CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY IN THE WRITINGS OF EARLIEST FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.
We must express our regret that circumstances have prevented us from extending our researches, and especially from discussing the value of certain passages that seem to be contradictory. Happy the man who can put each Father into agreement with himself! Although we have verified most of the quotations in the original texts, the value of one or other of these testimonies may be disputed; that, however, is of little consequence, if only it be recognized that the fundamental thesis of the chapter is sufficiently established. That appears to us certain. Nevertheless, we desire to see our examination completed, the more so because the mine is rich and deserves to be more fully explored than it has been, particularly in French-speaking countries. Meanwhile, we refer our readers to the excellent work of Rev. Edward White, already more than once mentioned, in which chap. xxvi. contains, in addition to numerous extracts not here reproduced, indications of special works on this important subject. See in Supplement No. XV. a synchronical table of the Church Fathers, and their opinions as to the future life.
IN our introductory chapter we stated that the biblical doctrine of Conditional Immortality was that of the earliest Fathers of the Church. The time has now arrived for producing evidence in support of that statement.
I. The apostolic Fathers: Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, The Pastor of Hermas, Polycarp—
The apostolic Fathers never speak of a native immortality; an immortal life is in their view the exclusive privilege of the redeemed. The punishment of the rejected consists in a gradual destruction of their being, which finally becomes total. This punishment is called eternal, as being definitive and irremediable; we have already shown in the Scripture this use of an adjective, qualifying not the momentary action but the permanent results of the action. 1 Neither do the apostolic Fathers speak of a universal salvation; they teach that the unquenchable fire will consume its victims; in a word, they all with one accord appear to be Conditionalists.
Before quoting the apostolic Fathers, properly so called, we will mention the epistle ascribed to Barnabas. Although apocryphal, this writing must not be passed over in silence, for it has come down, at least in part, from the highest antiquity. The Chevalier Bunsen placed its origin in the last years of the first century; it was read aloud in the public worship of the primitive Church, and Tischendorf found it forming part of the Sinaitic manuscript. In it we read:
“The way of darkness is tortuous, it leads to death eternal with torment; 2 those who walk in it go towards that which destroys the soul.... He who chooses evil will be destroyed with his works... the fate of the wicked will be that of the Israelites who were bitten by the serpents in the wilderness. They will be finally destroyed in the approaching day of judgement, when the world and the evil one will be exterminated.” 3
The work that perishes comes to an end; to perish with his works is to exist no more. Satan is the evil one who is to perish with the world. 4 Chapter VI. [of that work] contains an allegory, wherein it is said:
“The child is nourished with milk and honey; so too we, being nourished and sustained 5 by faith in the promises and by the divine word, shall live and reign.”
1 Chap. VII., sect. ii., p. 194.
2 Meta timorias. An infliction of suffering precedes death or the end of being.
3 xx., sq .; cf. xii. It is in the Epistle of Barnabas that the expression eternal death is first found as a synonym of the second and definitive death.
4 Sunapoleitai to Ponero.
5 Literally, made alive, zoopoioumenoi. As in the writings of the New Testament, the notion of the sustentation of life takes precedence of the notion of mystic enjoyment.
The first epistle of Clement of Rome is held to be authentic; Bunsen attributes great importance to it from the standpoint of history as well as of doctrine. It also was read publicly in the Churches. This epistle teaches that "life in immortality is a gift" which God grants to believers only. Clement does not confound death with immortality; death is a result of mortality. The death of such as Cain, Pharaoh, and the bad men of the Old Testament is identified with the death reserved for all the impenitent. 1 The second epistle speaks of a "struggle to obtain immortality," which implies that immortality is not inherent in our nature. 2
The third to be quoted is Ignatius who died a martyr at Antioch about the year 115 of our era. He writes:
“Be vigilant, as God's athlete; the reward is incorruption and life eternal 3.... That for which I seek is the bread of heaven, the bread of life, the flesh of Jesus Christ, and the divine drink, love incorruptible and perpetual life” 4
Elsewhere he calls the Lord's Supper "the medicine of immortality, an antidote against death, 5 the pledge of a perpetual life.... How could we live without Christ?... If God should reward us according to our works we should no longer exist." 6
1 First Letter to the Corinthians, iii., ix., xxxv.; cf. xvi., sq., xlviii.
2 Second Letter to the Corinthians, vii.
3 Letter to Polycarp, ii.
4 Letter to the Romans, vii.
5 Pharmacon athanasias, antidotos tou me apothanein. Letter to the Ephes., xx.
6 Ouk eti esmen. Letter to the Magnes., ix., sq.
The book of the Pastor was composed by Hermas about the year 140. Like the Epistle of Barnabas it forms part of the Codex Sinaiticus; Bunsen compares it to Dante's Divine Comedy and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. According to Hermas, men are like trees in winter; without their leaves, all trees, whether dead or alive, are very much alike, and so it is often difficult to distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous; but, says the Pastor: “The righteous are trees which will revive in the spring-time of the life eternal. Those men, on the contrary, who are absorbed in worldly preoccupations will remain withered and dead in the age to come; they will be burnt up like dry wood... their death will be final.. Those who are dominated by evil desires will perish for ever, for lusts are deadly... they consume... and kill the wicked.” 1
Similar views are expressed in the epistle addressed by Polycarp to the Philippians. This Father, who had known the apostle John, died a martyr at the age of eighty-six years, soon after the middle of the second century. He ends the series of apostolic Fathers. He wrote:
“If we are pleasing to God in this world we shall obtain the future world, for God will raise us up if we do his will” 2
This notion of conditional resurrection brings us again to the Judeo-Christian point of view, which left in the shade the eventual and provisional resurrection of the lost. 3
II. Recent discovery of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
Here may be placed the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the text of which had for centuries been completely lost. Discovered by the learned Bryennios, Patriarch of Nicomedia, it was published in 1883. What date should be assigned to this document? Bryennios thinks it was written about the year 150. Dr. Lightfoot, Professors Funk, Massebieau, and a certain number of German critics, attribute it to the end of the first century. In any case it is difficult to exaggerate its importance. 4
1 Apothanountai eis telos... thanatoi... dapanatai deinos. Similitudes, iii., sq.; Mandates, xii., § 1, sq.
2 Letter to the Philippians, ii.; cf. v.
3 Cf. Luke xx. 35: "They that are accounted worthy to attain to that world and to the resurrection from the dead."
4 The quotations that follow are taken from the interesting work entitled La Didache; or, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. By Paul Sabatier; Paris, Fischbacher, 1885, passim.
The series of precepts in the Didache begins with a comparison of the two ways, that of life and that of death. The unity of the book is thereby distinctly indicated, since the last chapter shows us the ending of these two ways:
"for the wicked it will be death, that is to say, annihilation; for the good it will be life. There are two ways, that which leads to life, to the eternal kingdom with the Lord, and that which leads to death, to the annihilation of the wicked.” [Usually the noun life in the New Testament is taken in a too spiritual sense.... For the most part, this word designates not life in the Philonian sense, but life with the Messiah after his return. See Bruder, Concord., N. T. Graeca, p. 386.]
“Believers who desire to follow the first of these must practise the love of God and of the neighbour, join the Christian societies in baptism and the Lord's supper, and in prayer and meditation await the great day when the Messiah will return.... We feel ourselves in a current strongly Israelite and Palestinian, without any mixture of Alexandrian or Philonian philosophy." There is here nothing which either nearly or remotely reminds us of the immortality of the soul.
There are two ideas at the foundation of this eschatology, or rather one idea under two forms: the survival of a certain number of believers, and the resurrection of the rest. The eternal life is not conceived of here any more than in the synoptic Gospels apart from the body. The author has maintained purely Jewish ideas; he ignores or neglects those of the Greeks...
After the appearance of the great Seducer, the whole world is to pass through a trial by fire; the wicked are annihilated, the righteous are saved. These are the endings of the two ways: some live, the others die, or rather they are annihilated. This idea comes out everywhere in the Jewish books of the first century; it is found even in a prayer that was said by the scholar on leaving the place of study.
Participation in the eucharistic supper confers immortality in symbol: "We thank thee, O holy Father!... Thou, O Lord almighty, hast created all things for thine own name, thou hast given food and drink to men for their enjoyment and that they may render thanks to thee; and to us thou hast freely given spiritual food and drink and life eternal by thy Servant." 1
"To sum up, the eschatology of the Didache not only belongs to a Palestinian current of thought; but by its numerous points of resemblance with the Epistles to the Thessalonians, it seems to depend upon very ancient tradition, very nearly reproducing the ideas of Jesus on the subject." 2
1 I thank thee, O Lord my God, for having associated me with those who frequent this place of study, instead of leaving me among those who haunt the shops. I rise like them, but it is for the study of the Law, not for worthless affairs; I take pains, but I shall be rewarded for them, while those will not; we all alike are running, but my goal is the future life, while they will only arrive at the pit of destruction." Talmud of Babylon, Berachoth, 28b, Schwab's edition, p. 337.
2 Paul Sabatier, op. cit., pp. 55, 150.
A passing reference may here be made to a document which has also come down from a high antiquity, the anonymous romance of Paul and Thecla. The author attributes to his heroine this declaration: "The Son of God is the ground of immortal life, for to the storm-tossed he is a refuge, to the troubled repose, the shelter of them that had despaired; and in a word, whoso believeth not on him truly shall not live, but shall die outright." 1 Thecla is addressing the surrounding crowd of heathens. The heathens were absolutely ignorant of the mystic meaning that the Churches have given to the words live and die; for them these verbs could only bear the meaning of the perpetuation or cessation of existence. This saying is, no doubt, taken from a legendary story; but since, according to a quotation of Tertullian, the document dates from the first half of the second century, it may very well serve to fix the meaning then given to the expressions in question.
III. The apologist Fathers: Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius
With Justin Martyr begins the series of apologist Fathers; his death took place in the year 164. In his dialogue with the Jew Trypho one of the interlocutors is an aged Christian, who is understood to represent the true biblical doctrine. Having repudiated the Platonic doctrine of the eternal pre-existence of souls, the old man is made to say:
“The world was created, and souls also. There was a time when they were not; they are therefore not naturally immortal. I do not, however, say that all souls die, 2 for that would he too much to the advantage of the wicked. I say that the souls of the righteous remain in a better place, but the evil in a worse, awaiting the time of judgement.... The righteous... shall not die any more, but the wicked shall be punished so long as it shall please God that they exist and be punished.” 3
1 Praxeis Paulou kai THekles. Edition of Professor Lipsius, 1891, § 37. We owe this quotation to the kindness of Professor E. Combe, of the Lausanne University. [See also Dr. Wm. Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography, art. Thecla.]
2 Alla men oude apothneskein phemi pasas ias psuchas ego.
3 Kai einai, kai kolazesthai. Dial. cum Tryph., § v. Cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haeres., lib. ii., cap. xxxiv., § 3: "Quoadusque ea Deus et esse et perseverare volueril."
Justin then asks the old man whether he thinks with Plato that the world and the souls that form part of it will be made imperishable by the divine will; the old man replies that he does not hold that view, and says:
“Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live. Thus, then, it will not even partake of life when God does not will it to live. For to live is not its attribute, as it is God's; but as a man does not live always, and the soul is not for ever conjoined with the body, since whenever this harmony must be broken up the soul leaves the body, and the man exists no longer, even so whenever the soul must cease to exist the spirit of life is removed from it and there is no more soul.” 1...
Although certain contradictions make Justin appear to be in conflict with himself, he introduces the same principles in his Apologies, thus:
“God delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and men shall cease to exist, 2 because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature.” 3
1 Dial. cum Tryph., § vi. Kai ouk estin lie psuche eti. [The translation of this and the following quotations from Justin is that of T. and T. Clark's series: The Ante-Nicene Chr. Libr, 1867.] The text adds: "It returns to its starting-point," nonentity, or the original substance. Olshausen says: "Without being nonentity, this starting-point is equivalent to non-existence." Quod idem est atque ouk einai (Opuscula, p. 180). The distinction seems very fine drawn. Ullmann says that the soul then ceases to be conscient and personal (Studien und Kritiken, p 430, 1828). In all this, do we not see a manifest tinge of Platonism? In Platonism, which these Fathers had sucked with their mothers' milk, nothing comes out of absolute nonentity, and, therefore, nothing can return thither. But even from that point of view, what is a soul that is deprived of spirit, without liberty, without reason, without self-consciousness, in a word, without personality? A human soul without spirit is like a body without a head; but universal analogy teaches us that a decapitated being cannot continue to live.
The last hesitation of Nitzsch (an inconceivable existence in nonentity), of Delitzsch, and of Olshausen himself, may they not be also the result of some vestige of dualism? And may it not be the case with M. Geo. Godet too? He believes that the power of the wicked will one day be "paralyzed in the outer darkness" (Chret. evang., 1881, p. 60). If he grants to us a total and final paralysis of all the faculties of the wicked, we will willingly abandon to him all that remains, if there remains anything. It is open to him to come to an understanding with us on that basis (Cf. Crit. relig., p. 17; April, 1882). If the paralysis is not absolute, there remains a hostile power, and therefore dualism. See, too, Supplement No. III., § vi. Putting aside the circumlocutions and the reserves of the Greek Fathers, Arnobius, as we shall presently see, speaks of a soul that perishes without leaving behind it "any residuum."
2 Meketi osi .
3 Second Apol., vii. Dr. Donaldson's rendering.
[Apologies continued:] “We have learned that those only are deified 1 who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue. 2... But if the soldiers enrolled by you, and who have taken the military oath, prefer their allegiance to their own life, it were verily ridiculous if we who earnestly long for incorruption should not endure all things in order to obtain what we desire from him who is able to grant it. 3
But we, because we refuse to sacrifice to those to whom we were of old accustomed to sacrifice, undergo extreme penalties and rejoice in death, believing that God willraise us up by his Christ, and will make us incorruptible, undisturbed, and immortal." 4
The Epistle to Diognetus has been attributed to Justin. In it there is mention of a punishment "which must continue until the end." 5 There is, therefore, to be an end of that punishment. It is also therein stated that "God has given his only Son, who is righteous, immortal, and of an imperishable nature for men who are unrighteous,mortal, and of a perishable nature." 6
One of Justin's disciples was Tatian, the Assyrian. According to this author it is the spirit which preserves the soul:
“The soul is not in itself immortal, but mortal. Yet it is possible for it not to die... the ignorant soul is darkness. On this account, if it continues solitary, it tends downwards towards matter, and dies with the flesh; but if it enters into union with the divine spirit, it is no longer helpless, but ascends to the regions whither the spirit guides it; for the dwelling-place of the spirit is above, but the origin of the soul is from beneath." 7
1 Apathanatizesthai: According to its etymology, the primary meaning or this word is to immortalize. Its use in the sense of apotheosis shows that among the Greeks deification and immortalization were synonymous terms, immortality being the prerogative of the gods. The evident inference is that man, not being a god, without this process has not immortality.
2 First Apol., xxi.
3 First Apol., xxxix.
4 Aphthartous kai apatheis kai athanatous. Trypho., xlvi. Cf. First Apol., xiii., lii. The Apologies are addressed to the Roman emperor and senate. For these, immortality could not be anything else than the perpetuation of a glorious existence. Did not Marcus Aurelius on the approach of death exclaim ironically: "It seems to me that my immortality is already beginning."
5 Mechri telous, x.; cf. Dan. vii. 26: The work of destruction and its final result. It is in this epistle that is found the first mention of an "immortal soul."
6 Idem ., ix.
7 Ouk estin athanatos he psuche kath'heauten, thnete de. Alla dunatai he aute kai me apothneskein. Thneskei men gar kai luetai meta tou somatos me ginoskousa ten aletheian. Contra Graecos, xiii. Cf. vii., xv.
Theophilus, sixth bishop of Antioch, who like Justin was a convert from paganism, addressed to one of his friends a treatise which was intended to bring him over to Christianity. He thus falls into the ranks of the apologist Fathers. He puts this question:
"Was man created mortal? Not so. Immortal? Neither so. What then? Man was made neither mortal nor immortal, for if the Creator had made him at once immortal, he would have made him a god; if he had made him mortal, God would appear to us as the cause of his death. Therefore neither immortal nor yet mortal did he make man; but, as we have said above, capable of either destiny, 1 in order that he might incline to the things of immortality, and keeping God's commandments obtain immortality as his reward, and so become divine; 2 but if he should turn aside to the things of death, disobeying God, he would become the cause of his own death. For God made man free and master of his own fate. 3 But that which he through his negligence and disobedience did not 4 acquire, God in his philanthropy and mercy now gives to him when men become obedient. For in the same manner as man by his disobedience brought death upon himself, so if he fulfils the will of God any man who desires it can acquire the life eternal. In fact, God has given us a law and holy precepts whereby any man who does them will be saved, and, attaining the resurrection, will inherit incorruptibility.” 5
1 Dekztikos amphoteron, amphidektos, mesos. Irenaeus, Arnobius, Lactantius, 183 and Nernesius come again to this intermediate position.
2 Literally, god, genetai theos.
3 Autexousion.
4 This negative is a conjectural emendation of the text, reading ouch for oun, thus giving to a phrase that has puzzled the interpreters a clear and consistent meaning, which brings it into complete harmony with the context.
5 Ad Autolycum. Lib. ii., cap. xxvii.; cf. xxiv.
The testimony of Irenasus has an exceptional value. A disciple of Polycarp, who, as we have seen, had known the apostle John, Irenaeus was as it were the spiritual grandson of the beloved disciple. He was bishop at Lyons, where he died a martyr about the year 197. His teaching on the subject before us is most explicit. He says:
“God created the heavens above us, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all their grandeur; and so it is with souls and spirits. All creatures have had a beginning, and their duration depends upon the divine will.... The prophetic spirit speaks of God as the Father of all, who grants perpetuity of existence to those who are saved. For life is not from ourselves, nor from our nature, but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. He who preserves this gift of life and returns thanks to him who bestows it shall receive 'length of days' for ever and ever; but he who rejects it and proves unthankful to his Maker for creating him, and will not know him who bestows it, deprives himself of the gift of duration to all eternity. The Lord spoke of those who are thus unthankful when he said: 'If ye have not been faithful in that which is least, who will commit much unto you?' He thus teaches us that those who are not thankful to him for this short transitory life deserve the fate that awaits them, and will justly he deprived of perpetual life.... Souls receive their life and their perpetual duration as a gift from God, coming out of nonentity and continuing to exist because he wills that they should be and subsist. The substance of life comes from communion with God, and to be in communion with God is to know him and to enjoy his goodness. Men therefore will see God that they may live; they will be made immortal by that vision and by that intimate relation with God.
It was for this end that the Word of God became man.... This took place that man should not suppose that to himself belongs naturally the incorruptibility which is an attribute of God alone, and that he should not boast in his vainglory as though he were in his nature like to God.... Unbelievers will not inherit incorruptibility. The believer himself only possesses it as yet by his faith in the divine promise; it will actually begin only after the resurrection.” 1
Here, as elsewhere in the writings of the earliest Fathers, incorruptibility means not a mystic purity, but the imperishability of the resuscitated body. The chastisement of the wicked will be eternal, because God's benefits are eternal. To be deprived of the benefit of existence is a punishment; to be for ever deprived of it is in fact to suffer an eternal punishment. 2
1 Adv. Haeres. Lib. ii., c. xxxiv.; cf. lib. iii., cc. xviii.-xx., and lib. i. c. vii., § 1.
2 Irenaeus seems to exhaust the vocabulary at his disposal in order to deny the immortality of the unsaved. The terms that he uses have a definitely ontological meaning: athanasia, aphtharsia, diamone, paramone, paramenein.
Two passages have been urged against us in which Irenaeus speaks of immortal souls; but these contemplate a merely relative immortality. 1
Here we may quote Saint Perpetua, whose martyrdom took place at Carthage about the year 205. When the proconsul said to her, "Perpetua, wilt thou sacrifice to the gods of the empire?" she replied: "I am a Christian; I am called Perpetua, and am willing to die that I may have a perpetual life." 2 The true faith of the primitive Church was thus declared by the ingenuous lips of this virgin martyr. So, too, by a striking contrast, the enemies of the Church had a correct notion of the Christian's hope. Lucian, the great mocker, the second century Voltaire, derided them by saying, "These wretches have got it into their heads that they will be immortal!" And the heathens of Lyons, after having tortured the Christians, burnt them and cast their ashes into the Rhone, with the intention of preventing the martyrs' resurrection. 3
Clement of Alexandria died about the year 220. Having been a disciple of the celebrated Pantenus, he succeeded him as chief of the Christian school of philosophy founded at Alexandria. He says: “Let us observe God's commandments and follow his counsels; they are the short and direct way that leads to immortality.” 4
Even by the admission of our opponents the term that he uses can only designate an endless duration. Again he says: “When baptized we become enlightened; enlightened we become sons; as sons we become perfect and immortal.” 5
1 "Sed incorruptibiles animae quantum ad comparationem mortalium corporum." Lib. v. 7.
2 A similar allusion to her name occurs in her farewell to her father: "If thou put no obstacle in the way, thou shalt one day have thy daughter in perpetuity."
3 E. Doumergue, in the Christianisme au XIXme siecle, 11 April, 1884.
4 Aidioteta. The Pedagogue, i. 3.
5 Apathanatizometha . Ibid., § 6.
Here the writer establishes a very clear distinction between immortality and the virtues of which it is the crown and the reward.
Arnobius, the earlier one of that name, last of the apologist Fathers, lived at the beginning of the fourth century. His talents had made him famous. He was well known for his prejudices against Christianity, which he relentlessly attacked. Still, he could not contemplate without admiration the heroic courage of the martyrs. A new Saul of Tarsus, he could not always kick against this goad, and at last became a Christian; but, like the apostle Paul, he was distrusted by those whom he had so long opposed. In order to dissipate their doubts, he published an appeal to the heathens. It was at the time of the persecution under the emperor Diocletian; and after this courageous act the doors of the Church were opened to him. He is the most decided of all the Fathers in his opposition to Platonism. It is surprising, indeed, that the Church should have preserved his work, which is so contrary to the opinions that subsequently prevailed.
This is how he apostrophizes the disciples of Plato:
“What arrogance it is on your part to claim God as your Father and to pretend that you are immortal as he is! Inquire, search, examine what you are, what your fathers were, and how you have made your entrance into life. Will you consent to recognize that we are creatures either quite like the rest or separated from them by no great difference.
Your interests are in jeopardy, it is a question of the preservation of your souls; and unless you apply yourselves to know the supreme God a terrible death awaits you: not, indeed, a prompt and sudden abolition, but a long and grievous death-agony.
None but the Almighty can preserve souls, give them length of days, and a spirit that shall never die, for God alone is immortal. As for souls, they are of an intermediate quality, even as Christ has taught us. They may, on the one hand, perish through not having known God, and on the other hand be delivered from death if they give heed to his threatenings and profit by his offered favours.
Let it be understood that in man's true death there is nothing left behind. The death that is seen is only the separation of soul from body, not absolute destruction.
But the true death is when souls that know not God shall be given over to be consumed in protracted torment.... Let us, then, avoid the vain hope of this new category of individuals who in their own insolent presumption assure us that souls are naturally immortal, of divine rank, offspring of God, inspired by him, exempt from the defilement of matter. In fact, souls are born at the very gates of the empire of death; but as the result of the divine generosity they are allowed to prolong their existence on condition that they earnestly seek to know God. That knowledge is for them like salt, which, permeating their substance, protects them from corruption, or like the cement which serves to connect the stones of a building.
By putting off their insolence and cultivating sentiments of greater humility, your souls will prepare themselves for a new destiny. But God does not constrain anyone. The maintenance of our existence is by no means a necessity for him. He will not enrich himself by making us like gods; he will not impoverish himself by leaving us to fall back into nothingness.” 1
IV. The purpose of the incarnation according to the great Athanasius, surnamed the Father of orthodoxy—
It is easy to understand that a doctrine so definite was detrimental to the reputation of Arnobius, yet the same doctrine was taught by one so little suspected that he has been called the Father of orthodoxy, none other than the great Athanasius, who was the leading spirit in the Council of Nicaea. Such at least was his view when he composed his treatise on the Incarnation of the Word of God, which may be considered the most ancient treatise of Church dogmatics. M. Jundt, writing in the Encyclopedie des sciences religieuses, calls this work a veritable philosophy of religion. 2
1 Treatise against the Gentiles, bk. ii., chap. xiv.—xvi., passim. 186
2 Its date is understood to be the year 319. Athanasius would then be in his twenty-third year.
Athanasius writes:
“God is good, or rather is himself the fount of goodness.... He made all things out of nothing through his own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. And among these, pitying the race of men above all things on earth, and seeing that from the condition of its own nature it could not continue permanently, he graced them with something yet more….
He brought them into his own paradise and gave them a law, to the end that if they preserved the grace given, and remained good, they might have the life in paradise without sorrow, or pain, or anxiety, in addition to the promise of incorruption in heaven; but that, if they transgressed and turned aside and became evil, they might know that they would undergo the corruption in death which was natural to them, and no longer live in paradise, but thenceforth dying outside it, abide in death and incorruption.... ... The transgression of the commandment was making them return to their natural state; so that, having come into being out of non-existence, they also naturally suffer corruption back again into nonexistence in course of time. For if, having once no existence, 1 they were called into being by the presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it was a natural consequence that, when men were destitute of the knowledge of God and were turned back again to non-existence (for evil is not being, and good is being), they should, inasmuch as they were called into being from God who is, be for ever left destitute even of being 2 —that is, that they should be destroyed and remain in death and corruption.” 3
Athanasius then proceeds to expound the purpose of the incarnation, namely: to save man from relapsing into nothingness, and to endow him with immortality in the renewed image of God. Through the effects of the transgression man is born to perish; but by means of the incarnation he can by faith become united to the imperishable nature of the Word. The Son of God has appeared in order to communicate immortal life to men. 4
1 Phusin echontes to me einai.
2 Kenothenai kai tou einai aei.
3 [The foregoing paragraphs are quoted from the translation published by the Religious Tract Society in the Christian Classics Series, pp. 52, 53, 54, 55.]
4 De incarnatione Verbi Dei, iii., iv., sq., etc. "Notwithstanding this sound basis of faith, it must not, however, be supposed that Athanasius attributed immortality to the saved alone, for, like Dr. Watts and some other modern writers, he inconsistently taught, at least in the case of rejectors of Christ, 'that God would immortalize the wicked for an "eternal death" of conscious suffering.' The seemingly self-contradictory doctrine of Athanasius is well discussed and accounted for in the work above referred to, The Holy Spirit the Author of Immortality, 1708."—Edward White, op. cit., p. 425.
The immortalization of man by Jesus Christ remained, however, the great force in the struggle against Arianism. Athanasius argues: "If the Son of God has had a beginning, he may also have an end; in that case, our life depending upon his, the power by which the Saviour delivers us from eternal death wouldnot be complete."
V. Latest echoes of the primitive teaching: Lactantius, Nemesius, Theophylact, Sophronius, Nicholas of Methone.
This doctrine was, as it were, drowned in the rising tide of the Platonic theory which was made to triumph in the Church by the false Clementines, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, Jerome, and especially Augustine. Nevertheless, the primitive teaching was maintained here and there.
Lactantius, surnamed the Christian Cicero, a disciple of Arnobius, was, like his master, a partizan of Conditional Immortality. 1
”Man,” says he, “stands upright with eyes raised to heaven because immortality is offered to him. Yet he does not possess it otherwise than as a gift of God, for there would be no difference between the just and the unjust if every man born into the world should become immortal. Immortality is, then, the wages and reward of virtue; it is not inherent in our nature.” 2
According to Nemesius; who lived in the fifth century:
”Man was originally neither mortal nor immortal, but in an intermediate condition. He was either to share the fate of his body, if he gave way to bodily passions, or to become worthy of immortality by following the noblest aspirations of his nature.” 3
Canon Swainson, in his learned history of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, shows by a curious example that the belief in Conditional Immortality lingered in the Churches sporadically for several centuries after the time of Athanasius. At the third Council of Constantinople, A.D. 680, under the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, at the eleventh session, a synodical letter of twenty-one pages in length from Sophronius, who had been Patriarch of Jerusalem in the early part of the century, was read, in which, after reciting his faith in the Trinity, he proceeds to speak of the Incarnation, making special mention of the errors of Nestorius and Apollinaris; and on a later page declares the true faith to be that "men's souls have not a natural immortality, it is by the gift of God that they receive the grant of immortality and incorruptibility." 4
Theophylact, Archbishop of Acris, Metropolitan of Bulgaria, who died about 1107, was one of the best masters of exegesis of the Byzantine school. He seems to have had much the same tendency as Theophilus of Antioch.
1 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, § 10b.
2 Inst. div., lib. vii., cap. 5; cf. Epitome, cap. 35. Non sequela natures sed merces premiumque virtutis. See Carl Beck., Christl. dogmengesch., p. 319.
3 De natura hominis, cap. i.
4 Page 250.
He has been praised for penetration and correctness of expression. He says:
“The angels are not immortal by nature, but by the effect of grace. If they share in immortality it is not inherent in them.” 1
“There are souls that perish," wrote Nicholas of Methone. "Those souls that are reasonable, truly spiritual and divine, alone survive, attaining to perfection by the communication of God's grace and by the effort of virtue.... If any creatures are eternal, they are not so in themselves, nor by themselves, nor for themselves, but by the goodness of God, for all that has been created has had a beginning, and can only be preserved by the goodness of the Creator.” 2
The historian Neander called Nicholas of Methone the greatest theologian of his time. The lines just quoted show to what an extent he could rise superior to popular opinion. It is astonishing that they could have been written in the twelfth century. Darkness was at that time spread all over Europe, thick darkness, which was very soon to be illuminated by the sinister gleams of the torches of the Inquisition. 3
1 Commentary on 1 Tim. vi. 16.
2 Refut., p. 207, sq.; cf. p. 120. Hagenbach, op. cit., § 174.
3 The triumph of the Platonic heresy was universal. Popes and councils were eager to put their seals upon the tomb of an ancient truth. As we shall see, the Reformers did not break these age-lasting seals. A few vestiges of primitive teaching have, however, been preserved in the text of certain liturgies. For example, in the Roman Missal, the order for Christmas contains this prayer:
"Post communion. Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that as the Saviour of the world, born this day, is the author of divine generation to us, so he may also be himself the giver of immortality!" So, too, in the liturgy of the Anglican Church we find some characteristic phrases: "Perish everlastingly;" "eternal death;" "that in the last day... we may rise to the life immortal." In this Church, Conditionalism has continued latent, so to speak, and by a decision that dates from the year 1864 the constituted authorities have formally declared that the doctrine of an eternal hell is not an official dogma. See the pamphlet entitled: Hear the Church of England, which is proved to have expelled from her articles the dogma of endless torments, by H. S. Warleigh, Rector of Ashchurch, Tewkesbury; London, Elliot Stock, 1872.
It may be added that the Roman Church admits a distinction between the punishment of privation and that of infliction (paena damni, paena sensus ). The former would be eternal, consisting in the privation of the beatific vision of God; the latter might be mitigated, or even come to an end. Is not this an indistinct echo of the biblical doctrine: suffering followed by the privation of sensation?
The poem of the Redemption, by Charles Gounod, also contains an echo of Christ's teaching (p. 31)
"Il a fait de sa chair le pain de notre vie!
Par ce miracle de bonte,
Son amour a verse dans notre ame ravie
Un levain d'immortalite."
Which may be rendered into English thus:
“In his flesh he has made for our l ife the true bread.
By this wonderful bounty of God,
In our rapturous souls his love has now spread
Immortal ity's leaven abroad.
A hymn wel l known in French P rotestant churches expresses the same thought:
"Notre Jesus aujourd'hui nous presente
Un pain celeste, une manne excellente;
Qui le recoit avec humi l ite
Peut s'assurer de l'immortal ite."
Or in Engl ish:
"Our Jesus offers us to-day
Celestial bread, a manna pure;
And whoso humbly takes it, may
Of immortality be sure.”
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