CHAPTER LI. THE DOCTRINE OF A CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY AND OF THE ETERNAL DESTRUCTION OF THE WICKED. Current Traditionary Doctrine Concerning the Eternal Suffering of the Unsaved Masses of Mankind, Contrasted with the Biblical Doctrine of the Destruction of the Unsaved, and of Immortality only through Christ.-The Biblical Doctrine as Enunciated by Christ.—Natural Immortality of the Soul Distinguished from Survival of the Soul.—Summary of Argument for Immortality through Christ:-1. Natural Immortality is Taught neither by Reason, nor by Primeval Tradition, nor by Revelation.-2. Natural Immortality is Denied by the Scriptures, both Implicitly and Expressly.-3. The Scriptural Doctrine of Redemption is in Agreement with the Idea that Immortality is the Gift of God through Regeneration, and with no other Idea. This Appears (a) in the Nature of Christ; (b) in the Nature of Justification; (c) in the Prominence given to Regeneration; and (d) to Resurrection.-4. The Practical Results of the Doctrine of Life in Christ, both in Christian and in Heathen Lands, Confirm the Conclusions thus Reached. By the Rev. EDWARD WHITE, Professor of Homiletics in New College, London, lately Chairman IF there be a God in Nature, and if this God has spoken to man in the Hebrew Revelation, then he is morally one and the same God, in Nature, Judaism, and Christianity; terrible to law-breakers, but good to the willing and obedient. The eternal destiny of mankind will be determined not on arithmetical but on spiritual principles. "When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever;" words in which the psalmist speaks the language of universal conscience (Ps., 92: 7). The divine judgment will give to every man "according to his works." Nevertheless, the question of human destiny acquires an appalling interest from the prodigious number of the earth's population, and from the indifferent character of so many of them. The lowest modern estimate gives thirteen hundred millions, of whom nearly a thousand millions are non-Christians; Buddhists, Brahminists, Mohammedans, Jews, Parsees, and miscellaneous heathen idolaters of Asia and Africa. If the present inhabitants of India and Burmah, alone, could pass in single file before a person able to fix a gaze of one minute's duration on each (not too much time to expend in thinking of an eternal doom), then, if the stream should roll on night and day, it would require over five hundred years to bestow this momentary notice on all the two hundred million people, young and old, now living in England's eastern empire. If arranged in lines of thirty abreast, and a yard apart, the column would extend from the borders of Afghanistan, throughout the whole Turkish empire, and across the continent of Europe, to the Atlantic shore, a distance of five thousand three hundred miles. By the aid of this integer the mind may train itself to imagine the masses of mankind in all lands, and in all the ages; each individual of them, according to St. Paul, destined to give an account of himself unto God (Rom., 14:12). The question is, Has Almighty God revealed the destiny of the unsaved portion of these dense multitudes of mankind? The answer, given for many centuries past by the Church, is that, after deductions for those dying in infancy and childhood, or in invincible ignorance, for whom hopeful views are entertained by many, the residue of the "wicked," being by nature immortal, will suffer in hell in different degrees throughout infinite duration. This doctrine underlies the modern missionary enterprise, and has been recently re-affirmed, after much disputing, by one of the foremost of the American missionary societies. Holding this belief of the modern churches to be an error of appalling magnitude and disastrous influence; to be based on (1) a psychology false in itself, and contrary to Holy Scripture; (2) on a Biblical exegesis which sets at defiance those first principles of orthodox interpretation, which are obeyed in every other department of sacred truth; and (3) on a tradition which is contrary to the main testimony of Judaism and of Ante-Nicene Christendom; I have been invited to represent the opinion of those who maintain on Biblical grounds the exclusive immortality of regenerate men, and the literal destruction of the unsaved in the "second death." This doctrine, however, of the destruction of the wicked cannot be thoroughly explained apart from some reference to the circle of truths of which it forms a part, and not the most important part. Of that circle of truths, the central idea is the incarnation of the Divine Life, the union of the finite and the infinite in Christ, regarded as the only source of human immortality, by the redemption of man from sin and death; while the circumference of the circle consists in the revealed history of man's original state as created, of his subsequent apostasy from God, of the methods of his recovery and salvation; through the atonement of the Son of God, through the regeneration of human nature by the indwelling Spirit of life; and through resurrection from the dead, in glory "equal to the angels," leaving for the remaining segment of the circle the revealed doctrine on the "everlasting destruction" of those who persist in rebellion against the King of Eternity. This connected statement, as a whole, is known by the name of the doctrine of Life in Christ,* because its chief aspects regard the salvation by grace of the natural man (the yuzós of St. Paul, 1 Cor., 2:14; 15:44) from impending extinction of life, through union with the divine eternal man, Christ Jesus; so that it is as rational to denominate it the doctrine of "annihilation" as it would be to speak of medicine and surgery as doctrines of annihilation, because they deal with dying life. The leading truths concerned cannot be expressed with greater clearness and brevity than in the language of the Lord himself in his discourse in the Capernaum synagogue. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in your 66 See Life in Christ. A study of the Scripture doctrine on the nature of man, the object of the Divine Incarnation, and the conditions of human immortality. By the author of this contribution. Whittaker & Co., 8vo, 600 pp. selves" (R. V.). "I am the living bread which came down from heaven if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world." "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and died: this is the bread that came down from heaven that a man should eat thereof and not die " (John, 6:49-58). Thus men must be born twice, or die twice. We must be "born again," or die "the second death" (John, 3:1-5. Apoc., 2:11; 20: 6, 14; 21:8). St. Peter's words are parallel. Being born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth. For all flesh is as grass; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which in the gospel is preached unto you" (1 Pet., 1: 23–25). So also 1 John, 2:17, "For the world passeth away and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 66 The doctrine of Life in Christ then is directly opposed to the notion-widely held in European and American Christendom, but almost unknown in heathen Asia-of the naturally and absolutely immortal individuality of all human souls; and the removal of this notion leads at once to the full development of the Scripture doctrine of personal immortality through the divine incarnation alone. It must, however, be noted, at the outset, that the denial of the absolute immortality of souls is not the same thing with the denial of their survival in the first death. The butterfly rises from the chrysalis, but it does not live forever. Nature is half filled with examples of the survival of portions of organisms, which are nevertheless perishable. All seeds of plants are survivals which are not possessed of eternal life. Thus also the souls or spirits of all men may survive for different ends, according to the Scripture; some for punishment (" The Lord knoweth how to reserve the ungodly unto the day of judgment under punishment;" 2 Peter, 2:9); some for education, as the souls of children: some for further visitations of mercy, as those "spirits in prison" whom the Spirit of Christ visited in the interval between his death and resurrection (1 Pet., 3:19; 4:5, 6); some to rest with the Lord until the time of his glorious advent (Phil., 1: 23), when they will "receive according to their works." But those alone will "live forever" who have become "one spirit" with the incarnate Word, by the second birth unto righteousness. For all others there is reserved the "destruction of body and soul in Gehenna" (Matt., 10: 20). "These, as natural brute beasts, born for capture and extinction*; speaking evil of the things which they understand not; shall utterly perish in their own corruption, or mortality" (2 Pet., 2: 12). The general argument, therefore, for the Scriptural authority of the doctrine of Life in Christ, or immortality on the condition of regeneration, may be summed up under the following heads : 1. Neither the light of reason, nor ancient tradition, nor revelation, teaches the eternity of the soul, by nature. 2. Holy Scripture denies it, not only by a consistent silence on the subject, from the days of Moses to St. John, but by the most express and steadfast assertion of the destruction of the wicked. 3. The doctrine of Holy Scripture on the redemption of the world by the incarnation of the LIFE, that is, of the eternal Word of God; and the whole structure of the language used in setting forth the doctrine of redemption, assert in the strongest manner that the very object of that redemption is to confer absolute immortality, or eternal life, on regenerate men, and not simply to confer pardon, holiness, and bliss on beings already immortal or incapable of death. 4. That the experienced results of thus representing the divine revelation, both at home and in the mission field, are such as to confirm the persuasion that the doctrine of life and death eternal, as thus understood, sheds fresh luster on the moral attributes of God, adds a new force to faith and love, while offering an effectual reply to the chief objections of atheism and infidelity. * 40opùv, the word used by Plato in the Phado for extinction. |