CHAPTER IX.—THE DEVIATION OF THE CHURCHES, AND THE DOCTRINE OF COMPULSORY IMMORTALITY IN AN ETERNAL HELL.
I. The corruption of the traditional dogma explained by the infiltration of heathen dualism—
How is the gold become dim? how is the most pure gold changed?
How is it that the firmament of evangelical doctrine has become darkened? How is it that night has closed upon it? How is it that the Church as a whole could so deviate?
All Protestants agree in admitting that during more than a thousand years the universal Church has deviated with respect to more than one important point. The fault of this deviation is attributed either entirely to the Popes or to Constantine the Great. Protestants are also very ready to imagine that the Reformers made all needful reforms. Unhappily that is only an illusion.
The Church of the second century already cherished in its bosom the germ of many a Romish error, and Protestantism is even now half Roman Catholic. Count deGasparin has said:
"We forge Protestant Fathers.... The truth is that the Fathers are the beginning, and for that very reason the condemnation, of Roman Catholicism.... It is just because the lapse begins with the Fathers that it is necessary to go back farther than their time." 1
Professor Ernest Naville, a thinker of the highest reputation, who is well versed in the history of philosophy, has made a similar declaration, as follows:
"In the formation of Church science there were introduced elements of ancient thought which were incompatible with the direct and true meaning of the Gospel. Dazzled by the genius of Plato and Aristotle, the Fathers and the schoolmen accepted from these illustrious Greeks not only the part of their works that is eternally true, but also certain principles the consequences of which contradict the teaching of the living and true God. The philosophy accepted by Christians, and illustrated in modern times by such men as Leibnitz, Fenelon, Malebranche, contains foreign currents which have come from Greece and India and tend to land the thoughts on the desolate shores of Pantheism.
The idea of God, of the almighty Creator, does not even yet reign completely above the ruins of the metaphysical idols set up by the errors of the sages. A noble task has been reserved for our epoch. A great harvest of truth is demanding reapers. While gathering up with pious care all that is pure in the intellectual heritage of past centuries, we need to break away more than has yet been done from the false and unsatisfying doctrines of Greek tradition, and by a serious effort of thought to succeed in placing the intellect itself, in its own primitive nature, in presence of the Gospel. Then will it be recognized, as I am fully convinced, that the Gospel is the true principle of science, as it is the true principle of civilization, and that Christian philosophy is the meeting of reason, as God has made it, with truth, as God has given it." 2
1 Le Christianisme aux trois premiers siecles, pp. 117-119.
2 Revue de theologie et de philosophie, p. 178, 1875; and Chret. evang., p. 470, 1874. The italics are those of M. Astie's quotation. "The Fathers of the Church were only heathen philosophers christianized."-A. Schloesing, Revue chretienne, p. 269, 1882.
Let us examine the history of dogmas. Just as in the autopsy of a dead body the baneful traces of a poison may be followed, so we shall show in the official doctrine of the Churches the deleterious influence of a diabolical falsehood. This falsehood is still sounded forth from the pulpits of truth. It promises immortality to sinners, even though impenitent. "Ye shall not surely die," that insolent declaration of the Old Serpent, has become the basis of ecclesiastical eschatology.
In order the better to deceive, the seducer has transformed himself into an angel of light; he has presented himself in the brilliant costume of science. Intoxicated with a false philosophy, the Church Fathers have conferred upon a heathen a title with which none of the apostles even were ever honoured; they have called him the divine Plato. 1
II. The apostles had predicted corruption in the doctrine of the Churches and the intrusion of false philosophy—
And yet the Church had been specially cautioned on this point. The apostolic Epistles contain various admonitions and predictions on the subject. Paul writes:
"The mystery of lawlessness doth already work... take heed lest there shall be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit..... Where is the philosopher? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world?... Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto Greeks foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God... a wisdom not of this world.... The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside unto fables.. I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and purity that is toward Christ." 2
1 The late Rev. Edwin Hatch, D.D., in his recent volume on The influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, shows that in the third and fourth centuries, under the influence of Greek logic, more importance was attributed to the letter of the formulas than to the primitive doctrine, and that the old orthodoxy then became a new heresy. He further indicates the need for a return to the true Gospel of Christ. See, too, Alex. Westphal's essay entitled, Chair et esprit, wherein he traces the developement of the two notions of flesh and spirit in the Old and New Testaments. Toulouse, A. Chauvin and Son, 1885, p. 150, sq.
2 2 Thess. ii. 7; Col. ii. 8; 1 Cor. i. 20, 22-24; ii. 6; 2 Tim. iv. 3; 2 Cor. xi. 3. The apostle, who quotes three Greek poets, does not invoke the authority of a single philosopher.
"The craftiness of the serpent!" Is not the lying promise of unconditional immortality a part of his craftiness, and is it not at the foundation of Plato's dualist doctrine, the danger of which we have just seen indicated by Professor Ernest Naville? The Church, believing herself to be wiser than her founders, placed herself blindfold under the direction of the Academic philosophers. Clement of Alexandria said, in his early time, that the apostle Paul did not include in his blame "all philosophies, but only those of the Epicureans and the Stoics." Plato had taught the pre-existence and the imperishability of souls. His affirmation prevailed against the negation of the apostles and prophets. Christ, Paul, Peter, and John were made to appear Platonists.
III. The doctrine of Athenagoras
The author of the false Clementines is the earliest in date of the ecclesiastical writers who deviate from the primitive faith. Yet he in some passages contradicts himself by asserting that the soul "will end by being consumed in the flames of hell; for they cannot endure for ever who have been impious against the one God.... A supreme chastisement will put an end to their existence." 1
Then came Athenagoras, a native of Athens and disciple of Plato, who applied himself to the task of demonstrating the existence of a fundamental accord between the doctrine of Jesus and that of the great Athenian philosopher. He laid down as a principle that in creating man God's purpose was to make him live; it is impossible that God's purpose should not be attained; therefore man must live for ever, good or evil, happy or unhappy.
Athenagoras holds that the purpose of man's existence is that existence itself. 2 The Gospel, on the contrary, subordinates the perpetuation of existence to holiness. According to the apostle Paul, the purpose of the creation is the manifestation and the glorification of the sons of God. 3
1 Homily iii. 6, sq., 59.; xvi. 10; Antwerp edition, 1698.
2 Here again is found the Platonic principle adopted by Thomas Aquinas, and recalled if not adopted by Professor Ernest Naville (le Libre arbitre, p. 318), who, however, has just cautioned us against the errors of Greek philosophy.
3 Rom. viii. 19.
But this glory is not attained apart from the exercise of freedom; it depends upon the triumph of morality. The elect lay hold on eternal life; it is not imposed upon them. A compulsory immortality in wickedness, interminable sufferings which will never be of any advantage to the victims, these are blasphemous inventions. We raise our feeble voice in denunciation of the truly diabolical craftiness which, by presenting to the Church the seductive fruit of heathen philosophy, with subtilty and without noise, has at last attained to this shocking triumph to cause God to be calumniated by his own elect.
Greek philosophy at that time was making a vigorous effort to substitute it’s dogma of the immortality of the soul for the old Jewish idea of resurrection in an earthly paradise. The two forms, however, were still existing together. 1
1 Renan, Marc Aurele, pp 505 and 511; and L’Ecclesiata, p. 29.
IV. Three Africans, Tertullian, Augustine, and Origen, secure the triumph of the Platonic doctrine—
There were three natives of burning Africa, Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine, who were most influential in completing the triumph of the Platonic doctrines.
Tertullian, who had an ardent spirit, and was an eloquent preacher but a most ignorant theologian, appealed to the revelations of a sister who had seen visions. In order to explain how the flames of hell will burn the wicked without devouring them, he alludes to the philosophical notion of a special kind of fire, a secret or divine fire, which does not consume that which it burns, but while it burns it repairs. So the volcanoes continue ever burning, and a person struck by lightning is kept safe from any destroying flame. The mountains burn and last, and so will it be with the enemies of God. 2
Tertullian forgot that, according to the Scripture, God does not allow to subsist that which he consumes; it needed a miracle to prevent the destruction of the burning bush, while it is written of the wicked that by the wrath of God they will be "burnt up like stubble." The Bishop of Carthage lived in a time of persecution.
1 Renan, Marc Aurele, pp. 505 and 511; and L'Ecclesiaste, p. 29.
2 Apolog. xlviii., cf. Scorp. iii.
Christians were seized and given over to wild beasts. The law of the Gospel prohibited vengeance on the part of Christ's disciples, but it sometimes seemed to them that an eternity of sufferings in hell would not be too much punishment for those who thus tormented them in the present life.
“You delight in spectacles, exclaimed Tertullian, and there is a spectacle reserved for us in the day of judgement. How shall I admire, how rejoice, when I behold in the depths of the abyss so many proud monarchs and magistrates who have persecuted the name of the Lord; when I hear their cries in the midst of flames more terrible than they ever kindled to burn the Christians! There will be seen tragedians whose sufferings will force them to utter the true accents of pain; there will be dancers whom we shall see leaping in the midst of the flames, and fiery chariots going the round of the burning arena.” 1
The spirit of vengeance impelled Tertullian to make out hell to be eternal. He goes so far as to speak of the immortality of the wicked: "An eternal life will be their portion," he says. Such expressions are, as we have seen, utterly foreign, and even contrary, to both the letter and the spirit of the Scriptures.
Tertullian's hell is a hideous field of carnage, a "perpetual slaughter;" 2 mortal sufferings without the relief that is brought by death. Such a doctrine causes horror; it is, however, logical, if the teachings of Plato are to be reconciled with those of Christ. In that case the Bible asserts contradictions. Ever slaughtered, the wicked are never put to death; they perish without ever being destroyed, and death becomes one of the aspects of life!
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, upheld with all his might these strange aberrations. For the dogma of Platonic immortality, he did that which later on was done by Calvin for the dogma of the predestination of the wicked; he perpetuated for centuries the triumph of a monstrous error. 3 Impelled by the logic of his system, he condemned to the eternal fire of hell every little infant dying unbaptized. 4
1 De spectac., xxx.
2 AEterna occisio.
3 That the doctrine of native and inalienable immortality prevailed in the Church through the influence of Augustine after his controversy with Pelagius is expressly stated by Petavius. De theolog. dogmat., vol. iii., p. 172; Antwerp, 1700.
4 Multum autem fallit et fallitur qui eos in damnatione predicat non futuros. Opp., vii., p. 142.
It was with Calvin, his disciple, as with Augustine; their characters were affected by their sombre theology. Augustine devoted to eternal torments not only little infants, but also those wretched beings who in his time found reason to believe in the existence of the antipodes! In his letter to Pope Boniface, like Jerome he sanctioned persecution against heretics.
These facts confirm what we have said in a former chapter about the always deleterious effects of sin, even when pardoned. If the son of the pious Monica had not wasted his youth in guilty pleasures, he would have had the time needed for the acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Neither did he nor his predecessor Tertullian take the trouble to learn Hebrew. He had not even a good knowledge of Greek. Not being able to study the Bible in the original texts, Augustine found himself deprived of the best antidote against a false philosophy. The Old Testament, that bulwark of monism, remained almost a closed book to him. 1 Carried away by every wind of doctrine, he was for seven years an adept of Manichaeism, of a sect which actually rejected the Old Testament. From that heresy Augustine retained the evil leaven of dualism. His dogmatics were completely impregnated with it. The Western Church, and more especially the Calvinists and Jansenists, have had to suffer grievously for the errors of the Bishop of Hippo: those errors still hinder the progress of the Gospel.
1 In theology monism is the doctrine which admits only one eternal principle. Dualism is, on the contrary, a "system of philosophy or religion which, going back to the origin of things, admits two contrary principles, both eternal, as, for example, good and evil, spirit and matter, the ideal and the real. This system is essentially heathen; it is found among the Persians under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and although Christianity recognizes only one God, the Creator, eternal, by whom all things subsist, a dualism has made its way more than once into the developement of Christian dogma, not only in a coarse and material form, as with the Gnostics and Manichaeans, but in a more subtile form in the discussions between Augustine and Pelagius as to the origin of evil, in the lucubrations of the spiritualist and antinomian sects of the middle ages, and in the conception of the devil as it is admitted in the Catholic Church, andeven by many Protestant theologians."—J. Aug. Bost, Dictionnaire d'histoire ecclesiastique, article Dualisme. In a private letter to the author, Pastor Mittendorff, of Geneva, writes as follows:
"You have said that the Platonic doctrine of the soul's immortality contains a basis of dualism. That is perfectly true. It is right that the upholders of the traditional dogma should be confronted with the ultimate philosophical consequences of their system. Starting from the principle of the soul's indestructibility, they admit, as a final result of the exercise of human freedom, the persistent revolt and the eternal suffering of a certain number of creatures, that is to say, the eternal duration of an evil principle; of a state of rebellion against the principle of good, against God; that is, from the point of view of duration, the infinity of evil opposed to the infinity of good, or the introduction of dualism into the notion of the supreme Being.
"Now, this dualism ought to be repudiated in the name of philosophy and in the name of the Bible. There is only one Absolute, one Infinite, who is God, the principle of good, of whom the Scripture gives a sublime definition by calling him the 'I am.' This is exactly Paul's thought when he says that 'God only hath immortality,' and that a day is coming when 'God will be all in all.' That which results from this conception is the annihilation of the devil, of the principle of evil. If God is the source of life, all who separate themselves from God are condemned to death; annihilation is the logical consequence of sin as viewed from either the metaphysical, the juridical, or the moral standpoint. He who revolts against God puts himself outside of life."
The doctrine called orthodox provoked, as early as the third century, the equally excessive reaction of Origen. He, too, was a victim of the Platonic dualism. He imagined a hell that was nothing more than a purgatory; from it men and devils come forth regenerated, and go to enjoy the felicity of the elect at the right hand of the heavenly Father. We shall devote our next chapter to the examination of this theory.
The Church maintained the endless tortures of Tertullian for heretics and those who were excommunicated; to the general body of the faithful it gave the benefit of the prospect opened up by Origen. The idea of the indestructibility of the soul flattered human pride, and for the clergy purgatory became a source of honour and profit. On, this basis was founded the system of indulgences. The well-paid priest had the power of sending more quickly to paradise any deceased person whose salvation might be somewhat doubtful to those left behind. The proverb is well known: "The fire of purgatory boils the monk's saucepan."
The abuse became so shocking that it provoked Luther's Reformation.
V. Feeble protests of Duns Scotus and Pomponatius—
Even before the Reformation the Renaissance uttered its protest against the Platonic immortality. As early as the thirteenth century Duns Scotus, while still professing to believe in the immortality of the soul, maintained that it was a doctrine not susceptible of demonstration by the aid of natural powers, via naturali; for him it is one of the data of Revelation, an article of faith. 1
Some of the fifteenth-century humanists went further; they demonstrated by philosophical and scientific arguments that the soul is mortal as well as the body. They attributed their point of view to the teaching of Averroes, an Arabian philosopher and commentator of the works of Aristotle.
Peter Pomponatius, born at Mantua in 1462, became the chief of an Averroist school. M. Bartholmess calls him "the most influential professor of philosophy of his time." 2 Idolized by the youth of the universities, Pomponatius published in 1516 his famous book on the Immortality of the Soul, wherein he maintained a doctrine somewhat similar to that of Duns Scotus. This book was burnt at Venice by the public executioner; but at Rome Pomponatius was warmly defended by Cardinal Bembo. Said Pomponatius: "As a Christian, I believe that which, as a philosopher or scientist, I cannot believe." To which his adversary Boccalini replied: "Pomponatius should be absolved as a Christian and burnt alive as a philosopher." Pomponatius died a natural death four years later, and Cardinal Hercules de Gonzaga had a statue erected to his memory.
1 F. Bonifas, Histoire des dogmes, vol. ii., p. 330.
2 Franck, Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, article Pomponace.
The doctrine maintained by this philosopher became for some years an almost official teaching throughout Italy. About the year 1500, immortality was the problem around which all philosophical questions revolved, and "throughout the sixteenth century, when a new professor of philosophy made his appearance before the students in the Italian Universities, whatever might be the subject that he proposed to treat, they were always ready, in order that they might at once understand his views, to cry out:
'Speak to us of the soul!' dell'anima. " 1
The opinion that the soul is mortal was so widely accepted by the learned men in Italy that the Church considered it a duty to intervene. Pope Leo X. caused this doctrine to be condemned by the fifth Lateran Council. The absolute immortality of the soul separate from the body was proclaimed by a decree of the eighth session of that Council.
“Pomponatius was condemned,” says Renan, “but was supported in secret.... What serious effect could be expected from a Bull countersigned Bembo, and commanding belief in immortality?... The Lateran Council was but a feeble effort to arrest the progress of Italy in the path on which she was going, and from which she could only be withdrawn by the great reaction produced by the commotion of the Reformation.” 2
It is thus seen that the triumph of the doctrine of native and inalienable immortality is of comparatively recent date. Its place in the chronological order of official dogmas is immediately before the immaculate conception of the Virgin and Papal infallibility.
VI. Acknowledgements of the Reformers Luther and Tyndale—
There was a moment in which Luther seemed to take the part of Pomponatius against Pope Leo X. In his Defence of all the Propositions condemned by the New Bull, Luther placed the dogma of the immortality of the soul among the "monstrous fables that form part of the Roman dunghill of decretals." 3 It has been supposed that Luther's indignation was due to the fact that the Pope allowed himself "to raise to the rank of a dogma a truth which had been always an integral portion of the Christian faith." 1 This view might perhaps be upheld if, in his enumeration of "Roman corruptions," Luther did not associate the dogma of the soul's immortality with transubstantiation and papal idolatry. He does not mention a single biblical article of faith. Native immortality there finds itself decidedly in very bad company. We find it difficult to understand that the great reformer could have applied the name of "monstrous fable" to "a truth which had been always an integral portion of the Christian faith." For the present we prefer to admit that he may have shared for a while the doubts that were then so generally prevalent with respect to the scholastic notion of the immortality of the soul. 2 It has, moreover, been remarked that Luther, who taught the sleep of souls between death and resurrection, hardly ever speaks of eternal torments.
1 Franck, Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, article Pomponace .
2 The date of the Bull is December 19, 1513. As we have said, the book of Pomponatius on the Immortality of the Soul appeared in 1516; it would he interesting to know to what extent the author took account of the Pope's Bull, one part of which was directed against his academic teaching.
3 The Latin text of Luther's thesis is as follows: "Permitto tamen quod Papa condat articulos fidei et suis fidelibus, quales sunt panem et vinum transsubstantiari in sacramento, essentials Dei nec generare nec generari, animam esse formam substantialem corporis humani, se esse Imperatorem mundi et Regem coeli et Deum terrenum, animam esse immortalem et omnia illa infinita portenta in romano sterquilinio Decretorum; ut qualis est ejus fides, tale sit evangelium, tales et fideles, talis et ecclesia et habeant similem labra lactucam, et dignum patella sit operculum. "Nos vero, qui non Papani sed Christiani sumus, scimus quod nihil est fidei et bonorum morum quod non abunde in literis sacris sit expositum ut neque jus, neque locus sit alia statuendi ullis hominibus."
Calvin, however, thought it his duty to devote one of his earliest works to the question of the sleep of souls. 3 On this point he opposed the opinion maintained by the Reformer William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible into English, who died at the stake in 1536.
“The true faith,” says Tyndale,” putteth [setteth forth] the Resurrection, which we be warned to look for every hour. The heathen philosophers, denying that, did put [set forth] that the souls did ever live. And the Pope joineth the spiritual doctrine of Christ and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers together, things so contrary that they cannot agree any more than the spirit and the flesh do in a Christian man. And because the fleshly-minded Pope consenteth unto heathen doctrine, therefore he corrupteth the Scriptures to establish it.” 1
1 Geo. Godet, Chret. evang., 1882, p. 562.
2 We may add that in the passage quoted by M. Geo. Godet the argument adduced by Luther in support of the immortality of the soul has little weight. It amounts to this: that the human soul must be imperishable because in the Apostles' Creed it is said, "I believe in the life everlasting;" as if the life everlasting were not, even from the traditionalist standpoint, the exclusive privilege of believers, and that of which non-believers will be deprived; for non-believers, therefore, there would be no immortality. The explanation given by the Reformer would then lead straight to Conditionalism. It should also be borne in mind that the explanation referred to appeared some time later than the thesis before mentioned.
3 Psychopannychia, Strasburg, 1542. The two prefaces are dated respectively from Orleans, 1534, and Basle, 1536.
To the Latin text of Luther's thesis is as follows: "Permitto tamen quod Papa condat articulos fidei et suis fidelibus, quales sunt panem et vinum transsubstantiari in sacramento, essentials Dei nec generare nec generari, animam esse formam substantialem corporis humani, se esse Imperatorem mundi et Regem coeli et Deum terrenum, animam esse immortalem et omnia illa infinita portenta in romano sterquilinio Decretorum; ut qualis est ejus fides, tale sit evangelium, tales et fideles, talis et ecclesia ethabeant similem labra lactucam, et dignum patella sit operculum. "Nos vero, qui non Papani sed Christiani sumus, scimus quod nihil est fidei et bonorum morum quod non abunde in literis sacris sit expositum ut neque jus, neque locus sit alia statuendi ullis hominibus."
VII. Serious deficiency in Protestant dogmatics—
On the whole we are bound to admit that, recoiling from the immensity of the task, the theologians of the sixteenth century did not thoroughly examine the foundations of the theory formulated by Augustine. Not one of them undertook the reform of the traditional hell.
“The Reformation, being concentrated upon the points that separated it from the Catholic Church, which for the Reformers were summed up in the authority of the Scriptures and justification by faith, did not submit to a new examination those doctrines that were not included within the bounds of its dominant preoccupations, and that did not form an object of the ardent polemics of the time.” 3
It may, however, be told, to the honour of the sixteenth century, that in 1562 the Convocation of the Anglican Church, presided over by Archbishop Parker, had the wisdom to suppress the "articles of religion" in which the eternity of sufferings was implicitly affirmed. 4 It is a no less remarkable fact that the doctrine in question is absent from the confession of faith of the Reformed Churches of France, called that of La Rochelle.
1 Confutation of Sir Thomas More, 1531.
2 See the dedication to Francis I. of his latest work, Christianae Fidei Expositio, 1536.
3 Edmond de Pressense, Essai sur le dogme de la redemption, p. 23, Paris, 1867.
4 The Anglican "Articles of Religion" were originally forty-two; they were reduced to thirty-nine.
The successors of the Reformers quarrelled, and then went to sleep. The religious re-awakening of our century contented itself with the acceptance of the traditional doctrine as it stood. Adopting the ready-made formulas of the Reformation, its leaders seem to have had no sort of suspicion that those formulas contained a bastard mixture of Gospel with heathen philosophy. By a sort of intellectual indolence, evangelism has disdained the profound study of dogma, and is now punished for it by the felt lack of power to influence the class of thinking men. French Protestantism in particular has failed to make any deep impression outside its own borders. 1
Alone, or nearly so, one of the chief apostles of the revival, M. Ami Bost, attained to the point of view that we are defending. His work on the subject was the last that issued from his incisive pen. It was the worthy crowning of a career devoted without reserve or prejudice to the defence of truth. 2
1 See Chap. I., sect. iii.
2 See Chap. I., p. 24, note 3.
We ought here to mention beside Ami Bost one of his friends, the father of him who writes these lines. Shortly before his death, which occurred in his eightieth year, and while in the full possession of all his faculties, A. F. Petavel arrived at the same conclusions.
In relation to M. Bost, we may here mention a characteristic incident. Some of the chiefs of the revival having felt the need of replacing Ostervald's translation of the Bible by a new version (which has been called the Swiss version), there was a discussion as to the text which should serve as the basis of the work. The superstitious notion of a providential text, together with the intellectual indolence before referred to, brought about the adoption of the Elzevirs' edition, which has borne the name of received text, the predominance of which is only a usurpation. Ami Bost had the courage to protest, demanding that account should be taken of the results of criticism; but this proposal was rejected, and its author had to retire from the committee of translation.
It is incumbent upon our generation to take up the uncompleted work of the Reformers. Happily, they have handed down to us the Bible and freedom of inquiry, the fulcrum and the lever, by means of which, with the help of God, the coming generation will raise and speedily put aside the stone that encumbers the way of truth.
This reform within the Reformation is all the more urgent because on the point in question Catholicism has an incontestable advantage over Protestantism. The doctrine of purgatory, although false in some respects, contains an element of truth which has been lost in the Calvinist dogma. This fact may perhaps partly explain the reason why Protestantism has made no advance in Europe since the sixteenth century, while Roman Catholicism, with the aid of persecution it is true, has reconquered various countries, as, for instance, Poland, the region of Gex, and a part of Savoy. 1
1 See the article in the Figaro of 19 April, 1889, previously referred to, which exhibits that feature of Roman Catholicism which has been so skilfully turned to advantage.
VIII. Summary of the dogma called orthodox
The so-called orthodox doctrine appears in the standards of the Reformed Churches, and particularly in the Westminster Confession, which still holds its authority among the Presbyterians of England, Scotland, and America. It may be summed up thus:
1. Adam was created with a soul immortal as God himself, although his body was perishable.
2. The death with which he was threatened in the event of disobedience had a threefold character: it would put an end to physical life, separate the soul from God, and subject the soul to eternal torments. There are thus three kinds of death, two of which are rather life than death.
3. Adam's fall not only rendered our first progenitor subject to these three kinds of death, but also by the hereditary transmission of original sin has brought the same condemnation upon all his posterity.
4. Therefore, with the exception of a certain number who are the elect, every human being is even before his birth predestined to endless torments. Thus hell is to be the eternal abode of all children dying in infancy who are tot the objects of a special decree.
5. Christ has borne the curse of the law; yet in his case the eternal torments of the second death were limited, it is not said why, to the period of a few hours passed in the garden of Gethsemane and on Calvary.
6. These expiatory sufferings of Jesus during a few hours and his death protect the believer against the two kinds of death of the soul. As for the body, the Christian dies with the prospect of a resurrection at the last day.
7. The Gospel has introduced an infinite aggravation of the sentence pronounced by the law of Moses. Therein death by stoning was the only punishment of the greatest culprits. But the Gospel threatens the impenitent with torments which must last as long as God himself. This aggravated doom will have a retroactive effect upon the obstinate sinners of the Old Covenant.
8. The inhabitants of the eternal hell will be infinitely more numerous than those of the future paradise, for there is no possible salvation beyond the tomb, and all the heathen are to be there; all men who have not had sufficient faith, or who die without having here below heard of Jesus Christ, will rise again in order to suffer endless torments. Now, there can be no question that the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ have formed, at any rate up to the present time, only an insignificant minority of the human race.
IX. Pernicious consequences of that dogma—
Such is the Augustinian and Calvinist doctrine in its offensive nakedness, which the evangelical theologians of our day sometimes endeavour to hide under a Noah's mantle. 1 If it were but altogether dead we might apply to it the saying De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but it is well known that wherever it has maintained a breath of life it persecutes those who appeal from it to the Bible and free inquiry. Abusing its acquired position, it seems to have but one aim: to blight in its germ every effort to return to the primitive Gospel. We are therefore bound to denounce it openly as a superstition as dangerous as it is tyrannical. The summary of it that we have given may suffice to show its incoherence, but it is needful also to indicate its disastrous effects.
By presenting God in a false light it has discredited the Gospel. A theologian of the Anglican Church has brought out very clearly the logical results of this doctrine:
"No man can deny that God is able to destroy what he was able to create. No man can deny that God had a power to choose whether he would inflict death upon the sinner or an endless life of agony. Which would he choose, the gentler or the more fearful doom? Will you say the latter? Why? There must be a reason. Is it to please himself? He repudiates this kind of character (Ezek. xviii. 23). His mode of dealing here contradicts it: where pain is sharp it is short. Is it to please his angelic or redeemed creation? They are too like himself to take pleasure in such a course. Did no pity visit the Creator's bosom they would look up into his face and plead for mercy. Is it to terrify from sin? To terrify whom? Not the lost, they are handed over for ever to blasphemy and evil. Is it, then, to terrify the unfallen, and preserve them from sin? Would it? What is sin? Is it not pre-eminently alienation from God? What would alienate from him so completely as the sight or the knowledge of such a hell as Tertullian taught? Pity, horror, anguish, would invade every celestial breast. Just fancy a criminal with us. He has been a great criminal. Let him be the cruel murderer, the base destroyer of woman's innocence and honour, the fiendish trafficker in the market of lust, the cold-blooded plotter for the widow's or the orphan's inheritance. Let him be the vilest of the vile, on whose head curses loud, deep, and many have been heaped. He is taken by the hand of justice. All rejoice. He is put to death! No; that is thought too light a punishment by the ruler of the land. He is put into a dungeon, deprived of all but the necessaries of existence, tortured by day and by night, guarded lest his own hand should rid him of a miserable life, and all this to go on till nature thrusts within the prison bars an irresistible hand and frees the wretch from his existence. Now, what would be the effect upon the community of such a course? The joy at the criminal's overthrow, once universal, would rapidly change into pity, into indignation, into horror, into the wild uprising of an outraged nation to rescue the miserable man from a tyrant worse than himself, and to hurl the infamous abuser of law and power from his seat. And this is but the faintest image of what a cruel theology would have us believe of our Father which is in heaven! Nature steps in in the one case, and says there shall be an end. Omnipotence, in the other, puts forth its might to stay all such escape. For ever and for ever! Millions of years of agony gone and yet the agony no nearer its close! Not one, but myriads to suffer thus! Their endless cries! Their ceaseless groans! Their interminable despair! Why, heaven and earth and stars in their infinite number, all worlds which roll through the great Creator's space, would raise one universal shout of horror at such a course. Love for God would give way to hatred. Apostasy would no longer be partial, but universal. All would stand aloof in irrepressible loathing from the tyrant on the throne, for a worse thing than Manichaeism pictured would be seated there—the one eternal principle would be the principle of evil." 1
1 It will, of course, be understood that we do not at all underrate the genius of the great men who formulated this doctrine. On the contrary, we acknowledge and admire the logic which has courageously drawn the legitimate consequences from an erroneous principle, and the candour of a Calvin who admitted that his system was horrible: Decretum quidem horribile fateor!—Inst., lib. iii. 23, § 7.
Can that be a true theodicy which allows the continuance in the universe of an ever-burning volcano, an ever-livid blotch, an ever-festering sore, a howling and cursing that will never cease? Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of "a destructive principle that never produces destruction, and of the destruction of a finite being that never comes to an end?" 2
If a tree may be judged by its fruit, is that dogma beyond the range of criticism which espoused the barbarism of the Visigoths, and brought forth the tigers of the Inquisition? These read the Gospel in the light of the burning piles that they kindled; fashioning their own souls in the image of their ferocious deity, they thought that they were rendering service to heretics by tormenting them on earth to enable them to escape from unending torments.
Can that be an acceptable doctrine which obliges us to admit something like two different deities: one here below who is tender and beneficent, most frequently avenging himself for the ingratitude and wickedness of men by untold benefits; the other beyond the tomb beholding with impassive complacency the interminable sufferings of his adversaries? We read with horror the stories of the Inquisition or the history of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the Emperor Montezuma broiled on a gridiron over a slow fire, the description of that torture which was caused by the dropping of water perpetually night and day on the forehead of the victim until he became mad with the pain; but what are these torments of a few hours or days in comparison with a fire, fierce or slow, material or immaterial, which after a thousand millions of years would then only just have begun its work?
Just as Torquemada has discredited the Papacy, so the doctrine of eternal torments has dishonoured the Gospel. The Goliath of unbelief, who today so arrogantly defies the forces of the living God, has not a more effective weapon in his panoply than the reproach that the Churches adore a cruel God. Even the idolaters of India and Siam repulse our missionaries in the name of divinities who, as they say, are more clement than ours.
1 Rev. H. Constable, M.A., late Chaplain to the City of London Hospital, and Prebendary of Cork. Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, 6th edition, 1886, p. 217, sq.
2 Aug. Bouvier, Actes de la Societe pastorale suisse, p. 83, Geneva, 1885.
If we may believe the assertion of a man who in his lifetime was an influential London minister, "nine-tenths of the bitterness and fierceness with which Christianity is assailed by its coarser and more malign opponents may be traced to this fatal spring." 1
We will not accept, as arbitrators in this matter, the avowed enemies of the Christian faith, nor even freethinkers like John Stuart Mill, Professor Tyndall, Theodore Parker, Colonel Ingersoll, or Madame Ackermann, although these have all expressed their reprobation of this dogma; but we will quote writers who are favourable to the Gospel. M. Charles Renouvier says: "An eternal hell is one of the scandals most effective in alienating minds from the Christian conception of the world and its destinies." 2 The excellent Sismondi wrote:
“I left the church in haste, that I might not have to speak with anyone of the indignation that the minister had excited in me by his preaching about eternal torments.... I am determined never again to enter an English church, that I may not be forced to listen to such blasphemies, never to contribute towards the promotion of that which the English call their reform, 3 for by the side of it Popery is a religion of mercy and grace. I can put up with idolatry and atheism, but to attribute to the divinity an infernal malice is an outrage upon the object of my adoration which fills me with indignation." 4
The traditional doctrine is largely responsible for contemporary scepticism. 5
1 Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, The Christian World, 16 March, 1877, p. 196.
2 Critique religieuse, April, 1880, p. 44.
3 Sismondi probably means the religious movement called the Revival.
4 Fragments de son journal et de sa correspondance, Geneva, 1857, p. 106, sq
5 Among the former Earls of Shaftesbury there was one whose unbelief has remained proverbial in England. It is said that he had consulted several eminent ecclesiastics in order to ascertain whether the New Testament really teaches eternal torments. Upon their affirmative reply, he declared himself unable thenceforth to admit a religion so contrary to the idea that he ought to cherish of the Governor of the universe. But a Scottish minister, Rev, J. L. Robertson, in a sermon preached at Glasgow has expressed yet stronger indignation; he declares that "the popular notion of eternal punishment is erroneous and very hurtful in its tendencies in so far as the conception... debases and distorts the character of God."—Christian World, 20 Jan., 1877, p. 71.
It has called forth the poet's cry:
Rather a desert heaven than your so cruel God,
Whom I could only fear and curse. 1
The aim of one of Tennyson's later poems, the ode entitled Despair, is just to bring out into strong relief the deplorable results of this same belief. 2 Mr. Thomas Walker, late editor of the London Gazette, has shown that it was a challenge intended by the Poet-Laureate to force the hand of the evangelical Churches with regard to a doctrine which has not yet been repudiated by any one of them.
Not long ago the president of a French tribunal wrote to us thus: "I am anxious to thank you.... You may boast 3 of having brought me back to Christianity, from which I had been completely alienated by the frightful, atrocious, monstrous dogma of eternal torments.... That question had been the torment of my life."
It was Father Hyacinthe who said one day: "One of the starting points of contemporary unbelief is the error of the Churches in presenting to us a God who is either imbecile or ferocious." 4
1 Plutot un ciel desert que votre Dieu cruel Qu'il me faudrait craindre etmaudire!
2 And we broke away from the Christ, our human Brother and Friend, For he spoke, or it seemed that he spoke, of a hell without help, without end.
Ah, yet, I have had some glimmer, at times in my gloomiest woe, Of a God behind all, after all, the great God for aught I know; But the God of Love and of Hell together—they cannot be thought; If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought!
Tennyson puts this imprecation in the mouth of an unhappy disciple of Calvin. An eternal hell is likewise the pivot of one of Victor Hugo's dramas Torquemada. The author makes an eternal hell the foundation of the theory of the Inquisition; the stake is the supreme remedy that is to preserve the misbelievers from the unquenchable flames.
3 We must here say that the Conditionalists do not "boast" of the fulfilment of their duty, which is always imperfect.
4 Conference of 21 May, 1886. A similar thought appears in the discourse entitled "An Apology for the Inquisition."—Ni clericaux ni athees, p. 190. The God of the pretended eternal torments is all one with the God of the Inquisition.
The defenders of an eternal hell might to some extent apply to themselves the words of the ex-Carmelite monk addressed to the ultramontanes: "It is because of you that the name of God, of the personal and living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the God who hears and inspires me, because of you that the name of God is blasphemed all over the world. Ni clericaux ni athees, p. 191.
A prebendary of St. Paul's in London has expressed in a recent volume a very similar opinion; he considers that at the present time it is of the highest importance to make an inquiry into this point. 1 The inquiry has been also demanded by the Rev. J. Foxley, chaplain to the University of Cambridge; it is on the order of the day in the religious press of England.
X. Alleviations imagined by evangelical theologians—
Thus challenged and closely pressed, the traditional dogma is ashamed of itself; it hides itself, or else pleads attenuating circumstances. The Position of Platonic orthodoxy becoming untenable, its defenders have imagined certain accommodations.
Thus, in spite of Augustine, of Calvin, and of the confessions of faith, the salvation of all children who die in infancy is affirmed, although it is not said to what extent they share in original sin; what may be the consequence to them of that evil predisposition is a question that is not considered. The study of the problem being dreaded, it has been found more convenient to put it aside.
The traditional doctrine is further mitigated by the assertion that while the first death and the second are transmissible by inheritance, the third death is not. The assertion is, however, quite gratuitous, and Calvin was more logical. In order to be orthodox, that is logically Platonist, it must be admitted that, with the exception of the small number of the elect, humanity, like a great river, is rushing on over the precipice of eternal sufferings; humanity, that is to say men, our fellow-creatures, by hundreds and thousands of millions.
The recent census shows that British India alone contains some two hundred and eighty-five millions of inhabitants. Supposing that population arranged in ranks of thirty abreast and one yard apart, they would form a column some five thousand four hundred miles in length, a column that would extend from Delhi to Lisbon. If we were to believe the traditional dogma, all these millions of a single generation of Hindoos are marching towards the lake of fire and brimstone, not there to perish, but there to live for ever in torments. And we must not forget that the official doctrine does not admit any means of grace beyond death, nor any intermediate abode between heaven and hell.
1 Rev. C. A. Row, Future Retribution, p. 3; London, 1887.
And what a hell it is! To describe it we will simply quote a sermon by the celebrated preacher, Spurgeon. He says: “When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone—that will be a hell for it—but at the day of judgement thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul shall be together, each brimfull of pain, thy soul sweating in its inmost pore drops of blood, and thy body from head to foot suffused with agony; conscience, judgement, memory, all tortured.... Thine heart beating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire and yet unburnt, thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained yet coming out undestroyed, all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall ever play his diabolical tune.... Fictions, sir! Again I say they are no fictions, but solid, stern truth. If God be true, and this Bible be true, what I have said is the truth, and you will find it one day to be so.” 1
That sort of thing is preached even now, here and there, but some of the more compassionate theologians protest. They say: "We reject the notion of material fire. The sufferings of the future life will be eternal, but they will belong to the moral order." This is another pretended alleviation. Can those who so use it ever have tried to realize that eternity so glibly spoken of? In vain does the imagination attempt to embrace a number so vast as that representing the distance from the earth to the sun; but supposing as many centuries as there are units in that number, and the moral sufferings of the reprobate lasting throughout all that duration: that would be but the beginning of sorrows.
1 New Park Street Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 105, Sermon No. 66. Mr. Spurgeon would not now use the phraseology of a discourse that dates from the early years of his career. His theology has, then, been modified in some degree, although he would perhaps not be willing to admit it. We should be glad if, some day, he would explain the causes of his doctrinal evolution; it would be interesting to learn how he has come to think himself authorized to mitigate in any way that which he declared to be the immutable truth. In any case, his early sermons remain as authentic monuments of the old so-called orthodox preaching. [See an article entitled "The Christian Hell" in the Nineteenth Century for November, 1891, p. 712.]
But we shall be told of the philosopher Kant, who speaks of such a conception of eternal duration as childish. We reply that our business is not with Kant, but with traditional notions which are insulting to our heavenly Father.
Enough, however, of alleviations. An important article of faith is not to be veiled; it either is such or it is not. It must be loyally proclaimed or else denounced. If believed, it should be preached from the house-tops; if not believed, it should be opposed to the very end. If this dogma be false, it is a calumny against God and a stumbling-block in the way of humanity. All the resources of apologetics would not suffice to counterbalance its baneful effects.
Vainly, too, has it been thought sufficient to diminish the intensity of eternal sufferings. In vain is the penalty mitigated in spite of the Scripture imagery which threatens the reprobate with the most acute pains; the most odious characteristic of the traditional teaching, namely, the disciplinary uselessness of interminable sufferings, can never be got rid of. A learned and thoroughly evangelical man once said to us that the softest easy-chair would fill him with horror if he had the prospect of continually sitting in it for only a hundred years; but a century in eternity is infinitely less than a drop of water in the ocean.
It has been thought that dualism might be avoided by opening up the prospect of a day when the wicked "will be reduced to a condition of impotence to do harm." It is said that "suffering, sin, and death will for ever have disappeared." 1
1 F. Bonifas, Le Christianisme au XIXme siecle, 20 Sept., 1872.
Does not this involve contradiction? A wicked man who no longer does harm is no longer a wicked man. A poisonous tree will always bear poisonous fruit. A wicked man, if he were all alone, would do harm to himself; if he lives in society he will do harm to his companions. More than that: the universal law of progress requires a developement of evil in the reprobate. The cruelty of a Nero would be raised to the millionth power, without even then ceasing to become more cruel. Is that conceivable? But we are assured that "sin will have disappeared"; then the wicked will no longer be sinners, there will be no more eternal sufferings, nor even the possibility of alienation from God. Such a doctrine amounts to universal salvation; it is no longer the traditional dogma, to which the defence was intended to apply. 1
We have now to show that if the majority of modern theologians mitigate hell, there are some—even in learned Germany—who are not afraid of invoking the nightmare of unending torture. For example, it is surprising to find so enlightened a theologian as M. Paul Chapuis translating without note or reserve the following passage from a manual of Kurtz. It may be noted that this astonishing paragraph occupies a position of honour; it is the last but one in the volume.
“Eternal condemnation consists, from a negative point of view, in an eternal rejection, away from the face of God, cut off from happiness which can only be found in God; in an abode totally deprived of all light, of all life, of all joy or enjoyment; in a society composed of the refuse of angels and men, where there is neither love nor sympathy. On the positive side this condemnation may be described as an unlimited moral torture which nothing softens, nothing calms, nothing benumbs; an existence in company with the rejected from among angels and men, in torments caused by their abode deprived of light and of life.” 2
XI. Scepticism of believers in respect of eternal torments—
Believers themselves have become sceptical with regard to eternal torments. An English writer says: “The persuasion is general that things are not so bad as they are commonly represented to be; that in some way or other, through the mercy of God, punishment will not be inflicted.” 3
1 See Supplement No. III., § 6, and in note 1 on page 235, our reply to M. Geo. Godet, who, like M. Bonifas, supposed a final paralysis of the faculties of the wicked.
2 La Revelation salutaire de Dieu, a manual of sacred history, translated from the fourteenth German edition, Lausanne, 1887, p. 427. The sentence that we have put in italics surely deserves that distinction.
3 Henry Dunn, The Destiny of the Human Race, vol. ii., p. 586; London, 1863.
A minister of the Church of Scotland, the late Dr. N. McLeod, chaplain to Queen Victoria, expressed himself thus: “It does appear to me that there exists a wide-spread callousness and indifference, an ease of mind, with reference to the fate hereafter of ungodly men, which cannot be accounted for except on the supposition that all earnest faith is lost in either the dread possibilities of future sin or of its future punishment.” 1
Mr. Henry Dunn, who quotes these words, adds: "Even of professed believers the sad truth must be told, that few attempt to realize the awful condition in which mankind are supposed to be placed; that many shrink from ever hinting danger to their nearest and dearest unconverted relatives; and that some, it is to be feared, compromise with conscience for the absence of a life in the spirit of their creed by violent speculative denunciations on those who oppose it. The great multitude in the meantime live on and pass into eternity devoid of every sentiment of anxiety in reference to the world that is to come; the popular theology being, we fear, but too truly expressed in an epitaph we have seen somewhere written upon the tombstone of a notoriously abandoned man who was killed by a fall while hunting:
'Between the stirrup and the ground
He mercy sought and mercy found.'"
Is there, indeed, anyone who imagines his own father or child for ever burning in unquenchable flames? In the pulpit the preacher is assailed by distressing doubts; he hesitates in his speech; his reserve, his indefinite declarations, and perhaps a factitious vehemence, betray a secret scepticism which communicates itself to his hearers, troubles the believers, and hardens the impenitent. There is no lack of talent in modern preaching, yet it gains few converts, because it is incapable of inspiring a salutary fear. Paul made Felix tremble while speaking to him of judgement to come; in our days the Christian orator, fettered by a dogma that cannot be avowed, can do no more than stammer out unintelligible threatenings.
1 Parish Papers, chapter on Future Punishment, London, Alex. Strahan and Co., 1862, p. 144, sq.
Fifty years ago, John Foster, the essayist, wrote to our venerable friend, Rev. Edward White: A number (not large, but of great piety and intelligence) of ministers within my acquaintance, several now dead, have been disbelievers of the doctrine in question; at the same time not feeling themselves imperatively called upon to make a public disavowal; content with employing in their ministrations strong general terms in denouncing the doom of impenitent sinners. 1
An organ of the Wesleyan Methodists, quoted by Mr. Henry Dunn years ago, stated as a notorious fact that many Christians whose orthodoxy on other points has never been questioned are unbelievers on this. Some evade inquiry as unprofitable. Others preach the doctrine of eternal remorse, and consider future punishment to consist not so much in any direct infliction by the hand of God, as in the natural working out of confirmed depravity. Others are known to go much farther, and hold that eternal punishment is but a diminution of eternal joy in a state of salvation. The lowest order of happiness in heaven, say they, and the lightest suffering of hell, may, for aught we know, touch each other.
For our own part, we are able to confirm the truth of these remarks. The outcome of conversation with colleagues in the ministry has often been just this: "Your view maybe correct, but it is not prudent to speak of it; do not by any means preach it!" As though the Gospel contained inopportune truths, and as though we were not required to publish the whole plan of salvation!
Besides, considered from the point of view of the most practical pastoral prudence, will it not be found that this doctrine, which we believe to be the most true, is at the same time the most useful? The certainty and clearness of the teaching, the confidence of the preacher, the threatened chastisement no longer revolting, but yet terrible and inevitable, at the same time biblical and rational, these characteristics are likely to produce an impression a hundred times more profound than that made by an inadmissible theory which each one mitigates and manipulates in his own fashion.
1 Life and Correspondence of John Foster, vol. ii., p. 415, sq.
Belief in eternal torments is also shaken even in the Roman Catholic Church. It is now a considerable time since Monseigneur Chalandon, Archbishop of Aix, in a sermon preached at Paris recommended the clergy of the capital to avoid preaching about hell, saying that "this question tends more to the alienation of men's minds from the faith than to their attraction towards it." The preachers of our days, finding the attenuation of purgatory not sufficient, "have to such an extent widened the conditions of salvation, that the dogma of the small number of the elect has given place to that of the small number of the reprobate."— Ch. de. Remusat, La Vie future in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 June, 1865.
It has been said that there is nothing more immoral than a law of which the application is neglected. A dogma in course of decomposition is even more deleterious; it corrupts the atmosphere of the religious life.
XII. Unstable equilibrium of eschatological agnosticism—
Recoiling from an honest return to the primitive teaching, ever fettered by the doctrine of eternal torments, not being able to justify that doctrine but desiring to stem the tide of scepticism of which it is the overflowing fountain, contemporary evangelism sometimes seeks a refuge in eschatological agnosticism as in a citadel. When alleviations are exhausted, and the cause becomes desperate, ignorance on this special point is set up as a principle. In Christian teaching the fate of the wicked becomes a reserved compartment, a sequestrated domain, access to which is interdicted; and this procedure has "a show of wisdom in humility." 1
We have already quoted the saying of Pastor Rochat: "When anyone believes in eternal torments he confines his statements to our Saviour's own words as to judgement to come, and he trembles." 2 One of the latest champions of the traditional dogma has seized upon this saying and set it up as a standard; he said, "Therein lies our whole theology on the subject in question." 3
Shortly afterwards the Synod of a Free Church carried the same principle a step further:
“The pastors of the Belgian Christian Missionary Church think it neither prudent nor useful to refer in their preaching to the doctrine of eternal torments, which they accept in the very terms of the holy Scriptures, while refusing, with wise reserve, to examine it.... We never bring it prominently forward in the pulpit.” 4
1 Col. ii. 23.
2 See page 217.
3 Geo. Godet, Chretien evangelique, 1882, p. 564.
4 Report of the Synod of the Belgian Christian Missionary Church. Extraordinary session of 1 Nov., 1882, pp. 23, 35.
In presence of a doctrine the examination of which is thus interdicted, what are to become of exegesis, dogmatics, reason, the religious consciousness, and that Christian faith which seeks to understand, fides quaerens intellectum? 1 These are all immolated together upon the altar of an idol which, though clothed in ecclesiastical costume, is in fact none other than the heathen principle of a native and inalienable immortality.
Some will doubtless retort by saying that if examination is suspended it is done "out of respect for the word of Jesus Christ." 2 But there are more words than one of Jesus Christ; there are several, which need to be brought together and logically connected in order to the due maintenance of the authority thus invoked, which we, too, invoke. Here are some of these words which are too often lost sight of:
"Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose or forfeit his own self? That which is born of the flesh is flesh. Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction." Jesus compares the unrepentant sinner to the criminal who is put to death, to the barren fig-tree that is rooted up, to the vine branch deprived of its sap, to the tares which are burnt up. What is done with these images and declarations by the traditional dogma? It ignores them; and then it isolates two or three sayings apparently contradictory, and summarily opposes us with them as being irrefragable arguments. We shall have occasion to show, in a subsequent chapter, that, far from establishing the traditional dogma, these texts confirm the natural meaning of those that we have just quoted. 3
1 Anselm of Canterbury.
2 Geo. Godet, Chretien evangelique, 1882, p. 564.
3 See Chap. XI., sect. ii., The Threatenings of Jesus.
The agnosticism wherein some of our opponents seek an entrenchment is a position so untenable that we find its defenders in flagrant contradiction with themselves. Here, for example, is M. Geo. Godet, who reproaches us with "wishing to dissipate the mystery" which is the last resource of the dogma that we are opposing. Before an insoluble problem he thinks we ought to imitate the prudence of Martensen, who left all in uncertainty. Whoever may be right, the believers in attainable immortality are evidently very wrong to defend so warmly that which they believe to be the truth! Yet M. Geo. Godet "rejects Universalism in the name of Scripture and of conscience... and as presenting considerable practical dangers." 1 On the other hand he admits that there will be "an evangelization of the dead, and that no one will be finally judged until he has had salvation clearly set before him." 2 We agree with both these views, and we congratulate ourselves on being to that extent in accord with our opponent; but when he thus determines two eschatological questions on which there is still much controversy, has M. Geo. Godet no fear lest he should dissipate certain mysteries? May not the Universalists on the one hand, and the old Calvinists on the other, fairly charge him with not observing that "sacred reserve" to which he exhorts us? Be that as it may, fortified by his example we will continue to affirm other truths equally evident to our eyes, and also to condemn "in the name of Scripture and of conscience" that theological agnosticism which, halting in the rear of Scripture, refuses to see that "the things that are revealed are for us and for our children." We should think we were holding the truth in captivity if we were not to declare that for us the final lot of the wicked is among the truths that have been revealed. 3
1 Chretien evangelique, 1881, p. 70, sq.
2 Ibid., p. 58, sq., 70.
3 Gieseler goes so far, in his History of Dogmas, as to maintain that of all evangelical doctrines, after Christology, eschatology is the one that the apostles have developed with the greatest care.
If we have rightly understood M. Geo. Godet, he would have us hold to the received dogma while finding a remedy for its "inconveniences" in certain modifications that he suggests. We have seen that all such alleviations leave untouched the main "inconvenience" of an endless hell. We are further advised to "use only biblical terms"; but how are these to be employed without attaching to them a definite meaning? The minister of Queen Candace tried to understand the words that he read; the apostle Paul blamed the use of unintelligible words. The human mind has a thirst for definitions. No doubt, as M. Geo. Godet very well says, the "vital question" is that of salvation; but still it ought to be understood from what we are saved. Salvation and perdition are correlative terms; but, logically, perdition takes the first place. Put that aside, and the very foundation of evangelical preaching is gone. That is the reason why, if we may believe the journal religieux, crowds have been seen "bursting with laughter on hearing the unexpected question: Are you saved? To be saved, what does it mean?" 1 It is impossible to answer that question without dealing with eschatology.
XIII. Shrinking from the necessity of a doctrinal reform, Evangelism is lapsing into Universalism.
The agnosticism that is recommended, being in unstable equilibrium impossible to be maintained, is at the same time very dangerous. Intended as a safeguard for the traditional doctrine, it is really more likely to favour the progress of Universalism. In our seventh chapter we have already shown that the impenitent sinner is quick to take advantage of the silence of certain preachers with regard to future punishment; the signature in blank that is entrusted to him he fills in with optimist hopes. We believe that an almost mechanical repetition of threatenings that are not understood will lead to the same result. Agnosticism is in fact only a form of scepticism. The refusal to examine that which we are supposed to believe is caused by the weakness of belief and the fear of being convicted of error. Seeing that pulpit orators glide over the theme of eternal torments without daring to deal thoroughly with it, that they hesitate to plead that cause before the tribunal of reason and the religious consciousness, and that they base a colossal dogma upon two or three doubtful passages, as on the point of a needle, many a simple listener will come to the conclusion that in reality there are no eternal torments. The few texts that are invoked in proof will be in his eyes no more than hyperbolical formulas, from which it is understood that considerable discount is to be taken off. As, on the other hand, he is constantly told of the eternal mercy, this same simple listener will naturally be led to cherish the hope of a final and general amnesty. Supposed to possess an inalienable immortality, having eternity before him in which to become reconciled to a God of love, he will not fail to put off indefinitely that disagreeable conversion, of the urgency of which he has not been made sensible. Thus it is that eschatological agnosticism blunts the salutary point of Christian preaching.
1 Journal religieux, 14 May, 1881.
Evangelism, which thinks itself immovable, is, then, dragging its anchors and drifting helplessly in the direction of Universalism. As an indication of this may be mentioned the fact that Universalists are looked upon generally with favour, while several Conditionalist pastors have been deposed. 1 The traditional dogma, like a new Proteus, becomes transformed when closely pressed; it then becomes softened. It "is resolved to admit nothing but probabilities in these matters, and to await from the divine mercy, beyond time, unsuspected combinations such as are outside all our earthly categories." 2
1 In the pastoral conferences in Paris in 1885 it was a Universalist, Pastor Ducros, who was appointed by the party that was reputed orthodox to oppose the Conditionalism of M. Byse. This detail shows, by the way, how difficult it now is to find a theologian who will consent to defend the old ecclesiastical dogma. There is nothing to be said in its favour, yet it is thought right to put every possible obstacle in the way of those who would fain substitute a sound stone for the one that is crumbling, and so endangering the whole edifice of the faith. Conditionalists are shut out from the Evangelical Alliance. Contemporary evangelism may truly be said to have done its best to disparage, to discourage, to stifle in its cradle a most legitimate conviction. Short-sighted, if sagacious, it has more than once fired upon its true friends at the cry: "Conditionalism, that is the enemy!" When will the scales fall from its eyes? When will it be perceived that this victim of persecution is the direct heir of the Old Testament and the New? Will it be said of it: "This is the heir; come, let us kill him"? Will it be immolated for the sake of its rivals, the traditional dogma and Universalism, those illegitimate children of Christianity and Alexandrine philosophy?
2 A. Gretillat, Expose de theologie systematique, vol. iv., p. 602. "We hope for the salvation of all."— G. Godet, Chretien evangelique, 1871, p. 70, sq. In a recent thesis, destined to oppose our conviction, M. Joseph Bes concludes as follows: "With the Scripture and the Christians of past ages we shall continue to preach the doctrine of eternal torments, with the secret hope that this preaching itself will serve to render the threat vain; we shall continue to announce tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, but retaining at heart an immortal hope for our fellow-travellers who have fallen by the way."—Etude critique sur une theorie contemporaine de l'immortalite conrtitionelle. Thesis presented to the Protestant theological Faculty of Paris, the 7th July, 1890. Thus a certain dissimulation would form part of the programme of the evangelical ministry. "We are reproached with no longer daring to speak of perdition; this accusation is severe, but it is just." —Ch. Porret, La notion du peche in the Chretien evangelique, 1890, p. 507.
"Unsuspected combinations"! There is one, however, that everyone will suspect. Since you thus set the door of eternity ajar, allowing a transcendent mercy to appear on the threshold, each one of your readers will cherish the dream of a supreme and universal absolution. The meshes of your net are wide enough to let all your fishes escape, great and small, and you may be sure that they will have sufficient intelligence to take advantage of that fact, if indeed there be any advantage therein.
One who believes himself to be orthodox is surely universalist at the bottom of his heart; and "the heart has reasons which reason does not know." But to pass from the traditional dogma to Universalism is to quit a crumbling fortress only to get suffocated in a bog. It is falling from Scylla into Charybdis when, in whatever way, the rebel is allowed to imagine that he will inevitably be saved. Evangelism will have to pay dearly for its compromises with Universalism, which is the negation of its principle; for there is no ultimate danger for anyone if everyone must infallibly be saved, and if there is no danger, there is no salvation. The preaching of the Gospel of salvation becomes superfluous, since, with or without preaching, the final result will be the same, and all will end well for all. By becoming universalist, evangelism will cease to be evangelical. Deprived of the notion of a loss that is irreparable, it will perish like the bee that dies when it loses its sting. 1
Universalism is neither more tenable nor less pernicious than the official dogma; we can hardly doubt that our readers will come to this conclusion if they will but take the pains to study in the next chapter the arguments put forward by the believers in universal salvation.
1 In England and America there are Unitarian churches which are also universalist. One of their periodicals, The American, recently confessed that these churches are incapable of taking part in the aggressive work of Home Missions. See the Eglise libre of 20 Dec., 1889.
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