the fallacy of eternal torment and related issues

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"Sweetness and Light".

Christianity was everywhere at first, a religion of "sweetness and light." The Greek fathers exemplified all these qualities, and Clement and Origen were ideals of its perfect spirit. But from Augustine downward the Latin reaction, prompted by the tendency of men in all ages to escape the exactions laid upon the soul by thought, and who flee to external authority to avoid the demands of reason, was away from the genius of Christianity, until Augustinianism ripened into Popery, and the beautiful system of the Greek fathers was succeeded by the nightmare of the theology of the medieval centuries, and later of Calvinism and Puritanism.5 Had the church followed the prevailing spirit of the ante-Nicene Fathers it would have conserved the best thought of Greece, the divine ideals of Plato, and joined them to the true interpretation of Christianity, and we may venture to declare that it would thus have continued the career of progress that had rendered the first three centuries so marvelous in their character; a progress that would have continued with accelerated speed, and Christendom would have widened its borders and deepened its sway immeasurably. With the prevalence of the Latin language the East and the West grew apart, and the latter, more and more discarding reason, and controlled, by the iron inflexibility of a semi-pagan secular government, gave Roman Catholicism its opportunity.

 

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Oriental Asceticism.

The influence of the ascetic religions of the Asiatic countries, especially Buddhism, contaminated Christianity, resulting later in celibacy, monasteries, convents, hermits, and all the worser elements of Catholicism in the Middle Ages.6 At the first contact Christianity absorbed more than it modified, till in the later ages the alien force became supreme. In fact, orientalism was already beginning to mar the beautiful simplicity of Christianity when John wrote his Gospel to counteract it. Schaff, in his "History of the Christian Church," remarks:

All the germs of (Christian) asceticism appear in the third century. * * * The first two Christian hermits were not till Paul of Thebes, A.D. 250, and Anthony of Egypt, A.D. 270, appeared. Asceticism was in existence long before Christ. Jews, Nazarites, Essenes, Therapeutæ, Persians, Indians, Buddhists, all originated this Oriental heathenism. * * * The religion of the Chinese, Buddhism, Brahmanism, the religion of Zoroaster and of the Egyptians, more or less leavened Christianity in its earliest stages. So did Greek and Roman paganism with which the apostles and their followers came into direct contact.

The doctrines of substitutional atonement, resurrection of the body, native depravity, and endless punishment, are not lisped in the earliest creeds or formulas.7 The earliest Christians (Allen: Christian Thought) taught that man is the image of God, and that the in-dwelling Deity will lead him to holiness.

In Alexandria, the center of Greek culture and Christian thought, "more thoroughly Greek than Athens it its days of renown," the theological atmosphere was more nearly akin to that of the Universalist church of the present day than to that of any other branch of the Christian church during the last fifteen centuries.8

 

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Wonderful Progress of Christianity at First.

The wonderful progress made during the first three centuries by the simple, pure and cheerful faith of early Christianity shows us what its growth might have been made had not the morose spirit of Tertullian, reinforced by the "dark shadow of Augustine," transformed it. As early as the beginning of the second century the heathen Pliny, the proprætor of Bithynia, reported to the emperor that his province was so filled with Christians that the worship of the heathen deities had nearly ceased. And they were not only of the poor and despised, but of all conditions of life--omnis ordinis. Milner thinks that Asia Minor was at this time quite thoroughly evangelized. As early as the close of the Second Century there were not only many converts from the humbler ranks, but "the main strength of Christianity lay in the middle, perhaps in the mercantile classes." Gibbon says the Christians were not one-twentieth part of the Roman Empire, till Constantine gave them the sanction of his authority, but Robertson estimates them at one-fifth of the whole, and in some districts as the majority.9 Origen: "Against Celsus" says: "At the present day (A.D. 240) not only rich men, but persons of rank, and delicate and high-born ladies, receive the teachers of Christianity; and the religion of Christ is better known than the teachings of the best philosophers." And Arnobius testifies that Christians included orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. And it was precisely their bright and cheerful views of life and death, of God's universal fatherhood and man's universal brotherhood--the divinity of its ethical principles and the purity of its professors, that account for the wonderful progress of Christianity during the three centuries that followed our Lord's death. The pessimism of the oriental religions; the corruption and folly of the Greek and Roman mythology; the unutterable wickedness of the mass of mankind, and the universal depression of society invited its advance, and gave way before it. Justin Martyr wrote that in his time prayers and thanksgivings were offered in "the name of the Crucified, among every race of men, Greek or barbarian." Tertullian states that all races and tribes, even to farthest Britain, had heard the news of salvation. He declared: "We are but of yesterday, and lo we fill the whole empire--your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your municipalities, your councils, nay even the camp, the tribune, the decory, the palace, the senate, the forum."10 Chrysostom testifies that "the isles of Britain in the heard of the ocean had been converted."

 

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God's Fatherhood.

The talismanic word of the Alexandrian fathers, as of the New Testament, was FATHER. This word, as now, unlocked all mysteries, solved all problems, and explained all the enigmas of time and eternity. Holding God as Father, punishment was held to be remedial, and therefore restorative, and final recovery from sin universal. It was only when the Father was lost sight of in the judge and tyrant, under the baneful reign of Augustinianism, the Deity was hated, and that Catholics transferred to Mary, and later, Protestants gave to Jesus that supreme love that is due alone to the Universal Father. For centuries in Christendom after the Alexandrine form of Christianity had waned, the Fatherhood of God was a lost truth, and most of the worst errors of the modern creeds are due to that single fact, more than to all other causes.

It was during those happy years more than in any subsequent three centuries, that, as Jerome observed, "the blood of Christ was yet warm in the breasts of Christians." Says the accurate historian, Cave, in his "Primitive Christianity:" "Here he will find a piety active and zealous, shining through the blackest clouds of malice and cruelty; afflicted innocence triumphant, notwithstanding all the powerful or politic attempts of men or devils; a patience unconquerable under the biggest temptations; a charity truly catholic and unlimited; a simplicity and upright carriage in all transactions; a sobriety and temperance remarkable to the admiration of their enemies; and, in short, he will see the divine and holy precepts of the Christian religion drawn down into action, and the most excellent genius and spirit of the Gospel breathing in the hearts and lives of these good old Christians."

 

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Christianity, a Greek Religion.

"Christianity," says Milman, "was almost from the first a Greek religion. Its primal records were all written in Greek language; it was promulgated with the greatest rapidity and success among nations either of Greek descent, or those which had been Grecized by the conquest of Alexander. In their polity the Grecian churches were a federation of republics." At the first, art, literature, life, were Greek, cheerful, sunny, serene. The Latin type of character was morose, gloomy, characterized, says Milman, by "adherence to legal form; severe subordination to authority. The Roman Empire extended over Europe by a universal code, and by subordination to a spiritual Cæsar as absolute as he was in civil obedience. Thus the original simplicity of the Christian polity was entirely subverted; its pure democracy became a spiritual autocracy. The presbyters developed into bishops, the bishop of Rome became pope, and Christendom reflected Rome." But during the first three centuries this change had not taken place. "It is there, therefore, among the Alexandrine fathers that we are to look to find Christianity in its pristine purity. The language, organization, writers, and Scriptures of the church in the first centuries were all Greek. The Gospels were everywhere read in Greek, the commercial and literary language of the Empire. The books were in Greek, and even in Gaul and Rome Greek was the liturgical language. The Octavius of Minucius Felix, and Novatian on the Trinity, were the earliest known works of Latin Christian literature.11

 

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Christianity, a Greek Religion.

"Christianity," says Milman, "was almost from the first a Greek religion. Its primal records were all written in Greek language; it was promulgated with the greatest rapidity and success among nations either of Greek descent, or those which had been Grecized by the conquest of Alexander. In their polity the Grecian churches were a federation of republics." At the first, art, literature, life, were Greek, cheerful, sunny, serene. The Latin type of character was morose, gloomy, characterized, says Milman, by "adherence to legal form; severe subordination to authority. The Roman Empire extended over Europe by a universal code, and by subordination to a spiritual Cæsar as absolute as he was in civil obedience. Thus the original simplicity of the Christian polity was entirely subverted; its pure democracy became a spiritual autocracy. The presbyters developed into bishops, the bishop of Rome became pope, and Christendom reflected Rome." But during the first three centuries this change had not taken place. "It is there, therefore, among the Alexandrine fathers that we are to look to find Christianity in its pristine purity. The language, organization, writers, and Scriptures of the church in the first centuries were all Greek. The Gospels were everywhere read in Greek, the commercial and literary language of the Empire. The books were in Greek, and even in Gaul and Rome Greek was the liturgical language. The Octavius of Minucius Felix, and Novatian on the Trinity, were the earliest known works of Latin Christian literature.11

 

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Testimony of the Catacombs.

An illuminating side-light is cast on the opinions of the early Christians by the inscriptions and emblems on the monuments in the Roman Catacombs.12 It is well known that from the end of the First to the end of the Fourth Century the early Christians buried their dead, probably with the knowledge and consent of the pagan authorities, in subterranean galleries excavated in the soft rock (tufa) that underlies Rome. These ancient cemeteries were first uncovered A.D. 1578. Already sixty excavations have been made extending five hundred and eighty-seven miles. More than six, some estimates say eight, million bodies are known to have been buried between A.D. 72 and A.D. 410. Eleven thousand epitaphs and inscriptions have been found; few dates are between A.D. 72 and 100; the most are from A.D. 150 to A.D. 410. The galleries are from three to five feet wide and eight feet high, and the niches for bodies are five tiers deep, one above another, each silent tenant in a separate cell. At the entrance of each cell is a tile or slab of marble, once securely cemented and inscribed with name, epitaph, or emblem. 13 Haweis beautifully says in his "Conquering Cross:" "The public life of the early Christian was persecution above ground; his private life was prayer underground." The emblems and inscriptions are most suggestive. The principal device, scratched on slabs, carved on utensils and rings, and seen almost everywhere, is the Good Shepherd, surrounded by his flock and carrying a lamb. But most striking of all, he is found with a goat on his shoulder; which teaches us that even the wicked were at the early date regarded as the objects of the Savior's solicitude, after departing from this life.13

Matthew Arnold has preserved this truth in his immortal verse:14

"He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!"
So rang Tertullian's sentence on the side
of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried,--
"Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,
Whose sins once washed by the baptismal wave!"
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,
The infant Church,--of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave,
And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs,
With eyes suffused but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid
Her head in ignominy, death and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew
And on his shoulders not a lamb, a kid!

This picture is a "distinct protest" against the un-Christian sentiment then already creeping into the church from Paganism.

Everywhere in the Catacombs is the anchor, emblem of that hope which separated Christianity from Paganism. Another symbol is the fish, which plays a prominent part in Christian symbolry. It is curious and instructive to account for this ideograph. It is used as a cryptogram of Christ. The word is a sort of acrostic of the name and office of our Lord.

 

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Early Funeral Emblems.

The Greek word fish, in capitals -- -- would be a secret cypher that would stand for our Lord's name, when men dared not write or speak it; and the word or the picture of a fish meant to the Christian the name of his Savior; and he wore as a charm a fish cut in ivory, or mother-of-pearl, on his neck living, and bore to his grave to be exhumed centuries after his death an effigy of a fish to signify his faith. These and the vine, the sheep, the dove, the ark, the palm and other emblems in the Catacombs express only hope, faith, cheerful confidence. The horrid inventions of Augustine, the cruel monstrosities of Angelo and Dante, and the abominations of the medieval theology were all unthought of then, and have no hint in the Catacombs.

Stll more instructive are the inscriptions. As De Rossi observes, the most ancient inscriptions differ from those of Pagans "more by what they do not say than by what they do say." While the Pagans denote the rank or social position of their dead as clarissima femine, or lady of senatorial rank, Christian epigraphy is destitute of all mention of distinctions. Only the name and some expression of endearment and confidence are inscribed. Says Northcote: "They proceed upon the assumption that there is an incessant interchange of kindly offices between this world and the next, between the living and the dead." Mankind is a brotherhood, and not a word can be found to show any thought of the mutilation of the great fraternity, and the consignment of any portion of it to final despair. Such are these among the inscriptions: "Paxtecum, Urania;" "Peace with thee, Urania;" "Semper in D. vivas, dulcis anima;" "Always in God mayest thou live, sweet soul;" "Mayest thou live in the Lord, and pray for us." They had "emigrated," had been "translated," "born into eternity," but not a word is found expressive of doubt or fear, horror and gloom, such as in subsequent generations formed the staple of the literature of death and the grave, and rendered the Christian graveyard, up to the beginning of the seventeenth century, a horrible place. The first Christians regarded the grave as the doorway into a better world, and expressed only hope and trust in their emblems and inscriptions.

Following are additional specimen epitaphs: "Irene in Pace." "Here lies Marcia put to rest in a dream of peace." "Victorina dormit," "Victoria sleeps;" "Zoticus hic ad dormiendum," "Zoticus laid here to sleep; "Raptus eterne domus," "Snatched home eternally." "In Christ; Alexander is not dead but lives beyond the stars, and his body rests in this tomb." Contrast these with the tone of heathen funeral inscriptions. In general the pagan epitaphs were like that which Sophocles expresses in OEdipus, at Colomus:

"Happiest beyond compare
Never to taste of life;
Happiest in order next,
Being born, with quickest speed
Thither again to turn,
From whence we came."

"In a Roman monument which I had occasion to publish not long since, a father (Calus Sextus by name,) is represented bidding farewell to his daughter, and two words--'Vale AEternam,' farewell forever--give an expressive utterance to the feeling of blank and hopeless severance with which Greeks and Romans were burdened when the reality of death was before their eyes." (Mariott, p. 186.) Death was a cheerful event in the eyes of the early Christians. It was called birth. Anchors, harps, palms, crowns, surrounded the grave. They discarded lamentations and extravagant grief. The prayers for the dead were thanksgiving for God's goodness. (Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, Vol. 1. p. 342.) Their language is such as could not have been used by them had they entertained the views that prevailed from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Century, among the majority of Christians; and their remains all testify to the cheerfulness of early Christianity.

 

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Cheerful Faith of the First Christians.

"The fathers of the church live in their voluminous works; the lower orders are only represented by these simple records, from which, with scarcely an exception, sorrow and complaint are banished; the boast of suffering, or an appeal to the revengeful passions is nowhere to be found. One expresses faith, another hope, a third charity. The genius of primitive Christianity--to believe, to love and to suffer--has never been better illustrated. These 'sermons in stones' are addressed to the heart and not to the head--to the feelings rather than to the taste. * * * In all the pictures and scriptures of our Lord's history no reference is ever found to his sufferings or death. No gloomy subjects occur in the cycle of Christian art." (Maitland.) Chrysostom says: "For this cause, too, the place itself is called a cemetery; that you may know that the dead laid there are not dead, but at rest and asleep. For before the coming of Christ death used to be called death, and not only so, but Hades, but after his coming and dying for the life of the world, death came to be called death no longer, but sleep and repose." The word cemeteries, dormitories, shows us that death was regarded as a state of repose and thus a condition of hope. If fact, "in this auspicious world, 15 now for the first time applied to the tomb, there is manifest a sense of hope and immortality, the result of a new religion. A star had arisen on the borders of the grave, dispelling the horror of darkness which had hitherto reigned there; the prospect beyond was now cleared up, and so dazzling was the view of an 'eternal city sculptured in the sky,' that numbers were found eager to rush through the gate of martyrdom, for the hope of entering its starry portals." 16 Says Ruskin: "Not a cross as a symbol in the Catacombs. The earliest certain Latin cross is on the tomb of the Empress Galla Placidia, A.D. 451. No picture of the crucifixion till the Ninth Century, nor any portable crucifix till long after. To the early Christians Christ was living, the one agonized hour was lost in the thought of his glory and triumph. The fall of theology and Christian thought dates from the error of dwelling upon his death instead of his life." 17 Farrar adds: "The symbols of the Catacombs, like every other indication of early teaching, show the glad, bright, loving character of the Christian faith. It was a religion of joy and not of gloom, of life and not of death, of tenderness not of severity. * * * We see in them as in the acts of the apostles, that the keynotes of the music of the Christian life were 'exultation' and 'simplicity.' And how far superior in beauty and significance were these early Christian symbols to the meaninglessness and pagan broken columns and broken rose-buds and skulls and weeping women and inverted torches of our cemeteries. We find in the Catacombs neither the cross of the fifth and sixth centuries nor the crucifixes of the twelfth, nor the torches and martyrdoms of the seventeenth, nor the skeletons of the fifteenth, not the cypresses and death's heads of the eighteenth. Instead of these the symbols of beauty, hope and peace." 18

 

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Dean Stanley's Testimony.

From A.D. 70, the date of the fall of Jerusalem, to about A.D. 150, there is very little Christian literature. It is only when Justin Martyr, who was executed A.D. 166, that there is any considerable literature of the church. The fathers before Justin are "shadows, formless phantoms, whose writings are uncertain and only partially genuine." Speaking of the scarcity of literature pertaining to those times and the changes experienced by Christianity, says Dean Stanley: "No other change equally momentous has even since affected its features, yet none has ever been so silent and secret. The stream in that most critical moment of its passage from the everlasting hills to the plain below is lost to our view at the very point where we are most anxious to watch it. We may hear its struggles under the overarching rocks; we may catch its spray on the boughs that overlap its course, but the torrent itself we see not or see only by imperfect glimpses. * * * A fragment here, an allegory there; romances of unknown authorship; a handful of letters of which the genuineness of every portion is contested inch by inch; the summary explanation of a Roman magistrate; the pleadings of two or three Christian apologists; customs and opinions in the very act of change; last, but not least, the faded paintings, the broken sculptures, the rude epitaphs in the darkness of the Catacombs--these are the scanty, though attractive materials out of which the likeness of the early church must be produced, as it was working its way, in the literal sense of the word, underground, under camp and palace, under senate and forum."19

There were eighty years between Paul's latest epistle and the first of the writings of the Christian fathers. Besides the writings of Tacitus and Pliny, the long haitus is filled only by the emblems and inscriptions of the Catacombs. What an eloquent story they tell of the cheerfulness of primitive Christianity!20


1 Martial, Juvenal, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, and other heathen writers, describe the well-nigh universal depravity and depression of the so-called civilized world. In Corinth the Acrocorinthus was occupied by a temple to the goddess of lust.

2 Uhlhorn's Conflict of Christianity and Paganism.

3 Conquering Cross. Forewords.

4 Early Years of the Christian Church.

5 Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought.

6 Milman's Latin Christianity.

7 Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine.

8 The early Christians never transferred the rigidity of the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday. Both Saturday and Sunday were observed religiously till towards the end of the second centurty--then Sunday alone was kept. Fasting and even kneeling in prayer was forbidden on Sunday with the early Christians. Ancient Christian writers always mean Saturday by the word "Sabbath."

9 The Emperor Maximin in one of his edicts says that "Almost all had abandoned the worship of their ancestory for the new faith."

10 Hesterni summus et vestra omnes implevimus urbes, insulas, castella, municipia, conciliabula, castra ipsa, tribus, decurias, palatium, senatum, forum. Apol. c. XXXVII. Moshein, however, thinks that the "African orator, who is inclined to exaggerate, "rhetoricates" a little here. The primitive Christians exulted at the wonderful progress and diffusion of the Gospel.

11 Milman's Latin Christianity. "The breadth of the best Greek Fathers, such as Origen, or Clement of Alexandria, is a thousand times superior to the dry, harsh narrowness of the Latins." Athanase Coquerel the Younger, First His. Trans. of Christianity, p. 215.

12 Cutts, Turning Points of Church History

13 See DeRossi, Northcote, Withrow, etc., on the Catacombs.

14 A suggestive thought in this connection is, that our Lord (Matt. xxv. 33), calls those on his left hand "kidlings," "little kids," a term for tenderness and regard.

15 Maitland's Church and the Catacombs.

16 Maitland.

17 Bible of Amiens.

18 Lives of the Fathers.

19 Christian Institutions.

20 Martineau's Hours of Thought, p. 155. "In the cycle of Christian emblems the death of Christ holds no place; it was not till six centuries after his death that artists began to venture upon the representation of Christ crucified. The crucifix dates only from the end of the Seventeenth Century."--Athanase Coqueral

 

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Origin of Endless Punishment.

When our Lord spoke, the doctrine of unending torment was believed by many of those who listened to his words, and they stated it in terms and employed others, entirely differently, in describing the duration of punishment, from the terms afterward used by those who taught universal salvation and annihilation, and so gave to the terms in question the sense of unlimited duration.

For example, the Pharisees, according to Josephus, regarded the penalty of sin as torment without end, and they stated the doctrine in unambiguous terms. They called it eirgmos aidios (eternal imprisonment) and timorion adialeipton (endless torment), while our Lord called the punishment of sin aionion kolasin (age-long chastisement).

 

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Meaning of Scriptural Terms.

The language of Josephus is used by the profane Greeks, but is never found in the New Testament connected with punishment. Josephus, writing in Greek to Jews, frequently employs the word that our Lord used to define the duration of punishment (aionios), but he applies it to things that had ended or that will end.1 Can it be doubted that our Lord placed his ban on the doctrine that the Jews had derived from the heathen by never using their terms describing it, and that he taught a limited punishment by employing words to define it that only meant limited duration in contemporaneous literature? Josephus used the word aionos with its current meaning of limited duration. He applies it to the imprisonment of John the Tyrant; to Herod's reputation; to the glory acquired by soldiers; to the fame of an army as a "happy life and aionian glory." He used the words as do the Scriptures to denote limited duration, but when he would describe endless duration he uses different terms. Of the doctrine of the Pharisees he says:

"They believe * * * that wicked spirits are to be kept in an eternal imprisonment (eirgmon aidion). The Pharisees say all souls are incorruptible, but while those of good men are removed into other bodies those of bad men are subject to eternal punishment" (aidios timoria). Elsewhere he says that the Essenes, "allot to bad souls a dark, tempestuous place, full of never-ceasing torment (timoria adialeipton), where they suffer a deathless torment" (athanaton timorion). Aidion and athanaton are his favorite terms for duration, and timoria (torment) for punishment.

 

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Philo's Use of the Words.

Philo, who was contemporary with Christ, generally used aidion to denote endless, and aionian temporary duration. He uses the exact phraseology of Matt. xxv: 46, precisely as Christ used it: "It is better not to promise than not to give prompt assistance, for no blame follows in the former case, but in the latter there is dissatisfaction from the weaker class, and a deep hatred and æonian punishment (chastisement) from such as are more powerful." Here we have the precise terms employed by our Lord, which show that aionian did not mean endless but did mean limited duration in the time of Christ. Philo adopts athanaton, ateleuteton or aidion to denote endless, and aionian temporary duration. In one place occurs this sentence concerning the wicked: "to live always dying, and to undergo, as it were, an immortal and interminable death."2 Stephens, in his valuable "Thesaurus," quotes from a Jewish work: "These they called aionios, hearing that they had performed the sacred rites for three entire generations." 3 This shows conclusively that the expression "three generations" was then one full equivalent of aionian. Now, these eminent scholars were Jews who wrote in Greek, and who certainly knew the meaning of the words they employed, and they give to the aeonian words the sense of indefinite duration, to be determined in any case by the scope of the subject. Had our Lord intended to inculcate the doctrine of the Pharisees, he would have used the terms by which they described it. But his word defining the duration of punishment was aionian, while their words are aidion, adialeipton, and athanaton. Instead of saying with Philo and Josephus, thanaton athanaton, deathless or immortal death; eirgmon aidion, eternal imprisonment; aidion timorion, eternal torment; and thanaton ateleuteton, interminable death, he used aionion kolasin, an adjective in universal use for limited duration, and a noun denoting suffering issuing in amendment. The word by which our Lord describes punishment is the word kolasin, which is thus defined: "Chastisement, punishment." "The trimming of the luxuriant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful." "The act of clipping or pruning--restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement." "The kind of punishment which tends to the improvement of the criminal is what the Greek philosopher called kolasis or chastisement." "Pruning, checking, punishment, chastisement, correction." "Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed the word for punishment? The Latin poena or punio, to punish, the root pu in Sanscrit, which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivation was originally formed, not to express mere striking or torture, but cleansing. correcting, delivering from the stain of sin." 4 That it had this meaning in Greek usage, see Plato: "For the natural or accidental evils of others no one gets angry, or admonishes, or teaches, or punishes (kolazei) them, but we pity those afflicted with such misfortune * * * for if, O Socrates, if you will consider what is the design of punishing (kolazein) the wicked, this of itself will show you that men think virtue something that may be acquired; for no one punishes (kolazei) the wicked,

looking to the past only simply for the wrong he has done--that is, no one does this thing who does not act like a wild beast; desiring only revenge, without thought. Hence, he who seeks to punish (kolazein) with reason does not punish for the sake of the past wrong deed, * * * but for the sake of the future, that neither the man himself who is punished may do wrong again, nor any other who has seen him chastised. And he who entertains this thought must believe that virtue may be taught, and he punishes (kolazei) for the purpose of deterring from wickedness?" 5

 

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Use of Gehenna.

So of the place of punishment (gehenna) the Jews at the time of Christ never understood it to denote endless punishment. The reader of Farrar's "Mercy and Judgment," and "Eternal Hope," and Windet's "De Vita functorum statu," will find any number of statements from the Talmudic and other Jewish authorities, affirming in the most explicit language that Gehenna was understood by the people to whom our Lord addressed the word as a place or condition of temporary duration. They employed such terms as these "The wicked shall be judged in Gehenna until the righteous say concerning them, 'We have seen enough.'"5 "Gehenna is nothing but a day in which the impious will be burned." "After the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer." "There will hereafter be no Gehenna."6 These quotations might be multiplied indefinitely to demonstrate that the Jews to whom our Lord spoke regarded Gehenna as of limited duration, as did the Christian Fathers. Origen in his reply to Celsus (VI, xxv) gives an exposition of Gehenna, explaining its usage in his day. He says it is an analogue of the well-known valley of the Son of Hinnom, and signifies the fire of purification. Now observe: Christ carefully avoided the words in which his auditors expressed endless punishment (aidios, timoria and adialeiptos), and used terms they did not use with that meaning (aionios kolasis), and employed the term which by universal consent among the Jews has no such meaning (Gehenna); and as his immediate followers and the earliest of the Fathers pursued exactly the same course, is it not demonstrated that they intended to be understood as he was understood?7

Professor Plumptre in a letter concerning Canon Farrar's sermons, says: "There were two words which the Evangelists might have used--kolasis, timoria. Of these, the first carries with it, by the definition of the greatest of Greek ethical writers, the idea of a reformatory process, (Aristotle, Rhet. I, x, 10-17). It is inflicted 'for the sake of him who suffers it.' The second, on the other hand, describes a penalty purely vindictive or retributive. St. Matthew chose--if we believe that our Lord spoke Greek, he himself chose--the former word, and not the latter."

All the evidence conclusively shows that the terms defining punishment--"everlasting," "eternal," "Gehenna," etc., in the Scriptures teach its limited duration, and were so regarded by sacred and profane authors, and that those outside of the Bible who taught unending torment always employed other words than those used by or Lord and his disciples.

Professor Allen concedes that the great prominence given to "hell-fire" in Christian preaching is a modern innovation. He says: "There is more 'blood-theology' and 'hell-fire,' that is, the vivid setting-forth of everlasting torment to terrify the soul, in one sermon of Jonathan Edwards, or one harangue at a modern 'revival,' than can be found in the whole body of homilies and epistles through all the dark ages put together. * * * Set beside more modern dispensations the Catholic position of this period (middle ages) is surprisingly merciful and mild."3

 

[Pilgrim 33]

Whence Came the Doctrine?

Of Heathen Origin.

When we ask the question: Where did those in the primitive Christian church who taught endless punishment find it, if not in the Bible?--we are met by these facts:--1. The New Testament was not in existence, as the canon had not been arranged. 2. The Old Testament did not contain the doctrine. 3. The Pagan and Jewish religions, the latter corrupted by heathen accretions, taught it (Hagenbach, I, First Period; Clark's Foreign Theol. Lib. I, new series.) Westcott tells us: "The written Gospel of the first period of the apostolic age was the Old Testament, interpreted by the vivid recollection of the Savior's ministry. * * * The knowledge of the teachings of Christ * * * to the close of the Second Century, were generally derived from tradition, and not from writings. The Old Testament was still the great store-house from which Christian teachers derived the sources of consolation and conviction." 9 Hence the false ideas must have been brought by converts from Judaism or Paganism. The immediate followers of our Lord's apostles do not explicitly treat matters of eschatology. It was the age of apologetics and not of polemics.10 The new revelation of the Divine Fatherhood through the Son occupied the chief attention of Christians, and the efforts seem to have been almost exclusively devoted to establish the truth of the Incarnation, "God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." We may reasonably conclude that if this great truth had been kept constantly in the foreground, uncorrupted by pagan error and human invention, there would have been none of those false conceptions of God that gave rise to the horrors of medieval times,--and no occasion in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries for the renascence of original Christianity in the form of Universalism. The first Christians, however, naturally brought heathen increments into their new faith, so that very early the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked, or their endless torment, began to be avowed. Here and there these doctrines appeared from the very first, but the early writers generally either state the great truths that legitimately result in universal good, or in unmistakable terms avow the doctrine as a revealed truth of the Christian Scriptures. "Numbers flocked into the church who brought their heathen ways with them." (Third Century, "Neoplatonism," by C. Bigg, D.D., London: 1895, p. 160.)

At first Christianity was as a bit of leaven buried in foreign elements, modifying and being modified. The early Christians had individual opinions and idiosyncrasies, which at first their new faith did not eradicate; they still retained some of their former errors. This accounts for their different views of the future world. At the time of our Lord's advent Judaism had been greatly corrupted. During the captivity 11 Chaldæan, Persian and Egyptian doctrines, and other oriental ideas had tinged the Mosaic religion, and in Alexandria, especially, there was a great mixture of borrowed opinions and systems of faith, it being supposed that no one form alone was complete and sufficient, but that each system possessed a portion of the perfect truth. "The prevailing tone of mind was eclectic," and Christianity did not escape the influence.

 

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The Apocryphal Book of Enoch.

More than a century before the birth of Christ 12 appeared the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which contains, so far as is known, the earliest statement extant of the doctrine of endless punishment in any work of Jewish origin. It became very popular during the early Christian centuries, and modified, it may be safely supposed, the views of Tatian, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and their followers. It is referred to or quoted from by Barnabas, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Irenæus, Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, Hilary, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others. Jude quotes from it in verses 14 and 15, and refers to it in verse 6, on which account some of the fathers considered Jude apocryphal; but it is probable that Jude quotes Enoch as Paul quotes the heathen poets, not to endorse its doctrine, but to illustrate a point, as writers nowadays quote fables and legends. Cave, in the "Lives of the Fathers," attributes the prevalence of the doctrine of fallen angels to a perversion of the account (Gen. vi: 1-4) of "the sons of God and the daughters of men." He refers the prevalence of the doctrine to "the authority of the 'Book of Enoch,' (highly valued by many in those days) wherein this story is related, as appears from the fragments of it still extant." The entire work is now accessible through modern discovery.

A little later than Enoch appeared the Book of Ezra, advocating the same doctrine. These two books were popular among the Jews before the time of Christ, and it is supposed, as the Old Testament is silent on the subject, that the corrupt traditions of the Pharisees, of which our Lord warned his disciples to beware, 13 were obtained in part from these books, or from the Egyptian and Pagan sources whence they were derived. At any rate, though the Old Testament does not contain the doctrine, 14 Josephus, as has been seen, assures us that the Pharisees of his time accepted and taught it. Of course they must have obtained the doctrine from uninspired sources. As these and possibly other similar books had already corrupted the faith of the Jews, they seem later to have infused their virus into the faith of some of the early Christians. Nothing is better established in history than that the doctrine of endless punishment, as held by the Christian church in medieval times, was of Egyptian origin, 15 and that for purposes of state it and its accessories were adopted by the Greeks and Romans. Montesquieu states that "Romulus, Tatius and Numa enslaved the gods to politics," and made religion for the state.

 

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Catholic Hell Copied from Heathen Sources.

Classic scholars know that the heathen hell was early copied by the Catholic church, and that almost its entire details afterwards entered into the creeds of Catholic and Protestant churches up to a century ago. Any reader may see this who will consult Pagan literature 16 and writers on the opinions of the ancients. And not only this, but the heathen writers declare that the doctrine was invented to awe and control the multitude. Polybius writes: "Since the multitude is ever fickle * * * there is no other way to keep them in order but by fear of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods and of the infernal regions." Seneca says: "Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc., are all a fable." Livy declares that Numa invented the doctrine, "a most efficacious means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace." Strabo writes: "The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, * * * for it is impossible to govern the crowd of women and all the common rabble by philosophical reasoning: these things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude." Similar language is found in Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plato, and other writers. History records nothing more distinctly than that the Greek and Roman Pagans borrowed of the Egyptians, and that some of the early Christians unconsciously absorbed, or studiously appropriated, the doctrines of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans concerning post-mortem punishment, and gradually corrupted the "simplicity that is in Christ" 17 by the inventions of antiquity, as from the same sources the Jews at the time of Christ had already corrupted their religion. 18 What more natural than that the small reservoir of Christian truth should be contaminated by the opinions that converts from all these sources brought with them into their new religion at first, and later that the Roman Catholic priests and Pagan legislators should seize them as engines of power by which to control the world?

Coquerel describes the effect of the irruption of Pagans into the early Christian church: "The, at first, gradual entrance and soon rapid irruption of an idolatrous multitude into the bosom of Christianity was not effected without detriment to the truth. The Christianity of Jesus was too lofty, too pure, for this multitude escaped from the degrading cults of Olympus. The Pagans were not able to enter en masse into the church without bringing to it their habits, their tastes, and some of their ideas."19 Milman and Neander think20 that old Jewish prejudices could not be extirpated in the proselytes of the infant church, and that latent Judaism lurked in it and was continued into the darker ages. Chrysostom complains that the Christians of his time (the Fourth Century) were "half Jews." Enfield 21 declares that converts from the schools of Pagan philosophy interwove their old errors with the simple truths of Christianity until "heathen and Christian doctrines were still more intimately blended * * * and both were almost entirely lost in the thick clouds of ignorance and barbarism which covered the earth. * * * The fathers of the church departed from the simplicity of the apostolic church and corrupted the purity of the Christian faith." Hagenbach reminds us that 22 "There were two errors which the newborn Christianity had to guard against if it was not to lose its peculiar religious features, and disappear in one of the already existing religions: against a relapse into Judaism on the one side, and against a mixture with Paganism and speculations borrowed from it, and a mythologizing tendency on the other." The Sibylline Oracles, advocating universal restoration; Philo, who taught annihilation, and Enoch and Ezra, who taught endless punishment, were all read by the early Christians, and no doubt exerted an influence in forming early opinions.

 

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Early Christianity Adulterated.

The Edinburgh Review concedes that "upon a full inspection it will be seen that the corruption of Christianity was itself the effect of the vitiated state of the human mind, of which the vices of the government were the great and primary cause." "That the Christian religion suffered much from the influence of the Gentile philosophy is unquestionable."23 Dr. Middleton, in a famous "Letter from Rome," shows that from the pantheon down to heathen temples, shrines and altars were taken by the early church, and so used that Pagans could employ them as well as Christians, and retain their old superstitions and errors while professing Christianity. In other words, that much of Paganism, after the First Century or two, remained in and corrupted Christianity. Mosheim writes that "no one objected (in the Fifth Century) to Christians retaining the opinions of their Pagan ancestors;" and Tytler describes the confusion that resulted from the mixture of Pagan philosophy with the plain and simple doctrines of the

Christian religion, from which the church in its infant state "suffered in a most essential manner." The Rev. T. B. Thayer, D. D., 24 thinks that the faith of the early Christian church "of the orthodox party was one-half Christian, one-quarter Jewish, and one-quarter Pagan; while that of the gnostic party was about one-quarter Christian and three-quarters philosophical Paganism." The purpose of many of the fathers seems to have been to bridge the abyss between Paganism and Christianity, and, for the sake of proselytes, to tolerate Pagan doctrine. Says Merivale: In the Fifth Century, Paganism was assimilated, not extirpated, and Christendom has suffered from it more or less even since. * * * The church * * * was content to make terms with what survived of Paganism, content to lose even more than it gained in an unholy alliance with superstition and idolatry; enticing, no doubt, many of the vulgar, and some even of the more intelligent, to a nominal acceptance of the Christian faith, but conniving at the surrender by the great mass of its own baptized members of the highest and purest of their spiritual acquisitions." 25 It is difficult to learn just how much surrounding influences affected ancient or modern Christians, for, as Schaff says (Hist. Apos. Ch. p. 23): "The theological views of the Greek Fathers were modified to a considerable extent by Platonism; those of the medieval schoolmen, by the logic and dialectics of Aristotle; those of the latter times by the system of Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Locke, Leibnitz, Kant, Fries, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Few scientific divines can absolutely emancipate themselves from the influence of the philosophy and public opinion of their age, and when they do they have commonly their own philosophy, etc."

 

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Original Greek New Testament.

That the Old Testament does not teach even post-mortem punishment is universally conceded by scholars, as has been seen; and that the Egyptians, and Greek and Roman Pagans did, is shown already. That the doctrine was early in the Christian church, is equally evident. As the early Christians did not obtain it from the Old Testament, which does not contain it, and as it was already a Pagan doctrine, where could they have procured it except from heathen sources? And as Universalism was nowhere taught, and as the first Universalist Christians after the apostles were Greeks, perfectly familiar with the language of the New Testament, where else could they have found their faith than where they declare they found it, in the New Testament? How can it be supposed that the Latins were correct in claiming that the Greek Scriptures teach a doctrine that the Greeks themselves did not find therein? And how can the Greek fathers in the primitive church mistake when they understand our Lord and his apostles to teach universal restoration? "It may be well to note here, that after the third century the descent of the church into errors of doctrine and practice grew more rapid. The worship of Jesus, of Mary, of saints, or relics, etc., followed each other. Mary was called 'the Mother of God,' 'the Queen of Heaven.' As God began to be represented more stern, implacable, cruel, the people worshiped Jesus to induce him to placate his Father's wrath; and then as the Son was held up as the severe judge of sinners and the executioner of the Father's vengeance, men prayed Mary to mollify the anger of her God-child; and when she became unfeeling or lacked influence, they turned to Joseph and other saints, and to martyrs, to intercede with their cold, implacable superiors. Thus theology became more hard and merciless--hell was intensified, and enlarged, and eternized--heaven shrunk, and receded, and lost its compassion--woman (despite the deification of Mary) was regarded as weak and despicable--the Agape were abolished and the Eucharist deified, and its cup withheld from the people--and woman deemed too impure to touch it! As among the heathen Romans, faith and reverence decreased as their gods were multiplied, so here, as objects of worship were increased, familiarity bred only sensuality, and sensuous worship drove out virtue and veneration, until, in the language of Mrs. Jameson's "Legends of the Madonna," (Int. p. xxxi): One of the frescoes in the Vatican represents Giulia Farnese (a noted impure woman and mistress of the pope!) in the character of the Madonna, and Pope Alexander VI. (the drunken, unchaste, beastly!) kneeling at her feet in the character of a votary! Under the influence of the Medici, the churches of Florence were filled with pictures of the Virgin in which the only thing aimed at was a meretricious beauty. Savonarola thundered from his pulpit in the garden of S. Marco against these impieties." 26


1 See my "Aion-Aionious," pp. 109-14; also Josephus, "Antiq." and "Jewish Wars."

2 "De Præmiis" and "Poenis" Tom. II, pp. 19-20. Mangey's edition. Dollinger quoted by Beecher. Philo was learned in Greek philosophy, and especially reverenced Plato. His use of Greek is of the highest authority.

3 "Solom. Parab."

4 Donnegan, Grotius, Liddel, Max Muller, Beecher, Hist. Doc. Fut. Ret. pp. 73-75.

5 The important passage may be found more fully quoted in "Aion-Aionios."

6 Targum of Jonathan on Isaiah, xvi: 24. See also "Aion-Aionious" and "Bible Hell."

7 Farrar's "Mercy and Judgment." pp. 380-381, where quotations are given from the Fourth Century, asserting that punishment must be limited because aionian correction (aionian kolasin), as in Matt. xxv: 46, must be terminable.

8 "Christian Hist. in its Three Great Periods." pp. 257-8.

9 Introduction to Gospels. p. 181

10 The opinions of the Jews were modified at first by the captivity in Egypt fifteen centuries before Christ, and later by the Babylonian captivity, ending four hundred years before Christ, so that many of them, the Pharisees especially, no longer held the simple doctrines of Moses.

11 Robertson's History of the Christian Church, vol. 1. pp. 38-39.

12 The Book of Enoch, translated from the Ethiopian, with Introduction and Notes. By Rev. George H. Schodde.

13 Mark vii: 13; Matthew xvi: 6, 12; Luke xxi, 1; Mark viii, 15.

14 Milman Hist. Jews; Warburton's Divine Legation; Jahn, Archaeology.

15 Warburton. Leland's Necessity of Divine Revelation.

16 Virgil's æneid. Apollodorus, Hesiod, Herodotus, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, etc.

17 II Cor. xi: 3.

18 Milman's Gibbon, Murdock's Mosheim, Enfield's Hist. Philos., Universalist Expositor, 1853.

19 Coquerel's First Historical Transformations of Christianity.

20 See Conybeare's "Paul," Vol. I, Chapters 14,15.

21 See also Priestley's "Corruptions of Christianity."

22 Hist. Doct. I Sec. 22.

23 Vaughan's Causes of the Corruption of Christianity; also Casaubon and Blunt's "Vestiges."

24 Hist. Doct. Endelss Punishment, pp. 192-193.

25 Early Church History, pp. 159-160.

26 Universalist Quartarly, January 1883.

 

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Doctrines of "Mitigation" and of "Reserve."

There was no controversy among Christians over the duration of the punishment of the wicked for at least three hundred years after the death of Christ. Scriptural terms were used with their Scriptural meanings, and while it is not probable that universal restoration was polemically or dogmatically announced, it is equally probable that the endless duration of punishment was not taught until the heathen corruptions had adulterated Christian truth. God's fatherhood and boundless love, and the work of Christ in man's behalf were dwelt upon, accompanied by the announcement of the fearful consequences of sin; but when those consequences, through Pagan influences, came to be regarded as endless in duration, then the antidotal truth of universal salvation assumed prominence through Clement, Origen, and other Alexandrine fathers. Even when some of the early Christians had so far been overcome by heathen error as to accept the dogma of endless torment for the wicked, they had no hard words for those who believed in universal restoration, and did not even controvert their views. The doctrines of Prayer for the Dead, and of Christ Preaching to those in Hades, and of Mitigation, were humane teachings of the primitive Christians that were subsequently discarded.

"Mitigation" Explained.

The doctrine of Mitigation was, that for some good deed on earth, the damned in hell would occasionally be let out on a respite or furlough, and have surcease of torment. This doctrine of mitigation was quite general among the fathers when they came to advocate the Pagan dogma. In fact, endless punishment in all its enormity, destitute of all benevolent features, was not fully developed until Protestantism was born, and prayers for the dead, mitigation of the condition of the "lost," and other softening features were repudiated.1

It was taught that the worst sinners--Judas himself, even--had furloughs from hell for good deeds done on Earth. Matthew Arnold embodies one of the legends in his poem of St. Brandon. The saint once met, on an iceberg on the ocean, the soul of Judas Iscariot, released from hell for awhile, who explains his respite. He had once given a cloak to a leper in Joppa, and so he says--

"Once every year, when carols wake
On earth the Christmas night's repose,
Arising from the sinner's lake'
I journey to these healing snows.
"I stand with ice my burning breast,
With silence calm by burning brain;
O Brandon, to this hour of rest,
That Joppan leper's ease was pain."

It remained for Protestantism to discard all the softening features that Catholicism had added to the bequest of heathenism into Christianity, and to give the world the unmitigated horror that Protestantism taught from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century.

The Doctrine of "Reserve."

We cannot read the patristic literature understandingly unless we constantly bear in mind the early fathers' doctrine of "O Economy," or "Reserve."2 Plato distinctly taught it,3 and says that error may be used as a medicine. He justifies the use of the "medicinal lie." The resort of the early fathers to the esoteric is no doubt derived from Plato. Origen almost quotes him when he says that sometimes fictitious threats are necessary to secure obedience, as when Solon had purposely given imperfect laws. Many, in and out of the church, held that the wise possessor of truth might hold it in secret. when its impartation to the ignorant would seem to be fraught with danger, and that error might be properly substituted. The object was to save "Christians of the simpler sort" from waters too deep for them. It is possible to defend the practice if it be taken to represent the method of a skillfulteacher, who will not confuse the learner with principles beyond his comprehension. 4 Gieseler remarks that "the Alexandrians regarded a certain accommodation as necessary, which ventures to make use even of falsehood for the attainment of a good end; nay, which was even obliged to do so." Neander declares that "the Orientals, according to their theology of oeconomy, allowed themselves many liberties not to be reconciled with the strict laws of veracity." 5

Some of the fathers who had achieved a faith in Universalism, were influenced by the mischievous notion that it was to be held esoterically, cherished in secret, or only communicated to the chosen few,--withheld from the multitude, who would not appreciate it, and even that the opposite error would, with some sinners, be more beneficial than the truth. Clement of Alexandria admits that he does not write or speak certain truths. Origen claims that there are doctrines not to be communicated to the ignorant. Clement says: "They are not in reality liars who use circumlocution 6 because of the oeconomy of salvation." Origen said that "all that might be said on this theme is not expedient to explain now, or to all. For the mass need no further teaching on account of those who hardly through the fear of æonian punishment restrain their recklessness." The reader of the patristic literature sees this opinion frequently, and unquestionably it caused many to hold out threats to the multitude in order to restrain them; threats that they did not themselves believe would be executed.8

The gross and carnal interpretation given to parts of the Gospel, causing some, as Origen said, to "believe of God what would not be believed of the cruelest of mankind," caused him to dwell upon the duty of reserve, which he does in many of his homilies. He says that he can not fully express himself on the mystery of eternal punishment in an exoteric statement.9 The reserve advocated and practiced by Origen and the Alexandrians was, says Bigg, "the screen of an esoteric belief." Beecher reminds his readers that while it was common with Pagan philosophers to teach false doctrines to the masses with the mistaken idea that they were needful, "the fathers of the Christian church did not escape the infection of the leprosy of pious fraud;" and he quotes Neander to show that Chrysostom was guilty of it, and also Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius, and Basil the Great. The prevalence of this fraus pia in the early centuries is well known to scholars. After saying that the Sibylline Oracles were probably forged by a gnostic, Mosheim says: "I cannot yet take upon me to acquit the most strictly orthodox from all participation in this species of criminality; for it appears from evidence superior to all exception that a pernicious maxim was current, * * * namely, that those who made it their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation that censure."