I. The immortalization of man by means of faith in Jesus Christ, the principal aim of the New Testament writings—
IMMORTALITY, which in the Old Testament is conditional, is conditional also in the New. The Gospel adopts the teaching of Moses and the prophets, giving it precision and completion. In so doing it borrows the terms which are used in the Septuagint translation to represent the corresponding Hebrew words. The Alexandrine version thus forming the connection between the two Testaments, the biblical doctrine is, as it were, firmly clenched.
The New Testament has nothing to say about a native and inalienable immortality. This silence is not without meaning, for the Scripture takes care to teach the most elementary religious truths, proclaiming even those which might be taken for granted, as, for example, the eternity of God. 1 If Providence is not named, there is no lack of texts in favour of that doctrine; but as regards native immortality, neither the word nor the thing can be found 2
1 Deut. xxxii. 40; Rom. xvi. 26.
2 One of the latest champions of the traditional dogma in America explains this absence by saying that if there had been favourable texts the Conditionalists would have contested their genuineness. Life and Death Eternal, by S. Bartlett, p. 50.—In despair of his cause, this author seems to have acted upon the rule said to prevail among the lawyers at the Old Bailey: "If you have no good argument, abuse the opponent's attorney."
In both Testaments immortality appears as the result of a personal faith in the personal and living God: the redeemed righteous shall live; the obstinate sinners shall be for ever destroyed. 1 Still, the horizon becomes wider; the new Testament prolongs the lines; it clearly extends to the future life the temporal promises and threatenings of the Old Testament. The eternity of life and the eternity of non-existence, veiled under the Old Covenant, are revealed and made prominent in the New.
Jesus upholds the conditions of immortalization. To one who asks of him how to obtain eternal life, he answers, like Moses: "Do this, fulfil the law, and thou shalt live." 2 Man becomes immortal by righteousness; but (and this is a new fact) Jesus offers in his own person the only bridge whereby a man may attain to righteousness. His expiatory death gives us the assurance of divine pardon, and an imperishable life becomes the portion of everyone who unites himself to Jesus by faith. Such, as it seems to us, is the fundamental thought of the New Testament, the precise aim of the Gospel. "These things are written," we read in the Gospel of John, "that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing ye may have life." 3 In this passage the word life is used in its full force; it is active existence, normal, pure, happy, and also perpetual, because not poisoned by sin. That life alone is imperishable.
1 2 Thess. i. 9; cf. Psa. xcii. 9.
2 Luke x. 28; Lev. xviii. 5.
3 John xx. 31.
II. With a scope beyond the horizon of the Old Testament, the question already raised comes up again: What do the biblical writers mean by the words life and death? —
Here again, as at the outset of our study of the Old Testament, traditional exegesis cries "Halt!" Put aside, it says, the rudimentary notions of existence and duration; the life promised in the New Testament bears a mystic meaning synonymous with eternal happiness and holiness. Deprived of this mystic life, the wicked may still exist, and even exist for ever. Without having life eternal, they may yet possess an interminable life.
Truly, if the definition thus put forth in opposition to us were well founded, it would undermine the very basis of Conditionalism. But we are well prepared to meet the objection. We have to oppose it with that which in a deliberative assembly would be called a motion to order, an appeal to the rules. The principle which is held to govern all discussion among Protestants—we may say even among philologists—in the study of the texts is, as we have seen, the historico-grammatical interpretation. By virtue of this principle, the proper and usual meaning of words has the precedence of all other meanings. Unhappily, without being aware of it, Protestantism has been unfaithful to the principle upon which it is founded. In relation to these most important notions, life and death, it has followed in the wake of the Roman Church, which has distorted, falsified, and mutilated the teaching of the Scriptures. Brought to book, there is only one thing for Protestantism to do: to recognize its inconsistency, and so to re-establish the meaning of the terms in question, otherwise it will shamefully deny itself.
III. We maintain the literal and primarily ontological meaning of these terms—
Meanwhile we maintain that life in the New Testament signifies specifically not happiness, nor holiness, nor anything else, but simply life; that is to say, in relation to man, the existence of a conscient individual, capable both of thinking and acting. By death we understand the contrary of life: the deprivation of all sentiment, the end of all activity, the extinction of all individual faculties. Death without any restriction, expressed or understood, death absolute, sometimes called second death, will be the definitive and complete cessation of life as just described.
There are in Greek, as well as in French and English, plenty of words to express happiness. In French we have counted more than a dozen, and Greek is no less rich. There are even more words to express the notion of misery, to convey which the term death is supposed to be used. Human languages are only too fertile in vocables expressive of the idea of suffering. Death and life, on the contrary, are without synonyms; a further reason for leaving to these terms their proper meaning, which no other expression can convey without paraphrase.
Strong in the principle which furnishes a basis for Protestantism and biblical philology, we take our stand upon the literal meaning as in a citadel. In order to drive us out of it, our opponents have but one way of access: to prove that the adoption of that meaning leads, in this connection, to absurd consequences. It is, of course, necessary to take in a figurative sense those expressions which it would be ridiculous or contradictory to interpret literally. In such cases a tropical sense may, nay must, be substituted for the literal. In the Gospels, for instance, there are some hyperboles. Jesus directs us to turn the left cheek to the person who should strike us on the right. That is the letter. To one who smites him on the face he says: "Why
smitest thou me?" That supplies the interpretation according to the spirit. But to pretend that, in order to hold to the spirit, we must habitually take a meaning precisely opposed to the letter, is to "change darkness into light and light into darkness, to make bitter that which is sweet and sweet that which is bitter." This would be, the death and burial of exegesis.
With regard to the particular point now in question, by the admission that the soul can perish the representatives of the traditional dogma have, so to speak, cut the ground from under their feet.1 If the soul can perish, it is not by nature immortal. If it is not by nature immortal, there is nothing absurd in saying that Jesus confers upon the soul first of all an immortality properly so called. There is nothing absurd in the act of conferring imperishability. But if the literal meaning here has nothing absurd in it, there is no alternative; that meaning must prevail, otherwise we forsake Protestantism; and more than that, we forsake the universally-recognized domain of philology, for "there is only one philology."
1 Chap. II., sect. vi.—So, too, in the Chretien evangelique of 20 Jan., 1881, p. 20. M. Geo. Godet, while combatting Conditionalism, subscribes to the conclusions of Lotze as to the contingence of all creatures, including human souls.—See ante, pp. 54 sq., 70, and p. 82, note.
We have, therefore, full right to claim as in favour of Conditional Immortality all the texts in the New Testament in which it is said either directly or indirectly that Jesus is our life. We will not reproduce them; that would be to quote nearly the whole volume. We will take as a single example that classic passage which the British and Foreign Bible Society has had printed in three hundred different languages "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." In accordance with the rule to which we have appealed, this signifies that the believer, escaping the final and total destruction that awaits the impenitent sinner, acquires an imperishable life. This life will doubtless be holy and happy, considering the character of the God who gives it. In the widest sense of the word, in its full and emphatic sense, this life will be, as we have already indicated, perpetual existence in the normal developement of all human faculties, physical, intellectual, and moral health; the harmonious unfolding of all those gifts of which the germs have been implanted within us by the divine bounty. By the goodness of the Creator, every life is generally joyous in the measure in which it is normal. Nevertheless, in all life the notion of existence remains primary. Holiness and happiness are qualifications of life; there may be life without them, but the converse is impossible; life is a canvas, which they ought to beautify. No doubt a burning candle is flame and light, but it is in the first place a combustible. Let us, then, be careful not to put the attribute in the place of the subject, and always, in accordance with the rules of logic, to leave in the foreground that which is made prominent by the sacred text. 1
1 No one will contest the ontological meaning of the word life in this passage: "As the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself" (John v. 26). It is here evidently first of all existence that is spoken of. In verse 21 of the same chapter it is said that the Son giveth life to whom he will; therefore, judging by the context, it is existence that the Son gives to the believers. But it is asked how the Son could give existence to those who already have it. We reply, that to perpetuate a life ephemeral in its nature, to infuse a new life into a creature about to perish, to fill with oil a lamp that is going out, in short, to revive the dead, is indeed to give life in the ontological sense.
In the subsequent chapter Jesus identifies again, and even more evidently, the ontological life that he receives with that which he transmits: "As the,, living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he that eateth me shall live because of me" (John vi. 57). The as and so suffice to prove that it is not here a question of happiness and holiness, but, firstly and fundamentally, of Life, in its proper meaning of existence.
The principle that we lay down is that this fundamental meaning is never absent from the term in question. If Jesus elsewhere says, "This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent" (John xvii. 3), that knowledge is called life only by metonymy, and as the means of attaining the end. So also in the Old Testament: "There is death in the pot" (2 Kings iv. 40); death is used by metonymy for a deadly Poison, the effect for the cause.
The same remark applies to that other saying of Jesus in the same Gospel (John xii. 50): "His commandment is life eternal." This is again a metonymy, the cause put for the effect. Without metonymy this declaration might be paraphrased by saying that obedience to the commandment of the Father is a source of immortality. The ontological meaning remains unimpaired.
The traditional interpretation is, in short, a usurper. Like a parasitic plant, it infests the field of exegesis. Happily some excellent Commentators have contended against it, directly or indirectly. We will proceed to record some of their declarations.
IV. Declarations of some of the most esteemed Commentators
§ 1. We will begin by quoting Hermann Olshausen, one of the most eminent of those who in our century have laid down the laws of biblical interpretation. He says: “Kuinoel deserves severe blame for the superficial manner in which he explains the word life. He comments with incredible negligence on the words, "this life is in his Son," 1 as though the meaning were that "happiness is given by his Son." It is evident that this false interpretation tends to weaken, and even to suppress, the true meaning of our holy books... Schleusner asserts that the word life has nine different meanings, but he seems to ignore its only true meaning. Wahl and Bretschneider march in the footsteps of Schleusner, and have nothing better to say. Their interpretations do violence to the sacred writers, by attributing to them modern opinions. Lucke and Seyffarth have shown much more penetration. There is no doubt that the eternal life cannot be unhappy; but in the New Testament life never has the meaning of happiness. Life is the normal union of the forces which maintain the existence of the, living being. Death is the abnormal dislocation of these same forces. Applied to human nature, this definition will suffice to give us the true meaning of the word life in all the passages of the New Testament in which it is found.” 1
1 1 John v. 11.
§ 2. Professor Reuss could hardly misunderstand the ontological meaning of the term referred to. He says:
“Life eternal is nothing else than that which is more simply called life, the adjective merely expressing the indefinite duration of an existence assured to the individual... For a man to eat the flesh of the Son. . . signifies to have life in himself, a life henceforth permanent... imperishable.” 2
Such being the privilege of believers exclusively, it necessarily results that the life of the wicked will be transitory, perishable. Professor Reuss himself draws this inference: “When Paul says: ’In Christ shall all be made alive,’ he cannot have in view all human beings in general, for the simple reason that they are not all in Christ. He means to say: All those who are in Christ will have life just because they are in Christ, who is the author and cause of that life henceforth indestructible.... The others pass through temporal death into death eternal.” 3
Are not these words of Professor Reuss decisive: life henceforth indestructible? For eternal torments an indestructible life would be absolutely necessary; the wicked not having such a life, how could there be for them eternal torments? Let us remember that no such expression is applied to them in the Bible. Professor Reuss made use of it in a work published long ago; but if we desire to observe the progress of his thought, we must take note of the much more recent affirmations that have just been quoted. 4
1 Opuscula theologica, viii. De notion vocis ZOE in libris N. T.
2 La Bible. Theologie johannique, pp. 148, 188, 192.—We give notice once for all
that here and in the following quotations the italics are ours.
3 La Bible. Epitres pauliniennes, vol. i., p. 260. Histoire de la theologie
chretienne au siecle apostolique, vol. ii., p. 234. 1852.
4 In his explanation of 2 Thess. i. 9, Professor Reuss speaks of an eternal
damnation. We should have no difficulty in admitting that expression, for,
deprivation of life being clearly a punishment, a condemnation which makes it
perpetual becomes an eternal punishment or damnation.
As long ago as 1852 he wrote: “The notion of the indestructibility of the soul, of a continuity of life essentially inherent in the soul, all that which in philosophy we call immortality, is outside the circle of ideas in which apostolic theology moves. Incorruptibility, the quality of exemption from all decline, from all chance of death, properly belongs to God alone. None, therefore, but Christ, the image of God, could communicate to the world such a boon.” 1
§ 3. Professor Frederic Godet is in agreement with Professor Reuss on this point. The well-known Neuchatel professor declares that: "The life that Jesus Christ communicates to believers is not of a purely moral nature; it is his complete life, corporal as well as spiritual... When Jesus says: "I am the resurrection and the life," it is impossible to separate the moral from the physical meaning... Life designates existence in its perfect state of prosperity... But for
some beings this developement is limited to the physical life, for others it extends to the intellectual and moral life.. John means to say that in union with the creative Word there was life, full life, perfect developement of existence for each being according to its capacity." 2
§ 4. A lay theologian had preceded Professor Godet in this line of thought. M. Frederic de Rougemont has written:
“All life, physical and spiritual, flows from God through the Word.... The eternal Word of God is the life of all created things; it is in him that they subsist physically and morally, and it is by him that they are reborn to life after sin has put them to death physically and morally.” 3
1 Rom. i. 23; 1 Tim. i. 17; 2 Tim. i. 10.—Histoire de la theologie chretienne, etc., vol. ii., p. 237, sq. 1852.
2 Commentaire sur l'Evangile de Jean, vol. ii., pp. 130, 134, 333; vol. i., p. 156. Paris, 1864, 1865.
3 Notes inserted in a French translation by Clement de Faye of Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament, p. 110; and in Olshausen's Biblical Commentary upon the History of the Lord's Passion, p. 245. Neuchatel, 1845.
§ 5. Let us now weigh the testimony of the venerable pastor to whom we owe the New Testament Explained, one of the most useful works of our French evangelical literature. It is M. Louis Bonnet who writes:
“Life ought to be understood in its universal sense. The Scripture has no knowledge of the sterile notion of an immortality of the soul independent of the resurrection, and more especially of the renewal of our whole being. . . of the pagan idea of an immortality outside of the life in God, and of a state of pure spirit. . . . Never does the Scripture teach the doctrine of an abstract immortality. This false spiritualism is as contrary to true philosophy as it is to the Gospel.” 1
The principle clearly laid down, as by a common accord, by Messrs. Frederic Godet, Frederic de Rougemont, and Louis Bonnet, is of the highest value, and it should be urged to its legitimate consequences. If Christ, the Word of God, is truly the source of all life, of every sort, even physical, it logically follows that the wicked becoming more and more strangers to the life in Christ, must eventually be deprived of life of every kind, even physical. The theologians just named would then be virtually Conditionalists. As for Professor Reuss, he is perhaps expounding the view of the apostle Paul rather than his own. If he shared it, he, too, would be among the number of unconscious Conditionalists.
§ 6. Pastor Zietlow has expressed similar views:
“To the man [Adam] in his fallen state the gift of eternal life would have been baneful, as involving the eternal continuance of that state, and the production of a race of beings in eternal revolt against God. Still, the tree of life is not suppressed, but access to it is no longer permitted. Eternal life is essentially immortality, an indestructible life, 2 a life which has eternity for its goal. 3 It does not become the portion of the sinner, seeing that if it were to become his portion, he would be able to pose eternally as an enemy of God. . . . Eternal life gives to the natural human organism a capacity for eternal existence. It makes the man capable of immortalization in both the soul and the spiritual body. If deprived of this eternal life he becomes the prey of death, in conformity with the sentence pronounced in Gen. iii. 19; not as an extraordinary event, but as the natural and necessary consequence. Eternal life is a free gift of God, an additional grant, donum superadditum. 4 It is not a constituent part of human nature, but may be grafted upon it, so to speak. Without this graft human nature is perishable.” 5
1 Le Nouveau Testament de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ explique, all moyen d'introductions, d'analyses, et de notes exegetiques, par L. Bonnet, docteur en theologie, Pasteur a Francfort, four vols., large 8vo. Lausanne, G. Bridel and Co.—Notes on Matt. xxii. 32; John i. 4; Rom. viii. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 18, 53; 1 Tim. vi. 16, etc.
2 Heb. vii. 16.
3 Gen. iii. 22.
4 Rom. vi. 23.
5 Extract from an article entitled Der Baum des Lebens, by G. Zietlow, pastor at Carnitz, Pomerania. —Zeitschrift fur kirchliche Wissenschaft, of Chr. E. Luthardt, p. 21, sq. 1887.
§ 7. So also Dean Alford, one of the most esteemed English exegetical and critical writers. On the verse in the first Epistle of John (ii. 17), "And the world is passing away and the lust of it," he makes the following comments: “In the world the ungodly men who are, in all their desires and thoughts, of the world are included. They and their lusts belong to, are part of, depend on, a world which is passing away. On the other hand, eternal fixity and duration belongs only to that order of things and to those men who are in entire accordance with the will of God. And among these is he that doeth that will, which is the true proof and following out of love toward him. As God himself is eternal, so is all that is in communion with him, and this are they who believe in him and love him and do his will.” 1
§ 8. Professor Hugues Oltramare, late dean of the national Faculty at Geneva, calls the incorruptibility of believers non-transitoriness; 2 this supposes that the wicked reaping corruption would be transitory. What will that be if not a transitory existence followed by non-existence?
§ 9. The evidence leads Professor Menegoz to the same conclusions: “It is not only Paul's anthropology, but also the Pauline conception of redemption that is opposed to the understanding of death as anything else than the abolition of existence. . . . The chastisement of sin is the destruction of the life. In the day of the Lord the wicked will be exterminated. Their suffering ends in death, in the complete annihilation of their being Apart from life in Christ and with Christ there is no life. The whole theological system of Paul falls to pieces if death be understood to mean anything else than the suppression of existence.” 3
1 The New Testament for English Readers, in loco.
2 Commentaire sur l Epitre aux Romains, vol. i., p. 197, edition of 1843.
3 Le Peche et la redemption d'apres St. Paul, pp. 78, 91, 83, sq. Paris, 1882.— M. Menegoz has repudiated the name of Conditionalist; but, in truth, the sentences quoted formulate our main thesis in a way that leaves nothing to be desired. He is apparently another unconscious Conditionalist.
§ 10. In a lucid statement already quoted, Professor Auguste Sabatier has brought out very clearly this biblical notion of an eternal life, which protects the believer alone from falling back into nothingness: “According to St. Paul, who is the most explicit of all the writers of the New Testament, and who herein keeps well within the lines of Hebraism, man is not naturally immortal; he can only become so by a new infusion of the divine Spirit; he, is not so by nature, he becomes so by faith. It is a grace.” 1
These sufficiently numerous declarations are like so many piles driven through the somewhat marshy soil of traditional exegesis. The eschatology of the New Testament may rest securely upon this foundation. 2
V. Teaching of Jesus in relation to immortality—
Encouraged by so many adhesions, implicit or explicit, and determined to ascribe to the terms of the evangelical vocabulary their natural and legitimate meaning, let us now lend an ear to the words of Jesus.
"I am the bread of life," 3 said he. Bread is not a symbol of holiness, nor of happiness; it is simply figurative of the maintenance of existence. "He that drinketh my blood hath eternal life," 4 said Jesus again. Neither does the blood symbolize happiness, nor holiness. The blood is the life according to Moses. But these emblems will be further considered in the special study of baptism and the Lord's supper in our sixth chapter.
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life." 5 The view of the brazen serpent did not directly produce either sanctity or joy; it restored life by setting the organic functions again to work.
1 Memoire sur la notion hebraique de l'esprit, p. 33.
2 There are probably passages in the writings of the authors just quoted which might be opposed to us. It seems that here and there some of them have not always submitted to the historico-grammatical principle of interpretation. Their exegetic probity has valiantly struggled against ancient tradition, but they could hardly be expected expressly to disavow a metaphysical doctrine which they had sucked with their mother's milk. They leave to their successors the duty of openly repudiating it. Our predecessors are like Moses mounting the slopes of Nebo. Our quotations prove that they have had a glimpse of thepromised land of an exegesis without philosophic a priori.
3 John vi. 48.
4 John vi. 54.
5 John iii. 14, 15.
In his last discourse Jesus compares himself to the vine, the sap of which is for the branch that which the blood is for the animal. The branch separated from the stock is neither is culpable nor sensitive of suffering; it symbolizes only the lack of an independent life. It is withered, that is the sinner's agony; it is burnt, that is his complete combustion.
This leads us to speak of the fate that Jesus assigns to the wicked. They have not in themselves a full and durable life. 1 A man may destroy himself. 2 Jesus compares the wicked to the bundles of tares cast into the fire, to a man crushed under a rock, to criminals who are executed. It is true that the wicked will rise again; they will have to appear at the last judgement, but if they are obstinate they will be finally destroyed, "both soul and body in Gehenna." 3
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