Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors Part 35

7:9-11.) Jesus authorizes and commands us to reason from the parental nature in man to that in G.o.d. Instead of simply a.s.suring 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l, 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 mediaeval 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, G.o.d 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 (????) nor the next, it follows, says Origen, that there is a series of ages, or worlds, through which we pa.s.s, and many of these ages of ages (saecula saeculorum) must pa.s.s away before all bad men and angels shall have returned to their original state. Quoting the pa.s.sage, "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 G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.l. With him too, h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l, that is enough; you are not precluded from softening its horrors to any extent you can. Thus he maintains that the great Augustine allows h.e.l.l to be only a negative state-only the absence of the exquisite beat.i.tude of heaven. This writer (who is said by the editor to be a learned Catholic priest) a.s.serts 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d in order to everlasting life, or supreme beat.i.tude, but not of all vital influx in order to an endless existence, which is a partial and incomplete partic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d 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. h.e.l.l, therefore (Infernus), is simply a lower state of inchoate and imperfect being, "of saints nipped in the bud." Infant d.a.m.nation is only a gentle sadness-"levis trist.i.tia." All positive suffering in h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed the final judgment, but admits many palliations to its sufferings. He teaches that delight is the universal substance of heaven, and also of h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l.

-- 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 G.o.d and Christ. "This _is_ life eternal, to know thee, the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." "Eternal life and eternal death both come from the knowledge of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d; see its whole life as it really is; have all self-deceptions taken away, all disguises removed, and know itself as it is known. G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d and of itself, therefore,-from this judgment of the last day,-will flow eternal life to the one cla.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce; 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 G.o.d'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. G.o.d will never save him against his will; and G.o.d can wait. The sphere of time belongs to man's freedom; that of eternity, to the freedom of G.o.d.

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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d,"

there is nothing about duration implied. It is the quality of the life which is conveyed-spiritual life, life flowing from the sight of G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d's love. If he had seen G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, and therefore from bliss. His h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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, G.o.d has appointed such a punishment; and the object of judgment is to glorify G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.ses,-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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d's truth, showing men what they are, and what G.o.d 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, t? ????)(58) those (in Christendom or outside of it) to whom Christianity has never come.

-- 9. The Doctrine of Annihilation.