19th century continued
Dr. W. A. Brown (1865-1943), of Union Seminary, New York
The Christian Hope
, 1912
(From Israel came the doctrine of the resurrection, and of the advent; from Greece, the doctrine of natural immortality.)
Dr. J. Ager Beet (1840-1924), Wesleyan professor
Last Things
Preface to The Immortality of the Soul: A Protest, 5th ed., 1902
The following pages are . . . a protest against a doctrine which, during long centuries, has been almost universally accepted as divine truth taught in the Bible, but which seems to me altogether alien to it in both phrase and thought, and derived only from Greek Philosophy. Until recent times, this alien doctrine has been comparatively harmless. But, as I have here shown, it is now producing most serious results. . . .
It will of course be said, of this as of some other doctrines, that, if not explicitly taught in the Bible, it is implied and assumed there. . . . They who claim for their teaching the authority of God must prove that it comes from Him. Such proof in this case, I have never seen.The Immortality of the Soul (5th ed., 1902), Preface.
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Dr. R. F. Weymouth (1822-1902), headmaster of Mill Hill School, translator of
New Testament in Modern Speech My mind fails to conceive a grosser misrepresentation of language than when five or six of the strongest words which the Greek tongue possesses, signifying to destroy or destruction, are explained to mean "maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence." To translate black as white is nothing to this.Cited by Edward White in Life in Christ (1878), p. 365.
New Testament in Modern Speech, note on 1 Corinthians 15:18:
By "perish" the Apostle here apparently means "pass out of existence."*
On Hebrews 9:28:
The use in the N.T. of such words as "death," "destruction," "fire," "perish," to describe Future Retribution, point to the likelihood of fearful anguish, followed by extinction of being, as the doom which awaits those who by persistent rejection of the Saviour prove themselves utterly, and therefore irremediably, bad.
On Revelation 14:11:
There is nothing in this verse that necessarily implies an eternity of suffering. In a similar way the word "punishment" or "correction" in Matt. xxv. 46 gives in itself no indication of time.
On Revelation 20:10:
The Lake of fire: Implying awful pain and complete, irremediable ruin and destruction.*"
Dr. Lyman Abbott (1835-1922), Congregationalist pastor, and editor,
Christian Union and
The Outlook.
That Unknown Country (Symposium), 1889
Outside of the walls of Jerusalem, in the valley of Gehenna,
______
[size=-1]*Notes by Earnest Hampden-Cook, editor and reviser of third edition of
The New Testament in Modern Speech, by Richard Francis Weymouth.[/size]
590 was kept perpetually burning a fire, on which the offal of the city was thrown to be destroyed. This is the hell fire of the New Testament. Christ warns his auditors that persistence in sin will make them offal to be cast out from the holy city, to be destroyed. The worm that dieth not was the worm devouring the carcasses, and is equally clearly a symbol not of torture but of destruction. That Unknown Country, p. 72.
The notion that the final punishment of sin is continuance in sin and suffering is also based in part on, what seems to me, a false philosophy as to man. This philosophy is that man is by nature immortal. The conviction has grown on me, that according to the teaching both of science and Scripture, man is by nature an animal, and like all other animals mortal; that immortality belongs only to the spiritual life; and that spiritual life is possible only in communion and contact with God; that, in short, immortality was not conferred upon the race in creation whether it would or no, but is conferred in redemption, upon all those of the race who choose life and immortality through Jesus Christ our Lord.Ibid.
Dr. Edward Beecher (1803-1895), Congregationalist theologian; president, Illinois College
Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution It [the Bible] does not recognize, nay, it expressly denies the natural and inherent immortality of the soul. It assures us that God only hath immortality. (1 Tim. vi, 16). By this we understand that He has immortality in the highest sensethat is, inherent immortality. All existence besides Himself He created, and He upholds. Men are not, as Plato taught, self-existent, eternal beings, immortal in their very nature. . . . There is no inherent immortality of the soul as such. What God created He sustains in being, and can annihilate at will. Doctrine of Scriptural Retribution, p. 58.
Dr. Emmanuel Petavel-Ollieff (1836-1910), Swiss theologian; lecturer, University of Geneva
The Struggle for Eternal Life (La Fin du Mal)
The Extinction of Evil, 1889
The Problem of Immortality
591
Dr. Franz Delitasch (1813-1890), Hebraist, professor, Rostock, Erlangen, Leipsic
A New Commentary on Genesis There is nothing in all the Bible which implies a native immortality.Comment on Gen. 3:22.
From the Biblical point of view the soul can be put to death, it is mortal.Comment on Num. 23:10.
Bishop Charles J. Ellicott (1820-1905), of Bristol, chairman, English Revision Committee
The Ceylon Evangelist, October, 1893
It seems inconceivable that when God is all in all, there should be some dark spot, where amid endless self-inflicted suffering, or in the enhancement of ever-enduring hate, rebel hands should be forever raised against the Eternal Father and God of Everlasting Love.The Ceylon Evangelist, October, 1893.
Dr. George Dana Boardman (1828-1903), pastor, First Baptist Church of Philadelphia; established Boardman Foundation of Christian Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
Studies in the Creative Week, 1880
Writing on the issue of immortality he states:
Not a single passage of Holy Writ, from Genesis to Revelation, teaches, so far as I am aware, the doctrine of Man's natural immortality. On the other hand, Holy Writ emphatically declares that God only hath immortality (1 Tim. vi. 16): that is to say: God alone is naturally, inherently, in His own essence and nature, immortal.Studies in the Creative Week, pp. 215, 216. If, then, Man is immortal, it is because immortality has been bestowed on him. He is immortal, not because he was created so, but because he has become so, deriving his deathlessness from Him Who alone hath immortality. And of this fact the Tree of
592 Life in the midst of the Garden seems to have been the appointed symbol and pledge. That this is the meaning of the Tree of Life is evident from the closing words of the Archive of the Fall: "Jehovah God said: 'Behold, the Man hath become as one of Us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he stretch forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever:' therefore Jehovah God drove the Man forth from Eden, and stationed on the East of the Garden the Cherubim, and the Flaming Sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life" (Gen. iii. 22-24). If Man is inherently immortal, what need was there of any Tree of Life at all? This much, then, seems to be clear: Immortality was somehow parabolically conditioned on the eating of this mysterious Tree, and the Immortality was for the entire Man-spirit and soul and body.Ibid., p. 216.
H. Pettingell (1815-1887), Congregationalist, district secretary of Congregationalist Board of Foreign Missions
The Theological Trilemma (Endless Misery)
Universal Salvation, or Conditional Immortality, 1878
Platonism versus Christianity, 1881
The Life Everlasting: What Is It?
Whence Is It? Whose Is It? 1882
The Unspeakable Gift, 1884
It is worthy of remark, that the doctrine of eternal torment is found neither in the Apostles' Creed, nor the Nicene Creed, nor in two of the principal Confessions of Faith of the sixteenth century, viz., the otherwise rigid Creed of the French Reformed Church and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church. And we believe that if this dogma has been handed down throughout the Protestant Churches, it is simply as an inheritance from the errors of the middle ages and from the speculative theories of Platonism. If we examine the writings of the earlier Fathers, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria, we, find them all faithful to the apostolic doctrine of the
593 final destruction of the wicked. The dogma of everlasting torment did not creep into the Church until she yielded to the influence of Platonic philosophy.Pettingell's,
The Life Everlasting, pp. 66, 67.
Conferences on Conditionalism
In the nineteenth century, in addition to a great revival of individual exponents of conditionalism, conferences were held, such as the large London Conference on Conditional Immortality, May 15, 1876, with its published report. Convened under the chairmanship of LieutenantGeneral Goodwyn, the attendance included such prominent adherents as Henry Constable, Edward White, Minton, Heard, Howard, Leask, Tinling, and Barrett, with messages from Dr. Petavel of Switzerland, Dr. Weymouth of Mill Hill School, et cetera. The gist of the conference report was: "The Bible nowhere teaches an inherent immortality; but teaches that it is the object of redemption to impart it. . . . The communication of it requires a regeneration of man, by the Holy Spirit, and a resurrection of the dead."Page 28. It declared that the enjoyment of immortality is conditional; and that those who will not return to God will die and perish everlastingly. "Out of Christ there is no life eternal."
Dr. White there declared:
These are the ideas which have brought us together this morning. They are now firmly held by an immense multitude of thoughtful people of all lands, for although we are but a little company here assembled, we represent an immense army in Europe and America. These views are spreading every day amongst the churches; and number among their adherents some of the foremost men of science, theologians, missionaries, philologers, philosophers, preachers, and statesmen.Report, London Conference on Conditional Immortality, pp. 28, 29.
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Important Symposiums Appear
Several important symposiums
Life Everlasting (199 pages, 1882), with twenty contributors;
That Unknown Country (943 pages, 1889), a pro and con discussion with 52 well-known contributors; and a third,
Immortality: a Symposium, published in Britain were all issued within a decade. These, appearing on both sides of the Atlantic, indicate the widespread interdenominational and international interest in this vital theme. Note the first one, in 1882, published in Philadelphia.
Pettingell's "The Life Everlasting" Symposium.A 199-page symposium (appearing as a supplement to J. H. Pettingell's
The Life Everlasting of 1882), was prepared by the following contributors:
Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor, Park Congregational Church, Norwich, Conn.; Dr. Edward White, Congregationalist, St. Paul's Chapel, London; Samuel Minton, Anglican, Eaton Chapel, London; George R. Kramer, Independent pastor, Household of Faith Church, Wilmington, Del.; Joseph D. Wilson, rector, St. John's Reformed Episcopal Church, Chicago; A. A. Phelps, pastor, Congregational Church, Rochester, New York; editor,
The Bible Banner; Dr. A. M. B. Graham, president Arkansas Christian Conference and president Christian Temperance Union of Arkansas; William B. Hart, layman, Philadelphia; Dr. Willam Leask, Congregationalist pastor, Maberly Chapel, London; editor,
The Rainbow; Dr. Emmanuel Petavel (Petavel-Olliff), Geneva, Switzerland, author of
La Fin du Mal, translated into English as
The Struggle for Eternal
595
Life; J. H. Kellogg, M.D., superintendent of Battle Creek, Michigan, Sanitarium, author of
The Soul and the Resurrection; Prof. D. H. Chase, Methodist, Middletown, Conn.; Charles Byse, pastor, Free Evangelical Church, Brussels, Belgium, and editor of
Eglise Chretienne Missionnaire Belge and Journal du Protantisme Francoise; William Lang, author, Edinburgh; M. W. Strang, editor, The Messenger, Glasgow; Prof. Hermann Schutz, University of Gottingen, Germany, author of
Die Voraussetzungen der christlichen Lehre von der Unsterblichkeit (The Principles of the Christian Doctrine of Immortality); Dr. Clement M. Butler, rector of Trinity Church, Washington, D.C., and professor of history, Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia; Dr. Matson Meier-Smith, Congregationalist pastor and professor of homiletics and pastoral cares, Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia; Canon Henry Constable, Anglican author, London; Dr. C. R. Hendrickson, pastor, Baptist Church, Jackson, Tenn.; Dr. W. R. Huntington, rector, AllSaints Church, Worcester, Mass.
Dr. Phelps' Indictment on Innate Immortality.Dr. Phelps, in discussing "Is Man by Nature Immortal?" (pp. 639-650), presents twelve counts against the doctrine of innate immortality:
1. It has a bad history; it was introduced by the serpent in Eden, and springs from a heathen philosophy; it is not found in Jewish belief; is a compromise with Platonism; adopted and authenticated by the Church of Rome.
2. It is at variance with the scriptural account of man's creation.
3. It clashes with the Bible statement of man's fall.
596 4. It is opposed to the scriptural doctrine of death. 5. It is equally opposed to physiological facts.
6. Immortality is nowhere ascribed to man in his present state of existence.
7. Immortality is a blessing to be sought, and not a birthright legacy.
8. Inherent immortality is opposed to the scriptural doom of the wicked.
9. It supersedes the necessity of a resurrection.
10. It reduces the judgment scene to a solemn farce. 11. It subverts the Bible doctrine of Christ's second coming.
12. It is a prolific source of errorMohammedanism, Shakerism, Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, Purgatory, Mariolatry, Universalism, Eternal-Tormentism.
