for the figure of prolepsis as specially proper in a revelation of and from God, and suitable to the nature of Christian faith. He who “inhabits eternity” may well ask us to believe his promises as if they were already performed. In this sense Theodoret explains faith as the “substance of things hoped for.” (Hebrews 11:1.) And thus Chrysostom explains the passage before examined, Luke 20:37, 38: “For as Adam, though he was alive in the day that lie ate of the tree, yet by the sentence was dead; so these, even if they were dead, yet by the promise of the resurrection were alive.” (In Matthew Homily, 70, al; 71, chapter 3.) So Theophylact. And Origen: “The Lord saith that they who are dead live unto God, not as being yet alive, but as inasmuch as they are in the power of the life-giving God; and he saith that they have perished unless they attain the resurrection.” (In Psalm 119:60.) Beza remarks: “They live unto God,” i.e., “As respects Him to whom all things are present.” And Grotius: “They live as respects the power of God, which can restore the dead to a better life. For Ho calls the things that are not as the things that are.” On which last passage (Romans 4:17) Bengel remarks: “Before God,” i.e., “While before men those nations did not yet exist” And, “The dead are not dead to God; even the things which are not, to God they are.” “Thus God saith to light which is not, as if it were. Go forth.” And Castellio, on Romans 4:17, confessing that ho left the phrase in Luke 20:38 without understanding it, says: “But they live unto God because he will recall them to life; which to us is future, hut present to God. Therefore there will be a resurrection of the dead.
Thus Christ refuted the Sadducees.” (See Blackburne, Intermediate State, p. 360.) So Tyndale, Answer to More, pp. 180, 181. Gerhard remarks: “It is plain that these words, ‘I am thy God,’ are part of a covenant; compare Genesis 17:7. But they with whom God enters into a covenant of grace, since he would be their God forever, shall be recalled to life, that they may enjoy the things promised by the covenant of grace. This covenant is eternal, and therefore they who are embraced in it should live eternally, and hence have a resurrection.” Lucas Brugensis remarks on Matthew 22:32: “Which, more certainly than certainty itself, God will do. Else he would no more properly be called their God, in respect to his power alone, than of the brutes that are dead.” And if any one insists that “the immortality of the soul” explains the language, he replies: “The soul of Abraham is not Abraham,” etc. Likewise Beausobre and L Enfant, who add: “God can be truly their God only by the resurrection.” And Meyer “refers to some striking remarks of Kauffer as showing that the phrase ‘children of God’ is used by Matthew and Luke only of the state after the Lord’s coming.” (See Alford, on Luke 20:36.)
We have thus examined the alleged metaphorical sense of the term death, not because the refutation of it is at all essential to our argument, but to show how foreign it is to the general tenor of the Scriptures; for the very passages supposed to prove it seem to describe a coming death as if its proper work were already done. Instead of a spiritual sense, we find the liveliest form of the literal sense. The letter truly kills; and the only spirit that gives life is the mighty Spirit and power of God.
We need hardly repeat that we are not materialists; and, holding a moral nature in man, we certainly do not exclude the moral element from any word that reveals our relation to life or death under divine law. If any one chooses to call the actual godliness that lays hold on eternal life, a spiritual life, and the sin that ends in death, a spiritual death, we shall not object. But let not these phrases become in their turn exclusive. There is no reason in the nature of things why they should not denote corresponding results, of real life and real death. Our very being is rooted in the power and being of God. To believe truly in him, and to return his love with love, may be to strike a deeper root into that Source of all life and being. That we can subsist eternally divorced from him and in rebellion against him, is a conceit of human folly, warring, we think, against all the Sadducees.”
(See Blackburne, Intermediate State, p. 360.) So Tyndale, Answer to More, pp. 180, 181. Gerhard remarks: “It is plain that these words, ‘I am thy God,’ are part of a covenant; compare Genesis 17:7. But they with whom God enters into a covenant of grace, since he would be their God forever, shall be recalled to life, that they may enjoy the things promised by the covenant of grace. This covenant is eternal, and therefore they who are embraced in it should live eternally, and hence have a resurrection.” Lucas Brugensis remarks on Matthew 22:82: “Which, more certainly than certainty itself, God will do. Else he would no more properly be called their God, in respect to his power alone, than of the brutes that are dead.” And if any one insists that “the immortality of the soul” explains the language, he replies: “The soul of Abraham is not Abraham,” etc: Likewise Beausobre and L Enfant, who add: “God can be truly their God only by the resurrection.” And Meyer “refers to some striking remarks of Kauffer as showing that the phrase ‘children of God’ is used by Matthew and Luke only of the state after the Lord’s coming.” (See Alford, on Luke 20:86.)
reason and all revelation. The madness of such conceptions may grow out of the darkness and shadow of death in which we have been so long estranged from God.
Granting, therefore, the doctrine of a spiritual death, even the passages alleged as meaning nothing else may really involve the notion of utter and final extinction as a result. So we often say of the drunkard that he has “destroyed” himself; meaning that he has ruined his health, character, and estate; using the term mainly in a metaphorical sense. But what then? Do we infer, because the drunkard can not be more than destroyed, and is not dead yet, that he will live forever and never sink to a drunkard’s grave? Just the opposite. For the metaphorical sense of the strong word is as it were rooted and anchored in the literal sense from which it is derived. So “spiritual death” may very aptly — as the penumbra of a total eclipse — foreshadow and atmosphere an eternal death that leaves no trace of life nor gleam of hope.
CHAPTER 6
THE GENERAL TENOR OF SCRIPTURAL LANGUAGE
If now we have shown that the alleged immortality of the soul, or of man, is in the Scriptures neither declared, nor assumed, nor in certain passages implied, nor suggested by a metaphorical, life-sparing death, we may proceed to inquire what is the ordinary language of the Bible respecting the final destiny of men as righteous or wicked.
For this argument we will classify the texts which seem pertinent, and then, with the more particular examination of a few, treat the question of a literal or metaphorical sense.
Our selection of passages is attended with one difficulty. Many of those taken from the Old Testament may be regarded as applying, not to man's final destiny, but to temporal destructions and deliverances. Still we shall venture to cite a few such doubtful passages, for two reasons.
A few references are inserted, to passages where doubtless temporal and literal life and death are intended, by way of comment and as showing the use of terms. In order fairly to present the tone of the Scriptures on the subject, we append the passages supposed to imply the immortality of the lost.
To Live
“This do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:26; compare Leviticus 18:5; Nehemiah 9:29; Proverbs 4:4; 7:2; Romans 10:5; Galatians 3:12). “Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.” (Deuteronomy 8:3; compare Matthew 4:4, and the above cited passages). “Incline your ear and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live “ (Isaiah 55:3; compare Jeremiah 38:20; 1 Samuel 1:26: “As thy soul lives;” so chapter 17:55; 25:26; and 2 Samuel 11:11; Psalm 119:175). “Your heart shall live that seek God.” (Psalm 69:32). “He is just; he shall surely live” (Ezekiel 18:9; compare chapter 3:21; 18:17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 32; 20:11, 13, 21, 25; 33:10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19; 37:3-14). Proverbs 15:27. “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14). “The just shall live by faith;” or, “He that is just by faith, shall live;” (Romans 1:17; compare Habakkuk 4:4; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38.) “Give me understanding, and I shall live “(Psalm 119:144; compare Proverbs 9:6). “ And he shall live” (Psalm 72:15; the Psalm probably Messianic). “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise” (Isaiah 26:19; compare verse 14; John 5:25; 11:25; 14:19: “Because I live, ye shall live also;” Romans 6:8; 1 John 4:9). “He that eats me, even he shall live by me” (John 6:57). “If ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13; compare 2 Corinthians 13:4: “He was crucified through weakness, yet he lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him; but we shall live with him by the power of God; Galatians 2:20; 1 Thessalonians 5:10; 2 Timothy 2:11. “For [they] all live unto him” (Luke 20:38, examined above; compare Romans 6:10; 14:7; Galatians 2:19; 1 Peter 2:24; 4:2).
Living
“God shall destroy the forever, and root thee out of the land of the living“ (Psalm 3:5; compare Psalm 69:28: “Blotted out of the book of the living;” 66:13; 116:9; 143:5; Isaiah 4:3). “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38; compare Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:27; Romans 14:9).
To Live Forever
“Lest he eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22). “I [Jehovah] lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live forever” (Deuteronomy 32:40). See also Psalm 22:26; 49:9: “Live forever, and not see corruption.” “He that eats of this bread shall live forever” (John 6:51, 68). “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which [who?] lives and abides forever“ (1 Peter 1:23). Compare 1 John 2:17.
Life
“Tree of life” (Genesis 2:9; 3:22, 24; Proverbs 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4; Revelation 2:7; 22:2, 14). “Bundle of life” (1 Samuel 25:29). “Path of life” (“Thou wilt show me the path of life;” Psalm 16:11; Acts 2:28; each passage Messianic; Proverbs 2:19; 5:6). “Way of life” (“Is above to the way, that he may depart from Sheol beneath;” Proverbs 15:24; compare chapter 6:23; 10:17; Jeremiah 21:8; Matthew 7:14: “Narrow is the way that leads unto life;”). “Book of life” (Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27; 22:19; compare Exodus 32:32, 33). “Word of life” (Philippians 2:16; 1 John 1:1; compare John 6:63, 68). “Statutes of life” (Ezekiel 33:15; compare Leviticus 18:5). “Commandment ordained unto life” (John 7:10; compare Galatians 3:21; Deuteronomy 32:46, 47: “This law. . . is your life; and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land”). “And I know that his commandment is life everlasting” (John 12:50). “Bread of life“(John 6:35; compare verses 33, 48, 50: “That a man may eat thereof and not die;” 51, 53, 54). “Water of life“ (Revelation 21:6; 22:1, 17; compare John 4:10, 14; 7:38). “Fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9; Proverbs 13:14; 14:27). “Resurrection of life” (John 5:29; compare chapter 11:25; 6:40, 44, 54). “Crown of life” (James 1:12; Revelation 2:10; compare 1 Corinthians 9:25).
Christ As Life
“In him was life” (John 1:4; compare chapter 5:26; 11:25; 2 Tim. 1:1; 1 John 5:12). “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), “Life through his name” (John 20:31). “The Prince of life” (Acts 3:15). “That the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:10). “When Christ who is our life shall appear” (Colossians 3:4). “The Life was manifested,” etc., (1 John 1:2; compare chapter 5:12). “That ye might have life” (John 5:40; 10:10; 20:31). “Gives life unto the world” (John 6:33).
Life And good
(Deuteronomy 30:15, 19, see above; compare Jeremiah 21:8). “In his favour is life”(Psalm 30:5; compare Psalm 63:3). “Long life” (and “salvation,” Psalm 91:16; compare, as typical or containing a principle, Proverbs 3:2; “length of days, and long life,” 16, 22; 4:22, 23; 8:35; 11:19; 12:28; 19:23; 21:21; Ecclesiastes 7:12). “Enter into life” (Matt, 18:8, 9; 19:17; Mark 9:43, 45, 47). “Reign in life” (Romans 5:1 7). “Justification of life” (Romans 5:18). “Shall not see life” (John 3:36; compare chapter 8:12). “Alienated from the life of God” (Ephesians 45:18). “Heirs of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). “Promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Timothy 4:8; compare 2 Peter 1:3). “Savour of life unto life” (2 Corinthians 2:16). “Life for them that sin not unto death” (1 John 5:16). “Mortality swallowed up of life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). “Life and immortality brought to light” (2 Timothy 1:10).
Eternal or Everlasting Life
The phrase occurs once in the Old Testament (Daniel 12:2), and forty four-times in the New Testament, as follows: Matthew 19:16, 29 (Mark10:17, 30 Luke 18:18, 30); Matthew 25:46; Luke 10:25; John 3:15, 16, 36; 4:14, 36; 5:24, 39; 6:27, 40, 47, 54, 68; 10:28; 12:25, 50; 17:2, 3; Acts 13:46, 48; Romans 2:7; 5:21; 6:22, 23; Galatians 6:8; 1 Timothy 1:16; 6:12, 19; Titus 1:2; 3:7; 1 John 1:2; 2:25; 3:15 5:11, 13, 20; Jude 1:21. Compare the phrase: “After the power of an endless life“ (Hebrews 7:16).
Other Expressions
“Life forevermore“ (Psalm 133:8). “He asked of thee life, and thou gave it him, even length of days forever and ever” (Psalm 21:4). “Immortality“ or “In-corruption” :(1 Corinthians 15:53, 54; 1 Timothy 6:16); (Romans 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:42, 50, 53, 54; 2 Timothy 1:10; and in Ephesians 6:24; Titus 2:7, (received text), rendered “sincerity”). “Incorruptible” (Romans 1:23; 1 Corinthians i10:25; 15:52; l Timothy 1:17; 1 Peter 1:4, 23; 3:4).
To Die
“Shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17; compare chapter 3:4). “He that hates reproof shall die” (Proverbs 15:10; compare chapter 5:23; 10:21; 19:16). “He shall die in his iniquity” (Ezekiel 3:18-20; compare chapter 18:21, 24, 26, 31, 32; 33:8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18; John 8:21, 24; and Ephesians 2:1, 5; Colossians 2:13). “The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; compare chapter 13:19). “Neither can they die any more” (Luke 20:36). “That a man may eat thereof, and not die” (John 6:50; compare chapter 11:26: “Shall never die”). “Sin revived and I died” (Romans 7:9). “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die” (Romans 8:13).
Death
“Death and evil,” etc., (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19; compare Jeremiah 21:8.) “All they that hate me love death” (Proverbs 8:36; compare chapter 10:2; 11:4, 19; 12:28; 13:14; 14:12, 27; 16:25). “No pleasure in the death of him that dies” (Ezekiel 18:32; 33:11).
“Passed from death unto life” (John 5:24; 1 John 3:14). “Knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death” (Romans 1:32). “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death” (John 8:51; compare verse 52). See also Romans 5:12-21; and if death is applied to a final destiny, compare 1 Corinthians 15:21, 54-56. “Whether of sin unto death” (Romans 6:16; compare chapter 7:5, 10, 13; 8:2; 2 Corinthians3:7; 7:10; James 1:15; 1 John 5:16). “The end of those things is death” (Romans 6:21). “The wages of sin is death,” etc., (Romans 6:23; contrasted with “eternal life.”) “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? “ (Romans 7:24; compare Hebrews 2:15.) “To be carnally minded is death” (Romans 8:2). “Savour of death unto death“ (2 Corinthians 2:16). “ Who hath abolished death,” etc., (2 Timothy 1:10.) “Shall save a soul from death“ (James 5:20). “Twice dead, plucked up by the roots” (Jude 1:12). “And death and Hades delivered up,” etc: (Revelation 20:13). “And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14). “And there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4; compare 1 Corinthians 15:26).
If death implies eternal misery, then either all are saved or the “last enemy” is not destroyed. But compare Luke 20:36.
Second Death
Contrasted with “crown of life,” “resurrection,” “book of life,” “water of life,” Revelation 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8.
To Destroy Or Be Destroyed
“God shall destroy thee forever, and root thee out of the land of the living” (Psalm 52:5). “They shall be destroyed forever” (Psalm 92:7). “The Lord preserves all them that love him; but all the wicked will he destroy” (Psalm 145:20). “The prosperity of fools shall destroy them” (Proverbs 1:32; compare chapter 6:32; 11:3; 13:13, 20; 15:25; 29:1: “Suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy”). “He shall destroy the sinners (of the land) out of it” (Isaiah 13:9). “My people are destroyed (Hebrews cut off) for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,” etc: (Hosea 13:9. Here and in the previous passages we think the future is anticipated.) “Able to destroy both soul and body” (Matthew 10:28; compare James 4:12). “Will miserably destroy those wicked men” (Matthew 21:41; compare Mark 12:9). “Art thou come to destroy us?” (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34.) “Destroy not with thy meat,” etc., (Romans 14:15; compare verse 20.) “Shall be utterly destroyed from among the people” (Acts 3:23; compare Deuteronomy 4:26). “If any man defile (or destroy) the temple of God, him shall God destroy” (1 Corinthians 3:17; compare chapter 6:13; Revelation 11:18).
“That he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). “As natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed” 2 Peter 2:12). “Destroyed them that believed not” (Jude 1:5). The argument from other senses of the Greek words will be considered in the sequel:
Destruction
“The indignation shall cease, and mine anger, in their destruction” (Isaiah 10:25; compare chapter 13:6). “Broad is the way that leads to destruction” (Matthew 7:13). “Vessels of wrath filled to destruction” (Romans 9:22). “Whose end is destruction” (Philippians 3:19). “Then sudden destruction cometh upon them” (l Thessalonians 5:3; compare 2 Peter 2:1, where also the word “damnable” should be “destructive.” “Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9; compare Isaiah 13:6). “Lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition” (1 Tim. 6:9). “The unstable wrest to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16).
To Perish
“Shall perish forever” (Numbers 24:20, 24; said of nations; compare Deuteronomy 4:26; 8:19, 20). “The way of the ungodly shall perish” (Psalm 1:6; compare 2:12; 73:27; 83:17). “The wicked shall perish, shall be as the fat of lambs; . . . into smoke shall they consume away” (Psalm 37:20; compare Psalm 78:2). “He that speaks lies shall perish” (Proverbs 19:9; compare chapter 21:28). “Not the will of your Father. . . that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:14; compare John 10:28: “My sheep shall never perish;” 1 Corinthians 8:11: “Shall the weak brother perish?”) “That whoever believeth on him should not perish” (John 3:15, 16). “ Not willing that any should perish “ (2 Peter 3:9). “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). “Thy money perish with thee” (Acts 8:20). “Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish” (Acts 13:41). “As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law” (Romans 2:12). “To them that perish, foolishness” (1 Corinthians 10:18). “Then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished” (1 Corinthians 15:18). “A savour in them that perish of death unto death” (2 Corinthians 2:15, 16). “Deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). “Shall utterly perish in their own corruption “ (2 Peter 2:12).
Here it should be observed that the Greek, apollumi, is rendered indifferently by destroy perish and lose. Hence the following passages should be added: —
Lose
“He that saves his life shall lose it” (Matthew 10:39; compare verse 28; 16:26; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24, 25 (“lose himself”); 17:33; John 12:25). “That I should lose nothing, but raise it up at the last day” (John 6:39; compare chapter 17:12; 18:9). “Gospel hid to them that are lost” (2 Corinthians 4:8).
Perdition
That is a lost or perished state. The same word is also rendered “destruction.” “Son of perdition” (John 17:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:3). “To them an evidence of perdition” (Philippians 1:28). “Lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition” (1 Timothy 6:9). “Who draw back unto perdition” (Hebrews 10:39). “Day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7). “The beast, that goes into perdition” (Revelation 17:8, 11).
To Consume, Burn, Devour
“They shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away” (Psalm 37:20). “They are utterly consumed with terrors” (Psalm 73:19). “Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more” (Psalm 104:35). “Whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). “The day cometh that shall bum as an oven: and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be as stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up” (Malachi 4:1). “A fire goes before him, and burns up his enemies round about” (Psalm 97:3).
“Who among us shall dwell with devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”(Isaiah 33:14). “A fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries”(Hebrews 10:27). “ Fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them” (Revelation 20:9).
Illustrative Uses
“The Lord thy God is a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy i5:24; compare Hebrews 12:29; Exodus 24:17; Isaiah 29:6; 30:27, 30). “He will bum up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17; compare Matthew 13:30, 40). “Men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6; compare Matthew 3:10). “Whose end is to be burned” (Hebrews 6:8).
Other Expressions
“Evil shall slay the wicked” (Psalm 34:21; compare Psalm 62:3; 139:19; Proverbs 1:32; Isaiah 11:4; 66:16; Luke 19:27). “On whomsoever this stone shall fall, it will grind him to powder” (Matthew 21:44; Luke 20:18). “Lest I tear you in pieces” (Psalm 1:22). “Thou puts away (Hebrews earnest to cease) all the wicked of the earth like dross” (Psalm 119:119). “Evil doers shall be cut off” (Psalm 37:9). “The wicked shall not be” (Psalm 37:10; compare Proverbs 12:7).
Of the above passages, omitting those which are cited as illustrative, more than four hundred will fairly apply to the final destiny of men, either good or bad. But for two or three reasons our induction is still incomplete.
Not without reason, therefore, does the Peschito Syriac version render them by the words “life,” and “to give life,” and the name of our Saviour by, “the Life-givers” And with equal reason may we offer about a hundred instances of their use, to be added to the above list.
2. The use of such words as joy, glory, honour, etc., in describing the blessedness of the righteous, gives no material for argument either for or against the literal sense of the above passages. For to say that the future life of the good will be happy does not at all exclude the literal sense of the term life; nor imply the endless existence of those who are never said to inherit life.
And to say that happiness and misery form a natural contrast, and thence to inter the eternal misery of the unsaved, is to overlook the fact that literal life and death are opposites. And we think such reasoning would also imply, in the last resort, that sinfulness and misery have an equal original right of possession in the universe, with holiness and happiness.
Since we have found blessing and cursing used as epithets of literal life and death, we can form no argument from the frequent use of these words. But when such terms as misery and the like are apparently made a finality in the case of the lost, there is just so much apparent, though slight, argument for their immortality. We should therefore add, in our induction of materials, the following passages: —
“The children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12; compare chapter 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:80; Luke 13:28; but see also Psalm 112:10: “Shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away”). “And in hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments.” (Luke 16:23). “Indignation and wrath; tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil.” (Romans 2:8, 9). “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still,” etc: (Revelation 22:11). “Without are dogs and sorcerers,” etc., (Revelation 22:15.)
3. “We close our list with the passages which may be supposed to imply or describe an eternal misery of the lost.
“Let them be confounded and troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish” (Psalm 83:17). “Shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). “Everlasting burnings” (Isaiah 33:14, cited above). “They shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched” (Isaiah 66:24; compare Mark 9:44, 46, 48; where, however, the repetition of the phrase is probably an interpolation). “Unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17, cited above; compare Mark i10:43, 45). “Everlasting” or “eternal fire” (Matthew 18:8; 25:41; Jude 1:7).
“Everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46). “Eternal damnation” (Mark 3:29; compare Hebrews 6:2: “eternal judgment”). “Shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36). “Shall be punished with everlasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). “Mist of darkness forever” (2 Peter 2:17). “Blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 1:13). “Reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). “And the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever; and they have no rest, day nor night, who worship the beast and his image” (Revelation 14:11; compare chapter 19:3, 20; 20:14; Isaiah 34:10). “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).
These passages will be examined in another chapter. We here remark that they can yield the received view only inferentially. For none of them name the supposed eternal existence of the lost; only two of them seem to describe eternal suffering (Psalm 83:17, and Revelation 20:10); and of these the most important speaks not of the wicked in general, but of certain persons or powers from whose fate that of the rest of the wicked is deduced. And if this supposed plain and decisive declaration of eternal suffering be taken as a ruling text, it is among the latest teachings of revelation on the subject. Whereas the fearful importance of such a doctrine requires that it should have been declared at the earliest date, and in the most plain, explicit, and comprehensive language.
Waiving, then, for a moment, the particular examination of critical passages, we may make one or two remarks on the general tenor of the Scriptures thus presented.
This fact is often urged as showing that the words can not mean extinction or annihilation. But observe, that these words, when applied to the righteous are still used in a literal sense. They describe a physical death, which is strictly a death; — a cessation and extinction of physical life; the body decays, the person is seen and known no more. The righteous subject of this death has indeed another life and a future being untouched by the death asserted of him. Still, he is said to “perish.” In the extent' to which the word is applied, its sense is absolutely literal; it shows not a trace of metaphor and gives no argument whatever for a metaphorical sense of the word when applied elsewhere.
If, then, the same word is applied to the final destiny of the wicked, the literal sense is presumptively the true sense. Its meaning can not, indeed, be just the same as when applied to a righteous man; but the difference may rather be in the extent of its meaning, not in the kind or nature of it. The difference will naturally be, not between the literal death of the righteous man's body and the metaphorical death of the wicked man's soul, but between the part and the whole; between the dying of the righteous bodily, and the dying of the wicked utterly — his destruction, soul and body, in the same sense.
3. The terms in question are doubtless sometimes used in a metaphorical sense. So are all words of daily speech. Language would not be the vital, buoyant thing which it is, if words did not occasionally break beyond the limits of the letter. But when this lively sense becomes the ordinary sense, that is only a new literal or proper sense.
And the metaphorical sense usually dwells near the literal, as its atmosphere; it rarely, if ever, wars against it We have seen this in the word “destroyed,” as applied to the drunkard. So we read, “The destruction of the poor is his poverty;” where the term has a kindred tropical sense. Still we do not, therefore, exclude the literal sense; —we do not say, because the pauper is only very poor and yet lives, that he will never die.
So Paul says, “Our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed day by day;” — the whole expression steeped in metaphor. But we do not infer the outward immortality of the believer; nor the inward immortality of the unbelievers.
4. Because the metaphorical sense is ever derived and secondary, the literal sense of words is prima facie their true sense. This is a generally received rule of interpretation. It means that the literal sense is presumptively true, or has the first claim to be received. For the literal sense is the common, ordinary, usual, obvious sense, or that which first strikes the mind of the hearer when the word is uttered alone. Life — life everlasting — death — destroy — perish: the ideas conveyed by these and other similar words are likely to be their true sense, unless overruled by the connection, or by the general tenor of the book in which they appear.
And it is almost an adage that the literal sense of words is presumptively the true one. Thus Luther says: “That which I have so often insisted on elsewhere, I here once more repeat; ' viz., that the Christian should direct his first efforts toward understanding the literal sense (as it is called) of Scripture, which alone is the substance of faith and of Christian theology; which alone abides in tribulation and temptation, and conquers the gates of hell with sin and death, and triumphs to the praise and glory of God.' (In Deuteronomy cap. 1; Opp. tom. 3: fol: 32, 1583.)
And Hooker: “I hold it for a most infallible rule in expositions of sacred Scripture, that when a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the letter is commonly the worst.” (Ecclesiastical Polity, book 5, 100:59, § 2.) See also J. P. Smith, Scripture Tested, 1, 214. And Jeremy Taylor: “In all the interpretations of Scripture, the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen unless there be evident cause to the contrary. The reasons are plain; because the literal sense is natural, and it is first, and it is most agreeable to some things, in their whole kind; not indeed to prophecies, nor to the teachings of the learned, nor those cryptic ways of institution by which the ancients did hide a light, and keep it in a dark lantern from the tampering of ruder handlings, and popular preachers: but the literal sense is agreeable to laws, to the publication of commands, to the revelation of the Divine will, to the concerns of the vulgar, in which the idiot is as much concerned as the greatest clerks.” (The Minister's Duty in Life and Doctrine, Sermon 2.) And Alford says with emphasis: “A canon of interpretation which should be constantly borne in mind is, that a figurative sense of words is never admissible, EXCEPT WHEN REQUIRED BT THE CONTEXT.” (Comment on Acts 10:42.) And Coleridge somewhere remarks that language is made most impressive by a reference even to the primary and radical sense of words, though it may have become obsolete.
5. The literal sense is not confined to the physical or material sense. It applies to the mind and its faculties no less than to the body and in the world of matter. When we say that love and affection die out, or that reason is destroyed, we mean that they have ceased just as really as if the person were dead.
Hence there is no reason for saying that, because the soul is immaterial, all words applied to it must be taken in a metaphorical sense. If God can “destroy both soul and body,” the immaterial nature of the soul does not render it indestructible.
The agencies by which the soul is, destroyed, may indeed be named by metaphors. God is a “consuming fire;” not literally fire; yet his anger may really frown the wicked back to nothingness; and for that very reason, it may be, he is called a consuming fire. So while the words “fire” and “worm” as used in Mark 9:44-48 may not be taken literally because the whole passage is figurative, yet they may denote, as Whately remarks, “something that is to a soul what fire and worms are to a body. And as the effect of worms or fire is, not to preserve the body that they prey upon, but to consume, destroy, and put an end to it, it would follow, if the correspondence hold good that the fire figuratively so called, which is prepared for the condemned, is something that is really to destroy and put an end to them” (Future State, 100:8). Even Cudworth has said: “To allegorize this fire into nothing but remorse of conscience would endanger the rendering of other points of our religion uncertain also.” (Intel: System, 3:364, 365.)
And when we read of wisdom as a “tree of life,” and the like (Proverbs 3:18; 11:30; 13:12, 14; 14:27; 15:4), the allegory does not require a metaphorical sense of the word “life,” as the context will show. Such modes of representation are often the liveliest pictures of that which is literally true.
To say that because the soul is a spiritual substance its “death” and all other words applied to it can be understood only in a tropical sense, is not only to beg the question of its immortality; but such a rule of interpretation would make it impossible for language to assert its literal death. Yet the rule would destroy itself; for it would, on the one hand, make the soul eternally its very creation being a metaphor; and, on the other hand, unreal, its proper existence being a metaphor.
We are now prepared to remark on the collection of passages we have made respecting the final destiny of the righteous and the wicked. A very few are commonly supposed to speak of misery as a finality with the wicked, or to imply its eternity; and not more than one or two of these can be even pretended as expressly declaring so momentous and fearful a truth. All the rest of the passages, four or five hundred in number, speak of life, everlasting life, living forever, and immortality, as the destination of the righteous; and of death, destruction, being consumed, etc., as the end of the wicked. And we may add that “life,” “eternal life,” etc., are the terms most used to denote the future of the righteous, while “joy,” “peace,” “blessedness,” “glory,” etc., are less used. But these would be the terms most appropriate for that purpose, if the righteous and wicked were alike to live, or exist, forever!
Now, the ordinary sense of the words “life,” “death,” etc., in these four or five hundred passages, would show the immortality of the righteous alone. Bitt the common view takes all these passages in a metaphorical sense, “Life” is taken to mean happiness; and “death,” misery. If “life” were understood to denote strictly living, however happily: or if “death” meant strictly dying, however miserably, the received doctrine of eternal suffering could not be maintained.
But why is the ordinary sense, which is prima fade the true sense, thrust out from all these several hundred expressions? How is this sense overruled, to make way for a metaphorical sense, involving an infinite eternity of sin and woe? If the context of all these passages suggested or required it, then the ordinary sense might yield, and the tropical sense be allowed. Or, if the human soul, or the human race, were, in a single instance plainly declared immortal, the literal sense of this whole flood of expressions must be given up. Or, if such immortality were evidently and undoubtedly assumed in the Scriptures, the tropical sense of this general tenor of their language would be required. Or, if such godlike immortality, neither asserted nor mentioned, were still shown to be implied in one or more scriptural expressions, then must we understand the “dying” and “perishing” of the wicked to mean their undying misery. Or, if the wicked as a class were said either to live or to exist eternally then must the obvious sense of near half a thousand expressions make way for a sense less obvious. And finally, if against the almost overwhelming force of the profound silence the Revelation of Life to a despairing world respecting the alleged immortality, if the few passages last cited, or any of them, shall appear to imply an endless being of the wicked which they do not name, then will the ordinary sense of the many other passages yield to an extraordinary sense, and, with all other odds against it, the future eternity of woe will be proven.
Yet, even here, we may remark that some of these few passages are highly metaphorical: This is allowed by those who insist upon them as involving the fearful doctrine. But, while a metaphor is not meaningless, yet it does not define its own meaning, and its true sense must be obtained by various helps; even after these are tried it may remain obscure. But if a given metaphor is obscure and yet means a dread something, we should not readily say it means the worst thing conceivable, or endless suffering; for that would be to take counsel of our fears, or would be a panic exegesis. And in so doing, we should ignore and practically deny the safety and the importance of the true sense of the divine revelation. Moreover, it is a maxim with interpreters that obscure expressions should be explained by such as are clearer. Thus Wetstein: “Words and phrases which are obscure and hard to be understood, of which many have either perplexed and confused notions or none at all, are to be explained by such as are clear, simple, and easy to be understood.” (De Interp. N. Ti., § 4.) Hence, if these few passages contain metaphors which may be obscure, with the greater reason may they be explained by a multitude of expressions which are presumptively plain and clear. And if we take the many passages in the literal sense and explain the metaphor in some of the few expressions accordingly, we are far more likely to get the truth than they who extend the metaphorical sense to the multitude of passages, or to the general tenor of the Bible, and leave the literal sense of only a few dire passages, such as Revelation 20:10, and those most like it By that method of interpretation the sceptre is given to the smallest number of most dreadful passages, the principal of which is of latest date in the Revelation; and they are made to rule out the plainer and more obvious sense of the general tenor of the Scriptures.*
* That the passage in Revelation 14:10 is sometimes regarded as imperial, a Gibraltar, as it were, of the received doctrine, see the Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1868, p. 659: “He shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Unless, now, the doom of Satan can be explained away, the first step is not taken towards erasing from the pages of the Bible the doctrine of eternal punishment in the proper sense of the term. But it can not be explained away. There it stands on the sacred record, like some mighty mountain of granite, rising ragged and awful from the unfathomable depths of the sea, and hiding its head amid dark thunder-clouds. God has placed it there, as a beacon to an apostate world, and man can not remove it!
CHAPTER 7
SEVERAL TERMS AND PASSAGES
We have offered the “general tenor” of the Scriptures not as absolutely deciding the import of expressions in controversy, but as very strong presumptive proof of our view. We may complete the argument by the more particular examination of certain expressions.
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever.” John 6:51. In verse 58 a plain contrast is made between the life which Christ gives, and the food that did not save from death. “Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eats of this bread shall live forever.” This contrast would be wholly irrelevant if Christ wished to teach the eternal happiness of the saved and the eternal misery of the lost. There is nothing here, or in the whole chapter, to suggest the latter doctrine, or the belief of it by those who heard Christ. On the one hand was literal death; carcasses fallen in the wilderness; no type whatever of continued existence in whatever state. And on the other hand is named, not happiness or joy especially, but life forever. The idea of duration, constantly suggested by other terms in the chapter, is expressly stated in verse 27. Better than “meat which perishes” is “that meat which endures unto everlasting life.” And in vs. 40, 54, this life is connected with the promise: “I will raise him up at the last day;” which is repeated in vs. 39, 44. In verse 50 Christ is called such bread “that a man may eat thereof and not die.”
And the proper or literal sense of the phrase “live forever” is suggested, we think, by all the parallel passages. To those cited above (p. 57) might be added as illustrative the phrases, “O King, live forever” (Daniel 2:4; 3:9; 5:10; 6:6, 21; compare 1 Kings 1:31); “The prophets, do they live forever?” (Zechariah 1:5) and “What man is he that desires life and loves many days?” (Psalm 34:12) cited by Barnabas as follows: “Who is he that would live forever? Let him hear the voice of my Son.” (Ep. c 9.) The expressions in Daniel are doubtless hyperbolical, meaning the same with the modem phrase, “Long live the king.” But here, as elsewhere, the notion of unlimited duration of life lies on the face of the phrase.
Two objections may be started against the literal sense of the phrase. 1. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (verse 52.) True, Christ taught no such thing unless we adopt the Romish view of transubstantiation. The producing cause of the promised life was not Christ’s literal and physical body. Yet it was Christ himself; he is still the Bread of Life that came from heaven, the Prince of life, the Life-giver. And the bold figure by which he calls his flesh and blood meat and drink, is argument not for a metaphorical sense of the word life, but for its literal sense. Christ corrects, indeed the error which the Jews fell into, and says, “The flesh profits nothing;” and, “It is the spirit that quickens” (verse 63); But this “spirit,” so far from denoting a “spiritual sense” of his previous discourse, may be rather the power of his resurrection: To this event he had just alluded: “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” (verse 62.) This resurrection, which was the pledge of what was promised in vs. 39, 40, 44, 54, proved him to be more than flesh or- seed of David (Romans 1:3, 4); it was the work of the Spirit, the divine nature and power in him, vindicating and justifying him from the claim of death (1 Timothy 3:16), and showing him as the last Adam or quickening Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). And when Christ goes on to say, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life,” he does not mean simply that his teachings are spiritual and holy; the emphasis shows rather that he here claims as his own the power to give the promised life. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” So in chapter 5:24, 25: “He that hears my word hath everlasting life.” The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.” And the whole discourse is concluded by the words of Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God?”(verses 68, 69.)
1. The literal sense of the phrase is so natural that the use of it can hardly be avoided even in argument for eternal suffering. Thus in a recent article we are told that God, “in determining to make a free agent who should live forever, who would fall into sin, would never repent, and would subject himself to everlasting punishment, must have governed himself of the consideration of what his glory required.” The same writer uses the phrase “should never perish” in a literal sense, though the orthodox view requires its metaphorical sense in the passages cited in our ‘general tenor.’ (Se Bibliotheca Sacra, January 1860, p. 127.) We think that we observe, and that the writer forgets, his own rule: “The obvious meaning is to be received.” (P. 122.) And we think the observance of this rule would have prevented the violent interpreter long and contradictory expressions cited above, chapter 6.
2. It may be said that the promised life was not literal because it was not physical, and is put in contrast with the bodily life which manna sustained. True: but this is not the prominent point of contrast. For the life which Christ promises is described under physical images: “I will raise him up at the last day.” And the perishing nature of that other food is the point insisted on. They who ate even manna were now dead; but they who receive Christ shall not die.
Here, however, we meet the opinion that several expressions in the New Testament are designed as definitions of spiritual life. E.g.: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). “To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). But these expressions on the face of them, will as easily mean that the knowledge of God, etc, are the way or the means of life. This sense we think is uniformly favoured by the context; and it agrees with the views of early Christians. Thus Athanasius: “As made in the likeness of the true Being, to he preserved by the knowledge of him, man might have escaped the force of corruption, and remained immortal.” Again: “When they divested themselves of the knowledge of God, and turned aside to non-entities (for evil things are not entities, but good things are entities, since they are of God, who truly is), it followed that they must be divested of the nature of existing forever.” (De Incam. Yerbi, c 4.) And Amobius : Souls are of a middle nature, as Christ has discovered to us, and such that they can die if they know not God or be delivered from death if they embrace his gifts and favours.” (Adv. Gentes, 1. 2, c:14.) And Irenseus: “He who rejects it [the grant of life], and proves unthankful to his Maker for creating him, and will riot know him “who bestows it, deprives himself of the gift of duration to all eternity.” (Adv. Haer., 1. 2. 100:34, § 3.)
A very scholarly and eloquent writer in support of the common view has happened to cite 1 John 5:20 as follows: “This is the true God: this is eternal life;” repeating the pronoun, on which the argument turns, as if it were used in a definition, and apparently supposing it to be in the neuter gender. “Here knowing the true God and being in the true God,” he says, “is declared to be eternal life.” (New Englander, May, 1856, pp. 189, 190.) But we beg leave to remind a former Professor of Greek that the pronoun is masculine, and must refer to the author of the life. “This is the true God, and eternal life.” Compare chapter 1:2: “For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” See also verse 1, and John 1:4; 11:25; 14:6.
Our discussion of the passage in John 6:51 may be summed up in the following words of Irenaeus: “He who was the true bread of the Father gave himself to us as milk, sharing our humanity; that we, being as it were suckled by the breasts of his fleshy and inured by such nursing to eat and drink the Word of God, might be able to receive the bread of immortality, which is the Spirit of the Father.” (lb. 1. 4, 100:38, § 1.)
We have already protested against the notion that we take the term life in the Bible, as denoting mere existence. We regard the immortal life which Christ gives as of course a blessed life. Yet we find no intimation that one can have “mere existence” without it. If a man has long struggled with poverty and eaten the bread of carefulness, when affluence comes he may be said emphatically to live; still his abundance literally keeps him alive.
He who feasts sumptuously all the year is as really kept from starvation by his dainties as is the beggar by his crust. It may be a humiliating reflection: but the guests at a banquet, rejoicing in abundance, and luxury, and festive wit, are as really warring against hunger and death as they who feed at the poor house. Shall we ever outgrow our dependence on the life-giving power and favour of God? The Spirit of God that raised up Jesus from the dead may fill the inmost being of the believer with a life unspeakably joyous; the salvation will be surpassingly glorious. It may be a rescue from annihilation nevertheless. And though we know not the inmost processes either of life or of death, yet, just because we have not explored the mysteries of being, who knows that sin, separating the creature from the Fountain of Life, may not be either a process of, or reason for, a proper death? “Injustice,” says Socrates, “would rapidly lead the souls that possessed it into non-existence,” if they were not immortal: (Republic, 1. 10.) Such may be the tendency of moral evil; and the Scriptures reveal no immortality in the soul, to withstand its power. They point to Christ as our only hope.
“Because I live, ye shall live also.” John 14:19. Let the reader simply compare the context and say if the following words of Stier on the passage will admit any immortality of unbelievers: “There is no other guarantee for our personal continuance in the integrity of our being, and consequently, also, as that is inseparable, for the resurrection of our bodies, than the personality of Christ, in whose ‘I live,’ declared in his resurrection and assumed to us by the reception of his Spirit in ourselves, we have the firm and sufficient foundation for, Ye shall live also.’ All other arguments and hopes of immortality are like shadows and vapour before the light and power of this living word. (Revelation 1:17, 18.)”
Everlasting or Eternal Life. This is the grammatical equivalent of the phrase “live forever,” and the literal sense is quite as natural to the one as to the other. And there must be very special reasons for it, if one is taken literally and the other metaphorically. We think that the context almost uniformly favours the literal sense of the phrase in question; and the contrasted expression to perish (John 3:15, 16; 10:28; Romans 2:11, 12) supports it as well as any word could do. See also contrasted, the losing of life (John 12:25), death (Romans 1:32; 5:12, 21; 6:21, 22, 23; 1 John 3:14, 15), corruption (Galatians 6:8), and the connected resurrection (John 6:40, 54).
And on the phrase as used in Romans 5:12, Fritzsche, one of the best commentators, remarks: “It is quite apparent that physical death is properly contrasted with eternal life since the primary sense of eternal life, and that which is expressed in the words themselves, is that of a life everlasting not ending in death; the secondary sense, not expressed by the words, but otherwise derived (from the Christian hope, resting on the promises of Christ), is of a blessed life.”
The passage most frequently adduced in behalf of the metaphorical sense is 1 John 3:15: “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” This is Compared with John 3:36; 5:24; 6:47; 1 John 5:11, 13; and it is inferred that eternal life is a spiritual life already begun in the believer. But granting this, the immortality of the unbeliever will not follow, as we have before remarked on the common view of “spiritual death.” And we have found some of these passages taken by orthodox writers as anticipative. The everlasting life is also frequently spoken of 2 future (Daniel 2:2; Matthew 19:16, 29; Mark 10:17, 30; Luke 10:25; 18:18, 30; John 4:36; 6:27; 12:25; Romans 2:7; 5:21; 6:22; Galatians 6:8; 1 Timothy 1:16; 6:12, 19; Titus 1:2; 3:7; 1 John 2:25; Jude 1:21). In two of these passages it is put “in the world to come” (Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30). We think that the phrase “eternal life abiding in him” is best explained of the divine, life giving power, working now as a regulative principle and a germ of the future life. Compare John 5:38: “Ye have not his word abiding in you;” 1 Peter 1:23; 1 John 1:1, 2; 3:9; 5:20.
Immortality or in-corruption. One of the words thus rendered may have an ethical sense in Ephesians 6:24, and the received text of Titus 2:7, where it is rendered “sincerity.” But in the latter passage it is probably an interpolation; and in the former passage it is taken by some writers in its literal sense; as if “love in in-corruption” were unfailing, undying love; or else love “in the sphere of immortality, the striving for heavenly good, the heavenly sense, in which alone love to Christ is possible.” Others connect the preceding word “grace.”
“Grace unto immortality” or with immortality.” No such argument can be based here against the literal and ordinary sense. The word must have this sense in 2 Timothy 1:10; 1 Corinthians 15: 42, 50, 53, 54.
On 2 Timothy 1:10 Theophylct remarks: “He enlightened us by the gospel that we might hope for life and immortality. For we have not yet been made immortal in fact, but shall yet be; and the gospel has ratified our hope.” Compare Euthymius. And in Romans 2:7 the literal sense of the word is given by the commentators generally. Thus Calvin, Grotius, Beausobre and L’ Enfant, De Wette, Meyer, Olshausen, Tholuck, Alford, Conybeare and Howsen, Stuart, and over a dozen others whom we have seen. It is also supported by the lexicographers, Schleusner, Bretschneider, Wahl, Robinson.
We find the metaphorical sense given only by Chr. Schmidt, citied by Reiche as “mistaken;” and by Paige (Universalist), plainly from a doctrinal bias. Theophylact and Euthymius remark that the passage “opens the gates of the resurrection.” And Dr. Gill says: “Immortality — not of the soul, which is common to all; but the in-corruption of the body,” etc. Several commentators render the phrase “glorious and honourable immortality,” or “immortal, glory and honour” and thus would avoid the conclusion that believers alone are immortal. But such mode of translation is not required by the tenor of the Scriptures; it is not proven; and if it were, the endless existence of unbelievers would not follow, even if it were suggested.
The other word rendered immortality is used to denote the divine prerogative (1 Timothy 6:16), and the immortal life which is gained in 4he resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:53, 54). The context of the latter passage, if not the entire chapter, shows that the immortality will be that of believers— most glorious and honourable. The Scriptures name no other.
Death. We need add but little to what has been said on Luke 20:36 and Ephesians 2:1, 5. But one or two passages may be cited as confirming the literal sense of the word death. Thus Christ says: “If a man keep my saying he shall never see death.” (John 8:51.)
Upon this the Jews ask how that can be, since Abraham is dead, and the prophets.” They clearly misunderstood him as speaking of literal death. They were indeed mistaken in supposing he taught exemption from bodily death; but that was an unimportant error, since Christ himself spoke of’ Lazarus both as dead and as not dead, regarding his temporary death as a “sleep.” But if the “death” of which Christ spoke means a “miserable immortality,” the mistake of the Jews required correction. Take it as denoting the “second death” in a literal sense, and all is dear.
Again, in Romans 1:32 the heathen are spoken of as “knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death.” If they plainly understood that sin deserved endless misery, it is marvellous that the Scriptures never thus describe and define the death, and that Christians have felt so many difficulties with the justice of such a doom, and yet it as a “mystery” to be dispelled by the light of another day. How natural, if the doctrine were true, that the inspired pages should name a death that never dies.” Yet all mention of any life or vitality whatsoever in the lost, is avoided throughout the Scriptures.
The Second Death, As before remarked, the expressions contrasted with this phrase in the Apocalypse indicate the literal sense. It frequently occurs in Jewish writings. The sense in some instances Ls not clear, and it is even applied to the despair of Rachel at being childless. Thus in the Jalkut Rubeni, fol. 93, 4: “In this place (Exodus 19:12) two deaths are spoken of, as also in Genesis 30:1, that is, the second death.” But in the following examples the sense is plain: Every idolater, who says that there is another God besides me, I will slay with the second death, from which no man can come to life again.” (Pirke R. Elieser, chapter 34.) “Let Reuben live in eternal life, and not die the second death.” (Targum of Onkelos, Deuteronomy 33:6.)
Buxtorf defines “eternal life” (chaje ‘olam) as “the life of the world to come.” The Jerusalem Targum adds to the phrase “second death,” the words, “by which the ungodly die in the world to come.” Jonathan thus paraphrases Isaiah 22:14: “This hath been decreed by the Lord, that this sin shall not be forgiven them until they die the second death;” upon which Kimchi says the Targumist understands the death of the soul in the world to come.” Again: “Behold, this is written before me, I will not give them long life, until I have taken vengeance for their sins; and I will give their glory [soul] to the second death.” (lb. Isaiah 66:6.) That is, they should never be forgiven, but should die. “He will slay thee with the second death.” (lb. verse 15.) “They shall die the second death, and shall not live in the world to come, saith the Lord.” (lb. Jeremiah 51:39.) “They shall die the second death, so as not to enter into the world to come.” (lb. verse 57.) See the other examples cited by Wetstein on Revelation 2:11, and in “Debt and Grace,” pp. 178, 179.
These examples clearly warrant the remark of Dr. Hammond that the phrase “seems to be taken from the Jews, who used it proverbially for final, utter, irreversible destruction. It seems to denote such a death from which there is no release. And according to this notion of it, as it reflects fitly on the first death (which is a destruction, but such as is reparable by a reviving or resurrection, but this past hopes, and exclusive of that), so will all the several places wherein it is used be clearly interpreted. [The doctor makes an ecclesiastical application of the phrase, but concludes]. And though in these different matters some difference there must needs be in the significations, yet in all of them the notion of utter destruction, final, irreparable excision, may very properly be retained, and applied to each of them.” (Commentary on Revelation 20:6.) To which we may add that which Calvin says of the soul in the second death: In short, it performs no (me function of life.” (Psychopania, Opp. 8. 346.)
The phrase “twice dead” in Jude 1:12 is evidently similar. Because it is applied to persons still in existence it is sometimes quoted as showing that the final punishment is not extinction. But the context, we think, shows that it is an example of prolepsis; and the following expression, “plucked up by the roots,” denotes an utter destruction. The tree that has been cut down may grow again; that which has been uprooted, never. The figure is strictly that of extirpation.
Excision. The Hebrew word chereth which signifies a cutting off from among the people, many express a principle respecting the punishment of the wicked, if not their final punishment itself. The expression frequently occurs in the Pentateuch, and Peter doubtless alludes to it in Acts 3:23: “Every soul which will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.” It was the “greater excommunication,” “which could be nothing less than death.
Many of the Hebrew doctors regard it as a punishment by the hand of God. And Maimonides interprets the expression: “That soul shall be cut off from his people” (Genesis 17:14), of the utter destruction of soul and body. This view is strongly confirmed by the Jewish use of the phrase second death.”
The verb is also used in Psalm 37:88: “The end of the wicked shall be cut off;” which should be compared with Proverbs 5:24:14, 20: “There shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off.” “There shall be nor eward to the evil man.” “The candle of the wicked shall be put out.” The Hebrew word here rendered “end” and “reward,” is the same which commonly denotes “after time,” “the last days,” “hitter stale,” “final lot.” It might be not inaptly rendered a result or a hereafter. But the sense is perhaps better given by a Jewish Rabbi, speaking of a cessation of existence, thus: “There shall be no residuum to the wicked man; the light of the ungodly shall be extinguished.” (Ebn Latiph; see Pocock, Porta Mobis, Note Miscellaneous, chapter 6.)
Anathema, This word occurs six times in the New Testament, viz: Acts 23:14; Romans 9:3; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 16:22; Galatians 1:8, 9. It also frequently occurs in the Septuagint, as the equivalent of the Hebrew cherem. A few examples will indicate its proper sense. “No devoted thing shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 27:29; compare Deuteronomy 7:26; 13:17; Joshua 6:17, 18; 1 Chronicles 2:7; Zechariah 14:11). In Judges 1:17, some copies render by “utter destruction.” In Numbers 21:2; Deuteronomy 20:17; Judges 21:11; 1 Kings 15:13, and other places, the verb is used to denote utter subversion and destruction. The Hebrew verb is rendered by “utterly destroy,” in Joshua 10:1; 2 Chronicles 20:23; and often elsewhere; by “utterly destroy,” in Deuteronomy 7:2; Jeremiah 1:21; 51:3; to slay, or “utterly destroy,” in Joshua 10:35; by “utterly destroy,” in Isaiah 34:2; 37:11; 43:28 (English. “Give to the curse”); to lay waste, or “utterly destroy,” in Isaiah 11:15, by “utterly destroy,” in Jeremiah 25:9.
These examples clearly sustain the following definitions of Schleusner, in his New Testament Lexicon: “1. Any thing set apart from common use; victim, sacrifice. 2. Whatever is destined to destruction; what is given to perish, is blotted out, cut off. 3. One devoted to a miserable fate, to be sacrificed in expiation; one who is an abomination, to be detested and removed from the sight of men; an abominable thing, to be removed from the sight of God and men.” Compare Bretschneider, Wahl, and Bobinson. Was the Greek word of the New Testament an immortal thing, or a thing to be conserved in eternal being?
In a single instance (1 Corinthians 16:22) the word “Maranatha” is added; and Lightfoot renders: “Let him be accursed or destroyed; our Lord cometh.” The passage is parallel with that in 2 Thessalonians 1:8, 9, where we shall find the proper destruction of the wicked is foretold.
Destruction Perdition etc: The Greek (apoleta), and its cognate (olethros) commonly rendered as above, are used, with the corresponding verbs, about ninety times in the New Testament. This number includes the cases in which is translated by “waste” (Matthew 26:8; Mark 14:4), “damnation” or “damnable” (2 Peter 2:1, 3), and the verb by “lose” or “lost” (Matthew 10:6, 39; 15:24; 16:25; 18:11; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24, 25; 17:33; 19:10; John 12:25, and elsewhere), and excludes these in which other Greek words are employed.
A glance at the passages thus reduced to a class shows that the literal sense of the terms in question is manifestly the true one in most instances. And when they are applied to a final destiny, there is little to suggest a metaphorical sense if we exclude the assumption of man’s immortality. We will examine the more important texts. Matthew 10:28: “Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” We have seen how the immortality of the soul is inferred from this passage and its context. By way of argument, it is sometimes remarked that Christ does not here say God can kill the soul: But Tertullian quotes the passage thus: “Who is able to kill and destroy (occidere et perdere) both soul and body.” (Con. Gnost., chapter 9; compare De Res. Camis, chapter 35.) And Cyprian: “Who can slay (occidere) both soul and body.” (Epistle 56, 81, et al.) And Jerome In like manner (In Epistle ad Ephesians torn. 4:897). And Augustine (Tract 43: in Joh., et al.); who accordingly speaks of the soul as having only a dependent immortality: The soul can die, it can be slain (occidi); and therefore I said it has a certain kind (quffidam) of immortality. “If the soul can not be slain how should our Lord, warning us, say, Fear Him?” etc. And Origen removes all doubt of the literal sense when he says: “Who is able to destroy and blot out both soul and body, either in Gehenna or as he may choose.” Plato also applies the same radical word in debating the question of a future life: “There is much unbelief among men lest, when the soul quits the body it be no longer any where, but in that day in which the man died it perish and be lost.” Phaedo, chapter 14.)
And the son of Sirach had said of sin: “The teeth thereof are as the teeth of a lion, slaying the souls of men, (Ecclesiasticus 20:2.) If, then, our Lord’s words mean what they seem to say, God may let the sinful soul utterly perish. “To say that he can but will not do it, is a begging of the question, and a seeming contradiction to the sense of our Saviour’s words.”
The Greek (“corruption”) is sometimes rendered “destruction.” In Romans 3:16. The verbs are rendered “destroy,” Matthew 5:17; 26:61; 27:.40; Mark 14:68; 15:29; Galatians 2:18; 1 John 3:8; also Acts 9:21; Galatians 1:23, 13; and (to render ineffective), Romans 6:6; 1 Corinthians 6:18; 15:26; 2 Thessalonians 2:8; Hebrews 2:14.
A somewhat similar passage in Isaiah 10:17, 18, confirms this sense of extirpation: “The light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; and it shall bum and devour his thorns and his briers in one day; and shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body.” Upon this passage Dr. Gill cites the Targum, thus: “Their souls with their bodies it shall consume;” And adds: “So some understand this of the eternal destruction of soul and body in hell.” And h Lapide happens to say they are destroyed “wholly (omnino sive toti), both with present death, and the eternal death of Gehenna.”
1 We here cite a treatise giving our view, published with Sermons and Fragments of Dr. Isaac Barrow, London 1884. The manuscript is in the hand-writing of Barrow, with notes of dissent; but whether it is an original or the copy, is unsettled.
In Acts 3:23 the emphatic form of the verb is used, with no hint of a destruction that does not kill: So that Theophjlact must needs remind the Apostle that, since the soul of man is immortal, it will not be utterly destroyed.” Etc.
A few passages supposed to require a metaphorical sense should be examined. 1. It m sometimes rendered to ‘lose.’ “He that finds his life shall lose it; and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 10:39). But here the life which a Christian may lose is the bodily life which strictly perishes. So in Luke 6:9 the same verb is rendered “to destroy,” and the literal sense is indisputable: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to save life, or to destroy it?”
Here we encounter the vexed question as to the meaning of psuche, used in the above and parallel passages, commonly rendered “life,” but rendered “soul” in Matthew 10:28; 16:26: “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Some have thought the word should be rendered “life” uniformly. We accept the common translation. But the use of the same Greek noun seems to show a like relation to the same verb or its equivalent; as if the present “life” and the “soul” might be “lost,” in the same sense. By faith the it is “kept” — preserved — unto life eternal (John 12:25).
The verb is also rendered “lost” in Matthew 10:6; 15:24: “The lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Here the sense is plainly anticipative. The “lost sheep” are so called because they are regarded as exposed, liable to perish, and not actually perishing simply because they are rescued and saved. The same word is applied to the unsaved in 2 Corinthians 4:3: “Our gospel is hid to them that are lost and in chapter 2:15: “A sweet savour (of death unto death) in them that perish.” Will they live forever?
In Luke 9:26, the phrase is “lose himself, or be cast away.” In Matthew 16:26 and Mark 8:36, the verb is used also in 1 Corinthians 3:1, 15, where the “loss” of unapproved work, ‘wood, hay, stubble,’ is spoken of.
In Luke 15:4, 8, a sheep from the flock, or a piece of money, is supposed to be “lost,” though not perished. Yet the sheep must perish if not found; and the silver was as good as out of the world if not recovered. In such cases extinction is either foreshadowed or has its equivalent.
A thing may be strictly destroyed while its elements remain. Entire change of form and loss of structural identity is destruction of that which was. Hence, with no metaphysical refinements and no thought of immortality in the soul, the early Christians might truly say and believe: “The day of the Lord Comes, in which every thing that is seen shall be dissolved, and the wicked one shall be destroyed with it.” (Barnabas, Epistle chapter 21.)
3. In 1 Corinthians 5:5 Paul directs the incestuous person to be given over to Satan “for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” There is an interpretation of this passage which would take the phrase as a metaphor, leaving to the word “destruction” its literal sense. (See Debt and Grace, page 183.) But Lightfoot remarks that the offender “deserved death two or three times over,” and says: “We are led to be of their opinion who interpret the place of a miraculous action, namely, of the real delivery of this person into the hands and power of Satan, to be scourged by him, and tormented by him with diseases, tortures, and affrightments.” And Bloomfield: “That the Apostles had the power and were authorized to punish notorious offenders with disease and death in a supernatural manner, few will deny. See John 20:23; Acts 13:11; and 1 Corinthians 11:29.”
If here is metaphor, it certainly looks to no immortality of the flesh. Others still interpret the word “flesh” of the carnal nature, the “old man” which was to be “crucified” with its affections and lusts. (See Alford.) In this view we should have, not the physical sense, yet the strict and literal sense, of the word in question. Thus rare is its metaphorical sense. If it were the true one, implying an eternity of evil, the literal sense ought to be as rare.
Gehenna, This Hebrew word should be here examined because it is commonly supposed to be a place of torment without death, and thus to require a metaphorical sense of “destroy” in Matthew 10:28. It also occurs in Matthew 5:22, 29, 30; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark i10:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6. The word is wholly different from Sheol and Hades which are often improperly rendered “hell.” It is, rather, the “lake of fire” into which Hades is said to be cast. Revelation 20:14. It marks the final destination of the lost, as distinct from the intermediate state, the place of souls, or the abode of the dead, which is the true notion of Sheol or Hades.
We find in the history of this word an instance of wild etymology which should be noticed, both for its innocence of Hebrew, and as illustrating the strange facility with which an “eternal hell” has been proven. Theophylact, on Matthew 10:28, says that our Lord, by the word Gehenna, “signifies the perpetuity of the punishment; for Gehenna is derived from ever existing.” The reader who knows neither Hebrew nor Greek sees at a glance that the word ever, on which the whole argument rests, has nothing to do with the word.
The name is notoriously derived from the “valley of the sons of Hinnom,” or Tophet, also called the Valley of Slaughter, near Jerusalem. This place had been polluted with the horrid worship of Molech and the sacrifice of infants, or causing children to “pass through the fire” to that idol. Too hideous, by the memory of these things, for habitation, it became the sink of the city, whither carcasses were carried as the prey of worms, or of fires that should consume them. Hence the expressions in Isaiah 66:24, and Mark 9:44-48, soon to be examined.
Kimchi, on Psalm 27:13, referring to the valley of Hinnom, says: “There was there a continual fire, to bum polluted things and bones; and therefore the condemnation of (he wicked is called, in a parabolical way, Gehinnom.” As a type, this valley with its contents would naturally denote an ignominious but complete destruction. A few passages from early Jewish writings will show that such was its actual import Thus the Jerusalem Targum on Genesis 3:24: “He made Gehenna for the wicked, like a two-edged sword, cutting either way; and in the midst of it sparks and coals, burning up (comburentes) the wicked.” The Targum on Psalm 37:20: “And they shall be consumed in the smoke of Gehenna.” And on Ecclesiastes 8:10 “They have gone to be consumed in Gehenna.” On Isaiah 31:9, Gehenna is described as a fire which goes forth from the bodies of the wicked and sets them on fire; for it is said, Te shall conceive chaff and bring forth stubble; your breath, as fire, shall devour you.” This may illustrate the peculiar use of the word in James 3:6. And in the Bereschith (R. 6:10) we read: “R. Jannai and R. Simeon said. How do you show that Gehenna is only upon the day when he will bum up (comburet) the wicked? Behold, the day of the Lord, burning as an oven, Malachi 4:1”
These examples warrant the remark of Wetstein on Matthew 5:22: “All the punishments of more atrocious crimes were inflicted, either by God or men; severe punishments, indeed, by the judgments of the twenty-three men; these more severe by the Sanhedrim; but the severest of all by God, in the excision (chereth) either of body or of soul, or of both. Of this punishment Christ is speaking here, and in verses 29, 30, and chapter 10:28.”
And of Newcome, who speaks of “a punishment corresponding to a death by fire in the valley of Hinnom, Jeremiah 7:31.” But if the “correspondence” be real, there can be no immortality in Gehenna.
Corruption. The Greek (phtheiro) and its derivatives, variously rendered “corrupt,” “defile,” “destroy,” “perish,” etc., occur fifty-one times in the New Testament, as follows:
1 Corinthians 3:17; 15:33;
2 Corinthians 7:2; 11:3; Ephesians i5:22;
Jude 1:10;
Revelation 19:2;
Romans 8:21;
1 Corinthians 15:42, 50; Galatians 6:8;
Colossians 2:22;
2 Peter 1:4; 2:12 (twice), 19; Luke 12:33;
2 Corinthians i5:16;
1 Timothy 6:5;
Revelation 8:9; 11:18,
Acts 2:27, 31; 13:34, 35, 36, 37;
2 Timothy 3:8; 2 Peter 2:12;
Romans 1:23;
1 Corinthians 9:25; 15:53, 54;
1 Peter 1:18, 23;
Romans 1:23; 1 Corinthians 9:25; 15:52;
1 Timothy 1:17;
1 Peter 1:4, 23; 3:4;
Romans 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:42, 50, 53, 54; Ephesians 6:24;
2 Timothy 1:10; Titus 2:7.
From this list the English reader will readily see that the modern ethical sense of “corruption” is rarely contained in the above Greek word, but is more frequently expressed by other terms. The literal sense holds in most of the above passages. In two important instances where the word may have a metaphorical sense, it is immediately repeated in a literal sense, viz.: “If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” 1 Corinthians 3:17). “And shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). The thing threatened in 1 Corinthians 3:17 can not be moral corruption, and the word is never used to signify torment. If the passage applies to a special judgment it is synonymous with Revelation 11:18. If to the final judgment, it denotes the final and proper corruptibility of “them that perish.” The passage in Galatians 6:8, “He that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,” may be compared with Ecclesiasticus 10:11: “When a man shall die, he shall inherit serpents, and beasts, and worms;” and chapter 19:3 : “ He that joins himself to harlots will be reckless. Rottenness and worms shall inherit him; and he shall be lifted up for a greater example; and his soul be taken away out of the number.” For the comparison, illustration, and terms employed, it would be difficult to state a final perishing more strongly than is done in 2 Peter 2:12 “These as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed speaking evil of the things that they understand not all utterly perish in their own corruption.” The use of the adjective form of the word, “corruptible,” “incorruptible,” and of the privative, in-corruption,” has been already observed.
And if any one shall insist on the occasional use of it in a metaphorical sense, the immortality of the vicious would not follow even if this occurred much oftener than it does. For in every analogy, moral corruption is a method of death and not of life.
Devour, Consume Burn. We have already observed how Theophylact, Cocceius and Calvin take the passage in Hebrews 10:27 as if the “adversaries” were not to be consumed, though the divine anger is represented as a consuming fire. Other elucidations also need explaining. Thus Estius, on Hebrews 12:29: “As fire acts with mighty force and speedily consumes that which comes in its way, so God will punish most severely his adversaria, and consume them in a moment (memento ecmsumpturns); yet not so that they shall cease to be, but that it shall never be well with them.” And Dr. Gill, on Hebrews 10:27: “They shall be devoured; not so as to be annihilated but shall be eternally destroyed, both soul and body; that is, everlastingly punished, or punished with everlasting destruction.” But Bloomfield says, more plainly an he intends: “As fire is often in the Old Testament said to eat up what it consumes, so the fiery wrath of God is not unfrequently represented as consuming, destroying and casting into perdition the enemies of God,” etc
On another passage, John 15:6, the comment of Stier, in his “Words of Jesus,” requires attention. He says: “As the branches are consumed when burned, the aptness of the figure ceases. Those branches of which the Lord here speaks bum on forever without being consumed. Luther well bite this in his translation of the awful ‘und muss brennen’ — and must bum. Concerning the damned the present may always be used; they bum, or they feed the fire.” (Compare Alford.) Here is certainly either an infinitely fearful passage, or a somewhat fearful exegesis. We venture to observe,
1. The word “must” is Luther’s, not Christ’s.
3. The present tense no more implies ceaseless burning than the phrase “they cast” implies ceaseless committal to the flames.
4. The word “bum” no more implies this than when we say of fuel that “it bums.” 5. The Greek Katerat is as properly rendered “they are burned” as “they burn;” the passive and middle voices having the same form in the present tense. And parallel passages (Matthew 3:12; Hebrews 6:8; 10:27; 12:39; Revelation 20:9) support, not to say that they require, the sense given in our translation. Theophylact paraphrases by saying they shall be consumed.” 6. If Christ’s illustration were not intended to apply in the last and most important item, he might as well have said, “they are not burned.” We find no reason to change the English version of the passage, or to think that it does not yield a sense sufficiently awful:
“Abide in me,” said Christ in this same parable of the vine and the branches. But he had used the same word (meno) to denote the continuance of the life he gives. “Labour for that meat which endures unto everlasting life” (chapter 6:27). Likewise the beloved disciple: “Ye are strong, and the word of God abides in you” (1 John 2:14). And again he says Very significantly: “The world passes away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abides forever” (verse 17). Compare 1 Peter 1:23: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever.” Can language more plainly declare and illustrate the notion of future eternal existence? And is this promised to those who abide in Christ, and implied for those who are cast forth as dead branches?
CHAPTER 8
PASSAGES SUPPOSED TO IMPLY THE IMMORTALITY OF THE LOST.
Forevery system of theology, and forevery style of interpretation, we may discover a key note, which can be expressed in one or more passages of Scripture. The doctrine of unending misery forms no exception to the rule. And though it is a delicate matter for one who dissents to select a key-note passage, still we shall venture to offer such an one, for very special reasons. We give the following, which is often cited, and as it is commonly quoted:—
2 Corinthians 5:11: “Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men.”
If the reader will turn to the abridged edition of Cruden’s Concordance, which is most likely the one he has, he will find under the word “persuade,” the word “terrors” printed as above. And he has heard it thus quoted so often that he may think it no error when he sees it. But his English Bible gives the word only in the singular number — “terror.” The prevalent opinion has created the plural form, as also in another phrase, “future punishments,” which can be traced back to the time when the soul began to be called immortal, about AD 200, and no further.
But not only is the passage commonly misquoted — we believe that it is even more seriously mistranslated. The Greek word rendered “terror” only in this instance, properly denotes fear, and is so translated generally. And the same phrase, “the fear of the Lord” occurs in thirty other passages in the Scriptures, besides the equivalent expressions, “the fear of God” “fear the Lord” etc, used over a hundred times. And in nearly all these instances the “fear “is not objective, i.e., it does not refer to the fearfulness of an offended God; but it is suggestive, denoting a sentiment in the heart of man. And the sentiment is rarely that of alarm, but commonly the filial fear of reverence and piety. Thus in the same epistle, 7:1, Paul speaks of “perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.”
Compare the expressions, “Walking in the fear of the Lord” (Acts 9:31); “The fear of the Lord is his treasure” (Isaiah 33:6); “The fear of the Lord prolongs days” (Proverbs 10:27); also Job 28:28; Psalm 19:9; 111:10, etc Now when Paul said, “Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men,” the fear was almost certainly his own feeling, and that was certainly not one of terror.
His allusion to the judgment of Christ (verse 10) indicates the same contrast that is made in Galatians 1:10: “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men?” Paul was wont to “persuade men” as one who was not afraid, but in that noble fear which quells all terror and alarm.
Offering this correction of a false key note, we proceed to examine the passages the misinterpretation of which, we think, has created the unscriptural “terrors.”
Psalm 83:17: “Let them be confounded and troubled forever; yea, let them be pat to shame, and perish.”
The Hebrew here reads, “forever and ever,” and the Vulgate, “conturbentur in saeculum saeculi.” There is quite as much here to suggest the notion of eternal sorrow as in some of the passages adduced to support that view — quite as much to give the word perish a metaphorical sense, and give life to the lost in the world to come. If we take the words literally and strictly they describe such a doom as really as the passage in Revelation 20:10. Eutbymius thus applies it: “He is said to perish in the world to come, not who so perishes as to be no more, but who endures those punishments the sufferers of which are said to perish.”
And Calvin: “Here he (the Psalmist) plainly imprecates their everlasting destruction.” But Patrick explains: “This is the worst we wish them, notwithstanding their enmity to us; that they may be so astonished and confounded at their defeat, as never to recover any courage to assault us; nay, together with their credit and their courage, quite lose their power to give us any farther trouble.” Holden remarks: “Let them be totally frustrated in their designs and expectations, and suddenly seized with the most terrible alarming fears and panics; bring the greatest reproach upon them and complete destruction.” And Poole: “But those of them that will not humble themselves before thee, let them be utterly destroyed.” The eternity is that of effect; of which hereafter.
And the passage shows that the burning of “wood” and “stubble” (verses 13, 14) is no symbol of an un-consuming destruction. On the term rendered “wheel” (verse 13), see Dr. Thompson’s work, “The Land and the Book,” page 357, 358.
Isaiah 33:14: “The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
A Lapide gives upon this passage the most immense and terrific estimate of misery for ages heaped on ages that we have ever seen. But Jerome, Jarchi, and others so far differ from this interpretation that they answer the question, “Who shall dwell?” etc., from the next verse: “He that walks uprightly,” etc De Lyra, Zwingli, Pellicanus, and Vitringa explain those words, uttered by “hypocrites,” as being also hypocritical words, or a feint of humility and unfitness to minister before Him who is a “consuming fire.” And Vitringa, Poole, and others remark that the Hebrew term Idnu, rendered “among us,” more properly denotes for us. Kimchi, Vatablus, and Grotius understand the “fire” and “burnings” of the devastation caused by the Assyrian army.
We think that interpretation best sustained which refers the dreaded flames to the divine judgments upon the Assyrians. The words are doubtless those of unbelieving Jews who had advised ungodly alliances with the surrounding nations, and who are now terror-stricken at the dangers that impend. When God appears to deliver the nation, they can not claim him as their God — he may be their enemy. In this same chapter the Assyrian host is represented as awaiting a sudden and utter destruction: “Now will I arise, saith the Lord; now will I be exalted; now will I lift up myself. Ye shall conceive chaff; ye shall bring forth stubble; your breath, as fire, shall devour you. And the people shall be as burnings of lime; as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire” (verses 10-12). This had been already foretold in chapter 27:4: “Fury is not in me [i.e. I am no longer angry with my people]. Who will set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them; I would burn them together.” See also verse 11, and chapter 10:16-18. The prophecy appears as history in chapter 37:36: “Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and four score and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.”
According to the custom of eastern nations these bodies should be burned. And on the phrase “burnings of lime” it is remarked by Dr. Alexander that “the same word burning is applied to the aromatic fumigations used at ancient burials (Jeremiah 34:5) [i.e. in the funeral pyre], to which there may be some allusion here. The ideas expressed are those of quickness and intensity. The thorns are perhaps described as cut up to suggest that they are dry, and therefore more combustible.”
The prophet aptly describes the alarm produced by this display of God’s power, in those who know not him as their deliverer. “Who among us,” they exclaim, “shall dwell with (this) devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with (these) perpetual burnings?” Thus Dr. Alexander renders the passage, with whom agree Luther, Vitringa, Le Clerc, Matthew Henry, Lowth.
Thus by orthodox writers the words are fully explained and their proper import is satisfied, from the scenes of time. Some of these writers think they contain also an allusion to, or a type of, a never consuming fire in eternity. But there are two objections to this: 1. That which consumes can not typify the un-consuming. 2. The supposed allusion would explain not a single word, and such an extension of the meaning would prove nothing; it would be wholly gratuitous. If such a sense is found in other passages, the proof of it here would still be wanting.
If, however, we take the passage as portraying the final doom of the lost, the first and second death combined in one, a parallel passage would be found in Revelation 6:17: “The great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?” And until it is shown that the spirit will not fail before God’s frown, we must infer any thing but immortality.
Isaiah 66:24: “And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.” Mark 9:43, 44: “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than, having two hands, to go into hell (Gehenna), into the fire that never shall be quenched; were their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Here it should be remarked that the passage in: Mark is slightly coloured in our translation.
The phrase is precisely the same with that in Matthew 3:12, and Luke 3:17, rendered “unquenchable fire”; the sense of which is, a raging fire that can not be subdued; as we propose to show. To call it a “fire that nether shall be quenched” is to mistake the nature designated, and to assume an endless duration of the fire.
Again, the three-fold repetition of the last clause in the entire passage in Mark (verses 43-48), is sometimes regarded as a solemnity of warning not required if utter extinction is the doom described. Without conceding that point, it should be stated that the manuscripts show various readings, and there is doubtless more or less interpolation. Mr. Green, in his “Developed Criticism,” gives the following opinion in the case: “The clause ‘where their worm dies not,’ etc, may be safely discarded from the first and second places, and ‘into the unquenchable fire’ from the second. Great doubt must necessarily attach to the latter in the first place also, from the amount of variation which occurs there, and its glossarial appearance.” See also Tischendorf, who rejects verses 44, 46, as spurious.
But we would not even seem to deprecate the repetition of the phrase in question, and will proceed to inquire what it means. As used in Mark’s Gospel, it is evidently taken from Isaiah; and the words, by their own force, can prove no more in the one case than in the other. If they properly signify, or imply, immortality in the New Testament, they will do the same in the Old Testament; for the words are identical, and in them the argument must rest.
On the opinions of Justin Martyr, see Debt and Grace, pp. 812-318, where we think the statement of Gieseler will be found fully warranted, that “Justin appears to regard it as possible that the souls of the ungodly will at some time be wholly annihilated.” (Dogmengeschichte, \ 45.) To the other passages there cited we may here add that although he reckons the immortality of the soul as a doctrine common to philosophy and Christianity (Cohort, ad. Graecos, 100:8), yet he says: “ We have learned that they only are made immortal who live piously and virtuously before God.” (Apologia I., 100:21.) But we may judge what value should be attached to any opinion of Justin, from the following passage in Jerome: “About this time (A.D. 124-126) Aristides, a philosopher from the schools of Athens, presented to the Emperor Hadrian an Apology for persecuted Christians; and we are told that he not only retained his philosophic garb and profession, but that he also interwove his philosophic opinions in his book, which was afterwards imitated by Justin Martyr.” (De Viris Illus., chapter 20; Epistle 83, ad Magnum.)
But it is of “carcasses,” that Isaiah says, “their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched.” The expression, then, proves the immortality of carcasses if it proves the immortality of the lost. If the expression itself is relied on, and if there is any consistency in logic, we do not see how this result can be avoided. And, as a matter of fact, precisely this result was accepted in the earliest orthodox use of the phrase which we have found. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, says: “ We have learned from Esaias that the carcasses of those that have transgressed shall be devoured by the worm and by the unceasing fire, remaining immortal, that they may be a spectacle to all flesh” (100:130). But the idea of an immortal corpse is absurd, and the argument proves too much. That is, it proves no immortality whatever.
Rather, as worms and fire utterly consume a dead body, so, if the antitype be true to the type, the two passages furnish the liveliest picture and the strongest proof of the utter extinction of the lost. And we might here we all inquiry into the origin of the phrase, and leave the argument as the Scriptures must generally be left, — to the English reader with his reference Bible. And this the more readily as nothing is said in Mark of the soul, especially as if the worm might be that of conscience; but the fire of Gehenna is evidently the same with the agency which can‘ destroy both soul and body” (Matthew 10:28); and in the similar passage in Matthew 5:29, 30, the contrast is made between the loss of a member and the casing of the whole body into Gehenna; and both in Mark and in Matthew 18:8, 9, the contrast is between “entering into life” halt or maimed, and the fire of Gehenna. The practical argument is plainly this: it were better to save one’s life at last, even with the loss of a limb, than to lose body, soul and all:
We would not, however, merely silence the argument for immortality from the phrase in question, but, if possible, satisfy the reader by a full explanation of it. What, then, do the clauses signify?
1. The fire is not quenched.” This is not a singular phrase. Equivalent expressions occur in 2 Kings 22:17; 2 Chronicles 34:25; Isaiah 1:28, 31; Jeremiah 4:4; 7:20; 17:27; 21:12, 14; Ezekiel 20:47, 48; Amos 5:6. In all these passages a reason is given, not for the continuance of that which fire preys upon, but for its being consumed; for the obvious reason that the fire is not put out. Thus in Isaiah 1:28: “They that forsake the Lord shall be consumed.”
“Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall bum, and shall not be quenched “ (Jeremiah 7:20); where Lowth remarks: It shall make a total destruction.” Surely all these things were not immortal: Again: “I will kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched,” (Jeremiah 17:27; comp. verse 4: “Shall bum forever;” where the Assembly’s Annotators remark: “For a long time;” and Orton: “Till you are consumed.”) “Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel” (Amos 5:6). All this seems plain. And the prediction in Ezekiel 20:47, 48, met the incredulous response, “Doth he not speak parables?” — not for the mystery of fire unquenched, nor because it was a trifling matter to be consumed, but because the people would fain hear smooth things.
1 The Psalmist here supplies the lack. He either mistakes or substitutes “souls” for “worms,” and says: “Their souls shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and the wicked shall be judged in Gehenna until the righteous shall say of them, “We have seen enough.” This is perhaps the passage which Mr. Landis has in mind When he simply states: “The Chaldee Targum on Daniel 12:2 says expressly: “The souls of the wicked shall never die.” (Immortality of the Soul, p, 292.) We conjecture thus because we do not find the language elsewhere, and no Targum of Daniel is known. There is however a paraphrase by Joseph Jachiades (A. D. 1280), which pretty distinctly gives the view we hold. See on chapter 8:14; 7:1, 12, 13.
To the half dozen errors of fact which Mr. L. alleges (pp. 98, 99) against our work on “ Debt and Grace,” we here reply that we did mistake an un-Protestant speech as having been made by a Romanist writer, and have corrected the error. Another alleged error, respecting Achilles, was not made by us in fact, and we think the charge indicates an aptness in trifles. Another “error” — that Seneca the philosopher also wrote the tragedies which bear the name of Seneca — we have found to be the opinion of thirty-eight critics, who are opposed by only eight so far as we have learned. The other matters alleged may be left with the reader. But one who claims Aristotle as holding the immortality of the soul without noticing the eminent authorities we cite to the contrary, and then pronounces our opinion a palpable mistake, should be informed that on one of the very passages cited (De Genesis Animal 1. 2, 100:3; Landis, p. 105) Mosheim remarks: “Those who rank Aristotle among the assertors of the soul’s immortality can look for no support whatever from this passage. I should say rather that it proves their opinion to be fallacious.” (Note to Cudworth’s Intellectual System, III. 472; cited in “Debt and Grace,” p. 276. See also W. A. Butler, History of Ancient Philosophy, II. 426-429; and B. Watson, Institutes, I. 53.)
The charge of “egregious and criminal misrepresentation” of the use of immortal by the early Christian writers (Landis, p. 304) fall harmless by the side of information offered to “our German cousins” on the same point (p. 295). How this information will be received from one who asserts that “Saivo alone means simply to ascend” (p. 210), who cites an opponent as holding an opinion which that opponent refers to in order to refute (p. 282 compare Dobney on Future Punishment, pp. 242-244), who commits Schlichtingius to his own absurd inference of immortality from the grievous death of the soul (pp. 179, 180), and is merry at “the beautiful consistency” between two writers, who are consistent though he does not perceive it (p. 117, note 9). We will not predict.
2. “Their worm shall not die.” If this is the worm of conscience, the figure was certainly far in advance of Jewish thought. And if it is not that of conscience, and yet implies the immortality of the lost, then most singularly is a worm named as immortal in the revelation, but the soul, never. But the connexion, and the word rendered “abhorring” used elsewhere only in Daniel 12:2, and signifying the nauseous spectacle of putrefying carcasses, show that the “worm” is either literal vermin, or something of which that is a type. So in Ecclesiasticus 7:19: “Humble thy spirit very much; for the vengeance on the flesh of the ungodly is fire and worms.” Compare chapter 10:11; 19:3 (cited above, p. 89); the Targum on Isaiah 66:6 (p. 80); and the remark of Lightfoot: “To be devoured by worms was reckoned an accursed thing, and what befell none but men of the greatest impiety.” (Horae Hebrews et Talm., Acts / 12:23.)
The whole phrase has a historical allusion, respecting which there are two opinions. Albert Barnes derives the figure “from a scene where a people whose lands have been desolated by mighty armies, are permitted to go forth after a decisive battle, and to walk over the field of the slain, and to see the dead and putrefying bodies of their once formidable enemies.” Of this the destruction of Sennacherib’s host would be a notable example.
Dr. Alexander, perhaps more correctly, thinks the prophet alludes to the fires kept up in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, or Tophet (Isaiah 30:33), and predicts the fate of the apostate Israel: “The central figure is Jerusalem, and its walls the dividing line between the two contrasted objects. Within is the true Israel, without, the false.”
The latter is finally exhibited, no longer living, but committed to the flames of Tophet. “To render our conceptions more intense, the worm is added to the fire, and both are represented as undying. That the contrast hitherto maintained may not be forgotten even in this closing scene, the men within the walls are seen by the light of these funeral fires, coming forth and gazing at the ghastly scene, not with delight as some interpreters pretend, but, as the text expressly says, with horror. In its primary meaning, this is a prophecy of ruin to the unbelieving Jews— apostate Israel.”
And it is not the exhaustless life of the individual, but the multitude of those who perish, that challenges the unquenched fire and the unfailing worm. Thus in Isaiah’s context, verses 15, 16: “Behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire; and the slain of the Lord shall be many.” Their number suggests a banquet like the “supper of the great God” to which the fowls of heaven are invited in Revelation 19:17, 18. Yet though they be so many, the worm shall not be wanting for its feast, nor the fire to consume that which remains. The double figure shows the completeness of the extinction. A similar iteration, we think, occurs in Joel 1:4
“In its primary meaning,” says Dr. Alexander; and in either his exegesis or that of Mr. Barnes nearly all commentators are agreed. Thus Poole, Kimchi, Le Clerc, and Noyes. Now the secondary or applied meaning, in Christ’s use of the words should correspond. But a destruction that leaves nothing can not describe an eternal non-destruction. And to extend the figure, as many do, to an eternal state, would not only make it self-contradictory, but would be gratuitous — explaining nothing, and proving nothing. That would be to assume the very thing to be proved, and to foist it upon words which in four or five different ways prove the contrary.
We may then freely say with Eichard “Watson (on Mark i10:43-48): “As the worm itself dies not, but destroys that it feeds upon, and as a fire unquenched consumes that upon which it kindles, so when temporal judgments are expressed by this phrase, the utter destruction of persons, cities, and nations, appears to be intended; but when it refers to a future state, and the subject of punishment is, in itself, or by divine appointment, immortal, the idea is heightened to its utmost terror.” But we have already found Mr. W. saying: “That the soul is naturally Immortal... is contradicted by Scripture.” Hence, until the actual immortality of the lost is proven from other passages, this passage must, by his own showing, describe their extinction
Mark 9:49: “Forevery one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.”
This passage, sometimes cited to show the immortality of the lost, can only illustrate the facility with which the direst evil once imagined, are proven. It is one of the most obscure and vexed places of all Scripture, as may appear from the nine closing pages in which Kuinoel gives account of seven different interpretations of it. And when we find contradictory methods of inferring from it the supposed immortal death (see Stier, a compared with Landis, Doddridge, Poole), we have some right to ask if it is not the very darkness of the passage that yield the supposed gloomy light.
But who shall be “salted with fire?” The phrase “everyone” is unqualified, and naturally denotes all men. The “fire” may be that of trial and judgment, temporal or final (Matthew 2:11, 12; 1 Corinthians 3:13), by which every man is either purified and strengthened, or overcome and condemned. What is said of “sacrifice” and “salt” is doubtless an allusion to Leviticus 2:13; with which compare 2 Chronicles 13:5; Matthew 5:13; Mark 9:50.
There is reason, we think, for supposing that “salt” denotes the preservation in immortal life of those who “have salt in themselves.” See Philo and others cited in “ Debt and Grace,” pp. 200, 201, 242.
The facility with which the fatal immortality has been deduced from Mark 9:49, reminds us of the illustrations offered by Tertullian and other early defenders of the doctrine. They spoke of lightning as a fire from heaven that kills’ without consuming, and thence conceived a fire of hell that consumes without killing. They pointed to the volcanoes that bum on and do not bum out, as pictures of eternal fire that does not destroy. Even Augustine appeals to “that grandest absurdity of all” the superstitions respecting the salamander, that it can live in the fire.
This and the preceding examples “are sufficient witnesses,” he says, “that not every thing which burns is consumed.” (De Civ. Dei, 1. 21, 100:4.) Another illustration is offered by a Lapide, who says on Matthew 3:12: “Hence the stone asbestos is named, which ever burns and is not extinguished.” Truly an argument a Lapide; which has been recently improved for the lapidation of heresy by one who renders the phrase ‘inconsumable fire”! (J. Litch, Pneumatologist, pp. 226, 274, 5; Discussion with Mr. Grant, p. 125.)
We may yet hear of unquenchable water. But if the “terrible idea” of un-consuming fire be true, why did no prophet or apostle ever appeal to the burning bush, in Exodus 3:2, as an illustration of a doctrine so important?
Matthew 3:12: “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the gamer; but he will bum up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” So Luke 3:1 7. Compare Mark 9:43, 45, as noted above, p. 96.
With these passages should be compared Psalm 1:4: “The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.” Isaiah 5:24: “As the fire devours the stubble, and as the flame consumes the chaff, so shall their root be as rottenness, and their blossom go up as the dust.” Matthew 13:30, 40: “As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world.” See also 2 Samuel 23:6, 7: “The sous of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away; . . . and they shall be utterly burned with fire.” Isaiah 10:16-18, and Matthew 3:10: “Every tree which brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” Isaiah 27:11: “When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the women come and set them on fire;” and John 15:6, as examined above, pp. 90, 91.
We have already noticed the use of the phrase, “the fire is not quenched.” Can the adjective form, “unquenchable”, sustain an infinitely different meaning? Is that which was wholly consumed by “fire unquenched,” forever unconsumed by “fire unquenchable”? Such a difference of implied meaning would be without a parallel in the use of words. And certainly there is no power of eternal endurance in “chaff,” or in any thing of which that is a type, to require an implied sense thus without a parallel: And when dried branches and felled trees, “cast into the fire” and “ burned,” are also given as illustrations of the final destiny of the lost it seems to us that language would be too capricious and uncertain a thing for use, if all such description of consuming fire were changed to that of un-consuming fire by an adjective termination.
We need hardly say more plainly that the same reasoning which would deduce the immortality of the lost from this adjective, would also show the indestructibility of chaff, and, indirectly of all the other frail and perishing things named in the parallels passages. The whole imagery is that of perishableness. It is all ignored, we think, by the usual assumption of a soul that cannot perish. But that we have not mistaken the figure will also appear from various commentators. Thus Wetstein: “The word denotes such a fire as can not be extinguished before it has consumed and destroyed all.” So Kuinoel and Rosenmiiller. Hammond says: “ A fire never quenched till it have done its work.” And Bloomfield, speaking of the oriental custom of burning straw and stubble, adds: “The word completes the awful image of total destruction.”
And the phrase is not peculiar to the Scriptures. Thus in Ecclsiasticus 23:16: “A hot mind is as a burning fire; it will never be quenched till it be consumed.” Chapter 28:23: “Such as forsake the Lord shall fall into it; and it shall bum in them, and not be quenched; it shall be sent upon them as a lion, and devour them as a leopard.” See also a fever described as an unquenchable fire: “ R. Chija Bar Abba said, A greater miracle is wrought upon a sick man than that which was done for Hananiah, Mizael, and Azariah. For their fire could be kindled by any commoner, and extinguished easily (a qualibet re). But the febrile fire of a sick man, since it is from heaven, who can extinguish?” (Nedarim, f. 41, 1.) Does an incurable fever argue the immortality of the patient? We read also, in Achmet, 100:122: “Burned with an unquenchable fire, with a strong wind.”
In the Anthology, I. 19, 3: “A fire is soon put out; but a woman is an inextinguishable fire.” In the Iliad, 13:169, 564, a similar phrase occurs, which the scholiast explains as “that which burns down quickly, or is quenched with difficulty.”
And Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, b. 6. 100:40, uses the very words in question in describing the martyrdom of Christians. Cronion and Julian, he says, were scourged, and afterwards “consumed in an unquenchable fire.” And “Epimachus and Alexander, who had continued for a long time in prison, enduring innumerable sufferings from the scourges and scrapers, were also destroyed in an unquenchable fire.”
See other examples of Plutarch (Nama, 100:19); Cicero (Oratio pro Fonteio, 100:17); Philo (De Temolento, Opp. 1. 889; De Sacrific, II. 254); Lilian (De Nat. Animal, 1. 5,100:8); Callimachus (Hytnn. in Dian. 117); ven or referred to in Debt and Grace, p. 197.
Mr. Landis argues from this phrase with all confidence and some epithets and concludes by affirming “the utter hopelessness of the advocates of the opposing theories, in view of this awful testimony.” (Immortality of Soul, p. 481.) But how can our opponents hope for our conviction in this matter, while they offer no explanation of Eusebius’ use of the phrase In question, and do not even notice it?
Thus not only Mr. L., but Professor Hovey, who argues from the passage (Impenitent Dead, p. 87); Dr. Post (New Englander, May, 1866, p. 179); Professor Barrows (Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1858, p. 650); Dr. Long (Bib. Sac, January 1660, pp. 118, 119). Are not these writers aware the passage in Eusebins?
Let them show, then, that he used the phrase either ignorantly or improperly, and we shall be so far better instructed. And we may then understand why the translators of Eusebius have here rendered his words so variously. Rufinus gives us only “ignibus” (fires). Hanmer renders by “a flashing fire,” and “a fiery pile.” And Crus by “an immense fire,” though he gives the original in a note. He also informs us that Valesius and Shorting have rendered the phrase in the second instance by “unslaked lime.” Do the words of Eusebins show a or do thy not?
Daniel 12:2: “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; Some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
Here, as in Matthew 25:46, a contrast is made between “everlasting life” and something opposed thereto. Do the term which describe this imply an immortal life of the lost?
It is thought by good critics that the word’ “many” denote not the general resurrection, but that of the righteous; the “first resurrection” spoken of in Revelation 20:5. The sense would then be, that these, who awake, rise to everlasting life; whiles the rest are left to shame and everlasting contempt. This would agree with the Syriac version: “Some to death, and the eternal contempt of their companions;” the term “companions” referring to those who live; or, in a dramatic way, to the fellowship of death, as in Isaiah 14:9-20; Ezekiel 32:24, 25, 30.
But in any case the resurrection foretold gives great prominence to the literal sense of the phrase “everlasting life.” And the contrasted expressions confirm this view. The word rendered “shame” (diraon) is the same which is rendered “abhorring” in Isaiah 66:24, where, says Dr. Wintle, it denotes “a kind of spectacle, show, or nausea;” and it is translated “nausea” by Buxtorf in his Concordance. The allusion is to the putrefaction of death. And thus not only is Isaiah 66:24 a parallel passage, but those above cited in connection with it, and also those in Matt 18:8, 9; Mark 9:43-48, where “life” is contrasted with the punishment of Gehenna. And the word contempt “brings to mind such passages as Proverbs 10:7: “The name of the wicked shall rot;” and with verse 3, Malachi 4:3: “Ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be as ashes under the soles of your feet;” Matthew 13:40-43; 2 Peter 2:9-12; and Psalm 92:7: “When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed forever;” where Hengstenberg remarks: The annihilation of the wicked comes into notice as the basis of the deliverance of the righteous, which is the proper theme of the Psalm.” This commentator doubtless means an earthly annihilation; and yet, as typical, if not in its proper import, it is a plain and direct argument for a final extinction.
We are left to such parallel passages because the phrase everlasting contempt” does not explain itself. One of them is cited in the Talmud, which gives a Jewish doctrine of punishment thus: “Those who sin and rebel greatly in Israel, as well as gentile sinners, shall descend into Gehenna, and there be judged during twelve months; at the end of which the body is consumed, the soul is burned up, and the spirit is scattered beneath the feet of the just, as it is said in Ma1:i5:3.” (Bosh Hashana, f. 17, 1.)
Matthew 8:12: “ Bat the children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:42: “And shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Compare verse 50; chapter 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28, and Revelation 22:15.
These are some of the expressions supposed to describe anguish as a continuous finality with the lost But the illustrations given in Matthew 13:30, 40, from the burning of tares, and in verse 48 from the refuse fishes of the net, with the remark, “So shall it be at the end of the world,” certainly indicate that the pain described may not be undying. And the passage just cited from the Talmud shows that the Jews at an early day supposed these pangs were mortal; as also their use of the terms “second death” and “Gehenna.”
But the Scriptures may here explain themselves; for they contain elsewhere the very expression on which the argument turns. The passage in Psalm 112:9, 10, is parallel with those last cited, and reads thus: “His righteousness endures forever; his horn shall be exalted with honour. The wicked shall see it and be grieved; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away; the desire of the wicked shall perish.” These words, and what is said in Matthew 8:12 of the disappointed “children of the kingdom,” show that the “gnashing of teeth” is a picture not of mutual rage among the lost, but of vexation at being finally excluded from the kingdom of light and life.
Matthew 18:8; “ Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee; for it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire.” Matthew 25:41: “Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Jude 1:7: “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Here the same phrase, is rendered by the like expressions, “everlasting fire,” and “eternal fire.” It is manifestly equivalent to the phrase “unquenchable fire,” just examined; and in Matthew 18:8, and Mark 9:43, 45, if we take the received text, the two phrases are given in different accounts of the same discourse of our Saviour. We may therefore reason from either to the other; and if we have found the true import of the one, we have also the import of the other.
The “eternal fire” can not preserve that which the “ unquenchable fire “ consumes and destroys.
But we may also show how the two adjectives denote the same thing. And we shall examine the passage in Jude chiefly, because it is expressly made an example from which we may infer what the phrase signifies, and because commentators have here bestowed most of their elucidations.
And here they commonly give what we regard as the true sense of the phrase. It is the eternity of effect which often appears in the Scriptures. The “eternal fire” is that which consumes utterly and forever. Thus Witsius, after saying that the words here are “not to be restricted to that fire wherewith these cities are burnt, but to be extended to the flames of hell, with which the lewd inhabitants of those cities are at this very day tormented,” adds: “But it is true of both, that they were burnt with fire; with which respect to the towns may in some measure be said to be eternal, they being so consumed as that they never shall or can be restored.” (Economy of the Covenants, book 1, chapter 5). But if this sense is good for the towns, why not also for the lewd people, and in their “second death” as well as the first? And why, when the sense is “ extended “ to the second death, is it also reversed, and a destroying fire made to typify un-consuming flames? Hence Whitby well remarks: “I conceive that they [the inhabitants] are said to ‘suffer the vengeance of eternal fire,’ not because their souls are at present punished in hell-fire, but because they and their cities perished by that fire from heaven, which brought a perpetual and irreparable destruction On them and their cities.” Schlichtingius, whose Socinian views did not hinder the concurrence of others, says: “The sense is, that those cities suffer an eternal overthrow, which came upon them as a punishment by fire, which is called ‘eternal‘ from the effect of the eternal overthrow, by a usual metaphor. Thus death is called ‘pale‘ for it makes men pale; and ‘eternal‘ as destroying forever; so likewise the judgment of the wicked, Hebrews 6:2.” Pricaeus says: “ We may understand of a destroying fire; a fire, that is, which utterly wasted and reduced them to nothing.” And Bloomfield: “ On the Greek word commentators (I think) require too much.
Benson explains it: “A fire which burnt till it utterly consumed them. See Whitby. It is not necessary to press on. We need only suppose the Apostle’s meaning is, they are publicly set forth (which is a forensic term), for an everlasting example (in their fiery destruction) of the punishment God sometimes inflicts for sin in this world, which is but a faint type of that which has reserved for the next.” (Critical Digest). Very true; a fire that utterly consumes is a “faint type” of a destruction ever going on and ever incomplete. Hammond, in a passage before cited, speaks of “the utterly irreversible destruction, such as fell on Sodom, called eternal fire, utterly consumptive.” (Comment on Revelation 20:6). Episcopius takes the passage in this same sense. (Resp. ad 64: Qusest, q. 62.) Dr. Gill explains the phrase of “a destruction total, irreparable, and everlasting.”
Newcome says: “Everlasting in its effects; the cities having been finally destroyed.” Adam Clarke takes it as applying either to the inhabitants or to the cities, and says: “In either case the word signifies an eternally destructive fire; it has no end in the punishment of the wicked Sodomites,... it has no end in the destruction of the cities; they were totally burnt up, and never were and never can be rebuilt In either of these cases the word has its proper and grammatical meaning.” And Rosenmiiller: “ We may understand of a destroying fire; that is, one which utterly wasted and reduced to nothing. But we may also understand a fire perpetually smoking.”
Some writers in support of the orthodox view insist on the fact that the participle “suffering” is in the present tense.
On Matthew 25:41, Dr. G. remarks, “The punishment they were to endure was appointed before the world was; and so hell is said to be ordained from eternity;” citing the Targumist on Isaiah 30:83: “For Tophet is ordained of old; for the king it is prepared.
The view suggested, that the wicked were from the beginning doomed to perish, is certainly admissible; and if the sense of the eternity of effect were not sustained, this would be tenable against all argument for an un-consuming fire.
But their inference does not follow for four reasons: 1. The word is also in the feminine gender, and describes the “cities” as such rather than the inhabitants as individuals. 2. The present tense is ever freely used in historical or lively description. 3. The punishment of Gehenna is not suffered until the final resurrection and judgment. 4. Granting that the present tense is used accurately, the verb is often used to denote a condition as well as actual conscious suffering; and this sense of it would be warranted by the last remark of Rosenmuller. But Macknight paraphrases thus: “Having undergone the punishment of an eternal fire.”
And in the same view of the cities as an eternal monument of desolation Cajetan remarks: They “were burned with fire from heaven, of which conflagration the traces still remain and ever will remain to the end of the world; to wit, a continual desolation, a Dead Sea, constantly smoking and exhaling pitch and sulphur wherewith it was burned; admitting neither fish nor any living thing, but speedily destroying them; producing apples of emptiness and ashes; so that Sodom has the appearance of a past fire, and is a vivid example of what will be in Gehenna.” Estius cites this with approval: Be it so; if the antitype is true to the type, what will be the immortality of the lake of fire and brimstone — the Dead Sea of the world to come?
The passage in Jude, we remarked, sets forth an example. And these cities have been an example in fact. “Nothing was more known and celebrated,” Whitby remarks, “among authors sacred and profane, Jewish, Christian, and heathen writers, than ‘the fire that fell down upon Pentapolis,’ or the five cities of Sodom; they being mentioned still in Scripture as the cities which God overthrew with a perpetual desolation; in the Apocryphal writings, ‘the waste land that yet smokes.’“
They are made an illustration of God’s threatening in Deuteronomy 29:23: “The whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and in his wrath.” Compare Isaiah 1:9; 13:19-22: “Babylon... shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,” etc: Jeremiah 20:16: “And let that man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew.” Jeremiah 23:14; 49:17, 18: “Edom shall be a desolation, ... as in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah; ... no man shall abide there.” Chapter 1:39, 40; Lamentations 4:6; Ezekiel 16:41-55: “When Sodom and her daughters shall return to their former estate” (a proverbial way of saying, Never; implying their irrevocable destruction). Hosea 11:8; Amos i5:11; Zephaniah 2:9; Matthew 10:15; Mark 6:11; Luke 10:12; 17:29, 30: “It rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” Romans 9:29; 2 Peter 2:6: “Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample to them that after should live ungodly.” “Overthrow,” not “torment,” is the favourite word; and this passage in Peter is specially similar to, and illustrative of that in Jude.
Thus the Scriptures. See also Wisdom 10:6-8: “ When the ungodly perished, she delivered the righteous man, who fled from the fire which fell down upon the five cities. Of whose wickedness even to this day the waste land that smokes is a testimony, and plants bearing fruit that never come to ripeness; and a standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul. . . They left behind them to the world a memorial of their foolishness.” 2 Esdras 2:8, 9: “Remember what I did unto Sodom and Gomorrah; whose land lies in clods of pitch and heaps of ashes.” 3 Maccabees 2:5: “Making an example for posterity of the haughty Sodomites signalized for their crimes, with fire and brimstone didst thou consume them.” Philo (De Vita Mosis, 1. 2): “The cinders, brimstone, and smoke, and the obscure flame as it were of a fire burning, yet appealing about Syria, are memorials of the perpetual evils which happened to them.” Josephus (Antiquities 1. 1, 100:11, § 1). Clement of Rome (ad Corinth., 100:11): “Lot was saved out of Sodom, when all the country around about was judged (or, burned, destroyed) by fire and brimstone.” Strabo (Geog. 1. 16): “Many signs indicate that this is a burnt district; for we find burnt rocks and an ashy soil, and drops of pitch distilling from the rocks, and bubbling streams of fetid odour.” Tacitus (History 1. 5, 100:7): “Not far hence are the plains which they say were formerly cities, and were struck with a thunderbolt, and were afterwards burned with fire from heaven.” Solinus (Poly hist. 1. 35); Diodorus Siculus (History 1. 19, 100:98).
And so notable was the example of this destruction, that it furnished the Jews a proverbial way of execration. “Whatever was useless, or rejected, or abominable, or accursed, they used to say, to show their rejection and detestation of it, ‘Let it be cast into the sea of salt,’ or the bituminous lake; thus, for instance, ‘any vessels that had on them the image of the sun, or of the moon, or of a dragon, let them be cast into the salt sea.’
Talmud Babylon, Avoda Zara, f. 42, 2; 49, 1; 53, 1; 71, 2; Nazir, f 24. 2; 26, 1, 2; Bava Metzia, f. 52, 2; Zemura, f. 22, 2; Meila, f. 9, 3; 10, 1.” (Gill, on Revelation 20:15.)
We may here also notice one or two instances in which the classic writers have used expressions very similar to that in land. Cicero speaks of the “eternal fire” (ignis seternus) preserved in a temple, as one which might be negligently allowed to become extinct. (Pro Fonteio, 100:17.) And Ovid speaks of Telephus as perishing by an “eternal disease” (aeterna coneamptus tabe.) This phrase is precisely equivalent to that in which we found a fever called an “unquenchable fire;” and it plainly means “a mortal disease.”
But a far more significant instance of the phrase in question occurs in the writings of Libanius, of the fourth century, some of whose letters are addressed to Basil and Chrysostom, they having been his pupils. Speaking of the city of Troy, he says: “It lies an example of the calamity of an eternal fire.” The expression is so nearly identical with that in Jude as to indicate Libanias’ familiarity with the epistle. He virtually compares the sack of Troy to the overthrow of the cities of the plain. Bat he certainly did not conceive of Troy as still homing; and no more did he think of the Trojans as living in the flames of hell. Hence, until it is shown that he used, the phrase without warrant, his expression must be added to the above numerous proofs that “eternal fire” utterly destroys; and the famous proverb, Ilium fuit becomes a symbol of the doom of the lost. “They shall be as though they had not been.”
If all these witnesses can not explain Jude’s allusion to a signal example, we must despair of its explanation altogether. But we readily agree with Hengstenberg: “As the fire and brimstone point to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, so it is very nature to suppose that allusion is made to the dead sea as the earthly image of hell.” (Commentary on Revelation 19:20.)
And if the Dead Sea be truly a picture of the doom of the lost the following words of the Talmud may be applied: “The men of Sodom have no part or portion in the world to come and shall not see the world to come.” (Sanhedrim, f. 29, 3.)
Some of the expressions we- have cited are specially pertinent, to our exegesis of the word “everlasting”, confirming the sense which orthodox writers have allowed: the eternity of effect. And if e great “example” of the doom of the un-godly is an “overthrow” or destruction by a so-called “eternal fire” in such admitted sense then where is the argument for taking the same phrase in Matthew 18:8; 25:41, in an infinitely different sense? We find no reason for this whatever. Rather the equivalent expression, already noted in Mark 9:43, 45, would of itself warrant the remark of Whately: “It would follow, if the correspondence [between literal fire and worms and their antitype] held good, that the fire figuratively so called, which is prepared for the condemn, is something that is really to destroy and put an end to them; and is called ‘everlasting’ or ‘unquenchable‘ fire, to denote’ that they are not to be saved from it, bat that their destruction is to be final.” (Future State, Lecture 8.)
The examples from the Scriptures of the eternity of effect will be given in connection with Mark 3:29 and Hebrews 6:2. Bat one parallel passage should here be noted: “For ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall bum forever.” (Jeremiah 17:4) Galovius, Grotius, and the Assembly’s Annotations, explain “forever” as meaning “for a long time.” But Lowth, one of the best commentators on Jeremiah, says: “That is, ‘Till you be consumed,” and refers to chapter 7:20; 15:14; 21:2; on the first of which places, ‘And it shall bum and not be quenched,” he says: “It shall make a total destruction,” referring to Deuteronomy 32:22; Psalm 89:46, and other places.
Mark 3:29: “He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.” Hebrews 6:2: “The doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection 6f the dead, and of eternal judgment.”
In Mark 3:20, there are various readings, of which sin, or guilt is adopted by the best critics. Thus Mr. Green, with the remark: The expression is peculiar, though possessing some special force in its peculiarity. By the word in Greek is properly signified than a single faulty act; and, accordingly, it not be combined with it in this its strict meaning.” (Developed Criticism, p. 40.) Yet the sense may be, not eternal sinfulness, or sinning, but: a sin or guilt that is never remitted; or, as Mareachall says: “Since the sinner hath never forgiveness, as the preceding words declare.” If eternal death in the literal sense is forgiveness, then, and not otherwise, does the passage imply the immortality of the lost.
The parallel passage in Matthew 12:32 brings out more plainly the Jewish distinction between forgiveness here and forgiveness hereafter.
Whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” We have already noticed the persuasion of the Jews that death would expiate for them all the sins of life, and give them a part in the world to come. This hope was not unlike the Romish doctrine of extreme unction. Yet against this fallacious hope protest was made not only by Christ, but in those fundamental principles of the Jewish faith to which appeal is made in Hebrews 6:2. There was to be an “eternal judgment,” a final and irreversible sentence.
But in neither passage is any thing said of eternal pain. The sin which incurred an adverse judgment might be strictly the “sin unto death” for which we are not bidden to pray, (1 John 5:16.) And the writings of the Jews sustain this view. Thus, in the Talmud, Jochanan Ben Zaccai speaks of the power and judgments of an earthly king as only temporary: “If he should slay me, that slaying would not be eternal.” “But if the King of kings shall be angry with me, his wrath is eternal; if he shall bind me, his bands are eternal; if he should slay me, his slaying is eternal.” (Berachoth, f. 28, 2.) Again it is said those guilty of certain sins “shall descend into Gehenna, and shall there be judged forever.” (Rosh Hashana, f. 17, 1.) On which Abarbinel, in his work on the “Summary of the Faith,” remarks: “Such are enormous sins and perverse deeds, which blind the eyes of the mind, and subvert the soul, so that he who commits them shall be cast out from the inheritance of the saints, which is the life of the world to come:” “ He that denies the resurrection of the dead shall not have part in the resurrection of the dead; for God rewards him with the same measure “ (Chapter 24). He had already said: “ Now the greatest reward is the world to come; and the heaviest punishment is extermination” (Chapter 1). In the. same chapter he makes a distinction much like that between the interest and the principal of a debt, of which the latter might be either remitted or exacted: A sinner who is an Israelite shall be punished according to his sin, yet shall have part in the world to come. But if a man shall not believe all these articles, he is already excluded from the lot of Israel, as a heretic and an Epicurean [infidel].”
So the Tahaud (Peyiah, § 1): “There are four things which are avenged of a man in this world, and yet the capital [of the sin] is reserved for the world that is to come.” And Maimonides: “The sages say. For three transgressions punishment is inflicted upon a man in this world, and moreover he has no share in the world that is to come; viz; idolatry, adultery, and bloodshed; but a bad tongue is equivalent to all these.” (Yad Hachazakah, Of the Temper, Chapter 7, § 3.) Again: “On all wicked [Israelites], though their sins be numerous, judgment is pronounced according to their sins, but they have a share in the world that is to come; for all Israel have a share in the world to come, though they have sunned; for it is said, ‘Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever;‘ which means, the land of life, or the world that is to come. Also, the pious of the Gentiles shall have a share in the world that is to come; These, however, [viz; heretics, they who deny the law, etc.], have no share in the world to come, but they are cut off, destroyed, and condemned forever and ever.” (Ibid., Of Repentance e. 3 § 11, 12.)
Thus speaks “The Eagle of the Jewish Doctors,” of whom it is said, with allusion to his given name: From Moses to Moses there was: none such as Moses; “ and who notoriously held the immortality of the righteous alone. Some reader may ask for his scriptural warrant in speaking of these destroyed: “as condemned forever and ever.”
The phrase “eternal judgment” in Hebrews 6:2, is explained by Theophylact, a Lapide, Newcome, Bloomfield, and Tholuck, by metonymy, as that of which the consequences ever continue. Tholuck refers to the phrases “eternal redemption” and “everlasting covenant” chapter 9:12; 13:20. The first of these is past all doubt an example of the eternity of effect; for the act or work of redemption is complete, and it is eternal strictly in its results. And if we turn to one of the many parallel passages in the Old Testament Numbers 18:19, we shall find how readily and freely the Jews used the word eternal. Because salt was thus token of a sacred, inviolate covenant, it is here called “eternal” by the Septuagiant translators, who render by “eternal salt.” Again, if the word “salvation” be taken in its strict sense of “deliverance” we may add the phrase “eternal salvation,” Hebrews 5:9, and Isaiah 45:17. In Revelation 14:6, we read of the “everlasting gospel,” which certainly is not to be forever preached and hence, as Poole and Barnes remark, is so called for its blessed and eternal effects; or, as De Wette explains, as “grounded upon the eternal decree of God and the eternal destiny of man.” In Psalm 9:6 is a clear example of an equivalent word in the sense of final: “Destructions are come to perpetual end; and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.”
These are examples in which the word “eternal” denotes no finality rather than the endless continuance of the subject to which it is applied. It is very aptly applied to the Greek word for “judgment” which may be in the literal sense critical or decisive. Thus a writer cited by Wetstein (on Jude 1:7) speaks of Constantine as having gained an “eternal victory” ; by which he plainly means a decisive victory, “conquering with the sword once, for a testimony without end.”
So in Mark 3:29 the guilt is aptly called because decisive of one’s destiny, mortal, fatal. The word then means, not to all eternity, but strictly, forever. And this phrase often appears in equivalent instances. Thus Psalm 9:5: “Thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name forever and ever.” Job 14:20: “Thou prevails forever against him, and he passes.” Chapter 23:7: “So should I be delivered forever from my judge.”
Chapter 4:20: “They perish forever.” Chapter 20:7; Psalm 9:18; 44:23: “Cast us not off forever.” (Compare Psalm 74:1; 77:7; 1 Chronicles 28:9; Lamentations 3:31.) Psalm 49:8: “It ceases forever.” Psalm 52:5: “God shall likewise destroy thee forever.” (Compare 92:7.) Psalm 77:8: “Is his mercy clean gone forever? doth his promise fail forevermore?” Psalm 83:17: “Let them be confounded and troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish.” Obadiah 1:10; “Thou shalt be cut off forever.” Micah 2:9; Philemon 1:15: “Receive him forever.”
In the Book of Enoch are several very plain instances of the eternity of effect, some of which Dr. Laurence has specially noted in his translation. Thus, “Even to the day of judgment, and of consummation, until the judgment the effect of which will last forever, be completed” (chapter 10:15; compare 19:2: “A judgment with which they shall be judged until they are consumed”). “Until the period of the great judgment; when all shall be punished and consumed forever” (24:9).
“They shall be cast into a judgment of fire; they shall perish in wrath, and by a judgment overpowering them forever.” (90:11; compare verse 13: “And blasphemers shall be annihilated every where”). An everlasting judgment, which shall be executed” (92:16). “The great judgment shall take effect forever and ever” (103:5). “Ye shall not be found like sinners; and eternal condemnation shall be far from you, so long as the world exists” (104:3).
However we explain Jude’s reference to Enoch (verse 14), the above expressions show that the following text proves no eternal suffering:
Jude verse 6: “The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
On which we may add Enoch 10:6-9: “Bind Azazyel hand and foot, cast him into darkness; and, opening the desert which is in Dudael, cast him in there. Throw upon him hurled and pointed stones, covering him with darkness; there shall he remain forever; cover his face that he may not see the light. And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire.” And chapter 10:17: “There shall they be taken into the lower depths of the fire in torments, and in confinement shall they be shut up forever. Immediately after this shall he (Samyaza) together with them, bum and perish.”
The phrase “everlasting chains” evidently denotes a confinement from which there is no release during ones life or existence, but not an eternal state. It is equivalent to the phrase “chains that can not be broken.” In a similar sense Apuleius speaks of “eternal fetters of deep love” (pedicis aetemis alligat, Metam. 1. 2.) Josephus (Wars, book 6, c 9, § 4) uses almost the same words in speaking of the tyrant John as condemned by the Romans to “eternal imprisonment. Valerius speaks of “punishment with eternal chains” in the same manner. And Cicero (Oration 4: in Catil., c 5) says that Catiline does not he8itid;e to commit “Publius Lentulus to eternal darkness and chains.” (See Wetstein, in loco.) Surely neither the orator nor the conspirator thought of hopeless chains in immortality.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-9: “And to you who are troubled, rest with us; when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”
“Everlasting destruction.” Strange that with no mention of the soul’s immortality it should be inferred from such a phrase that the soul will never perish. But “to be destroyed” and “to perish” are the same thing, expressed by the same Greek word, and each is “destruction.” The expressions “perish forever” (Job 4:20; 20:7; Psalm 9:18), “destroy forever” (Psalm 52:5; 92:7) are plainly equivalent. It were as proper to say that “perish forever” means “to be ever perishing and yet never perish,” as to say that “everlasting destruction” means an “eternal destroying of that which is never destroyed,” And if the passages are parallel, or even correspond as type and antitype, these interpretations must stand or fall together.
We conclude that here is another instance of “everlasting” denoting the eternity of effect. Such a destruction is one from which there is no recovery; it is irreparable, utter, complete. It is not “banishment,” as the expression is commonly understood and sometimes quoted. The phrase “from the presence,” etc., does not mean this; for the preposition does not denote separation but the origin or source of the destruction named. The same phrase occurs in Acts 3:19, where the idea of banishment would be absurd: “The times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.” It frequently occurs in speaking of the destruction of God’s enemies, by fire issuing from the divine presence, as in Leviticus 10:2; Numbers 16:35; 2 Kings 1:10, 12, 14; Revelation 20:9.
Compare Leviticus 9:24; Psalm 97:3; Isaiah 13:6: “The day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty;” and verse 9: “To lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.” These passages and the context sustain the view of Macknight, who says: “These wicked men, being raised from the dead, shall suffer punishment, even everlasting destruction, by fire issuing from the presence of the Lord.” And of Conybeare and Howson: “There shall go forth against them, from the presence of the Lord, and from the brightness of his glorious majesty, their righteous doom, even an everlasting destruction.” This view is supported by Chrysostom, CEcumenius, Euthymius, Theophylact, Bullinger (who explain of the facility with which the destruction is effected); by a Lapide, Beausobre and L’ Enfant, Castalio, Pellicanus, Vatablus, Cocceius, Grotius, Le Clerc, Estius, Bengel, Pelt, Bauragarten Crusius, Flatt, Storr, Poole, Hammond, Benson, Henry, Newcome; and allowed by Rosenmuller and De Wette.
Hammond explains the passage of “an utter destruction;” refers to Matthew 3:12 as denoting fire that “never goes out till it have burnt up all;” and adds: “Meanwhile not excluding the eternal torments of hell fire,” etc. Which proviso explains and proves nothing.
Matthew 25:46: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment; the righteous into life eternal.”
This is often taken as a “ruling” passage in support of the doctrine of eternal suffering, and therefore demands our special attention. At the outset we remark several objections against the inference. 1. The passage in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 is parallel describing the same judgment scene; and the “destruction” there named will as naturally define the “punishment” named here, as it will be defined by it. And more naturally, if rare words should be explained by words more common. 2. Granting, for argument’s sake, that “punishment” implies conscious suffering, it may be called “everlasting” with reference to its irreparable effect. Thus Psalm 83:17: “Let them be confounded and troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame and perish.”
3. The phrase “everlasting fire,” used in verse 41, as already shown, denotes the eternity of effect. Whether the expression in verse 46 be taken in the same sense or not, it should not disagree with it. 4. The life which is contrasted suggests that the punishment may be strictly death. Whereas the common view deduces immortality from that which is opposed to “life eternal.” 5. Various orthodox writers allow that final extinction would be an eternal punishment. 6. Besides these facts, which are more or less obvious, we hope to show that the word rendered “punishment” does not require the sense of conscious suffering.
We shall not at all insist on the acknowledged fact that the word “eternal” is often used in a limited sense. Yet we might show a strong or even satisfactory argument for such a limitation, if the passage were not better explained otherwise.
The common remark that the word is used in the absolute sense in the same verse, and that therefore the endless life of the righteous and the endless punishment of the wicked mast stand or fall together, is not valid; for the general sense of “lifelong,” or “during the continuance of the subject,” which the word doubtless bears, would admit a corresponding distinction in the future of those who “live forever” and those who “perish.”
Indeed, if the Greek means suffering, the limited sense, or else the “eternity of effect,” would be fairly suggested by verse 41, as already shown. Moreover, the same phrase precisely is used by Philo in speaking of a very limited duration. He says; “It is better not to promise at all, than not to render prompt assistance. For, in the former case, no blame follows; but in the latter, there is dissatisfaction from the weaker class, and a deep hatred and lasting punishment (mortal resentment?) from such as are powerful.” (Fragment Opp. II. 667, ed. Mangey.)
Nor shall we raise any question of the genuineness of the text. Yet if any one would rest an infinitely appalling doctrine on a word, one or two things should be said. Christ spoke not in Greek, but in Syrian-Chaldaic. And, granting the inspiration of the evangelist, no one can disprove — what many believe — that he wrote in Hebrew, and that the Greek of his Gospel is an uninspired translation.
And for the Greek the Ethiopic gives “their own,” or “ proper “ (suum); the old Latin version gives ignis (fire); and Augustine and others frequently read ambustionem or combustionem (burning); which shows how little the original term was then relied on. We submit, therefore, that the conjecture of Dr. Mangey, that the Greek (annihilation) is the true reading, was not “impious,” though Kavatc (burning), Kohtvoic (cutting off), or Kplatc (judgment), would be more plausible as a conjecture. But we would not seem to dislike the received text. Nor shall we detain the reader with various senses of the word kooic, such as “chastisement,” “restraint,” “abscission,” which have been proposed. (See Debt and Grace, pages 189, 190.)
But we may express our surprise that so wary a writer as Mr. Landis should give such countenance to the sense last named as he does, saying: “The final state of the lost is here designated by the singularly appropriate term; punishment by rejection or cutting off from or by deprivation of that happiness which the saved enjoy.” (Immortality of Soul, p. 480.) If for “happiness” Mr. L. had used Christ’s own word “life,” all that he adds about “going away into” such “deprivation” would not at all even suggest the immortality of these thus “cut off.” The sentence “depart” is solemn, dramatic, and contemplates not an abode in God s universe for the wicked, but an execution.
That suffering is here implied is strongly asserted by the writer in the New Englander, May, 1856, p. 171, who says Kokaau is a verbal noun, denoting action and not result, a noun of infliction. And this is argued from 1 John 4:18, where it occurs in the phrase “ fear hath torment; “ and from the Syriac, which gives in our passage a word rendered “ torment “ by Dr. Murdock.
But the Syriac will not prove the common view, even if it were an inspired version. For, the word rendered “torment” has also the more general sense of “ punishment,” or, as Latinized by Walton and White, “supplicium; “ and the verb also means to suppress submerge, suffocate, strangle. It is rendered “punish” by Dr. Murdock in Acts 4:21. And in 1 John 4:18 the Syriac uses another word, rendered “exists in peril.”
The Arabic also seems to have read “constraint,” which is preferred by Grotius and Schleusner. Hammond conjectures a similar word “hindrance.” Beausobre and L’ Enfant explain the received reading thus: “Fear hath punishment ever before its eyes.” The Vulgate gives simply paenam “punishment.” The translation in 1 John 4:18 by “torment” is nearly if not wholly without parallel, and is unsupported by the lexicographers. In Acts 4:21 the verb occurs, and the context favours the sense of punishment with a view to “restraint” and prohibition.
The word is used in one other place only in the New Testament, 2 Peter 2:9. Here it occurs as a participle in the present tense, rendered as future in our version: “The Lord knows how ... to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” But the future tense is no more required by the context than by the word. The 4th verse is plainly parallel; the participle “to be reserved” (kept) there used is also in the present tense; and the same verb is in the past tense in the similar passage, Jude verse 6. If then the verb has at all the sense of repress, or restrain, the obvious and grammatical rendering here would be, “to reserve the unjust confined, or restrained, unto the day of judgment.” Yet we shall not insist either on the sense of restraint, or on the present tense. We remark, however, that if the future tense be insisted on, that would indicate that the punishment begins with the judgment, and not before it. And then the final punishment may not be anguish of spirit, or any natural suffering, but something fatally different.
Since our word occurs but four times in the New Testament, we must look further for examples of its meaning. The Greek of the Old Testament offers for this purpose, and is of far more value than the classic writers, of whom the New Testament writers were comparatively ignorant. In the Septuagint we shall also include the Apocryphal books, which were Jewish, and some of them written before the time of Christ. The noun or verb is here found in several passages, as follows: —
Ezekiel 14:3, 4, 7; 43:11; 44:12 (marg.). Here it occurs as the equivalent of “stumbling-block.” Schlcusner explains the translation thus: “Whatever is the cause of misfortune or punishment is called in Scripture a ‘stumbling block.’ “ But the punishment threatened in chapter 14:8-10 is being “cut off” and “destroyed.”
Ezekiel 18:30: “So iniquity shall not be your ruin.” Compare verse 31; “Why will yo die?” and verse 32: “Live ye.”
2 Samuel 8:1: “David smote the Philistines, and subdued them.”
Proverbs 22:23: “For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.”
1 Esdras 8:24: “Whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the King, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to banishment (margin rooting out), or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.”
Wisdom 3:4: “Though in the sight of men they are punished, their hope is full of immortality.” For context see above, p. 47.
11:5: “For by what things their enemies [the Egyptians] were punished, by the same they in their need were benefited.” Compare verses 16, 19; 12:14, 15, 27; 16:1, 2, 9, 24; 18:11, 22.
14:4: “For a fatuity of which they [the Egyptians] were worthy brought them to this end; and they lost the remembrance of those things which had happened, that they might fill up the punishment which was wanting to their torments.”
14:10: Speaking of idol images and their worship: “That which was made, together with him who made it, shall be punished.” Comp. verse 13; “For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be forever.”
2 Maccabees 9:38: “ He put to death the sacrilegious wretch, the Lord repaying him his deserved punishment.” 6:14:” Nations, whom the Lord patiently expects until he shall punish them in the fullness of their sins.” See also 1 Maccabees 7:7; 3 Maccabees 1:3; 6:3; where the context shows that the punishment is death.
Here are twenty-eight examples of the use of the word, in not one of which it necessarily denotes torment; and in most of which the actual punishment was death. In one striking instance a lifeless block of wood is devoted to punishment. No other comment is needed than the question, Would Christ’s hearers, or the readers of the Greek of Matthew’s Gospel, familiar with such a use of the word, here put in connection with an apparently consuming fire, and in direct contrast with “life,” infer an immortality nowhere mentioned from Genesis to Revelation?
We have already observed how “life” and “death” in the literal sense are contrasted as “good” and “evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19). And if they are so when only temporary, they can be no less so when eternal. And De Wette remarks on Matt 25:46 2 “ Zoe (life) is perhaps not merely blessedness, but life in the most radical sense of the word; contrasted with it would be, properly, annihilation” It avails nothing to say that anguish is the opposite of joy. For, (1.) misery has not equal rights with happiness, in God’s universe. (2.) Death is the privation ofjoy, and thus as proper a subject of contrast. And (3.) “eternal life” not only implies endless joy, but is literally to “live forever;” and the opposite of this is, strictly, to be forever dead. Hence when Alford remarks that “here spoken of is not bare existence which would have annihilation for its opposite,” we need only reply that eternal life is eternal existence, to which extinction is opposite. And this contrast is the most natural one, if, as Fritzsche declares, the literal sense of “eternal life” is primary, and the notion of blessedness is accessory.
Nor will it avail to argue that utter extinction is not eternal punishment. For, however plausibly this might be argued on rational grounds, the scriptural argument would remain valid: Christ has called that an eternal which is elsewhere constantly called “destruction,” “perishing,” and “death.”
If the rational argument should seem to be made out it would rather follow, either that the “eternal” is so called for the eternity of its effect, as being a remediless doom, or that it is not to be rendered punishment, but by some other word. But we then reply, (1.) If thinking men have regarded extinction as eternal punishment, the Jews also may have done the same, and Christ might address them accordingly. And (2.) we have already observed that Jewish doctors have spoken of extermination as the greatest of all punishments.
And we add one or two proofs that the Jews in Christ’s time did conceive of death as an evil thing. In the Septuagint translation of Job 10:21, 22, which was in use among the Jews, is followed by the Vulgate and quoted by Calvin, we read: “Before I go and return no more, to a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death; a land of misery and darkness, where is the shadow of death, and no order, but eternal horror dwells.” Now we know that Job, in the depth of his anguish, desired death rather than life. And the Seventy translators certainly did not think that he contemplated eternal misery beyond the grave.
The passage can only portray the horror with which an eternal sleep of death was regarded by the Jews, la the same view, in Ezekiel 32:24, 25, 30, the enemies of Israel are spoken of as “enduring shame,” while they are described as “slain,” “fallen by the sword,” “ gone down to Sheol,” or to “ the pit,” and in their graves.
And in Isaiah 14:9-20 is an extended drama showing how deep a degradation it was, to the Jewish mind, to be in the doom of death.
Respecting the precise sense of the expressions “snares of death” (or of Sheol), “sorrows of death,” “ pains of death,” (2 Samuel 22:6; Psalm 18:4, 5; 116:3; Acts 2:24,) there is some dispute. Yet it is generally agreed that they refer, not to the pain of dying, but to the state of death. They imply that to be hopelessly dead is to be in an evil case.
All rational argument, therefore, to show that eternal can not be the death of the soul, we regard as irrelevant; and, if insisted on, as rationalistic Yet because it is often urged against our view, we will consider this objection also.
John 3:36: “Ho that believes on the Son hath everlasting life; and ho that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Here again the antithesis would suggest that they who do not see life shall strictly die. And the natural dramatism of which we have just seen the examples would justify us in supposing that God’s wrath abides on the lost in that it forbids their return to life and being. This would agree with the true sense of
Psalm 9:17: “ The wicked shall be turned back into Sheol, and all the nations that forget God.” i.e., their resurrection shall not be unto life; they have no escape from the grasp of death.
But while the words of the text admit this sense, the context and the commentators sustain another. See verses 18, 19. The world is condemned already; the believer finds pardon and life; upon the unbeliever the sentence of death remains, awaiting until it be executed. Thus Calvin: “I am not dissatisfied with the view given by Augustine, that the word ‘abides’ is used to inform us that from the womb we were appointed to death, because we were all born the children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). At least I willingly admit an allusion of this sort, provided we hold the true and simple meaning to be what I have stated, that death hangs over all unbelievers, and keeps them oppressed and overwhelmed in such a manner that they can never escape.” Here is nothing described beyond the judgment. And with this view agree Erasmus, Zanchius: “As a constant faith is a sign of election, so obstinate infidelity is a sign of reprobation; “ Perkins (On the Creed), Lightfoot, Gill: “Very remarkable are the following words of the Jews concerning the Messiah, whom they call the latter Redeemer: Whosoever believes on him shall live; but lie that believes not in him shall go to the nations of the world, and they shall kill him.” And Dr. G. adds, on the phrase in question: “The sentence will never be reversed, but will be executed.” See also Doddridge, Kuinoel, Alford.
Revelation 22:11: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”
This passage somewhat resembles the above, and we therefore examine it here, out of connexion with others in the Apocalypse. The elder Edwards, like many others, adduces it to support the view of eternal sinfulness. Yet even he remarks upon it: “Thus Christ takes leave of his Church till his last coming, warning them to improve the means of grace they have, and informing them that they are never to have any other.” (Works, I. 626.) This suggests the true sense, which is thus stated by the Venerable Bede: “Evil men are permitted to wax worse, or to reach the climax of wickedness, so they shall find God’s judgment to be just.” It is given more fully by Lowman: “The providence of God will indeed permit things to continue in this world, just as these things represent the state of them. Men of evil principles and corrupt hearts will continue in acts of injustice and oppression, and to promote false religion and wickedness, notwithstanding all the cautions of religion and judgments of Providence. Yet the cautions, directions, and encouragements of these prophecies, and the judgments of Providence foretold in them, will have a better effect on good minds, to their perseverance in truth, righteousness, and holiness.”
And the more critical examination of the principal words confines their import to the scenes of time. Thus Daubuz: “He that wrongs (or the unjust) denotes, in a peculiar manner, throughout this prophecy, the persecution and murder of the saints . . . ‘He which is filthy’ seems principally to denote those who shall be guilty of idol worship.. .”. These prophecies will be of great use, as they shall contribute to the constancy of the righteous and the holy, though they should not effect a general reformation in the world; though men of evil principles and wicked hearts shall still remain persecutors and idolaters.” This view is supported by the Syriac and Arabic versions; by Rosenmuller, who cites similar expressions from the classic writers; by De Lyra, Cornelius a Lapide, Beausobre and L’ Enfant, Eichhorn, Hengstenberg, Bullinger, Brightman, Henry More, Cradock, Bishop Walmesley (Pastorini), Poole, Henry, Andrew Fuller, Bishop Newcome, Bloomfield, Jenks, Stuart.
2 Peter 2:17: “These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom is reserved the mist of darkness forever.”
Jude 1:13: “Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”
The Syriac renders the passage in Jude: “Shooting stars,” Etc. And the allusion to meteors or comets is favored by Beausobre and L’ Enfant, Bretschneider, Arndt, Stier, De Wette, Bloomfield, Gardiner. The figure seems to be that of eternal extinction. So in the Book of Enoch, 91:3: “Sin shall perish in eternal darkness, nor be seen from this time forward forevermore.” And compare Proverbs 24:20: “The candle of the wicked shall be put out.” As we have already observed, Gehenna is associated with the notion of darkness. Thus the Targum on 1 Samuel 2:9: “The wicked shall be avenged in Gehenna, in darkness.” And on Psalm 37:20: “ Like fowls, fattened and afterwards killed, so shall the wicked perish and be consumed in the smoke of Gehenna.” The terror of eternal night, even aside from the notion of punishment, is finely depicted in the Septuagint and Vulgate of Job 10:21, 22, as above, p. 128.
These passages, and others that might be adduced, show good reason for taking the phrase in question as synonymous with the “Chaos and old Night” which was only another name for non-existence. And the dramatism involved in and connected with it might be offered as further argument for our view of Matthew 25:46, if that were at all needed.
Luke 16:23: “And in hell (Hades) ho lifted up his eyes, being in torments; and sees Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” Verse 26: “And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they which would pass from hence to you can not; neither can they pass to us that would come from thence.”
The distinction between Hades and Gehenna has been often remarked by biblical writers; and the passage itself, in what is said of the “five brethren” as still living, shows that here is no description of the final state. “Abraham’s bosom,” says Trench, “is not heaven, though it will issue in heaven; so neither is ‘Hades‘ hell, though it will issue in it, when death and Hades shall be cast into the lake of fire, which is the proper hell. (Revelation 20:14.)” (Notes on the Parables, p. 379). And Olshausen: “The distinction here drawn between Hades and Gehenna is essential to the understanding of many obscure passages. The ancient church, which firmly maintained the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, acknowledged this distinction without qualification. It lies also at the foundation of the rabbinical writings.” And we may add that there are traces of this very parable in these writings, indicating that Christ derived it from the Jews, who were certainly not likely to copy it from him. And as a parable the passage may be simply representative of general truth, and in itself purely dramatic, as is Isaiah 14:9-20. But at the most the words describe no more than do the “ everlasting chains “ of Jude 1:6, which bind unto the day of final judgment Accordingly, Olshausen remarks: “Rightly to understand the whole delineation, we must above all keep clearly in view that it is not everlasting salvation or condemnation which is here described, but the middle state of departed souls between death and the resurrection.” He afterwards repeats: “In our parable, therefore, there can be no possible reference to the everlasting condemnation of the rich man.”
We need not here examine the arguments by which some have indirectly inferred the immortality of the lost from the passage. This we have done elsewhere, showing, we trust, that whatever inequality of sufferings among the lost before the judgment may be supposed to accrue, even then the eternity and infinity of their sufferings would not follow; but such reasoning would involve far greater difficulties than those it seeks to relieve — which can be no difficulties whatever with God.
“The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Does it imply Eternal Future Suffering?” In this pamphlet, p. 11, and in “Debt and Grace,” p, 206, we suggest that the sense of Psalm 9:17 is, “The wicked shall be turned back into Sheol,” etc., i.e., they shall not escape the grasp of death. We find this view supported by R. Bechai, on the Pentateuch, f. 171, 3; cited by Eisenmengery. Entdiecktes Judenthum, II. 314.
2 Peter 2:4: “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.”
This passage is almost identical with that in Jude, verse 6, already examined. The word rendered “hell” is neither Hades nor Gehenna but the Greek for Tartartis made into a verb. The knowledge of this original, the force of the prevailing view, and the influence of Milton’s Paradise Lost, have promoted the belief that the final punishment of the lost is now being endured by the fallen angels; and “Tartarus” becomes, if not the lowest Gehenna, at least a living pandemonium.
But the passage itself declares that these angels are “reserved into judgment,” and we should ask, Do the Scriptures inform us where they now are? The answer is at hand. Satan, their acknowledged leader, is called “the prince of the power (or host) of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). He is said to go to and fro in the earth, and to walk up and down in it (Job 1:7). He is a roaring lion, walking about, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). We read also of a warfare against “spiritual wickedness in high places,” or wicked spirits in the skies (Ephesians 6:12).
And the passage so often quoted for proof of Satan’s eternal suffering (Revelation 20:10) shows that he will not be consigned to it until a full thousand years after he is bound in the “ bottomless pit,” or the abyss, and even that restraint is still future.
The English reader may then safely infer that the Tartarus of which Peter speaks is not Gehenna, however Plato (Republic 1. 10) or any one else may have used the word. It can yield no argument whatever for the common view. Yet we may show with what latitude the term has actually been used. Suidas gives as a definition, “The place in the clouds.”
Cudworth remarks that the same word is used by Apollodorus and other Greek writers, “when they speak of the Titans being cast down from heaven; which seems to have been really nothing else but this fall of angels poetically mythologized. And,” he adds, “by Tartarus here, in all probability, is meant this lower caliginous air, or atmosphere of the earth, according to that of St. Austin (De Genesis ad Lit., 1. 3, 100:10) concerning these angels: ‘That after their sin they were thrust down into the misty darkness of this lower air.’ “ (Intel50:Syst., III. 363.) Augustine also says, on Psalm 148: “The devil was condemned to that murky region, that is, to the atmosphere.” And Jerome remarks on Ephesians 6:12: “For this is the opinion of all the doctors, that the air, which divides between the earth and heaven, 1:full of contrary powers.” Which statement is confirmed by Petavius (De Angelis, 1. 3, 100:4). (Ecumenius speaks of Satan as “the prince of evil spirits that are in the air.”
And Windet, citing the varied use of the term, concludes: “We should say, then that the angels that sinned are exiled from that region of light in which they formerly dwelt; and are detained in the dark and murky atmosphere, just as criminals are bound with chains in a prison.” (De Statu Vita Funct., § 13, p. 266.) See also Parkhurst, on the word; Whitby, Macknight, and Clarke, on the passage; and Wetstein on Jude, verse 6.
Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34: “Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?” Matthew 8:29: “Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? “ Comp. Mark 5:7; Luke 8:28.
The latter passage shows again that the evil spirits or daemons are not now in Gehenna, and goes to confirm the dramatic character of the parable in Luke 16:19-31. For if these spirits were not yet in their torment, why should the rich man be in his, ere his final judgment? But, not to insist on this, we observe that a constructive argument is based on these two passages to show that wicked spirits will not perish from being.
The question, “Art thou come to destroy us?” is supposed to require a negative answer; and it is inferred that they who ask it will never be destroyed, but their final punishment will be simply torment.
But in this argument the word“ destroy“ is taken in its literal sense, which is a good precedent for its being so taken elsewhere; and we shall then infer that wicked men will be finally thus destroyed. (Matthew 10:28; 21:41; Acts 3:23; Romans 9:22; Philippians 3:19; 2 Thessalonians 1:9.) But though Jesus did not then “come to destroy” the demons, we can not infer their immortality. The question which they asked in their trepidation can bear no such argument. It may equally mean: “Art thou come to destroy us before the time?” Just as a convict under sentence of death may ask of his jailor coming in unexpectedly, “Are you come to lead me to execution?”
i:e., before the time. And in the account given by Mark of apparently the same transaction recorded in Matthew 8:29, the words are: “I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.” And in that by Luke; “ I beseech thee, torment me not.” In all the accounts an untimely and tormenting destruction may be the thing deprecated; and this view alone, so far as we can see, will reconcile them all.
Romans 2:8, 9: “But unto them that arc contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness; indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil; of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile.”
From this passage a reviewer in the Methodist Quarterly (July, 1858, pp. 413, 414) endeavours to support the received view. “We are not certain that he cites the phrase “every soul of man that doeth evil” as applying to the soul in distinction from the body. This is done by some writers; but Do Wette remarks that if this were the sense we should have read, “upon the soul of every man,” or, “every soul of men.” Thus likewise Wetstein, Estius, Alford, Tholuck, S. H. Turner. Compare Romans 13:1. In Acts 3:23 orthodox writers would be slow to admit that “soul” denotes the immaterial nature in man, instead of “person.”
If, now, the “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish,” were here called eternal, our reviewer might press his argument.
But the fact that they are not called eternal, in so vivid a description of God’s judgment, and while the contrasted “life” is called “eternal” (verse 7), is very significant. Moreover in the same close connection “immortality” is spoken of as a thing to be attained; in chapter 1:32 “death” is named as the penalty of God’s law; and in chapter 2:12 we read: “As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law.” We can only infer that the “indignation, wrath,” etc., are the natural concomitants and tokens of death to those who are “judged by the law.”
THE APOCALYPSE.
It is ever a delicate matter for those who regard a received doctrine as unscriptural, to criticise the canonical claims of any book. We therefore say at the outset that we are not going to deny the canonical character of the Apocalypse. But when a reviewer, as cited above, p. 71, plants a chief comer-stone of argument in that book, it is proper that the reader should know the facts of which biblical critics are generally aware.
If such a passage as Revelation 20:10 is indeed imperial, requiring hundreds of other apparently plain passages to be taken in a metaphorical sense, the book which contains it should lead all other scriptural books in authority, if not in time. But it comes not only among the latest in time; it also stands last in place because it followed all others in its early authority, and was last admitted into the canon of the Scriptures. At the close of the second century, when several other “ disputed “ books, or minor epistles, called antilegomena, had been received, the Apocalypse with the epistle to the Hebrews was still questioned — the latter for its authorship only, the former for its genuineness also. It was opposed by Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, and others, and its authority was generally doubted in the Greek Church.
In the Syrian churches, though not rejected, it was not publicly read, and comparatively few copies were made. In the “ Canons “ attributed to the Apostles, it alone is omitted, while two epistles of Clement are included. (See Apostolic Constitution, b. 8, chapter 46, § 85.) “ Eusebius expresses himself in an undecided way respecting it (Ecclesiastical History, book 3, chapters 24, 25), for which it is difficult to account, on the supposition that the prevalent tradition attributed it to the Apostle John.”
It attained its full place in the canon in A. D. 393, when the different collections of the New Testament books were formed into one, at the council of Hippo.
At the period of the reformation it was again rejected or decidedly questioned by Erasmus, Luther, Carlstadt, Zwingli, OEcolampadius, and Bucer. Zwingli says, in one of his disputes: “I do not cite the Apocalypse, for it is not a biblical book.”
Some have supposed it was written not by the Apostle John, but by a presbyter of that name, or else by the evangelist John Mark. “Others think that a disciple of John undertook to write on a subject which he had received from the Apostle, and that he thought himself justified in introducing his instructor as the speaker, because he wrote in his manner. So Ewald, Lucke, Schott, and Neander.” The authenticity of the book has been also opposed by Semler, Michaelis, Bretschneider, De Wette, Bleek, and others. “On the continent the prevailing current of opinion, if not in favour of the presbyter, is at least against the Apostle. In England the latter is still regarded as the writer, more perhaps by a kind of traditional belief than as the result of enlightened examination.” Thus speaks Dr. Davidson, who does not doubt the apostolic authorship of the book. (See Kitto’s Cyclopaedia, art. Apocalypse.)
We state these facts freely because they are better told by those who accept the canon as it stands. We shall not at all question the inspiration of any “disputed” book. We think it better, in the spirit of that legal reform which invites the jury to hear and weigh the testimony of all witnesses, that the people should understand all the facts so far as they can. These facts do not warrant the rejection of any book. But they do specially warrant in respect to the Apocalypse the distinction which Lardner makes between the undisputed and the disputed books.
Of the former he says: “These only should be of highest authority, from which doctrines of religion may be proved.” While the latter“ should be allowed to be publicly read in Christian assemblies, for the edification of the people; but not to be alleged, as affording, alone, sufficient proof of any doctrine.” (Credibility, SuppL, 100:2, § 4.)
As we have already intimated, we name these facts from no doctrinal bias; for the apocalyptic phrase, “second death,” accords with our view, and we think the book is consistent with itself. Yet if any one fears that there must be a loose or a strained interpretation of the Scriptures somewhere, the Apocalypse is the book of all others which forbids a rigid interpretation. It is confessedly the most obscure of all the Scriptures. There is no other book so abounding in symbolic language and description, so full of vivid imagery, so little admitting the literal sense of its words. There is no book the reading of which needs to be so tempered with the moral and spiritual instruction of the other Scriptures.
Whence, apparently, the remark of Calvin, who professed not to understand it: Delirum aut invenit, aut facit: It either finds a man mad, or it makes him such.” And its doctrine of the Millennium, so easily perverted into Chiliasm, was the strongest early objection against it.
But the hope of a “restitution of all things” in which sin, Satan, and all evil shall be wholly done away, now most prevails among Millenarians, who specially prize this book. It only remains to show that their glorious hope is not forbidden, but is rather supported, by the remaining passages alleged to show the immortality of the lost.
Revelation 14:10, 11: “Shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receives the mark of his name.”
Moses Stuart says that the phrase, “before the holy angels,” etc,, “must refer the punishment in question to the future world.” But nothing is yet said of the resurrection or final judgment; much of the phraseology suggests an application of the passage to the scenes of time, and the context confirms this view. The third angel, to be followed by four others, denounces woe upon those that worship the beast; i.e., upon those who practice idolatry. See chapter 22:11, as explained above. In the mingling of mercy with judgment the “everlasting gospel” had just been proclaimed (verse 6). Because the time is one of unprecedented distress, trying “the patience of the saints,” they are “blessed who die in the Lord, from henceforth,” — saved from the evil to come (verses 12, 13; comp. Isaiah I7:1; see Wetstein, Cocceius, Hammond, Newcome, Stuart). The chapter closes with an account of “blood, even unto the horse-bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.” The language upon which Stuart insists is the dramatic feature which, throughout the book, opens heaven as a witness to the warfare between good and evil on the earth.
This view is sustained by Daubuz, one of the most learned and able expounders of the book, who says that “Christ is peculiarly named because he is the chief actor and party concerned in this matter,” etc.; and the expression signifies, “according to the cognizance and sentence which God and Christ have pronounced.” He cites the phrase “evil before the Lord,” and Genesis 6:11; 19:13; Proverbs 5:21; Luke 15:18; Revelation 12:10.
The same expositor, who is very orthodox, explains the phrase “fire and brimstone” thus: “A fire made of brimstone, and therefore unquenchable, continual, and forever.... The fire is the symbol of the manner, the brimstone of the extent or perpetuity. This shows that the very common people, the subjects of the beast, or members of the corrupted church, shall be tormented during all the time of their idolatry. For they shall not prosper therein, though by their compliance with the false prophet they think to escape misery and persecution. Their idolatry will cause God to send them continual torments, that every individual of them shall feel the effects of their crimes. Thus judgment begins with them.”
He refers to chapter 9:5, where he says the word “torment” has always special reference to fire, “because torments, by way of trial upon malefactors, were for the most part performed with fire. From which reason you have in this book particularly many instances of smoke, fire, and brimstone, joined with torment.”
He connects it with the Hebrew balagh, “to absorb, swallow, or devour, as fire doth; and by consequence to destroy. Whence come the frequent comparisons or expressions of fire ‘devouring;’ as in Psalm 21:10; 50:3; Judges 9:15; Isaiah 9:18; 10:17; 33:11; Jeremiah 5:14; Deuteronomy 4:24; 9:3. So that we may see why torment by fire, in the metaphorical way, or symbolical language, is used so frequently to signify destruction and desolation.”
He also refers to chapter 9:17, where with great learning he strangely blends the common view with the exposition we have given of “unquenchable fire,” and gives among other examples this from the Sibylline Oracles: “Thou shalt be utterly destroyed with naphtha and pitch, and brimstone, and much fire, and shalt be a smoke ascending forever;” which is said of the destruction of Rome or of Italy. This will specially illustrate our next passage, chapter 19:3.
Having spoken of the “smoke ascending” as an allusion to the holocaust, he adds: “By the expression ‘forever and ever’ is to be understood, during the continuation of the subject; that is whilst the beast and the false prophet have adherents, they shall have a perpetual torment, without intermission, which shall be like a continual sacrifice.” The words which we have Emphasized he repeats on the next phrase: “The torments of these men shall last all along the continuation of their sin.” “The divine justice doth not linger about them. I confess that these judgments may and ought to be understood to fall upon them in this life; for these parts of the prophecy concern the militant state of the church, and the visible judgments of God upon them that are enemies to it.”
Such is his explanation of the passage; and the reader will say if it is not sufficient and full. That he should immediately proceed to say that the words “infer also the divine judgment in another” life; that the “rewards of a happy rest can not be justly given to God’s enemies, and therefore these torments must also extend to another life,” — the reader will say whether this explains or proves any thing.
Revelation 19:3: “And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up forever and ever.”
This is said of “Babylon,” which is another name for the idolatrous polity mentioned in chapter 14:11. But the context shows that it is utterly destroyed. See chapter 18:8-10, 15, 18, 21. “She shall be utterly burned with fire,” and “shall be found no more at all.” Her desolation strikes terror into the hearts of those who were seduced by her; they “bewail her, and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for fear of her torment.” What is this torment — of a city “utterly burned with fire”? The dramatic character of the whole passage warrants the view that it is the condition of utter destruction itself. In a passage before referred to, Ezekiel 32:24, 25, 30, where the condition of literal death is clearly described, the phrase “enduring shame” is rendered in the Septuagint by “torment.” The figure of “smoke ascending” is borrowed from the destruction of the cities of the plain (Genesis 19:28), and was already employed by Isaiah in describing the desolations of Edom: “The streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become pitch. It shall not be quenched, night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up forever and ever; from generation to generation shall it lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever” (34:9, 10). Upon which Poole remarks: “It shall be irrecoverably ruined, and shall remain as a spectacle of God’s vengeance to all succeeding ages.”
Daubuz illustrates this view by citations from Homer (Illiad, 21:522), Virgil (Aeneid, 3:2, 3), and Seneca (Consol :ad Polyb. Chapter 1), and says: “So then the smoke ascending forever and ever is not to signify a continual burning; but, by a metonymy of the efficient for the effect, to signify that it is burnt forever, and never to be restored.” This derivation of the language is sustained by Ribera, Cocceius, Eichborn, Hengstenberg, Cradock, Hammond, Bp. Newton, A. Fuller, Lowman, Thos. Reader, Clarke, Stuart, and denied, perhaps, by none. That one of these (Hengstenberg) should take the language in either passage as “an image of the torments of hell” in the common view, is simply to assume the point in question; to explain no word and to prove no thing. It strangely deduces an immortal life from the imagery of desolation and death.
Revelation 19:20: “And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which ho deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.”
Chapter 20:14: “And Death and hell (Hades) were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”
We here introduce two passages as being closely connected with Revelation 20:10: the first naming two companions of Satan’s final punishment; and both naming its place and method, and perhaps showing its nature.
And we find various writers explaining these passages as denoting that the Beast, the False Prophet, Death, and Hades, are utterly destroyed and come to an end. Thus Hammond says, on chapter 19:20: “The Roman Idolatry, and the Magic, and Auguries, and the Divinations of the heathen Priests, that had deceived the carnal Christians so far as to consent and comply with the heathenish idolatry, were to be like Sodom and Gomorrah, utterly extirpated.” And Daubuz: “He will not only destroy at last the persons who at that time are in possession of what is signified by the Beast and False Prophet, but utterly extirpate the succession of the tyranny and false prophecy forever.” And on the phrase, “fire burning with brimstone,” he adds: “ That is, into an everlasting destruction, a fire unquenchable, as that which is lighted and entertained with brimstone; and no wonder, seeing brimstone is a symbol of everlasting and irreparable destruction.” And Lowman: “Burning alive is one of the most terrible executions; being cast into a lake or pit of fire, burning with brimstone images in the mind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah who are recorded as examples of perpetual destruction, from which they can never possibly recover themselves.” And Andrew Fuller: “ Neither political nor ecclesiastical bodies as such can be literally cast into a place of torment; . . . they may, however, be cast into perdition so as never to rise any more; which may be the whole of what is intended.” Dr. Henry More (1680): “Their idolatrous power and tyranny was abolished and consumed.”
Cradock (London 1696) says: “Their idolatrous power and tyranny were utterly destroyed.” And Pirie: “The False Prophet of John is the little horn of Daniel; and both Daniel and John have assured us that this power will continue united with the beast, until both be destroyed together. ‘These both were cast alive into a lake of fire,’ says John. ‘ I beheld, even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame,’ says Daniel, chapter 8:11.” And Frere: “Infidelity and Popery are here finally destroyed together.” And Jones: “The whole antichristian system, power, or party, shall be so completely cast into perdition. . . that it shall never rise any more.” Reverend S. Scott: “ A perfect annihilation of all power adverse to the gospel.” And Albert Barnes: “The whole scene is symbolical — meaning that the destruction of these powers would be as complete as if they were thrown into such a burning lake.”
Revelation 20:14 is explained by Bede, on chapter 21:4, “There shall be no more death;” thus: “For Death was before said to be cast into the lake of fire.” And by Maldonat, cited by a Lapide: “ Death and Hades shall be no more.” Beausobre and L’ Enfant say: “A very elegant figure by which Death is compared to a tyrant holding men under his power, and who is to be destroyed. 1 Corinthians 15:54, 55.” Hammond says: “And then death itself was destroyed eternally.” Dr. Campbell: “The death which consists in the separation of the soul from the body, and the state of souls intervening between death and judgment, shall be no more.” And Arch Bishop Newcome: “Death was abolished. 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54.” And Stuart: “These tyrants must now become extinct, or die so as to live and act no more.” D. N. Lord, regarding death “as the place of the unburied dead,” says: “The dejection of death and the grave into that lake denotes that no place of the dead is any more to exist on earth.” Cumming says: “Hades, or the state of separation of soul and body, and death, the last enemy, is cast into Gehenna, or the lake of fire.” De Wette remarks: “The representation, that Death and Hades are treated in the same manner with the two Beasts and Satan, includes two particulars: (1). The annihilation of their power; compare 1 Corinthians 15:26; Isaiah 25:8. (2). Since death is the consequence of sin, which is punishable; so is the power of Death regarded as guilty, and its annihilation as punishment.” Dusterdieck, the continuator of Meyer, takes Death and Hades as personified, and “ their eternal removal (Isaiah 25:8; 1 Corinthians 15:26) a presupposing of the eternal life of the blessed (chapter 21:4).” Likewise A. Barnes. And Nitzsch: “The idea of annihilation becomes more prominent when we consider that even Death and Hades (which shall absolutely be no more), are cast into the lake of fire.” (Christian Doctrine, § 219, note 3.)
That some of these writers should infer, from the extinction of Hades, the immortality of the lost as well as the saved, involves such contradictions that one instance is worthy of a note.
The reasoning of Daubuz on verse 14, in which he is followed by Stuart, is very remarkable: “As ‘second death‘ signifies irrecoverable damnation to wicked angels and men, so to Death and Hades it signifies an absolute cessation of the effects which we see the present Death and Hades hare upon men; and consequently, that those who are not condemned to the same state, but doomed to live, shall never again be liable to the like effect, which this Death and Hades had once upon their persons; the very principle of Death being itself destroyed.”
In other words, Mr. D. takes this as a very circuitous way of implying what the Scriptures never name: that the wicked are immortal. But he must say that they are “not condemned to tho same state,” though they are expressly indicated or declared to be the subjects of the same “second death” in chapter 2:11; 20:6; 21:8, and are said to be cast into the same “lake of fire,” in chapter 20:15; 21:8; compare Matthew 18:8; 25:41; Revelation 19:20; 20:10. Mr. D. in fact says that of the wicked which is all along designed of the righteous with the change of a single word: “They are not condemned to the same fate, but appointed to live.”
Strangest of all is the view of Alcasar, adopted by a Lapide, that Death and Hades are appointed to Gehenna, not to be destroyed, but to torment eternally God’s enemies! Dr. Post gives the same view with emphasis: “With them far ever to dwell on them endlessly to raven!” (New Englander, May, 1856, p. 205.)
Revelation 20:10: “ And the devil that deceived them was east into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false prophet are; and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
We think the argument for tho eternal misery of all finally impenitent men and women is reduced to this single passage. And from this it is only inferential, depending on the effect of the “eternal fire” which is the common destination of Satan and the wicked (Matthew 25:41). Let us inquire whether the passage shall annul all the apparent reasons we have discovered for immortality through Christ alone; and seated on a throng of symbols, shall overrule the obvious sense of hundreds of other passages; — or, may it bb fairly interpreted in accordance with those reasons and that obvious sense?
1 . What signifies “the lake of fire and brimstone?” These terms, “fire” and “brimstone,” are first connected in the account of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah Genesis 19:34; and all the allusions to this overthrow indicate a proper destruction. The terms recur in Psalm 11:6: “Upon the wicked shall he rain snares, fire and brimstone, arid an horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup.” With which compare Revelation 21:8, and see if both passages do not denote a proper destruction. The terms occur again in Ezekiel 38:22: “An overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone;” — another picture, like Revelation 14:10, already explained of desolation and destruction. The terms occur once more in Revelation 19:20, denoting by very general consent a final destruction. Why should the same terms be used just once, denoting torment without destruction?
But if this is not a part of the final judgment, then the event connected with it (verse 10) may so long precede the final judgment that the phrase “for ages of ages” may apply to the interval. We give this not as our own view, but to meet the views of others. Mr. Barnes thinks “it is possible that there will be a long period of continued prosperity and peace between the events stated in verses 9, 10, and the final judgment, as stated in verses 1115.” If so, it can begin not far later than the period named in chapter 14:11; 19:3; where the same phrase, “forever and ever,” occurs, and the period is doubtless limited, as in Isaiah 34:10, which is a very similar passage. And we have found “during the continuation of the subject” admitted as a sense of the phrase.
5. If the phrase were insisted on as denoting an absolute eternity, it might denote the eternity of effect, as we have seen in Psalm 83:17.
6. But if the phrase “day and night” be taken to denote the continuation of torment, and this absolutely “forever and ever,” here are two things assumed which can not be proven.
2. That the phrase “day and night” does not of itself qualify and limit the import of the following phrase.
Yet even granting these assumptions, the dramatic use of the word “torment,” specially suitable to the symbolic character of the book, is too well supported by other passages to allow its literal sense against all other Scripture. See Job 10:21, 22, as cited above (p. 128), and Ezekiel 32:24, 25, 30, where in the Septuagint this very word 6uaavoc is applied to the state of death. So in Wisdom 3:1: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and torment may not touch them;“ where the context shows that the “ torment” is death. And Ecclesiasticus 21:10, 11: “The congregation of sinners is like tow heaped together, and the end of them is a flame of fire. The way of sinners is made plain with stones; and in their end is hell, and darkness, and pains.” See also the extended drama in Isaiah 14:9-20.
7. We have alluded to the phrase “eternal fire“ as the link in the argument by which the immortality of the lost is deduced from the supposed immortality of Satan. But, besides all our other proofs, we think we have shown by orthodox opinions and otherwise that this very phrase denotes an utter and irreparable destruction. Hence the true force of Matthew 25:41, linked with the whole mass of proof that the wicked will truly perish, is to show, not that they will endlessly suffer with Satan, but that Satan will be utterly consumed with them. In other words, that he will “be confounded and troubled forever and ever; yea, be put to shame, and perish.”
ETERNAL DEATH IS ETERNAL PUNISHMENT
We confess to some impatience with the reasons offered to show that extinction is no punishment, or is even an end of punishment, which are substantially as follows: —
We are free to say that we have tried to state these arguments so they Would refute themselves. The last named we will not here treat, but refer to our examination of it in “Debt and Grace,” pp. 884 885. To the others we reply: —
(I.) If man had never been raised high above the dead level of non-existence, and were no candidate for that which is infinitely better, then a return to it would be no loss. Death would then be “a debt of nature,” marking the fall tale of man’s enjoyments and settling all his accounts.
It would be no punishment because inevitable. No one is to be blamed for submitting to a relentless fate. If such were death, then it would be simply an eternal sleep. But the French atheists did not call it thus until they had voted away all hope of immortality. And when our opponents seek to put into our mouths the Epicurean maxim, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” — they forget that Paul used it as the proper language of despair. And we may paraphrase his own words: “If in this life only we have hope, after dreaming of immortality, we are of all creatures most pitiable. The gods have tantalized and mocked us; the unthinking and contented brutes have fared better.”
But if extinction is a cutting off of immortality, it is eternal punishment forevery reason that makes capital execution penal, lie is a fool who regards a deserved death on the gallows as no worse than natural death. But judicial death is simply the privation of life. It cuts one off from so many years of life which he might have lived. The sentence declares that he shall become “dead, dead, dead,” disclaiming all thought of infliction beyond: “And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.” The punishment which the law contemplates is strictly, premature, deserved, ignominious death, and nothing else.
And the punishment of the criminal may be said to cover all that period of life which is taken from him. Hence a certain inequality of punishment according to the age at which a criminal pays the forfeit of his life. And by the same rule he who dies a death eternally premature, for his sin against God, incurs eternal punishment. And if he shall congratulate himself beforehand on being finally dead, his unnatural fondness for death makes it no less an infinite penal loss.
But, says the metaphysician, to be annihilated is to become nothing, and nothingness can not be punished. Punishment requires a subject, which, in annihilation, does not exist. We are told that, “If no person is punished, there is no punishment. If no person is aware that ho is punished, there is no punishment.” The same writer finds absurdity in “an infliction of everlasting non-existence;” as if non-existence could not be a lasting state. (Bibliotheca Sacra, January 180, p. 114.) Yet he docs not end his paragraph without falling into the very absurdity which he alleges against our view. “Annihilation,” he says, “might more fitly be called an eternal deliverance from punishment.” “Eternal deliverance”? That requires a subject, and we will apply his own reasoning. “If no person is delivered, there is no deliverance. If there is no person who may be aware that ho is delivered, there is no deliverance.” But this will not be insisted on. Annihilation certainly would be deliverance from any thing worse than itself. And it is punishment so long as it “lasts” if it deprives one of holy blessedness which had been within reach. And as to consciousness, to insist on this is to forget tho old and frequent distinction between the “punishment of sense”, and the “punishment of loss,” which was applied to this very question by some of the writers whom we shall presently cite. And Chrysostom makes the loss of more account than the pain. “Hell is intolerable.” he confesses, “indeed exceedingly unendurable; yet it seems to me more intolerable to have failed of the kingdom.” (Epistle ad Philippians, Capitulo 4: Hornily 8.)
But the argument to which we ore replying seems to confound two very different things. To be reduced to nothing is far more than to have never been. That which never existed, or absolute nothingness, can not be punished. But created man is more than that; and his probation for immortality gives to annihilation an infinite significance which docs not belong to the uncreated. The never-existent is no subject of annihilation; but the extinguished soul is. Where existence has once obtained, all words which commemorate it are proper. If the condemned soul were degraded to an immortal brute, there would be an eternal punishment, and tho brutish unconsciousness of the fact would be deemed by many an aggravation of the case. If we mistake not, this is the Hindu notion of punishment — a penal degradation of souls in transmigration. But suppose the soul were reduced to a block; or that, still existing, it were utterly lifeless; would the completeness of its death bring a state of impunity? And if the lifeless soul were then removed from the universe as unfit for a place in it, would that be deliverance from doom, or its hopeless and eternal consummation?
The application of strong language to that which has lost existence is so natural that we need give but a single example, exactly in point, from a, writer least likely to concede any thing in the argument. Confuting the view that the death of the body destroys the soul, he says: “ To what end should the wicked, once annihilated be thus ‘raised?‘ Is it to suffer the penalty of God’s law? But this they have already suffered; they are still suffering.” The italics are ours. We simply add, the extinct who might have existed forever are proper subjects both of annihilation and of discourse.
I. P. Warren, “Sadducee-ism; a Refutation of the Doctrine of the Final Annihilation of the Wicked;“ p. 46. This writer can bear with no sort of materialists, though eminent theologians have said they may be good Christians. Hence he denounces as Sadducees those who hold the existence of angels and other spirits, and who daily speak of the resurrection of the dead. In the rigor of his orthodoxy, he interprets the resurrection in a style which many have deemed destructive of Christ’s argument for it, and which Justin Martyr declared a heresy. He reports as materialists writers who are not such; glossing the scriptural words which they quote, with a sense which they disown and oppose. (P. 10.) Thus he disguises, and otherwise ignores, the fact that Christians not materialists have held the doctrine be “refutes;” leaving to his readers the narrow choice between materialism and belief in endless woe. He argues that “even if the soul does die“ it may still exist; since the duet of our dead bodies remains, and nothing is lost; and this would he show the imperishableness of those who perish. (Pp. 16, 17.) Citing a single authority, he regards the passage in Luke 16:19-31 as directed against the Sadducees (pp. 66-68; but se verse 14;) as if tho Great Teacher incontinently threatened them with the pangs which they did not believe. And, with the powerful aid of the American Tract Society and our foremost religions journal, this teacher in Israel unwittingly offers himself as a guide to those who “would read the Bible unintelligibly.” (P. 24)
(2.) To say that certain classes of men do not fear, and may even welcome eternal death, proves only that they think as they act and are. Their estimates need not be taken as the standard of our judgment, or in the interpretation of God’s word. And in fact, if eternal death would be dreaded as eternal punishment by a seraph, it can be no less than this to the frailest child of Adam that might become a seraph.
Nay, if to the divine Being extinction would appear as eternal deprivation, it must be this if incurred by one that might become a “partaker of the divine nature,” and one of the sons of God.
And to the common remark that degraded men will not be moved to repentance by the fear of extinction, we might reply at length; but will only say here: if it were so, why should there be an eternal sin and misery, to save the desperate, of whom that doctrine in fact saves very few 1
(3.) We grant that annihilation would be “eternal deliverance” from undying pain. But if there is no such penalty declared, then such a comparison is assuming the thing to be proved. And, by just the same mode of reasoning, extinction is eternal punishment compared with a forfeited eternal life.
But the proneness of Christians to make the comparison rather with endless suffering, discloses an important fact. The prevalent doctrine, we think, has led Christians to think of salvation too much in a negative sense. Repentance is not a “laying hold upon eternal life,” so much as a way of escape from undying death. It is a significant symptom of this religion of fear, supplanting the religion of love, that professed Christians sometimes say they would forsake their faith if they might utterly die; and that theologians argue the safety of the glorified saints from the example of the woes of the lost.
We will close this note with a few expressions from various writers. Augustine shall give the key-note of their sentiment. He avers that “if any one shall say, ‘I would rather not be, than be in misery,’ I should reply, ‘You say what is false.“ (De lib. Arb., 1. 8 chapter 6; compare chapters7, 8.) Dr. Nordheimer speaks of “eternal oblivion, which in the East is considered to be the most severe of all inflictions.” (Remarks on Ecclesiastes 8:10; Biblical Repose, July 1838, p. 215.) Juriea, “the Goliath of the Protestants,” valorously defending the doctrine of endless woe, asks: “When a criminal is condemned to death, is not that an eternal punishment? Does the judge order him to be resuscitated in the course of a year?“ and concludes: “It is therefore [!] to mock religion to allege this seriously as a dogma opposed to the light of reason.” (L’ United de l Eglise, p. 380.) Earberry, replying to Bnrnet on this point, says: “The doctor pleads hard for annihilation, if this incurable scheme must take place, not considering that annihilation itself is an eternal punishment to a rational creature, and is as incurable as any state ho so much regrets.” (State of the Dead, Notes, p. 114.) Hermann Witsius says: “I know not if it can be determined whether this eternity ought necessarily to consist in the punishment of sense, or whether the justice of God may be satisfied by the eternal punishment of loss, in the. annihilation of the sinful creature.” And he concludes a fuller statement of God’s right in the case thus: “Here at least let us hesitate, and suspend our judgment.”
(Economy of the Covenants, book 1, chapter 5, paragraphs 41, 42.) Baxter says what is equivalent: “Would you not be contented to suffer a terrible degree of misery everlastingly, rather than die? Whatsoever men may say, it is certain they would.” (Unreasonableness of Infidelity, Part I. Works, 20, 61, London 1830.) And Milton: —
“For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
These thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish and be swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?“
Isaac Watts speaks of such punishment as “in some sort commensurate to the infinite evil contained in sin, as it is a loss of all blessings for an infinite duration, that is, forever and ever.” (Ruin and Recovery, q. 9, prop. 5.) Daubuz, speaking of the Epicureans as offering to relieve the case of drowned souls, debarred from Hades, by denying the immortality of the soul, says: “ But the remedy is worse than the disease.” (Comment on Revelation 20:12.) The younger Edwards says emphatically: “Endless annihilation is an endless or infinite punishment.” (Reply to Chaunccy, Works, I. 80. On this basis he builds an argument for eternal suffering; making free with infinitudes, as. if a second might be added to the first, which Dr. C. had granted to be just.) “ So dreadful do I think annihilation,” said a dying man, “that I would rather live in pain than not live at all.” (Dr. Gordon, Hall’s Memoir, p. 95.) And Dr. Hamilton, one of our most eloquent opponents, though he elsewhere expressly denies the point in hand, says of those who take this view: “With them most assuredly rests the charge, commonly, and not insidiously or unjustly, raised against us, of following sin with eternal ban and loss. What do we more than they? They in the destruction of immortal susceptibilities, write the eternal doom of sin! They in the deprivation of eternal happiness, show how the sinner is eternally treated and condemned! They mark, in the sudden wreck of immortal hopes and powers, that only an eternal sentence can satisfy! They go further than others: they do not wait: they precipitate the endless award!” (Rewards and Punishments, pp. 444, 445.)
CHAPTER 9
COLLATERAL ARGUMENTS
CONCLUSIONS
Our direct Scriptural argument is now done. We would fain here repeat the statement of facts we have given elsewhere (Debt and Grace, c. 5, § 5; c 8, §§ 5-10) respecting the opinions of the Jews and of the early Christians. These are doubtless important in their place; but we will only name a few things.
It is often argued that the Pharisees held the immortality of the soul, and that Christ silently sanctioned their doctrine. We deny the conclusion, since Christ said of the "leaven" of the Scribes and the Pharisees, ' Beware.’
And the supposition that the Pharisees held this doctrine rests on the sole testimony of Josephus, which is impeached both by opposing testimony and by the censure of various critics. To our citation of these censures a reviewer has simply replied that the authority in question" is unimpeachable; our author has been able to allege nothing valid against it." (Bib. Sac, July, 1858, p. 638.) To which we answer with the added impeachment by Kauffer, who says “We should also take care lest Josephus have more authority with us in this matter than he ought" (u.s., p. 40); and of Dr. Kitto: Josephus is not to be relied upon in the account which he gives of the belief of his countrymen (Antiq. 18:2; De Bell. Judith 2:7), as he appears to us terms which might suggest one thing to his Jewish readers, and another to the Greeks and Romans, who scouted the idea of a resurrection." (Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, article, Resurection of the Body.)
The following passage in the book of Judith, 16:17, has been cited to show that the Jews held the doctrine in question: 'The Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgmcnt, in putting fire and worms in their flesh; and they shall feel them, and weep forever.” But we have shown that the copyist has mistaken, and the true sense is given by the old Latin version: comburantur "let them be consumed forever." (D. and G., pp. 219, 220.)
To our citations from the book of Enoch we may here add the following expressions from the older Apocrypha, Wisdom 5:15: "The righteous live forevermore." Chapter 6:18, 19: "The giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of in-corruption; and in-corruption makes us near unto God." Chapter 8:13: "By the means of her I shall obtain immortality, and leave behind me an everlasting memorial to them that come after me." Verse 17: “To be allied unto wisdom is immortality." Chapter 15:3: "To know thee is perfect righteousness; yea, to know thy power is the root of immortality." Ecclesiasticus 19:19: "They that do things that please Him shall receive the fruit of the tree of immortality." Chapter 21:9: "The congregation of the wicked is like tow wrapped together; and the end of them is a flame of fire to destroy them." 2 Maccabees 7:9: "The King of the world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlasting life." Compare verses 14, 23, 36.
And with other citations might we support the remark of Dr. Bentley: "O dismal reward of Infidelity! At which nature does shi-ink and shiver with horror. What some of the learned doctors among the Jews have esteemed the most dreadful of all punishments, and have assigned for the portion of the blackest criminals of the damned, — so interpreting Tophet, Abaddon, the Valley of Slaughter, and the like, for final extinction and deprivation of being, — this Atheism exhibits to us as an equivalent to heaven." (Boyle Lecture, Sermon 1.)
In the account given of the early Christian doctrine by an opponent, we think we have shown serious errors. (Human Destiny, pp. 116, 118, 123, 423.) We here add one or two evident statements of our view, from the Homilies ascribed to Clement. Thus it is said: "They who do not repent shall receive their end by the punishment of fire. Punished with eternal fire they shall after a time be extinguished" (Homily 3:6). "By the greatest punishment they shall be utterly extinguished" (Homily 7, c. 7). “They wholly perish after punishment" (Homily 3, c. 59). The soul was infused within us, after His image, for immortality. If I forsake its parent by a just judgment it win also forsake me; And this after punishment shall I be destroyed in soul, failing of the help it should have brought" (Homily 16, 10). Though these are not the words of Clement himself, the history shows, we think that they grew out of the Christian doctrine, and were not imported from the Greek philosophy. The early Christians commonly spoke of man's nature as intermediate: the soul could either live or die. The first instance of its being called immortal in a Christian writing is about AD 138; and the mention of eternal suffering as if that were the eternal punishment, belongs to a still later age.
Yet, in the absence of all such language, now deemed by dome as essential to sound doctrine, and at a time when, if ever, the terrors it implies were needful, Christianity won its first and mightiest triumphs in the world.
Of the causes, external and internal, which gradually displaced the doctrine of Life in Christ only, of its honourable history nevertheless, and of the growing respect now accorded to it, we need not here speak.
"Vast amount and weight of evidence to the point evidence enough to prove it, if provable; all nature, all law, all revelation uttering the doctrine, so that it is an amazing stretch and energy of unbelief not to believe it, — implying a moral state and position that will not believe it on any testimony; however clearly and unqualifiedly, even to the exhaustion of the capabilities of language, God himself may declare and affirm it." (The Independent January 5, 1860.)
In conclusion, it is not for us to see that we have proved any thing. But there are practical considerations requiring the notice of some recent statements* Thus we have been told, respecting future endless misery, of a such language plainly impeaches either the integrity of those who deny the eternity of sin and woe, or the sobriety of those who thus affirm it. In either case we should offer a counter statement modestly. Yet we may boldly express our own opinion, that if Christians generally should for a few months acquiesce in the scriptural silence respecting the immortality of the soul or of man; should employ the scriptural expressions on the subject in their general tenor; and should cite the few supposed proofs of endless misery with no greater comparative frequency than other passages, so that they might be duly interpreted by the general tone of the Scriptures; — the doctrine in question would come to a speedy end. And the experiment ought not to be difficult, and can not be dangerous.
Such an "energy of unbelief" as is alleged above would not be far from hopeless reprobation. And the "vast amount" of evidence alleged as proving the doctrine requires no alternative, but should imperatively demand an unwavering assent. Yet the writer immediately appeals to the safe-side argument, thus: —
"It is wise to believe, in such a case, because believing will be more likely to be followed by the fitting action to escape the doom. If it shall tum out afterward that this doctrine of punishment is not true, the believer who took the pains to reform his life, is as well off as his neighbour who took the other course. We may suppose two foundations; one of them, in any case, by the acknowledgment of all men, will keep those who commit themselves to it. There is absolute certainly of being safe if we rest hero. As to the other foundation, there being a wide difference of opinion in regard to its sufficiency; the possibility of catastrophe and ruin, if we trust to it, must be admitted — no possibility, in the judgment of all men, if we trust to the other; and it is just as feasible to get on the absolutely sure one, as on the questionable one. It is plain to see what course prudence dictates— it is to take the higher platform. For though this fails, and tho lower and liberal scheme is found the true one, still those on the higher ground are safe; they fall from this and the lower catches them. But if any try the lower, and it proves to be not of God — not valid, they are lost, — there is nothing beneath but the bottomless pit."
So bald a statement of the arguments appearing in a journal which is in most respects the best we have, betrays the panic state of mind which the doctrine of eternal evil must ever produce. But it plainly assumes, 1. That truth, fairly stated and received, may not be so safe and trustworthy as something else. 2. That the doctrine in question is credible at pleasure; though Bishop Newton has said, “Imagine it you may, but you can never seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness." 3. That the more fearful doctrine, though it may be false, is a higher platform," and that they who plant themselves upon it may be caught" by a lower. 4. That the true doctrine in the case is not clearly revealed and can not be settled.
To which we reply: (1.) The safe-side argument is proper and "safe" only in the pressure of doubt or emergency. Thus the surgeon, the fireman, or the military leader may resort to extreme measures to make sure against an impending danger and the remedy may be little less grievous than the evil. But revealed religion, whose sole end is to enlighten and purify, presents no such perplexing case. For the duty of repentance is primary, imperative, manifest, and alone safe; and no less so, whatever be the measure of final punishment. 2. Moral conviction requires a sense of the justice of incurred penalty. Are they only convinced of sin who admit that it already deserves infinite suffering? 3. He who repents simply or mainly because he may be in danger of endless woe, stands ready to recant his repentance when he thinks there is no such danger. And finally, it is a settled principle of criminal law, that the certainty of punishment, more than extreme severity restrains from crime. That which is too fearful, is unfeared. Very few, if any, really apprehend that they may live in anguish forever. Hence there is, if all are immortal, a natural hope of final mercy and salvation; which renders the doctrine supposed to be so fearful and safe, a dead letter, and an opiate.
The way of safety is not found, then, in doctrinal severity. On the other hand, if truth is most safe, and if the doctrine of unending woe is false it is an infinite error, and must be in many ways most mischievous. We believe that it has been pernicious — creating the false piety of fear and terror, undermining confidence in the truth, suggesting the "safe-side" resorts of expediency, ensnaring the conscience, promoting spurious conversions, corrupting the church, and producing a timidity that shrinks from inquiry and perpetuates the error from age to age.
Speaking thus, we do not expect the immediate assent of those accustomed to assert the eternity of sin and suffering in the universe of Him who is almighty, all-wise, and all-good. But if we have shown any serious error in their interpretations of Scripture, we may ask that they forbear, for a while, all extra-scriptural statements of their doctrine, and fall back to the general language of the Word of Truth on this subject. Let them hold forth the Word of Life, as the only hope of a race that has incurred some sentence of death. And when the gospel of Glad Tidings shall be again heralded, as we believe that it was in its early vigour, and in the name of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, we need not fear that it will prove void.
In conclusion, while it is not for us to claim that we have demonstrated what growing numbers regard as the true sense of the Scriptures, and while we doubt not that errors may appear in the details of our argument, we cheerfully leave it with the inquirer after truth. And to those who think that no great change is to be expected, either in the letter or the spirit of Christian theology, we may offer the words of another for reply. In his work on "Wesley and Methodism" Isaac Taylor has remarked: —
"When once this weighty question of the after life has been opened, and when it shall have come into the hands of well-informed biblical interpreters, a controversy will ensue, in the progress of which it will be discovered that, with unobservant eye, we and our predecessors have been so walking up and down, and running hither and thither, among dim notices and: indications of the future destinies of the human family, as to have failed to gather up or to regard much that has lain upon the pages of the Bible, open and free to our use. Those who, through a course of years, have been used to read the Scripture; unshackled by systems, and bounds to no conventional modes of belief, such readers must have felt an impatience in waiting — not for the arrival of a new revelation from- Heaven, but of an ample and unfettered interpretation of that which has so long been in our hands.
Thus the future Methodism, as we assume, will feel the need of, and will acquire for itself, under pressure of the most urgent motives, an incontrovertible exposition of the scripture doctrine of the future administration of justice; but then it will not make this acquisition as if it could be held as an insulated dogma; for whatever is further ascertained on this ground, will come to stand in its true relationship to much beside, which, in the course of the same argument, will have started to view, as the genuine sense of the inspired books. The doctrine of future punishment, as a belief drawn from Scripture, and so drawn as to dissipate prevalent illusions, and to spread on all sides a salutary and effective alarm — such a belief will take ita place in the midst of an expanded' prospect of the compass and intention of the Christian system.
The past Methodism was far from being a message of wrath proclaimed by men of fierce and fanatical tempers: — it was a message of joy, hope, and love; and it made its conquests – as such, notwithstanding those bold and unmeasured denunciations against sin which it so often, uttered. And so it will be with the future Methodism; and although it will rest itself upon a laboriously obtained belief concerning the “wrath to come" — a belief that will lave the human mind with a deep convulsive dread, yet, and notwithstanding, this preliminary the renovation which we look for will come in as the splendour of day comes in the tropics, it will, be a sudden brightness that make all things glad!" (Pages 289-290.)
Evil not Eternal: — Are the Wicked Immortal?
“Here, at last let us hesitate and suspend our judgment"
Thus said an eminent orthodox divine, respecting the view that those who foil of Eternal Life, forfeit Immortality. This is maintained in the late work:
DEBT AND GRACE
AS RELATED TO THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
BY C. F. HUDSON
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. — MOSTLY FROM OPPONENTS.
"We have here a work surpassing in elaborateness and completeness the most of modern theological productions. The author is mild and candid in the statement of his views, correct in his representations of others, and exceedingly full and impartial in his exhibition of the various phases of belief and conjecture that have prevailed, both among philosophers and Christian writers, from the Fathers down to the present time." — Zion's Herald,
"We have read it with deep interest, and not without profit."- Congregationalist.
"His work shows very careful and extensive research, and on many collateral points his suggestions will be found instructive and important. .. . The aim of the book is, by showing the limitation of evil, to vindicate the goodness of God. There is scarcely one of the numerous positions of the writer for which he does not find collateral support in passages from the writing of distinguished Christian authors of past centuries." — New York Evangelist.
"As a history of religious opinions their relations and influence, it is a thesaurus. It has more real argument m it than almost any other volume of less than 500 pages we have ever seen. ... It is impossible not to respect his candour and acknowledge his ability. He is not to be answered by a paragraph, nor disposed of by a sneer." — Free Will Baptist Quarterly.
"Moving straight in among some of the most perplexed, solemn, and profound questions of theological concern in our day, — especially those of Retribution, Human Nature, Divine Justice, and Love, — with a bold heart, a firm step, and a learned head, the author will not fail to get a hearing. He has suffered cheerfully, both for his orthodoxy and his liberality. Whatever sectarians and idlers may do, thinkers and scholars will attend to him with respect." — Huntington s Monthly Religious Magazine.
"The following is from one of the best informed theologians of America: — ‘It is a work with which no one who feels an interest in the subject can afford to dispense, whatever may be his views. The matter of fact and argument condensed in it would be expanded by many writers into half a dozen volumes. I am persuaded that there is no single work which gives so good an historical view of the various forms of opinion in relation to the matters discussed. It is not merely a work of learning; it is full of thought.' " — Christian Register.
A "most extraordinary book — on the score of argumentative ability, among the greatest contributions that have been made to theological literature in America for many years." — Universalist Quarterly.
"His argument — founded on Scripture and the creed of the early Christian Church — is profound and powerful." — New York, Morning Express.
"Unquestionably the most candid and the most able work yet produced in our theological literature against the doctrine of eternal suffering. The book cannot fail to make a stir among theologians." — Christian Advocate and Journal.
From Reverend Cotwert Francis D. D., Professor in Cambridge Divinity School
“The most complimentary notices have certainly done it no more than justice — hardly that. The more I have read it, the more I have admired the very thorough and painstaking research, the profound scholarship, and the able, fair reasoning, which pervade the whole work. I really think it is a book of higher theological character than we have had among us for a long time. The ability, the sound learning, and the extent of research, by which it is characterized, will entitle it to rank among the works of permanent and settled value in theology.”
From the Author of ‘Life in Christ’ a Congregational Minister, London, England
[The gentleman to whom John Foster addressed his noted Restorationist Letter.]
"Thanks for the noble gift. I think you have treated the subject in a manner which must command the attention of scholars on both shores of the Atlantic. I truly congratulate yon on having been enabled to render this signal service to the cause of that which seems to be important truth.”
"The author is a fine scholar, and writes with ability.” — Central Christian Herald. "A learned and able work.” — Methodist Quarterly Review.
"On every page it affords proof that it is the work of a scholar, who is well furnished by wide reading and patient investigation, and who has the modest and reverent spirit of an earnest seeker of truth. — Christian Quarterly Journal.
"A book of great learning and subtlety.”— Writer in the Bibliotheca Sacra.
“The candour of his statements and reasoning is admirable. It is the most able and complete exhibition of a view which is far more likely to make converts in the future than Universalism. The entire subject of future punishment needs a new discussion, by men of eminent scholarship, vigorous thought, and genuine piety.” — Congregational Herald.
"Whatever support can be contributed to this doctrine by affluent learning, scholarly culture, brilliance and force of style, and dialectic astuteness, is subsidized for the purpose in this massive and compact volume. The number of editions it has reached, notwithstanding the immense burden of quotations from ancient and modem sources, which the author's exhaustive reading has enabled him to pack into it, evinces its power Of course, we have no room here to undertake a refutation of this subtle and dangerous book, which is likely to promote what we believe to be one of the most threatening and pestilent heresies just now crowding upon us.” — Princeton Review.
"The appearance of the fourth edition of this book is evidence of its popularity and its mischief. It is spiritedly written, and with considerable snow of learning and of philosophical method. A sort of halo is thrown round the subject by a style which, though not always transparent, is yet singularly elastic, copious, and vigorous." — Christian Review.
"Mr. H. has carefully studied the literature of the controversy. The arguments are quiet, clear, and, in general, candid.
“It is, by far, the ablest book we have ever read on the subject.
“Of course, it does not convince us that the orthodox view is erroneous, but we can not believe that truth will suffer by fair and candid discussion. The book is worthy of a careful study and of a candid answer.” — Presbyterian Quarterly.
"We have here the whole literature of the Question. And the reader will be well repaid by a masterly accumulation of testimony, as to the meaning and usage of terms and the' faith of eminent Christians, through the whole history of the church. Also, by many worthy and truthful reflections.” - W. M. Femald; God in His Providence, p. 287.
Other works by the same Author published as above.
CHRIST OUR LIFE.
The Scriptural Argument for Immortality through Christ alone. 168 pages.
THE RIGHTS OF WRONG; Is Evil Eternal? 24 pages.
THE PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. Does it imply Eternal Future Suffering? 24 pages.
HUMAN DESTINY
A Discussion. Do Reason and the Scriptures teach the utter extinction of an unregenerate portion of human beings, instead of the final salvation of all? C. F. Hudson, 478 pages.
"There is no lack of ability on either side, though Mr. Hudson exhibits the more learning, acuteness," etc. — Congregational Herald,
THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS MISERY
An occasion of SCEPTICISM. Extracts from the Epilogue to “Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography," by Sir James Stephen, late Professor of Modem History, Cambridge, England. 24 pages.
OTHER VALUABLE WORKS ON THE SAME SUBJECT:
BY H. L. HASTINGS.
PAULINE THEOLOGY; Or, The Christian Doctrine of Future Punishment as taught in the Epistles of Paul. 84 pages.
THE OLD PATHS; Or, The Primitive Doctrine of a Future life; Embracing copious Extracts from the Writings of Primitive Christians. 87 pages.
TRACTS ON IMMORTALITY. The above Treatises, with other Essays. Bound in one volume.
THE GREAT CONTROVERSY between God and Man. Its Origin, Progress, and End. 167 pages.
REASONS FOR MY HOPE. 128 pages.
FOREVER WITH THE LORD. (Preparing.)