CHAPTER XXXIII. THE FINAL JUDGMENT OF JESUS CHRIST, AND ITS ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES FOR ALL MANKIND. The Language of Jesus Christ, in Matthew 25, Involves many Propositions, among them these-1. There is a Final Judgment, distinguished from the Judgments of History, which passes upon All Men, and Knows but one Alternative, Salvation or Condemnation.-2. The Consequences of this Doom are Eternal.-Attempts to Evade this Awful Fact :-(a) Restorationism; (b) Conditional Immortality.-3. The Awards of it are according to Conduct in the Bodily Life.-4. The Final Judgment will be held by Jesus Christ as Mediator between God and Man.-Which Implies, 5, that Men will be Judged by their Conduct toward Christ.-But this Involves the Difficult Question, 6, Concerning those who have never heard of Christ in the Bodily Life. On this, the Scriptures leave us much in the Dark.-Untenable Answers: (a) That the Gospel has actually been Preached in all the World; (b) The General Witness of God to the Heathen; (c) the Preaching in Hades.-But on this Matter we must speak with Caution and Diffidence. By Professor CHRISTOPHER E. LUTHARDT, D.D., Ph.D., University of Leipzig, Germany. : "WHEN the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: inasmuch as ye did it not unto one And these shall go away into of these least, ye did it not unto me. eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt., 25: 31-46). How often have we read and heard these words, how often reasoned about them! But they appeal to us always with a new power. It is not only their majestic poetry that stirs the imagination. Rather is it their awful solemnity, which penetrates the spirit and will not release us from its grasp. The words of this passage are perhaps the most majestic and powerful of Scripture. And they are not merely poetry, but truth. For the mouth of the Truth gave them utterance. And they comprehend in themselves a multitude of single truths. We select from this number the following: (1) There is a final judgment, which passes upon all men, either to salvation or to condemnation; (2) this judgment determines the fate of all men forever; (3) the separation is effected according to conduct in this earthly life; (4) the separation is effected by Christ and is, therefore, (5) made dependent upon him. In accordance with this must we judge, (6) concerning the future judgment of the heathen, and in general of those who in this life have not heard the gospel of Christ. These propositions will form the subject-matter of the following discussion. 1. There is a final judgment, which passes upon all men, determining them to salvation or to condemnation. ment. It is indeed said: The history of the world is the world's judgThat is a half-truth. Divine judgments do in fact take place in the present, in the lives of individuals and of peoples. The destinies of men are not merely destinies; but in them are enacted ethical judgments of God. And it belongs to the loftiest attainments of the soul to perceive, in the course of the history of nations, the ways and works of divine justice. These, however, are only single steps in the progress of the divine justice toward its goal. These are not the judgment itself: they are only preparatory to it. For much remains unsolved; in the present there is no un mixed result. The history of the world is the world's judgment— if we choose to so speak-only because there is a final judgment. For everything must be brought to its own end and purpose. History is the great process between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice. At the end, God will pronounce judgment, justifying the one part, condemning the other. There is a judgment that is final. This judgment is the decision and consequently the separation. It knows but one alternative; it is either-or; it has no middle. term. Tertium non datur. Men have but seldom the right to pronounce a definitive final judgment upon men. For we cannot look into the depths of souls. Appearances are deceptive. What is visible upon the surface may possibly not be an expression of that which is beneath; and what is hid in the depths of the soul may possibly be incapable of manifestation. Not our bodies only, our souls also wear garments and go clothed in various vestments, in which they can show themselves, but can also conceal themselves, so as to appear other than they are. This world is a world of deceptions. We deceive even our own selves. To know one's self, in reality to know one's self, is a rare art and rare wisdom. For we are entangled in the affairs, operations, efforts of this world, which easily impose upon us in regard to ourselves. At death we emerge from this world. As in death the body by which we stand connected with this material world disappears, the material world disappears also. As we forsake the body, we forsake also the world. of appearances and deceptions. Emerging from this world, we enter the world of God, we pass from the world of appearance into the world of truth. We shall stand naked before God, without When we the garments which this world has wrapped about us. stand before God, it is in the presence of One before whose eyes all things are naked and laid open (Heb., 4:13). In the profoundest depth of every soul, none the less, a decision will have taken place. However concealed and obscured, it will be inevitably present. In the last analysis, we are all either for, or against, God. A middle position is impossible. For though indeed there are in the material world things indifferent; in the moral world of personality there is no indifference, no neutrality, but only determinateness; only an either-or. But God looketh upon the heart, i. e., the most inward relation of the soul to himself. This most inward decision of the soul for or against God corresponds, therefore, to that last historical and actual decision and separation by God in the final judg ment. The decision of God, therefore, in the final judgment, will be either salvation or condemnation, and these only. For, in exact accordance with the inward choice of the man, for or against God, will the sentence stand for fellowship with God or rejection from him. "Come, ye blessed," "Depart, ye cursed." There is no mean. "Come," this is the sentence of salvation, for salvation is fellowship with God. In it all is comprehended. There is no other and no higher blessedness. For to be a man of God is the original destiny of man. This is now accomplished. For to have attained his divinely ordained destiny makes man's blessedness. To all, therefore, who attain blessedness, the blessedness is the same; but the glory will be different. God will set some over much, others over little. "One star differeth from another in glory." But the possibilities of these gradations are endless. "Depart,"-this is the sentence of condemnation. For to be excluded from God's presence is the greatest evil for man, because the contradiction of his destiny. For as created by God, so are we also created for God. He is our life, light, and goal. Excluded from God and the world of God, limited to one's own God-resisting will and the instigator of it, Satan, and yet placed beyond the possibility of actively employing this will-this is the fire that is not quenched and the worm that dieth not. This condemnation is the same for all; but its degrees will be different for different individuals. For, according as more or less was given to each one, will each suffer more or fewer stripes (Luke, 12: 47, 48). This is the final judgment. 2. But this judgment determines man's fate for eternity. There is no more awful thought than that of eternal damnation. When we reflect upon it, and plunge ourselves into it, it makes the blood run cold. The mere thought seems insupportable. It is no wonder, then, that attempts have been continually made to mitigate it. The doctrine of apokatastasis, so-called, or restorationism, is well known. Down to our own day it has been constantly reappearing in the Church. This is the doctrine: At the end all things will come into harmony with God; for God shall be all in all. Hence, not division, but union, must be the goal of all things; in other words, all will finally attain to blessedness. The thought has something attractive about it; we find it difficult to escape its fascination. But it has Holy Scripture against it, for this speaks of an eternal perdition in the same terms as of the eternal life. "Eternity" is the same in both instances. What is true of the one eternity must be true of the other. There is an "eternal fire," an "eternal punishment" (Matt., 25:41, 46), "a worm that dieth not, a fire that is not quenched" (Matt., 9:48; Is., 66: 24), "and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever" (Rev., 20:10). Ex inferno nulla redemptio is, therefore, a saying of the Church. And so it must be indeed. For what should alter their condemnation? Either the love of God or the power of God. But the love of God, as toward these, has reached an end, for it has exhausted itself, and resigns its office to justice. And the power of God can accomplish nothing against the human will. For in the sphere of personal and moral life the power which compels must yield to the will which determines. Deus non cogit sed trahit. God does not coerce, but draws and persuades the will. That is the order of the moral world, which God himself has established as its law, in which the power of God prevails, and by which he also distinguishes that sphere from the material world. But the will of the wicked has declared itself against God, and thereby has separated itself from him. But no man can attain to blessedness against his will. There is, then, no apokatastasis, no final restoration of |