§ 1. Different Views concerning the Condition of the Impenitent hereafter.
The different views concerning the future state, held by the Christian
Church, may be thus classified; arranging them, exhaustively, under eight
divisions:—
I. The Roman Catholic Church makes three conditions hereafter; viz.,—
1. Everlasting joy.
2. Everlasting suffering.
3. Temporal sorrow in purgatory.
II. The Orthodox Protestant Church makes two conditions hereafter; viz.,—
1. Unmixed and everlasting joy.
2. Unmixed and everlasting suffering.
III. The Old School Universalists make one condition hereafter; viz.,—
1. Eternal joy.
IV. New School Universalists and Restorationists make two conditions
hereafter; viz.,—
1. Eternal joy.
2. Temporal and finite suffering.
V. Unitarians make an indefinite number of conditions hereafter, according
to the various characters and moral states of men.
VI. The Swedenborgians make an indefinite but limited number of heavens
and hells, suited to the varieties of character, but having a supernatural
origin.
VII. The Spiritualists make the other world like this world, with no
essential differences, making it a continuation of the natural life.
VIII. The Annihilationists believe that the finally impenitent will perish
wholly, and come to nothing.
This statement includes all, or nearly all, of the views held in the
Christian Church concerning the condition of departed souls in the other
world. We do not propose to examine them all at the present time; but we
shall examine at some length three of them.
Eternal punishment, annihilation, and universal restoration are the three
principal views taken in the Church of the condition hereafter of those
who die impenitent, and in a state of hostility to God. The wicked may
hereafter be reformed, may be annihilated, or may be kept in a state of
permanent punishment. One of these views is held by the Universalists;
another by Orthodoxy; the third is now adopted by those who are
dissatisfied with the horrors of Orthodoxy, but not yet ready to accept
the Optimism of the Universalist hope. We will consider these, beginning
with the Orthodox doctrine of everlasting punishment. We wish we could say
that this doctrine was not fully and decidedly Orthodox. But it is quite
as much so as the Trinity, the deity of Christ, or the atonement. No one
is allowed to have any doubts or questions concerning it. It seems to be
believed that the whole system of Orthodoxy would be endangered, if this
terror was not held to its bosom with an unfaltering grasp.
§ 2. The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment, as held by the Orthodox at
the Present Time.
What is this doctrine, as it is taught at the present day in all Orthodox
churches, and as it stands in all Orthodox creeds? It is, that the moment
of death decides, and decides forever, the destiny of man; that those who
die impenitent, unbelieving, and unconverted are forever lost, without the
possibility of return; that those thus lost are to suffer forever and
ever, without end, the most grievous torments in soul and body. These
torments consist in banishment from the presence of God, and positive
sufferings, in addition thereto, of an awful kind. Precisely what they
are, it is not, perhaps, necessary for an Orthodox man to believe. There
is no Orthodox definition which is authoritative on that point; and
considerable range, therefore, is allowable. The suffering may be that of
literal fire, or it may not. It may be physical suffering, or the pangs of
conscience, the absence of love, and the sense of emptiness. On these
points there is some liberty of opinion, doubtless. But we presume that it
would not be Orthodox to admit a preponderance, in hell, of good over
evil; or to admit, with Swedenborg, the existence of pleasure there, even
though it be only a diabolical and sinful pleasure. The doctrine of
Orthodoxy certainly is, that evil predominates over good, and pain over
pleasure, in the condition of the damned; so that there existence is a
curse, and not a blessing. Especially is hope shut out: there is no hope
of return, no possibility of escape, no chance of repentance, even at the
end of myriads of years. The man who is condemned to imprisonment for
life, in solitary confinement, is in an unfortunate condition; but he has
hope,—hope of escape, hope of pardon,—sure hope, at all events, of
deliverance, one day, by death, from his condition, and a change to
something better, or at least to something different. But, in the Orthodox
opinion, there is no such alleviation as this to the sufferings of the
future state.
It is usual, we know, for many Orthodox preachers to intensify in
description the sufferings of the future state, and to task their
imagination for multiplied pictures of horror; and we shall presently give
some examples to show how far this is carried. We have no doubt that there
are many Orthodox men who are as much shocked by these gross descriptions
as those are who deny everlasting punishment. But are they not themselves
really responsible for them? Those who admit the principle that God can
torment his children forever, in the other life, for sins committed in
this, have accepted the principle, from which _any_ view of the Deity,
however shocking, may very legitimately proceed.
But let us, for the present, only assume that Orthodoxy asserts a
preponderance of evil over good in the other world, and that this
preponderance is to be continued without end—forever. Let us see what this
means.
It means that the suffering to be endured hereafter by each individual
soul, as a punishment for sins committed in this world, will infinitely
exceed in amount all the suffering borne on the surface of the earth, by
its total population, from the creation of Adam to the destruction of the
world. Each lost soul will suffer not only more, but infinitely more, than
all the accumulated sufferings of the human race throughout all time. We
shudder as we read the account of the sufferings from hydrophobia, or the
burning alive of a slave at the South, or the tortures inflicted by the
Holy Inquisition, or the horrors of a field of battle, or the cruelties
inflicted by savages upon their victims; but all of these, added together,
are finite, and the sufferings of a single soul hereafter are infinite.
That is to say, all the pain and evil of this world, resulting from all
human sin, through all time, is infinitely small and insignificant when
compared with the punishment endured by a single soul hereafter for his
share of that sin. And all this is inflicted by God; and he is a God of
love.
There are some doctrines, the statement of which is their refutation.
This, we think, is one of them.
But it must also be considered, that this doctrine, which throws such
darkness over the future, also sends down a rayless night over the
present. It refutes every theodicy; it nullifies every solution of evil.
The consolation for the sufferings of this world is, that the fashion of
this world passes away, and that there is a better world to come. The
explanation of the evils of this life is, that they are finite, and that
they are, therefore, to be swallowed up and to disappear in an infinite
good. The Christian finds relief, in considering the sufferings of this
world, by regarding them as the means of a greater ultimate joy; by
looking forward to the time when all tears shall be wiped away; and by a
firm faith that love is stronger than selfishness, good stronger than
evil. But the doctrine of eternal punishment gives us, in the condition of
a single lost soul, a greater amount of evil hereafter than all the evil,
which is to be thus explained, here; and the myriads of lost souls, each
of which is to suffer infinitely more than all the sufferings of the
present world, present us with a problem, in the future, so appalling,
that the problem of present evil, vast as it is, becomes insignificant by
its side.
We are tormented with evil here. We seek a solution of the problem: we
find it in the limited, finite, and ancillary nature of evil. But that
solution is wholly taken away when we are told that evil is infinite and
eternal.
It seems to us impossible to hold the common doctrine on this subject,
without having the gospel view of the divine character essentially shaken;
it is not possible to regard Him as a being in whom love is the essential
attribute. If this is so, as we shall presently undertake to prove, it
becomes a matter of vital importance that the doctrine should be disproved
and rejected. It is not enough that it should be quietly laid aside: it is
due to the truth that it should be distinctly and fully confuted. For this
doctrine, if it be false, is deeply dishonorable to God: it takes away his
highest glory; it substitutes fear of him, in the place of love, in the
human heart; it neutralizes the peculiar power of the gospel; it degrades
the quality of Christian piety, and poisons religion in its fountain.
The Orthodox doctrine of future punishment is, then, exceedingly simple.
There is to be a judgment in the last day, universal and final. All
mankind are to be collected before the judgment seat of Christ, and there
to be divided into two classes,—one on the right hand, and the other on
the left. These are to go upward, to heaven, to be eternally happy; those
downward, to hell, to be eternally miserable. There are no degrees of
suffering; for the torments of hell are infinite in degree, as well as
everlasting in duration. Usually the suffering is made intensively as well
as extensively infinite. Sometimes degrees are allowed in suffering. No
allowance is made for ignorance, or want of opportunity; for inherited
evil, or evil resulting from force of circumstances. The purest and best
of men, who does not believe the precise Orthodox theory concerning the
Trinity, sits in hell side by side with Zingis Khan, who murdered in cold
blood hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, marking his
bloody route by pyramids of skulls. The unbaptized child, who goes to hell
because of the original sin derived from Adam, is exposed to God’s wrath
no less than Pope Alexander VI, who outraged every law of God and man, and
who, says Machiavelli, “was followed to the tomb by the holy feet of his
three dear companions—Luxury, Simony, and Cruelty.”(46)
This is the doctrine which every denomination and sect in Christendom,
except the Unitarians and Universalists, maintain as essential to
Orthodoxy. It is but a year or two since twenty-one bishops of the
Protestant Episcopal Church issued a declaration of their belief that this
doctrine is maintained, without reserve or qualification, by the Church of
England. Only recently an ecclesiastical council of Congregationalists
refused the fellowship of the churches to a gentleman elected as its
pastor by the Third Congregational Church in Portland, Maine. In the
report of the result, the council says that it believes the candidate to
be generally sound in his belief, and exemplary in his Christian spirit,
and heartily extends to him its Christian sympathy. But it declines to
install him as pastor, because it “understands him as saying, that he does
not know but there may be another state of probation and offer of
salvation, after death, for all to whom Christ is not personally preached;
and that, whilst believing in a future retribution, he says that the
everlasting punishment of the wicked may be an extinction of the wicked by
annihilation.” So that a mere doubt on this subject is considered a
sufficient reason, by the most advanced and liberal of the whole Orthodox
body at the present day, for refusing church fellowship.
The American Tract Society floods the land with loose leaves, all
appealing to the fear of an eternal hell. We have one before us now,
called “Are you insured?” which represents Christianity as a contrivance
for escaping from everlasting torment, as a spiritual insurance office,
where one must “take out a policy,” and so escape everlasting fire.(47)
There is no theological journal, bearing the Orthodox name, which is more
rational and liberal than the “New York Independent.” But in its issue of
January 5, 1860, it speaks of future endless misery thus, saying that
there is a “vast amount and weight of evidence to the point—evidence
enough to prove it, if provable; all nature, all law, all revelation
uttering the doctrine, so that it is an amazing stretch and energy of
unbelief not to believe it, implying a moral state and position that will
not believe it on any testimony, however clearly and unqualifiedly, even
to the exhaustion of the capabilities of language, God himself may declare
and affirm it.”
There is evidently an energetic attempt made in some quarters to revive
the decaying belief in the doctrine of everlasting punishment in the
future state, as a penalty for the sins of this. Dr. Thompson, of New
York, has published a work to this end, called “Love and Penalty.” Dr. J.
P. Thompson, the author of this book, is considered the leader of New
Haven theology—the Elisha on whose shoulders the mantle of Dr. Taylor, of
New Haven, has fallen. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, has labored in the
same field, exerting himself to prove this doctrine in various tracts and
other works. Professor Hovey, of the Baptist Seminary of Newton, has
published a little book on the same subject.
It is probably thought dangerous by these gentlemen to relax at all the
terrors of futurity. And, no doubt, if all those who have been restrained
from evil by fear of eternal punishment were to lose that belief suddenly,
the consequences, at first, would be sometimes bad. If you have exerted
your whole force in producing fear of hell, instead of fear of sin, then,
the terror of hell being taken away, men might rush at first into license.
But the dread of a future hell is by no means so efficacious a motive as
is often thought. We become hardened to everything, and neither the
clergyman nor his parish eat any less heartily of their Sunday dinner, nor
sleep any less soundly on Sunday night, in consequence of the terrible
descriptions of eternal torments contained in the morning’s sermon.(48)
§ 3. Apparent Contradictions, both in Scripture and Reason, in Regard to
this Doctrine.
Beside the practical motive for maintaining this doctrine, which we have
intimated, there are also scriptural and philosophical reasons. Scripture
and reason both do, in fact, seem to teach opposite doctrines on this
subject. There are passages in the New Testament which appear to teach
never-ending suffering, and others which appear to teach a final,
universal restoration. It is written, “These shall go away into eternal
punishment;” but it is also written, that Christ “shall reign till all
things are subdued unto him;” when “the Son also himself shall be subject
to Him who did put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” As
the same word is used to express the way in which all enemies are to be
subject to Christ, and the way in which Christ himself is to be subject to
God, it follows that the enemies, when subjected, shall be friends. It is
said that the wicked shall be punished “with everlasting destruction from
the presence of God;” but it is also said that “in the dispensation of the
fulness of times, God will gather in one all things in Christ, both which
are in heaven and on earth;” and “that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, in heaven, in earth, and under the earth; and that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.” It is said of the wicked, that “their worm never dies, and their
fire is not quenched;” but it is also said that “it pleased the Father,
having made peace through the blood of the cross, by Christ to reconcile
all things unto himself, whether they be things in earth or things in
heaven.” So that Scripture, at first sight, seems to teach both eternal
punishment and universal restoration.
There is a similar contradiction on this subject, if considered in the
light of pure reason. When looked at from the divine attributes, the
unavoidable conclusion seems to be, that all men must be finally saved.
For God is infinitely benevolent, and therefore must wish to save all; is
infinitely wise, and therefore must know how to save all; is infinitely
powerful, and therefore must be able to overcome all difficulties in the
way of saving all: hence all must be saved. But, on the other hand, when
we consider the subject from the position of man’s nature, an opposite
conclusion seems to follow. For man, being free, is able to choose either
evil or good at any moment; and, as long as he continues to be essentially
man, he must retain this freedom; and therefore, at any period of his
future existence, however remote, he may prefer evil to good—that is, may
prefer hell to heaven. But God will not compel him to be good against his
will (for unwilling goodness is not goodness); and therefore it follows
that there is no point of time in the infinite future of which we can
certainly say that then all men will be saved.
Of course these seeming contradictions of Scripture and antinomies of
reason are not real contradictions. God does not contradict himself either
in revelation or in reason. Whether we can reconcile such antagonisms
_now_, or not, we know that they will be reconciled. Meantime, it is our
duty to disbelieve whatever is dishonorable to God, or opposed to the
character ascribed to him by Jesus Christ. Christ has taught us to regard
God as our Father. It is our duty to refuse credence to any doctrine
concerning him which is plainly opposed to this character. If I have
formed my opinion of my friend’s character from a large experience, I
ought to refuse to believe, even on good evidence, anything opposed to it.
What is faith in man, or in God, good for, that is unable to resist evil
reports concerning them? If I am told that my friend has become a thief or
a swindler, and he who tells me says, “I know that it is so—here is the
evidence,” I reply, “I do not care for your evidence. I know that it is
impossible.” So, if all the churches in the world, Catholic and
Protestant, tell me that Jesus teaches everlasting punishment inflicted by
God for the sins of this life, and produce chapter and verse in support of
their statement, I reply, “If I have learned anything about God from the
teachings of Jesus, it is that your assertion is impossible. About the
meaning of these passages you may be mistaken, for the letter killeth; but
I cannot be mistaken in regard to the fatherly character of the Almighty.”
These contradictions we shall consider in a paper printed in the Appendix
(an examination of Dr. Neheimiah Adams’s tract on the “Reasonableness of
Everlasting Punishment”). At present we will only say that we should hold
it less dishonorable to God to deny his existence than to believe this
doctrine concerning him. We think that in the last day it will appear that
the atheist has done less to dishonor the name of God than those who
persistently teach this view. For what says Lord Bacon? (Essays, XVII. Of
Superstition.) “It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such
an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is
contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.
Plutarch saith well to that purpose. ‘Surely,’ saith he, ‘I had rather a
great deal men should say there were no such man at all as Plutarch, than
that they should say there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as
soon as they were born,’ as the poets speak of Saturn. And as the
contumely is greater towards God, so is the danger greater towards men.”
The doctrine of everlasting punishment, being essentially a heathen and
not a Christian doctrine, cannot do any Christian good to any one. It is
the want of faith in the Church which makes it afraid of giving it up. The
Christian Church has not faith enough to believe in the power of truth and
love. It still thinks that men must be frightened into goodness, or driven
into it. Fear is a becoming and useful motive no less than hope; but fear
of what? Not fear of God; but fear of sin, fear of ourselves, fear of
temptation. To be afraid of God never did any one any good. These
doctrines drive men away from God; or, if they drive them _to_ God, drive
them as slaves, as sycophants, as servants, not as sons. We are saved by
becoming _the sons of God_; but you cannot drive a man into sonship by
terror. You may make him profess religion, and go through ceremonies, and
have an outward form of service; but you cannot make him love God by means
of fear.
But good men teach these things, no doubt. Men far better than most of us
believe them and teach them. It always has been so. The best men have
always been the chief supporters of bad doctrines. A good man, humble and
modest, is apt to shrink from doubting or opposing what the Church has
taught. He accepts it, and teaches it too. When God wants a reformer, he
does not take one of these good, modest, humble men. He does not take a
saint. He takes a man who has ever so much will, a little obstinacy, and a
great love of fighting; and he makes the wrath of such a man to serve him.
Neither St. Teresa nor Fénélon could have reformed the Catholic Church. It
took rough old Martin Luther and hard-hearted John Calvin to do it. The
first Universalists, the Abolitionists, all reformers, are necessarily men
of that sort. They are rude debaters, not standing on ceremony or
politeness. They are hard-headed logicians, going straight to their point,
careless of elegances and proprieties. They are God’s pioneers, rough
backwoodsmen, hewing their way with the axe through the wilderness. After
them shall come the peaceful farmer, with plough and spade, to turn the
land into wheat fields, orchards, and gardens.
§ 4. Everlasting Punishment limits the Sovereignty of God.
It is certain that the doctrine of eternal punishment, in the common form,
can only be maintained by giving up some of the infinite attributes of the
Almighty. If punishment is to exist without end; if hell is always to
co-exist with heaven; if certain beings are to be continued forever in
existence merely as sinful sufferers,—then, it is clear, God is not
omnipotent. He shares his throne forever with Satan. Satan and God divide
between them the universe. God reigns in heaven, Satan in hell. God
desires that all shall be saved; but this desire is absolutely and forever
defeated by a fate greater than Deity. Law divorced from love—that is,
nature in its old Pagan aspect—is higher than God. God is not the Almighty
to any one who really believes eternal punishment. God is not the
Sovereign of the universe, but only of a part of it. The doctrine of
eternal punishment, in its common form, does, therefore, virtually
dethrone God.(49)
It is, in fact, impossible to conceive of an eternal hell co-existing with
an eternal heaven, without also seeing that it limits eternally the divine
Omnipotence; for the omnipotence of God is in carrying out his will to
have all men saved by becoming holy. Unless God’s laws are obeyed, God is
not obeyed; and he is not sovereign if not obeyed. Hell is a condition of
things hostile to God’s will: it is a permanent and successful rebellion
of a part of the universe. It is no answer to say, that it is shut up, and
restrained, and made to suffer; for it is _not_ conquered. God has
conquered sin only when he has reduced it to obedience. Hell is no more
subject to God than the Confederate States, during the rebellion, were
subject to the United States government. They were shut up by a blockade;
they were restrained by great armies and navies; they were made to suffer;
but they were _not_ reduced to submission and obedience.
Nor is it any answer to say, that the existence of sin and suffering
hereafter no more limits God’s omnipotence than their existence here and
now limits his omnipotence. For the question is of ETERNAL suffering.
Temporal suffering hereafter, we grant, is no objection to the divine
Omnipotence. Limited and finite evil, in this world or the other, is no
philosophical difficulty; and for this reason—that finite evil, when
compared with infinite good, becomes logically and mathematically _no_
evil. The finite disappears in relation to the infinite. All the
sufferings and sins of earth, through all ages, are strictly nothing when
viewed in the light of the eternal joy and holiness which are to result
from them. This is a postulate of pure reason. Make evil finite, and good
infinite,—make evil temporal, and good eternal,—and evil ceases to be
anything. But make evil eternal, as is done by this doctrine, and then we
have Manicheism—an infinite dualism—on the throne of the universe.
§ 5. Everlasting Punishment contradicts the Fatherly Love of God.
This doctrine is a relapse on Paganism, and derived from it. It has
nothing to do with Christianity, except to corrupt it. No man was ever
made better by believing it: multitudes have been made worse. It
attributes to our heavenly Father conduct that, if done by the worst of
men, would add a shade of increased wickedness to their character. It
assumes that God has made intelligent creatures with the intention of
tormenting some of them forever. It assumes that those who are thus
created, exposed to this awful risk, are to be thus tormented, unless they
happen to pass through what is called an Orthodox conversion in this short
earthly life. God keeps them alive forever in order to torture them
forever.
The barbarity of this opinion exceeds all power of language to express. We
are accustomed to mourn over the anguish and misery that are in this
world. The problem of earthly evil has been a burden and anxiety to good
men in all times, a great question for thinkers in all ages. The only
satisfactory solution is, that it is temporary and educational; that it is
to pass away, and, in passing, to create a higher joy and goodness than
could otherwise have come. But the doctrine of everlasting punishment not
only annuls this explanation, and makes it impossible to explain earthly
evil, but adds to it a tenfold greater mystery. The fatherly character of
God disappears in Pagan darkness, in view of this horrid doctrine; for the
everlasting suffering of one human being contains in itself more evil than
the accumulated sufferings of all mankind from the creation of the world
to the end of it. Add together all the sicknesses, bereavements,
disappointments, of all mankind; all the wars, famines, pestilences, that
have tormented humanity; add to these all the mental and moral pangs
produced by selfishness and sin in all ages, and all that are to be to the
end of time,—and these all combined are logically and mathematically
_nothing_, compared with the sufferings of one human being destined to be
everlastingly punished. For all temporal sufferings added together are
finite; but this is infinite.
Now, the being who could inflict such torture as this is _not_ the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There may be some deity of cruelty, some
incarnation of wrath and despotism, in the Hindoo Pantheon, capable of
such terrific wickedness. It is no answer to say that God inflicts
suffering now in this world, and therefore he may inflict everlasting
suffering in the other; for those are all finite; that is infinite.
_Finite_ suffering may result in greater good, may be an education to
good; but _everlasting_ suffering cannot. The finite and infinite cannot
be compared together. There is no analogy between them.
The God of the New Testament is our Father. If he inflicts suffering, it
is for our good; “not for his pleasure, but for our profit, that we may be
partakers of his holiness.” All earthly suffering finds this solution, and
accords with the fatherly character of God in this point of view. Much, no
doubt, cannot be now fully understood. We do not _see how_ it tends to
good; but all suffering _that ends_ MAY end in good. Suffering that does
not end CANNOT end in good.
If human beings are everlastingly punished, it must either be that they go
on sinning forever, and cannot repent, lose all power of repentance, and
so cease to be moral agents, or else that they retain the power of
repenting, and therefore _may_ repent. In the first case, God continues to
punish forever those who have ceased to sin, because their freedom and
moral power have ceased; or else he punishes forever those who have
repented, and _so_ ceased sinning. In either case, God must punish
everlastingly those who have ceased to be sinners; which is incredible.
If God is a Father, he is at least _as good_ as the best earthly father.
Now, what father or mother would ever consent to place a child in a
situation where there was even a chance of its running such an awful risk?
God has _created_ us with these liabilities to sin; he has (according to
Orthodoxy) chosen and determined that we shall be born wholly prone to
evil, and sure to fall into eternal and unending ruin, unless he saves us
by a special act of grace. “What man among you, being a father,” would do
so? Custom dulls our sense to these horrors. Let us therefore imagine a
case far less terrible. Suppose that a number of parents should establish
a school, to which to send their children. Suppose they should arrange a
code of laws for the school of such a stringent character that all the
children are sure to break it. Under the school are vaults containing
instruments of torture. For each offence against the laws of the school
(offences which the children cannot fail to commit) they are to be
punished by imprisonment for life in these cells, with daily torture, from
racks, thumb-screws, and the like. A few of them are to be selected from
the rest, not for any merit of their own, but by an arbitrary decree of
the parents, and are to be rewarded (not for their superior good conduct,
but according to the caprice of the parents) with every luxury and
privilege. Among these privileges is included that of taking a daily walk
through the cells, and witnessing the horrible sufferings of their
brothers and companions, and hearing their shrieks of anguish, and
praising the JUSTICE of their parents in thus punishing some and rewarding
the rest.
But this, you may say, is not a parallel case. No, we grant it is not, for
what are these torments to that of a never-ending futurity? They are all
as nothing. Therefore every such comparison must utterly fail of doing
justice to the diabolic cruelty ascribed to the Almighty by this Orthodox
doctrine.
“But what right,” says the Orthodox defender of this doctrine, “have we to
reason in this way concerning the divine proceedings, by the analogy of
earthly parents? What right have we to compare God’s doings with those of
a human father?” _No_ right, perhaps, as philosophers; but as Christians
we have not only the right to do it, but it is our duty to do so. Jesus
has himself taught us to use this analogy, in order to acquire confidence
in God’s ways, and to assure ourselves that God cannot fail of acting as
we should expect a good and wise earthly parent to act. “What man is there
of _you_, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he
ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If _ye_ then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father,
which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?” (Matt.
7:9-11.) Jesus authorizes and commands us to reason from the parental
nature in man to that in God. Instead of simply assuring us of it, on the
ground of his own authority to teach us; instead of saying, “Believe this,
because I say it,” he says, “Believe it, because it accords with your own
convictions and with human nature.”
§ 6. Attempts to modify and soften the Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment.
The reasons for the late efforts to support this terrific doctrine are
probably to be found in a widespread and increasing disbelief concerning
it, pervading the churches nominally Orthodox. This has come from the
growing intelligence and progressive movements of thought in the Christian
Church. The evidences of this belief are numerous and increasing. Those
who reject the Orthodox view are a numerous body, but divided into several
parties. There are the old-fashioned Universalists, a valiant race,—men of
war from their youth,—who, under the lead of such men as Hosea Ballou and
Thomas Whittemore, have spent their lives in fighting the doctrine of
everlasting punishment. Very naturally, perhaps, they went to the opposite
extreme of opinion, and denied all future suffering. But this view has, we
think, ceased to be the prevailing one among the Universalists. The
doctrine of ultimate restoration has very generally taken its place. This
doctrine also prevails widely in other denominations; not only among the
liberal bodies, like the Unitarians, but also among Methodists,
Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. It has widely spread, as is well
known, in Germany. It was held by Schleiermacher, the father of modern
German theology. It tinges the writings of such Orthodox men as Tholuck,
Hahn, and Olshausen. Others profess to believe in everlasting punishment,
but make it a merely negative consequence of lost time and opportunity:
one will be always worse off hereafter in consequence of the neglect of
duty. Others follow Swedenborg, and make the sufferings of hell rather
agreeable than otherwise to those who bear them.
Various ineffectual attempts have indeed been made, in all ages of the
Church, to soften the austerity of this doctrine. From the days of Origen,
these merciful doctors(50) have always been trying to soften this austere
dogma, but ineffectually; for the dread of an eternal hell has been one of
the chief motives which the Church has used in converting men from sin to
holiness. Any suggestion of the possibility of future restoration would,
it is feared, cut the sinews of effective preaching. For the baptized who
are not fit for heaven the Roman Catholic Church has established, indeed,
a temporary hell, with torments of an inferior sort; for bad Catholics
there is purgatory, with the hope of ultimate escape from it; but for the
unbaptized heathen, for heretics, and for excommunicated persons, there is
nothing but eternal punishment.
Many, in all ages, have made the everlasting continuance of punishment not
absolute, but _hypothetical_—depending on the question, “Will the sinner
continue forever to sin?”(51) Others have made future punishment
_relatively_ everlasting; that is, because even the repentant sinner will
be always just so far behind the position he would have had if he had not
sinned. This, however, is taking a material view of progress, as though it
was limited, like the going of a horse, to so many miles a day.
Many of the early fathers, and some of the mediæval doctors, took milder
views of the future sufferings of the impenitent or unconverted.
Proceeding from the idea of freedom, as indestructible in the human soul,
Origen declared that, no matter how low any moral being has fallen, a way
to return is always open to him. Even the devil may, in time, regain the
highest position in the angelic hierarchy.(52) No doubt Origen admitted
the need of external conditions for this restoration; but he said, God is
able to heal the damage done to any part of his works.(53) He will restore
all things to their origin, uniting the end and the beginning, and so
becoming indeed the Alpha and Omega. This may require long processes,
through many ages.(54) Since Jesus speaks of a sin which cannot be
forgiven in this age (ἀιὼν) nor the next, it follows, says Origen, that
there is a series of ages, or worlds, through which we pass, and many of
these ages of ages (sæcula sæculorum) must pass away before all bad men
and angels shall have returned to their original state. Quoting the
passage, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed,” he says that he shall
not be destroyed as to his substance, but as to his enmity. His being was
made by God, and cannot perish; his hostile will proceeded from himself,
and shall be destroyed.
Mr. Brownson (or rather a writer in Brownson’s “Quarterly Review,” July,
1863) takes another way of softening the terrors of hell. With him too,
hell is an everlasting state; but he maintains that the Roman Church has
not made it an article of faith to believe that there is any positive
suffering therein. If you believe in an eternal hell, that is enough; you
are not precluded from softening its horrors to any extent you can. Thus
he maintains that the great Augustine allows hell to be only a negative
state—only the absence of the exquisite beatitude of heaven. This writer
(who is said by the editor to be a learned Catholic priest) asserts that
there is a growing repugnance to the popular doctrine upon eternal
punishment among the most intelligent of the Catholic laity, and this
reluctance is the chief obstacle to the reception of the faith by a large
class of non-Catholics. He attempts to meet this state of mind by showing
that neither the doctrine of St. Augustine nor that of the Catholic Church
supports this popular view, but allows a much milder one. He proceeds to
make these points:—
1. St. Augustine nowhere teaches that human nature is intrinsically evil,
but he invariably teaches that it is substantially good. (“Omnis natura in
quantum natura est bona est.” “Omnis substantia aut Deus est aut ex Deo.”
De Lib. Arbit.) Therefore it follows that the very notion of _total_
depravity is impossible. St. Augustine distinctly says that “the very
unclean spirit himself is good, inasmuch as he is a spirit, but evil
inasmuch as he is unclean.” Hence, not even the nature of the devil
himself is evil. So St. Thomas (“Diabolus, in quantum habet esse, est
bonus”), “the devil, so far as he _is_, is good.”
2. St. Augustine teaches in explicit terms that existence is a good even
to angels and men who are eternally bound by the consequences of evil.
3. Eternal death, according to St. Augustine, is a subsidence into a lower
form of life, a privation of the highest vital influx from God in order to
everlasting life, or supreme beatitude, but not of all vital influx in
order to an endless existence, which is a partial and incomplete
participation in good. These sinful souls, therefore, fulfil in a measure
the end of their creation, and have a place and a function in harmony with
the general order of the cosmos. There is no trace, in this view of
Augustine, that God hates a portion of his creatures with an absolute,
infinite, and eternal hatred, and is hated by them in return. The original
act of creative love is an enduring and eternal act, in which even Satan
is included. “Their nature still remains essentially good, and far
superior in excellence and beauty to material light, which is the highest
corporeal substance.”
4. Hell, therefore (Infernus), is simply a lower state of inchoate and
imperfect being, “of saints nipped in the bud.” Infant damnation is only a
gentle sadness—“levis tristitia.” All positive suffering in hell is
probably temporal, and therefore must at last cease. The lost souls will
enjoy there quite as much as they can do here, _minus_ the temporal
sufferings of this life. They continue _natural_ beings, and therefore can
enjoy all natural joy; and that which they lose, being the “beatific
vision,” of which they have no conception, is a loss of which they are
wholly unconscious.
Swedenborg maintains, in the same way, the everlasting character of the
punishment of those who have passed the final judgment, but admits many
palliations to its sufferings. He teaches that delight is the universal
substance of heaven, and also of hell, and that evil spirits are in the
delight of evil, as good spirits in that of good. An evil spirit would be
as unhappy in heaven as a good one would be in hell.
§ 7. The meaning of Eternal Punishment in Scripture.
But what, then, is the vital truth in the doctrine of eternal punishment?
Christ says, “These shall go away into eternal punishment.”(55) What is
this “eternal punishment”? It is commonly supposed to mean the same thing
as punishment which shall never end, or punishment continued through all
time. But this is to misunderstand both the philosophical and scriptural
meaning of the word “eternal.” Eternal punishments are the opposite of
temporal punishments: they have nothing to do with time at all; they are
punishments outside of time. To attempt to realize eternity by adding up
any number of myriads of years of time, is necessarily a failure; for time
and eternity are different things. You might as well attempt to produce
thought or love, by adding up millions of miles of distance, as, by adding
up millions of years of time, to get any idea of eternity. Eternal life,
in the language of Scripture, has nothing to do with the future or the
past. It is a present life in the soul, awakened within by the knowledge
of God and Christ. “This _is_ life eternal, to know thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” “Eternal life and eternal
death both come from the knowledge of God and of Christ.” To one it is a
savor of life, to another of death. Eternal punishment and eternal life
are the punishments and the rewards of eternity, distinguished from those
of time, and having their root in the knowledge of God which comes through
Christ. Eternal life and eternal punishment both commence here, from the
judgments which takes place now: but the last judgment, or the judgment of
the last day, is that which will take place hereafter, when the soul shall
have a full knowledge of itself and of God; see its whole life as it
really is; have all self-deceptions taken away, all disguises removed, and
know itself as it is known. God’s love, when revealed, attracts and
repels. Like all real force, it is a polar force. The one pole is its
attractive power over those who are in a truth-loving state; the other
pole is its repelling power to those who are in a truth-hating state. Love
attracts the truthful, and repels the wilful. Eternal punishment, then, is
the repugnance to God of the soul which is inwardly selfish in its
will,—loving itself more than truth and right. It is the sense of
indignation and wrath, alienation and poverty, which rests on it while in
this condition. It is the outer darkness; it is the far country; it is the
famine, which comes as a holy and blessed evil, sent to save, by bringing
to repentance, the prodigal child, who has not yet “come to himself.”
From this knowledge of God and of itself, therefore,—from this judgment of
the last day,—will flow eternal life to the one class, and eternal
punishment or suffering to the other. Those who have been conscientious
and generous; who have endeavored faithfully to live for truth and right;
who have made sacrifices, and not boasted of them; who have clothed the
naked and fed the hungry, making the world better and happier by their
presence,—will hear the Saviour say, “Come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for
I was hungry, and ye gave me meat.” Perhaps they have never even heard the
name of Christ; perhaps they were the Buddhists of Burmah, of whom Mr.
Malcom speaks, who brought food to him, though a stranger to them. “I was
scarcely seated,” says he, “when a woman brought a nice mat for me to lie
on; another, cool water; and a man went and picked me a half dozen fine
oranges. None sought or expected the least reward, but disappeared, and
left me to my repose.” Or perhaps they will be the poor black women in
Africa, who took such kind care of Mungo Park, singing, “Let us pity the
white man: he has no mother to bring him milk, no wife to grind him corn.”
The reward of their fidelity will be the gift of a greater power of
goodness, coming from a knowledge of God and Christ. They were helping
Christ, though they did not know him. They will say, “Lord, when saw we
thee an hungered?” These Gentiles, without the law, who do by nature the
things contained in the law, will come to know Christ, and receive a
spiritual life—life flowing from that knowledge. On the other hand, those
who have not endeavored to do what they knew to be right will receive from
the same knowledge of God and Christ a spiritual or eternal punishment.
Perhaps they have received some of it already in this world; but a deeper
knowledge of the truth will bring a keener self-reproach. The worm that
never dies is this gnawing(56) tooth of conscience. The fire which is not
quenched is the heart still selfish, turned to evil, joined with a
conscience which sees the good. For man, as long as he is man, cannot get
away from himself. He may sophisticate himself with falsehoods, put his
conscience to sleep, and imagine that he has escaped all the penalties of
evil; but he cannot escape from himself. The longer and deeper the sleep
of conscience, the more terrible its final awakening.
Eternal punishment, therefore, is the punishment which comes to man from
his spiritual nature; from that side of man which connects him with
eternity, in contradistinction from temporal punishment, which is that
which comes from his temporal nature and the temporal world. Through the
body he receives temporal pleasure or pain from the world of time and
space; through the spirit he receives spiritual joy or sorrow from the
world of eternity and infinity.
Thus intimately are judgment and retribution connected. There is nothing
arbitrary about rewards or punishments. They follow naturally and
necessarily from the revelation of divine and eternal truth. Sooner or
later, the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, good and
evil, make themselves seen and known. The distinctions between right and
wrong _are_ eternal.
The idea of duration is not connected with eternal punishment or eternal
life; for the idea of duration belongs to time, and not to eternity. Human
law sentences men, for crime, to be punished by imprisonment for six
months, three years, ten years, or for life; but in God’s world there is
not, and cannot be, any relation between a man’s guilt and the precise
time he is to suffer. He must suffer while he is guilty, be the time
longer or shorter. When he ceases to be guilty, he must cease to suffer.
He therefore fixes the _duration_ of his suffering himself: that makes no
part of the divine sentence. If he judges himself unworthy of eternal life
during five, ten, one hundred, or ten thousand million years, that is for
himself to say. God will never save him against his will; and God can
wait. The sphere of time belongs to man’s freedom; that of eternity, to
the freedom of God.
And this reconciles the philosophic difficulty. Man, being _free_, can
postpone his submission and obedience _indefinitely_; but, being finite,
cannot postpone it _infinitely_. At any point of time, he may still
resolve to resist the influx of eternal life, and continue in the sphere
of death: but eternity surrounds time, and infolds it; and in eternity
God’s purposes will be realized, and every knee bow, of things in heaven,
and in earth, and under the earth. Universal harmony must prevail at last.
“Eternal” and “everlasting” are two wholly different ideas. We fully
believe in eternal punishment, but not in everlasting punishment. Eternal
life is spiritual life: eternal suffering is spiritual suffering.
The whole of antiquity recognizes this distinction; and the Bible is
saturated with it. When Jesus says, “He who believes in me has _eternal
life_ abiding in him,” there is nothing about duration intended in that.
When he says, “This is _life eternal_, to know thee the only true God,”
there is nothing about duration implied. It is the quality of the life
which is conveyed—spiritual life, life flowing from the sight of God and
Christ.
We believe in eternal punishment; but, because it is eternal, therefore it
is not everlasting. Eternal suffering, flowing from the sight of the
eternal truth and love of God, is real suffering, because it involves the
sight of sin, the consciousness of failure, the deep conviction of what we
ought to do and have not done; but all this leads to repentance and
salvation. When the Lord turned and looked on Peter, Peter went into
eternal suffering. He saw his own guilt and the infinite goodness of his
Master at the same time. The one produced penitence; the other, hope. But,
when Judas hanged himself, he did _not_ go into eternal punishment, but
into temporal. He saw his own baseness and his own folly; but he did not
see God’s love. If he had seen God’s love and Christ’s pardoning mercy,
together with his sin, he would not have hanged himself; but, like Peter,
he would have repented, and gone forth to preach the gospel.
When we see God’s truth and love, we go into eternal life or into eternal
suffering, according to the direction of our lives and hearts. If we are
following Christ, and trying to do right,—if we are not selfish, but
generous,—then the sight of God’s love and truth in Christ leads us
directly into spiritual joy; but if we are selfish, and seeking only our
own good, if we are indifferent to the rights of our fellow-men, then we
go into eternal or spiritual suffering.
The force of eternal punishment, therefore, is not in the statement that
it is never to end; nor in any description, however vivid, of outward
physical torments. Such descriptions produce excitement, agitation,
terror. But this is not _conviction_. The doctrine, not being in harmony
with the attributes of God or the nature of man, can never be sincerely or
profoundly believed. It is inwardly opposed by every Christian conviction
in the human soul; for it is not Christian, but Pagan. It is a relapse
into Paganism, an importation of Pagan terrors into Christianity. It
degrades every soul that teaches it, or that accepts it, in the same way
that idolatry degrades it. It puts a veil between the soul and the true
God.
But the true Christian doctrine of eternal punishment is, that the soul
which sins shall eternally suffer; that there is an eternal distinction
between truth and falsehood, good and evil; that spiritual distinctions
are positive and real; and that evil is not a mere negative thing,
implying a little less of good, but positive, being the state of a soul
which is repelled, not attracted, by the divine goodness; which keeps away
from God, as the shadow keeps on the side of the globe which is away from
the sun.
Again: eternal suffering is the suffering of eternity, as distinguished
from temporal suffering, which has its root in time. This is something
which comes from within, while temporal suffering comes from without. Till
man is reconciled to God by obedience and love, he has the sentence of
death in himself. This suffering is not arbitrary, but fixed in the nature
of things. As a sinner, man must be eternally separated inwardly from God,
and therefore from bliss. His hell is within him, not without. And it is
also here, as well as hereafter, since eternity is here, no less than
time.
In this view of eternal punishment, there is an important truth—truth
essential to the just spiritual growth of man. It is needed to resist the
tendency to make light of sin. It is needed to oppose the view which makes
evil, as well as good, a natural growth, and teaches that all men are on
their way upward, and will ultimately fall into heaven by some specific
levity. It is needed to remind us that we must choose whom we will serve,
and that, consciously or unconsciously, we are at all moments tending
either upward or downward—either towards God or away from him.
This is the great truth which is often lost sight of by Liberal
Christianity, and by that easy optimism which declares that “whatever is,
is right;” but darkly taught, because dimly seen, by Orthodoxy. Pagan in
its form, there is often an essentially Christian idea communicated by the
Orthodox pulpit. The Pagan form may be neglected and disbelieved: the
Christian impression may remain. It tightens the nerves of the soul, as a
cold bath invigorates the body made languid by too much warmth and ease.
Yet, as long as the Pagan form remains, the interior truth is shorn of its
full power. Let us pray that the truth, divested of its dark errors, may
at last be recognized by the Christian Church. For very often the words of
a great writer and thinker (who also was an earnest opponent of the
Orthodox form of this doctrine) recur to us in these studies: “Few see the
things themselves, but only the forms of things, in the mirror of
reflection, as images. But we shall at last see the things themselves face
to face, as it is said, and without a veil, if it please God, in part
before the close of this present life, more fully in the life to
come.”(57)
§ 8. How Judgment by Christ is connected with Punishment.
To what we have said of judgment by Christ, in the previous chapter, we
add here some further thoughts in regard to its connection with
punishment. Orthodoxy makes this connection arbitrary and outward. For
such sins, it says, God has appointed such a punishment; and the object of
judgment is to glorify God, by showing how exact he is in finding out
every sinner, and fulfilling his every threat against evil. But, according
to a better view, which alone can commend itself to minds of any large
range—future judgment is simply the act by which God shows to a man the
truth concerning himself, so that he can see it.
A deaf and dumb child being asked, “What is judgment?” replied, “Judgment
is to see ourselves as we are, and to see God as he is.” This is the
essential thing in judgment; and in this sense Christ is declared “to be
the judge of the quick and the dead;” that is, he judges us in this world,
and will judge us in the other world. His judgments are not external,
sentencing us to external punishments; but they are internal, causing us
to judge ourselves. He shows us what we are. Whenever he comes, he comes
to judgment, separating the good from the evil, testing the state of the
heart, causing men to go to the right or the left. His coming always makes
an issue which cannot be avoided; calls upon us to decide which course we
shall take, what thing we shall do, what master we will serve. When Christ
first came, he came for judgment, that the thoughts of many hearts might
be revealed,—revealed to themselves and to others. Wherever he came, men
immediately were divided into two classes,—becoming his disciples, or
becoming his opponents. No longer was any compromise possible between
truth and error, between right and wrong. They were obliged to choose
which to serve; and they chose according to the inward tendency of their
hearts. They whose hearts were right, chose the right: they whose hearts
were wrong, chose the wrong.
Christ is thus the Judge of the living as well as the dead. Often in our
lives he comes to us thus to be our Judge. Every time he calls upon us to
do anything for him, he judges the state of our heart. Every time he
offers an opportunity to the world of improvement or progress, he judges
the world.
When he was on trial before Caiaphas and before Pilate, they were on
trial, and not he. When they sentenced him, they condemned themselves.
During the whole of those dark hours, when Christ was buffeted, spit upon,
crowned with thorns, to the eyes of angels he was seen to be sitting on
the throne of his glory. Caiaphas and the Jewish priests, Pontius Pilate
and the Roman soldiers, Judas Iscariot, the Jewish people, each in turn
received their sentence, and passed to the left hand. And so ever since,
whenever any great opportunity has been given to the world to decide
between right and wrong, the world has pronounced judgment on itself; has
gone to the right hand with the sheep, or to the left hand with the goats.
When Paul offered Christianity to the Jews, and they rejected it, he said
“it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to
you; but seeing you put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of
eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” So it always is. God does not
judge us, nor Christ; but we judge ourselves. For this reason Jesus says,
“If any man hear me, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to
judge the world.” And again he says, “The word which I have spoken, the
same shall judge him at the last day.” And yet again, “This is the
judgment, that light has come into the world, and that men have chosen
darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.”
The account of judgment (in the 25th chapter of Matthew) at Christ’s
coming we considered in the last chapter. It will, however, bear a little
further examination. There are _three_ different judgments indicated in
the three parables of the virgins, the talents, and the sheep and goats.
The first is the judgment of opportunity, the second of work, the third of
knowledge. In the first and second we judge ourselves, in the last we are
judged. These two occur in time, the other in eternity. The first two are
the judgments which take place at Christ’s coming here; the third is the
judgment of “the last day.” The first takes place whenever we are “called”
by a new opportunity; the second comes in all retribution; the third by
the inward revelation of God’s truth, showing men what they are, and what
God is. The wise and foolish virgins represent those _who are invited to
receive Christianity_; the servants with the talents, believers who have
received it in different degrees; and the nations (heathen, τὰ ἔθνη)(58)
those (in Christendom or outside of it) to whom Christianity has never
come.
§ 9. The Doctrine of Annihilation.
This view of the final results of moral evil, as destroying personal
existence, is hardly an Orthodox doctrine, though quasi-Orthodox. It is
the refuge of that class of minds which are unable to accept universal
restoration on the one side, or everlasting punishment on the other. To
them a large number of human beings seem “too good for banning, and too
bad for blessing,” and in their opinion will be suffered quietly to drop
out of conscious existence. The analogies of nature, in which out of many
seeds and many eggs produced, only a few attain to the condition of plants
and animals, tend to confirm this view. The state of human character here
appears also to favor it, since multitudes pass out of this world in an
undeveloped condition, seeming wholly to have failed of the end of their
being. The chief scriptural argument in favor of the doctrine is found in
the assumption that “life through Christ” is equivalent to continued
conscious existence, and that “death” as the punishment of sin, is
equivalent to annihilation. We have so fully discussed the meaning of
these terms in the previous chapter, that it is not desirable to argue
this point here. We agree with the Orthodox view, and differ from that of
the annihilationists on this point. The God of the gospel is the Father of
all his children—of the weakest, feeblest, and most sinful. If he is the
God of _all_, then he is “the God, not of the dead, but of the living, for
all live to him.” Indian tribes and heathen nations may be willing that
the sickly infants, and those worn with age, should perish; they may
expose female infants, thinking them not worth bringing up; but Christian
nations establish schools and hospitals for the deaf and dumb, the insane,
the inebriates, the idiotic. If we, then, being evil, know how to care for
the weak, undeveloped, and vegetative natures, how much more shall their
Father in heaven care for them! The doctrine of annihilation rests
fundamentally on a Pagan view of God.
§ 10. The Doctrine of Universal Restoration.
This opinion has its roots, we think, in the gospel. It has prevailed in
the church from the earliest times, having been held, as we have seen, by
Origen, and a great number of eminent church fathers and doctors. What
more Christian word has come to us from the earliest centuries than the
cry out of the heart of the great Alexandrian teacher, “My Saviour, even
now, mourns for my sins. My Saviour cannot be happy while I remain in my
iniquity. He does not wish to drink the cup of joy alone in the kingdom of
God; he is waiting till we shall come and join him there.”(59)
Our object in this chapter is to consider the Orthodox view, and we shall
not, therefore, enter into any extensive argument concerning universal
salvation. We will only here indicate the general scriptural evidence in
its support. The alternative to the Orthodox view of everlasting
punishment is not, as we have shown, necessarily Universalism. It may be
annihilation, or it may be, under the name of eternal punishment, a
negative evil, being the privation of the highest kind of happiness.
Still, it seems proper to suggest, if only very briefly, some reasons
given by Universalists for their belief.
In the Epistles of Paul there are five or six passages, which appear to
teach, or to imply, an ultimate restoration of salvation of all moral
beings. Among them are these:—
1. Eph. 1:9, 10. “Having made known to us the mystery of his will,
according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in
the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth,
even in him.”
The apostle is speaking of the “riches of God’s grace,” wherein “he hath
_abounded_ toward us,” and gives as the proof this revelation made in
Christ of a great mystery—that “in the dispensation [economy] of the
fulness of times” he might bring into one (under one head) “all things in
heaven and on earth.” The idea of the passage seems evidently to be that
in the economy, or order, of the divine plan, which extends through
indefinite periods of time, all things shall be united under one head in
Christ. But if brought under one head (as the Greek word signifies), then
all become Christians, all “in heaven and earth.” This would seem to be a
very plain statement of a universal restoration.
As such, Olshausen, one of the most Orthodox of commentators, regards it.
He rejects all the explanations offered by the advocates of everlasting
punishment as unsatisfactory. “It cannot be disputed,” he says, “that in
it the restoration of all things seems to be again favored—a view which
Paul in general, as has already been remarked (on Rom. 11:32; 1 Cor.
15:24; Gal. 3:22) says more to support than the other writers of the New
Testament.” Olshausen declares the interpretations which suppose a merely
external subjection of the world to Christ to be entirely inadequate, and
have left unresolved the principal difficulty, which is, “how Paul could
say that all have a share in redemption, if he held the common view that
the numberless hosts of angels who fell, along with the far greatest part
of mankind (Matt. 7:13, 14) are eternally damned, and thus shut out from
the harmony of the universe.” The defenders of universal restoration, says
Olshausen, “understand the harmony of the universe seriously, in its
literal meaning, and seem, according to that, to be here in the right.”
2. Phil. 2:9, 10. “Wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the
earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father.” Here we have “_things under the earth_”
(καταχθονίων) added to “things in heaven and on earth.” This word only
occurs here in the New Testament, but is by Bretschneider (Lex. Man.)
translated “subterranean” or “infernal,” and applied to the inhabitants of
Hades, with a reference to Origen, who uses the word in relation to the
demons. De Wette applies the language to angels, living men, and the dead.
At all events, it appears to include all moral beings, and to declare that
the whole human race shall bow to Christ, and accept him as Master. But
this cannot mean a merely outward submission, for such a forced and
reluctant homage would bring little honor to God, nor be worth such
admiration on the part of the apostle. It must therefore mean that all
men, not only all who now live, but all who have lived, shall finally
become Christians and enter into the glory of God.
3. Col. 1:20. “And, having made peace by the blood of the cross, by him to
reconcile all things to himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in
earth or things in heaven.” Here a new feature is added to the statement
by the word “reconcile,” which evidently expresses the entire conversion
of the heart, and therefore of human beings, to the law of Christ.
4. 1 Cor. 15:22. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive.” The “all” must be as extensive on one side as the other. Now,
whether the death in Adam be physical or moral, whether it mean the
dissolution of the earthly body, or the loss of innocence by sin, it
certainly includes _all_ human beings, in the fullest sense. All men die,
and all men sin. It would therefore seem that the other “all” must be
quite as comprehensive. It must include all human beings. All men shall
“be made alive in Christ.” But this cannot mean a mere physical
immortality, or an immortality in misery; for one cannot be said to be
“alive in Christ” who is suffering endless torment. To be “alive in
Christ” means to be spiritually alive, for “he that hath the Son hath
life.”
5. 1 Cor. 24:28. In this passage Paul declares that _all_ enemies shall be
subject to Christ. But this, again, cannot mean a forced submission, for
that is in no sense being subject to Christ. _Christ’s_ subjects are
willing subjects. It therefore must mean that, finally, all human beings
shall become Christian in conviction and in heart.
These five texts from the apostle Paul seem to us very plain and
conclusive as to his opinions. But perhaps the strongest evidence in proof
of a universal restoration is to be found in Christ’s own parable of the
prodigal son. For in this the genuine spirit and purpose of the gospel is
shown to be that God _never_ loses his fatherly love for his rebellious
and lost children. On the contrary, his heart yearns towards them with a
more earnest affection than towards the holy and good. The prodigal son
represents those who are “dead in sin.” (Luke 15:24-32.) The parable
teaches that God loves them all the while they are away, and that “there
is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and
nine just persons who need no repentance.” Now, if God loves the sinners
thus whose bodies are yet alive, does he cease to love them when the
bodily change takes place which we call death? Does his nature change
then? And if not, does it ever change? After millions of years, if they
have been lost and dead so long, has his love become weary of waiting, or
does “his mercy endure forever”?
To us it seems clear, that if the parable of the prodigal son is to be
taken as a true statement of the feeling of God towards every sinner, that
every sinner must at last be brought back by the mighty power of this
redeeming love. The power of the human will to resist God is indeed
indefinite; but the power of love is infinite. Sooner or later, then, in
the economy of the ages, all sinners must come back, in penitence and
shame, to their Father’s house, saying, “Make us as thy hired servants.”
If so, if universal restoration does not mean primarily restoration to
outward happiness, but to inward obedience, it seems to us that the
doctrine may be so stated as to be a new motive for _present_ repentance
and obedience. May we not say to the sinner, You may resist God to-day,
to-morrow, for a million years; but, sooner or later, you _must_ return,
obey, repent, and submit? God will spare no means to bring you. His love
to you requires him to use all methods, all terrors, all suffering. The
“worm that never dies,” the “fire that is never quenched,” the “outer
darkness,”—these are all blessed means, in the providence of the Almighty,
to bring the sinner back to a sense of his evil state. In the other world,
as in this world, God will “chasten us, not for his pleasure, but for our
profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.”