Eschatology

      This whole section was omitted in the Second Edition as containing a number of conjectures which the Author shortly before his death acknowledged to be hardly digested, and as relating to a subject whose data are often wholly beyond our ken.  It is thought well, however, to print the whole in this Third Edition, for it will at least stimulate reflection.  A good deal is open to criticism, especially in the exegesis of 1 Peter 3 and 4.  It is to be regretted that the Author did not give a fuller and more sympathetic consideration to the view which, with slight variations, is known as “Life in Christ,” “Conditional Immortality,” or “Annihilation of the Evil”.  There is a great deal more to be said for this view than Litton suggests, and to many minds it appears the most true to Scripture, to reason, and to the analogy of nature.  But the section is left exactly as the Author wrote, without any attempt to correct or explain difficult points.

H. G. Grey.

Eschatology

      “Credo in carnis resurrectionem et vitam aeternam” (Apostles’ Creed).  “Iterum venturus est (Christus) in gloria, judicare vivos et mortuos.  Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi” (Nicene Creed).  “Inde venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos.  Ad cujus adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis, et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem.  Et qui bona egerunt, ibunt in vitam aeternam, qui vero mala, in ignem aeternam” (Athanasian Creed).  “Ex coelis autem idem ille” (Christus) “redibit in judicium, tum quando summa erit in mundo consceleratio, et Antichristus, corrupta religione vera, superstitione impietateque omnia opplevit, et sanguine atque flamma ecclesiam crudeliter vastavit.  Resurgent mortui, et qui illa die superstites futuri sunt mutabuntur in momento oculi, fidelesque omnes una obviam Christo rapientur in aëra, ut inde cum ipso ingrediantur in sede beatas sine fine victuri.  Increduli vero, vel impii, descendent cum daemonibus ad tartara, ex tormentis nunquam liberandi” (Expos. Simp. Conf. Helv., i.).  “Credimus, ubi tempus a Domino praestitutum, omnibus autem creaturis ignotum, advenerit, numerusque electorum fuerit completus, Jesum Christum e coelo, corporaliter et visibiliter, sicuti ascendit, venturum, ut se vivorum atque mortuorum judicem declaret; vetere mundo igne et flamma succenso, ut expurget eum.  Tunc vero, omnes homines, quotquot jam inde ab initio mundi usque ad finem fuerunt, coram summo hoc judice comparebunt.  Omnes autem autea mortui e terra resurgent, spiritu cum corpore proprio, in quo vixerat, conjuncto atque unito.  Qui tunc superstites erunt ictu oculi a corruptione in incorruptionem mutabuntur.  Judicabuntur secundum ea quae in hoc mundo egerent, sive bona sive mala” (Conf. Belg., xxxvii.).  “Omni malorum bonorumque discrimine remoto, omnes a mortuis resurgent. ... Illo die Christus de universo hominum genere judicaturus est. ... Post carnis resurrectionem nihil aliud fidelibus expectandum est nisi vitae aeternae praemium” (Cat. Rom. De Symb., cc. 12, 8, 13).  “Docent quod Christus apparebit in consummatione mundi ad judicandum, et mortuos omnes resuscitabit, piis et electis dabit vitam aternam et perpetua gaudia, impios autem homines ac diabolos condemnabit.  Damnant Anabaptistas qui sentiunt hominibus damnatis ac diabolis finem poenarum futurum esse.  Damnant et alios qui nunc spargunt Judaicas opiniones, quod ante resurrectionem mortuorum pii regnum mundi occupaturi sunt, ubique oppressis impiis” (Conf. Augs., 17).

      Most branches of philosophy, as well as forms of religion, indulge in speculations respecting the final issue to which the existing constitution of things is tending.  The astronomer, after calculating the motions of the planetary system, frames theories about its duration, and the possible changes which fresh concentration or combinations of matter may produce.  The geologist reminds us that the present distribution of sea and land is not necessarily permanent, and that the central fires of the earth may, at some future time, burst the barriers which confine them, and involve everything in a general conflagration.  Since matter, however, is indestructible, out of the ruins a new and fairer earth may emerge.  The moral philosopher asks whether the prevalence of sin and misery in the world is always to continue, and imagines a Utopia in which the destiny of the creature shall be realized, and the perplexities of life solved.  Even false religions have their Eschatology; the polytheism of ancient Greece its session among the gods, Buddhism its Nirvana, Mahometanism its sensual paradise.  But Christianity is emphatically a religion of the future.  As a scheme of redemption, it pledges itself to a restoration of the Church to more than was lost by the fall; and as a divine revelation it carries on its disclosures, step by step, until the end is reached.  God “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled reserved in heaven” for us, and “ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:3–5).

§ 102.  Death

      In the vegetable, animal, and rational creation, death, or the dissolution of the connecting link between the visible organization and the life that sustains it, is a fact which meets our eye everywhere and at all times.  When plants, from natural causes such as age, cease to derive nourishment from the circulating sap, they pass into shriveled husks; when the lower animals reach their appointed limit of existence, they breathe out the impersonal soul with which they are endowed, and their bodies return to the dust; and ascending to man, the crown and glory of creation, we find the same law prevailing; in due time the union of the spirit-soul with the body comes to an end, and the latter is resolved into the elements with which its several parts have an affinity.  As regards the immaterial part of man, what becomes of it is a question on which, before Christ brought life and immortality to light, philosophy was dumb, or could indulge only in vague hopes or surmises.  Scripture, in declaring that, with the exception of the quick at Christ’s second advent, death passes to and through all men (Rom. 5:12), sparing neither age, sex, or condition, adds nothing to our previous knowledge; what it does reveal is peculiar to itself, viz., the origin and eventual reversal of the law that pervades creation.

      To account for the universal dominion of death is a problem which forces itself on every reflecting mind.  The best uninspired writers of antiquity are fain to fall back on the inherent limitations of the creature.  Change and transformation pervade the material universe; things come and go; they appear for a time on the stage, and after having fulfilled their parts in the drama of life, they make room for their successors.  In the case of human society, it is urged, such a succession is necessary to progress, which without it would be impossible or very difficult; for while each generation bequeaths on the whole some valuable lessons to posterity, it labours under its own share of imperfection, speculative and practical, which it also transmits.  These seeds of error do indeed, in any case, reappear in the next generation; but they are more easily met and overcome, when not represented by living persons; and thus a vantage ground is gained for still further advances.  In short, in our present state the law of mortality is a necessary and salutary one; as such it needs no further explanation; death is natural to man.  As an attempt to remove difficulties, the theory may claim attention; but it fails to explain why mankind should be in a state to need so drastic a remedy; nor does it touch the question why the law should prevail over the irrational creation, the species of which, though physically improveable, seem unable to overstep the barrier between instinct and reason, or to enter into social combination with its elevating influences.

      Scripture, whether its testimony be accepted or not, assigns a positive reason for the fact of a very different kind.  S. Paul, in the passage cited (Rom. 5:12–19), not only recognizes the universal sway of death, but adds that the cause of its introduction was sin; “as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”; a statement which at once disposes of the supposition that death is a law of nature.  It implies that death, in its present form at least, did not exist before the fall, and is not necessary to the conception of a finite material being: if it came in through Adam’s sin, it would not have prevailed but for that sin.  But further, it is described as a penalty, not of a natural but of a positive character; by one man, by the transgression of one man, it entered; it is the consequence of that primal prevarication by which man fell.  The apostle refers to the account in Gen. 2 and 3 which contains all that we know on the subject.  In chapter 2:17, the penalty was to follow the sin immediately: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die”; but that the prophecy of a Redeemer of the seed of the woman might be capable of fulfillment, the sentence was suspended – only, however, suspended; and sooner or later, with some exceptions, every human being pays the last debt: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  In another sense, indeed, of the term death, the penalty was at once inflicted.  The word death in Scripture bears two distinct meanings, spiritual and physical. [Hollaz (P. ii., c. 2, Q. 20) remarks that the common division of death into spiritual, bodily, and eternal is not quite accurate.  Temporal is the proper opposite to eternal, and includes the two former divisions.  Spiritual death issues, in the natural course of things, in eternal or final separation from God; but the latter is not different in kind, only in degree, from the former.]  Spiritual death is alienation “from the life of God” (Ephes. 4:18), through a sense of guilt and the aversion of a fallen nature; and this, as we learn from the narrative, manifested itself directly after the eating of the forbidden fruit.  “They knew that they were naked,” exposed without shelter to the condemning sentence of the law and they withdrew as far as they could from the presence of the Being with whom they had hitherto maintained happy intercourse (Gen. 3:7, 8).  But spiritual death, if the poison runs its natural course unchecked by the divinely appointed antidote, terminates in final separation from God, or eternal death.  This, however, is not a distinct kind of death, but only the consummation of spiritual; and, like the penalty of bodily death, did not at once take effect as regards our first parents or their posterity.

      In the absence, then, of direct information on the subject, we may thus conceive of Adam’s state before the fall; he was capable of death, but not subject to it, certainly not under its present aspect.  Inherent immortality belongs only to the Creator; in this sense angels are not immortal, still less a being composed of soul and body; all created things depend for their continued existence on the will and sustaining power of God.  But to a created being means may, under certain conditions, be vouchsafed of actual perpetuity; of a posse non mori if not of a non posse mori.  In the case of the first man, he was liable to death in the same sense in which he was liable to temptation; he possessed posse non peccare, but not non posse peccare.  Only the second Adam enjoyed this privilege.  The condition of the first Adam’s immortality was successful resistance to temptation; and the tree of life was the sacrament of his immortality.  Adam, after the fall, was inhibited from the tree of life, because it would have been of no advantage to him and his posterity, but rather the reverse, to be exempted from physical death.  The holy seed could not here have been made perfect; while the progress of sin in the seed of the serpent, uninterrupted by the stroke of death, might have issued in a veritable hell upon earth.  Even the lives of the antediluvians were found too long for a sinful race; and it was not merely as a penal appointment, but as an act of the divine mercy that they were gradually abridged, until the ordinary limit of human life came to be that of the Psalmist (Ps. 90:19).  Speculations have been hazarded as to what the course of things would have been if man had not sinned.  Where Scripture is silent, positive statements are out of place.  But we may suppose that if even Eden was not to be the perpetual abode of sinless beings, but only the preparatory stage to a more perfect condition, the change would have been effected without any of the circumstances which render the death with which we are familiar formidable to nature.  No diminution of strength, or other infirmities of age; no pain or sickness, the present precursors of death; no violent conflict with what Scripture describes as the last enemy, would have heralded or accompanied the transition to the heavenly paradise.  Body and soul would, without separation, have reached the goal at once.  By a gentle and blissful process, analogous to that by which the favoured Christians alive at the second advent will be prepared for glory, each generation, as it became ripe for the change, would have been translated.  Not that even so man, sinless but unredeemed, would have reached the elevation which the members of Christ are taught to expect.  The present “vile body” is their disadvantage as compared with what we may surmise would have been the condition of Adam and his posterity if sin had not come into the world; their peculiar and surpassing prerogative is that, notwithstanding their present humiliation, they shall be raised, or changed, into the likeness of Christ’s glorified body, “according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:21).

      “The wages of sin is death”; and the association of the latter with the former can never, in this life, wholly disappear.  The antecedents and accompaniments of death are too striking and too solemn to allow us ever to forget its origin, or to be otherwise than formidable to nature.  Even the most confirmed Christian may well shrink from it, and with S. Paul prefer “not to be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life” (2 Cor. 5:3).  In many instances, no doubt, death has been “swallowed up in victory,” even on this side of the grave, and glimpses of the glory to come have been vouchsafed to the departing soul; but to make this the rule would be to divest the event of its penal character. [Thus J. Gerh.: Mors non obtinet pristinam suam naturam et qualitatem quam extra Christi satisfactionem ac meritum habuit, sed mutatur piis et in Christum credentibus in suavem somnum et verae vita exordium, in peccati exterminium et omnium malorum levamentum.  Loc., xxvii., c. 2.]  Death to every Christian is an enemy; encountered, indeed, in the assurance of present safety and eventual triumph, but still to be encountered.  Even if Christ be in us, the body is liable to death because of sin (Rom. 8:10) its dissolution is indeed the gate to endless life, but also the last debt which nature pays to the violated law.  Bunyan writes truly when he makes the river between this land and that afar off a dark and deep one, notwithstanding the divine presence and support.  And our Church only expresses the cry of shrinking nature when it puts the prayer into our mouths, “Suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from thee” (Burial Service). [The question why Christians should, as a rule, be still subject to death – though redeemed by Christ, is best answered by others of a similar character – Why should the fomes of sin be allowed to remain in the regenerate?  Why should Satan still have power to tempt to destruction?  Why should the Christian’s life be ordinarily one of sorrow and conflict?  The kingdom of Christ is set up on earth, but it waits the consummation of all things for its full manifestation.  It is the divinely appointed rule that Christians must know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings if they would reign with Him in glory (Rom. 8:17, Phil. 3:10, 11.]

Intermediate State

      The Church, in her creeds and leading writers, has never failed to insist on such topics as the second advent of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment.  But the intermediate state, the state of souls between death and judgment, has not, except under the form of the doctrine of Purgatory, received a similar measure of attention.  Traces of this doctrine distinctly appear in the writings of Augustine.  This father opens the portals of heaven at once to eminent saints and martyrs, and, on the principle, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, consigns the rest of unbaptized mankind to endless torment, varying in nature and degree: between these extremes lies a class of Christians, members of the Church, but of imperfect sanctity: and to prepare these for the bliss of heaven, Augustine thinks it not improbable that an intermediate state of purgatorial cleansing may be provided. [Tale aliquid etiam post hanc vitam fieri incredibile non est, et utrum ita sit quaeri potest; et aut inveniri aut latere nonnullos fideles per ignem quendam purgatorium, quanto magis minusve bona pereuntia dilexerant, tardius citius que salvari.  Euch., 68.]  Under the influence of Gregory the Great and Caesarius of Arles, the surmises of the earliest fathers became a recognized dogma of the Church, with important results as regards its practical system.  Alms, satisfactions, and masses, on the part of the living, were supposed to alleviate or shorten the pains of purgatory; departed saints became intercessors on behalf of their militant brethren on earth.  Under this point of view, no doubt, the two divisions of Christ’s mystical body vividly realized their connection with each other; but the interest in the subject there ended.  Nor do the schoolmen supply the defect.  Such questions as the number and nature of the receptacles of departed souls, according to age or ecclesiastical position, [They were described as five in number: Between the heaven of the blessed and the hell of the lost were inserted, the limbus of the souls of unbaptized children, that of the ancient Fathers of the world, and purgatory.  T. Aqu. Sum. Theol.] were more congenial to the schools than an examination of what Scripture on the whole teaches respecting the unseen world.  In this state the Reformation received the topic, and practically ignored it.  The doctrine of justification by faith swept away purgatory, and the abuses connected therewith; and the divisions of Hades, the two main ones excepted, also disappeared: but nothing took their place.  Death was supposed to transfer the souls of the pious at once to the full bliss of heaven, and those of the wicked at once to the torments of hell.  The intermediate state dropped out of view.  And such to this day is the popular belief.  In proportion as it is so, the second coming of Christ with its accompaniments no longer occupies the place which it does in Scripture.  Death, not the final judgment, becomes the turning point of human destiny.  As a natural result, the field of New Testament prophecy remained uncultivated, or was given over to labourers in whom imagination predominated over judgment, and whose interpretations have been repeatedly disproved by the event.  Really interesting questions touching the state of the disembodied soul were thought of no moment.  Recent times have witnessed a revival of interest in the subject, and both in England and in Germany it has become a prominent topic of discussion.  If on some points the conclusions arrived at are open to criticism; if the inquiry has not always been conducted in a spirit favourable to the attainment of truth; it yet remains an encouraging symptom that, in a materialistic age, the things unseen, and the future prospects of the Church, are engaging the thoughts and pens of competent writers.

      Two preliminary remarks may be not out of place.  While Scripture directs our thoughts fully and repeatedly to the second advent and the events that follow it, it is very reticent on the intermediate state, and indeed seldom directly refers to it.  The veil is occasionally lifted in part; hints are given which it is our duty to gather up; but the knowledge thus conveyed is extremely fragmentary.  Again, prophecy enters largely into these speculations, and it is one of its characteristics to clothe its announcements in symbolical language, and not to aim at exactness of discrimination between impending events and those of analogous character at a distance.  In Old Testament prophecy, deliverances from temporal calamity and the glories of Messiah’s kingdom often occupy the same line of vision; the rules of spiritual perspective are not always observed.  So it may be with the prophetic element of the New Testament.  For these reasons, nothing beyond the fundamental articles of the creed can pretend to more than probability.  The Apocalypse, for example, opens up to us splendid prospects of the future of the Church; but the style of the book is highly symbolical, and it has hitherto refused to surrender its full meaning to commentators, however pious and learned.  The same may be said of our Lord’s prophetical discourses, and of the similar passages, few in number, which occur in the Apostolic Epistles.  This does not absolve us from the duty of studying such portions of Scripture; the ancient prophets, though much of what they were commissioned to reveal was not clear to themselves, “inquired and searched diligently” what the Holy Spirit who prompted them intended, and at any rate were led to perceive that no temporal interpretation could exhaust these communications (1 Pet. 1:10–12); but it does warn us neither to elevate into Articles of faith what at best can only be pious surmises, nor summarily to reject such surmises as of pernicious tendency.  The name of heresy has been too often applied to opinions which, even if erroneous, do not affect the fundamentals of the faith, or to interpretations of Scripture which vary from those to which we have been accustomed.  We may rely upon it that the Bible has not yet spoken its last word to the Church.  If we cannot, with Schleiermacher, consent to exclude Eschatology from the province of dogmatic theology, as not sufficiently testified to either by Christian experience or by Scripture, we may still admit the truth of the fact alleged, so far as to abstain from dogmatical assertion, and from branding opinions with which we may not agree with invidious names.

§ 103.  Survival of the Soul

      The expression, immortality of the soul, is liable to objection.  To God alone belongs immortality in the strict sense of the word (1 Tim. 6:16); created beings, whether angels or men, depend for their existence on His continual presence and support, on the withdrawing of which they would relapse into nothingness.  “In Him we live and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), whether here or hereafter.  And thus, if any human personality survives the stroke of death, it does so because God sustains it in life, and as long as He does so.  The question then comes to this: can probable reasons be alleged for believing that the souls of the departed continue to exist, under the sustaining power of God, after their earthly tabernacle has been dissolved?  It can only be entertained by those who hold that an essential distinction exists between body and spirit; that form of materialism which regards the intellectual and moral faculties as functions of the bodily organization, depending on it and expiring with it, has no interest in such inquiries.  Philosophy and revelation are the sources of information within our reach.

      The philosophical proofs of the existence of the soul in a separate state resemble those commonly urged for the existence of God. Thus, by Cicero, the consensus gentium is adduced, [Permanere animos arbitramur, consensu nationum omnium (Tusc. i. 16).] and it is, no doubt, a fact of great importance.  The most uncultivated tribes believe in a future state of being, and nature is often a better guide than philosophy.  Nevertheless, exceptions occur, of which the most remarkable is Buddhism, with its doctrine of Nirvana, or the absorption of the soul into the spirit of the universe; and naturally, pantheism, in its various forms, favours the same conclusion.  With these systems, whether of religion or philosophy, the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the migration of the soul into various bodies in succession, must not be confounded, for in all its transmigrations the soul is supposed to preserve its separate identity.  Again, Cicero argues, not without reason, from the thirst for posthumous fame, which impels souls of heroic mould to “scorn delights and live laborious days,” in the hope of leaving a name behind them (De Senect., 22, 23).  Would statesmen sacrifice their ease, warriors risk their lives on the field, poets and scientists renounce the vulgar prizes of life, if they did not expect to know and to enjoy in a future state the veneration in which a grateful country, or mankind, holds their memory?  The teleological argument, too, is of weight.  Man evidently has capacities which do not find scope in the present life; for what purpose were they bestowed?  It is a frequent, but not the less mysterious dispensation, that just at the moment when an individual of rare natural and acquired abilities seems about to enter on a career of beneficent activity, accident or disease cuts short the expectation, and leaves the world mourning over what seems a waste of means and opportunity.  In a future life these faculties may have full scope for their exercise.  Then the doctrine of retribution lends its aid.  A righteous and almighty governor of the world being assumed as a fact, it is difficult to understand why virtue should so often fail of its reward and vice prosper even to the end of life.  The misgivings of the psalmist (Ps. 73) on this point were natural, and could not be set at rest until, under such light as he possessed, he fell back upon the hope that God would be the strength of his heart and his portion for ever (ver. 26).  None of these considerations are without force, and it may be remarked that they are of a more satisfactory nature than the metaphysical arguments on which Butler relies.  As for example, that since consciousness is a single and indivisible power, the subject in which it inheres must be so also, and therefore indestructible. [Anal. P. i., c. 1]  This reasoning overlooks the fact that the soul, according to Scripture, is created no less than the body; “the Lord breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7); whence it seems to follow that however simple an essence it may be and incapable of destruction by dissolution of parts, it may perish by the withdrawing on the Creator’s part of the life which He first communicated, and the continuance of which entirely depends upon Him.  The argument assumes that the soul has life in itself, whereas its life is derivative.  If it is not derivative, it must be a part, in some way or other, of the Divine essence, either by emanation or by union analogous to physical union, and thus we arrive at the doctrine of the eternal pre-existence of souls, as it was taught by Origen and others.  Moreover, the consciousness of the individual is not the mere abstraction which remains after separating from the soul all that makes it differ from other souls; for example, the residuum common to the race, of reason and conscience; but it is composed of the combination of peculiarities which the temperament, history, and natural endowments, of that particular individual have issued in, and which distinguishes him from any other man.  The individual soul, therefore, is by no means so simple a subject as is supposed.  In fact, the argument tends to annihilate personality, and especially personality as connected with the body; and this is another reason why it cannot be deemed satisfactory.  Not less open to doubt is the remark of Butler, that disease, as it advances, seems to have no effect on the mental powers.  Instances, no doubt, occur in which up to the moment of departure the mind seems as vigorous as ever it was; but, as a rule, decay of the bodily organs, especially of the organ of thought, is accompanied by a corresponding failure of mental energy.  Again, that the body is not the mind is indeed proved by the changes which the former undergoes without affecting personal identity; but to infer thence that the relation of one to the other resembles that of foreign matter to the sentient being, as, e.g., of a telescope to the faculty of vision, is pressing the analogy too far, and may lead to a depreciation of the body as equally with the soul an object of redemption.  Again, the facts that we have passed through manifold changes, bodily and mental, from infancy to manhood, and that the same law holds good in the lower creation; the transformation being often such as could not have been anticipated, as when the seed becomes a plant or the chrysalis develops itself into a worm or a butterfly; rebut any presumption against the survival of the soul in a new state, but they hardly carry us further.  To the objection that brutes may thus be proved to possess souls, and their souls to survive death, the answer is not, as Butler puts it, that for aught we know brutes may develop into rational beings as infants grow up into the exercise of reason; or, at any rate, that the future system of the universe may require orders of irrational creatures [“And thinks admitted to an equal sky / His faithful dog shall bear him company.”]; but that, as respects the brute creation, the permanence of the species does not necessarily involve that of the individual.  The question relates to personal identity, and we may well believe that while the species survives, a soul naturally destitute of reason and conscience, or of these faculties as they belong to man, passes at death into the Nirvana of the general life of the order to which it belongs.  It is remarkable that this profound thinker (Butler) should not have referred to the facts of dreamland, so mysterious and yet significant. [Not so Shakespeare: — “To die, to sleep; – To sleep! perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, Must give us pause.” – Hamlet.  The alleged appearances of the departed, some of which it is not easy to put aside, are too open to controversy to be insisted on.  The same may be said of the phenomena of animal magnetism and clairvoyance; which also are not to be dismissed as mere instances of ocular delusion or imposture, unworthy of examination.  Somnambulism is matter of experience, and it presents some analogy to the faculty of dreaming.]  Dreams prove that the soul can be active independently of the bodily senses, though not perhaps of the bodily organs; a life is lived in sleep the same in kind as that of the waking state, but full of strange incongruities; the soul can recall and combine impressions received either through the senses or the powers of reflection, but its dependence on the body is proved by the suspension of the critical faculty; it is not sensible at the time of the absurdity of some of its combinations, but it becomes so when recalling, in a waking state, what has passed.  Facts which prove both the relative independence of the soul of its bodily tabernacle, and the incompleteness of its condition, if ever (which is doubtful) that is one of absolute bodiless existence.  On the whole, these philosophical analogies may be sufficient to rebut the assumptions of the materialist, and so to clear the ground for more direct evidence; they raise a probability that death is the destruction neither of the soul nor of its active powers; but beyond this it is hardly safe to press them.  In particular, the inference from them that not only the soul itself but its active powers may continue after death may be opposed by another analogy.  A sleep without dreams, however long, seems to the sleeper but a moment on his awakening; the mental activities during that state though not extinct were certainly suspended.  We cannot, then, wonder at the avowal of Cicero’s auditor, that while he was reading Plato’s speculations on the subject he was inclined to assent to the soul’s immortality; but when he laid the book down his doubts returned [Nescio quomodo, dum lego assentior; cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum caepi cogitare, assentio omnis illa elabitur.  Tusc. i. 11.]

      We turn to revelation.  Of the Pentateuch it may be said that it contains no allusion to a future state at all; the sanctions of the Mosaic law were purely temporal.  Even the promises to the patriarchs did not extend beyond the present life.  To Abraham and his seed the future possession of the land of Canaan, and that this seed should be a blessing to the world, were promised, and there the revelation stopped.  The prayers in the Psalms for length of days, and thanksgivings for deliverance from death or danger, do not, as they were understood by the writers, refer to more than temporal mercies; whatever deeper meaning, as in Ps. 16, the Holy Spirit may have intended to convey.  Hezekiah’s song of praise (Isa. 38) is confined within the same limits.  After all that has been written on the famous passage, Job. 19:25–27, it is doubtful whether more can be found in it than an expression of faith by the sufferer, that to whatever harsh judgments his present afflictions might give occasion, God would at some future time clear up his integrity, and establish his reputation. [The passage is discussed in Runze’s article “Unsterblichkeit,” in Herzog.  Ewald, H. Schultz, and Dillmann translate it thus: “Though my sufferings become more intense than they are; if after my skin is destroyed my body should be affected; yet even in this life (‘mine eyes shall see it, and not those of another’) I shall experience the goodness of God in restoring me to health and prosperity, and silencing my enemies.”]  “Let me alone,” is his cry of anguish, “that I may take comfort a little before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death, a land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order and where the light is as darkness” (10:20–22).  As time went on a doctrine of scheol appears.  It may have founded itself on such expressions as that of Jacob: “I will go down into the grave to my son mourning” (Gen. 37:35), and such narratives as that of the appearance of Samuel to Saul (1 Sam. 28).  The Psalmist in Ps. 139 expects when he descends to hell, or scheol, to find the presence of God there (ver. 8).  In Isaiah (14) the King of Babylon is represented as received by the inhabitants of scheol, the shades or Rephaim who had preceded him thither, with cries of recognition and mockery.  Scheol itself is a place of silence and gloom, where no voice of praise is heard, and the active functions of life are suspended.  It is described in terms very similar to those which Homer uses, when he makes Achilles in the shades declare that he had rather be a day-labourer on earth than Achilles as he was.  In the later prophets, during and after the exile, a great accession to the national faith is visible.  The doctrine of the resurrection of the body comes into view, and this implies the survival of the soul in its disembodied state.  Such prophecies as “He will swallow up death in victory” (Isa. 25:8), and “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction” (Hos. 13:14), and such prophetic visions as that of the dry bones (Ezek. 37), must have prepared the way for the great announcement of Daniel, the first clear revelation on the subject, that “Many of them that sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12).  Thenceforward, until Christ came, uninspired teachers took up the theme, and, with the exception of the sects of the Sadducees and Essenes, there was no retrogression from the position in which prophecy had left it.  The apocryphal and pseudepigraphal books of the centuries immediately preceding Christ not only teach a resurrection of the dead, but connect death with sin as a penalty, and the reversal of the penalty with expiation and satisfaction (2 Macc. 7:32–37, 12:40–45).  And thus when our Lord appeared, the popular belief, as represented by the Pharisees, was on the side of a resurrection and of an intermediate state.  Those who may be perplexed by the absence of clear statements in the earlier records would do well to remember that the revelation of the Gospel proceeded gradually, in sundry ways and various partitions (Heb. 1:1), and that each part of it kept pace with the rest.  “Life and immortality,” in the Christian sense of the words, are the fruit of Christ’s atonement and resurrection (2 Tim. 1:10); until these had become facts, the disclosure of the former was necessarily postponed.

      What was lacking in these earlier notices was supplied by Christ Himself in the Gospels, and by the accredited organs of the Holy Spirit after the day of Pentecost.  “The hour is coming when they that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of judgment”; in this announcement the doubts which neither philosophy nor the hints of the Jewish Scriptures could remove, were for ever set at rest.  Hitherto the question had been a matter of debate in the Jewish schools, on which different sides might be taken without leading to a rupture with the theocracy: the Sadducees, who held that there was no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, and the Pharisees, who confessed both, equally acknowledged the authority of Moses.  But since the fuller revelation of the Gospel, the resurrection of the dead is an essential article of the Christian faith, and it carries with it the acknowledgment of a continued existence of the soul hereafter.  This latter is implied in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and in the promise to the thief on the cross, and thereby receives the seal of Christ Himself.  “Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise”; the disembodied spirits both of the thief and of Christ were to survive in Hades, and whatever belongs to Christ the typical Man, belongs to His Church.  But Christ, did more than announce or exemplify the fact; He showed from Scripture that so it must be, by an inference which the Sadducees themselves ought to have drawn.  “As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?  God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:32).  These patriarchs had passed from earth, but God was still with them, preserving them in the separate state until the time appointed for their resurrection.  This is the true warrant for the Christian’s assurance that death will not destroy the soul.  God lives essentially, therefore they that are His must live.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive because God, who is not the God of the dead but of the living, is still their God.  We may confidently appropriate the Apostle’s assurance, that “neither life nor death shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:38, 39).

§ 104.  Consciousness

      Butler draws a distinction between the destruction of the soul, or, as he calls it, the living being itself, and the destruction of its active powers by death.  It is conceivable that, as in a sleep without dreams, the soul might continue to exist after death, and yet that its present powers of reflection might be suspended.  This leads to the question, whether after death it remains actively conscious.

      The contrary opinion has been often entertained.  Certain Arabian Christians, in the third century, taught that the soul dies with the body, to be raised again with the body at the last day. [They were called Thenopsychites.]  A modified form of the same tenet appeared in the same century, under the title of Psychopannuchia, or a sleep of the soul (without dreams) until the resurrection of the body.  Tertullian mentions the opinion, only to reject it; nor did it prevail to any extent in the Church.  At the Reformation, some sections of the Anabaptists appear to have revived it – against whom Calvin came forward, in a Tract on the subject found in his collected works.  Luther expresses no fixed opinion.  In modern times writers of some note in England and Germany have shown themselves favourable to it, among whom may be mentioned Archbishop Whately, in his book entitled “Scripture Revelations on a Future State.”  The Old Testament describes the intermediate state as one in which the active functions of life are suspended; but it does not, any more than heathen mythology, suppose it to be a state of insensibility.  “Wilt thou show wonders to the dead; shall the dead arise and praise thee?”  Certainly not as God showed wonders by Moses, not as the worshippers joined in the praises of God in the temple; but from this comparative inactivity to a profound slumber is a long step.  Nor does the New Testament convey such an impression.  “The night cometh, when no man can work.”  Our Lord evidently was alluding to His approaching death, but we cannot suppose that the active powers of His soul were – during the three days’ sojourn in Hades, or paradise – in abeyance; and, indeed, if 1 Peter 3:19 refers to this sojourn, we know that they were not so.  He must have meant that the mode, or measure, of working which had hitherto been in His power, would cease at death.  To the same effect S. Paul speaks in Phil. 1:22–24.  The choice was present to his mind, whether to remain in the flesh, or to depart and be with Christ; it was not without hesitation that he arrived at the conclusion that the former was preferable.  And the reason he gives is, that it gave opportunity for “fruit of labour,” which the latter – though in other respects to be desired – did not.  But to be with Christ could never have been described as in itself a superior state, if it meant a state of insensibility.  In that case it would have been a retrograde state.  In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham and Dives are represented as recognizing each other; Dives implores relief from Abraham as the head of the chosen people, and Abraham does not repudiate his relationship.  A dialogue ensues, showing on either side acquaintance with the life lived in the flesh; and nothing can be more foreign to the impression which the narrative leaves on the mind than the supposition that the soul sleeps in the intermediate state.  That its imagery is not in all points to be interpreted literally may be admitted; but we must not with the shell discard the kernel.  The plain gist of the parable is to teach a future state of retribution, succeeding immediately to the present life; a state in which memory is active, conscience is quickened, remorse felt, and a desire to undo, if possible, the effect of former bad example is expressed.  There may be no “fruit of labour” in such a state, but insensibility of the soul is the last thing we connect with it.  Our Lord’s answer to the thief, “Today thou shalt be with Me in paradise” [To connect σήμερον with λέγω σοι, “Today I say unto thee, thou shalt,” etc., as some ancient commentators suggested, is inadmissible.] (the best comment on S. Paul’s expectation that for himself to depart would be to be with Christ) implies more than that both the Saviour and the thief would, ere the day ended, be in Hades; whatever we are to understand by the term paradise, it must signify here not a state of bare existence, but one of conscious felicity.  According to the interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19 now usually received, the spirits to whom Christ preached must have been capable of hearing and understanding what He said.  The figurative character of the Apocalypse is not to be denied; yet it seems straining the principle to suppose that the description of the great multitude before the throne, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, chanting the song of Moses and the Lamb (7:14), is nothing but figure; or that the cry of the souls, remembering their sufferings on earth, and appealing to God for recompense (c. 6), is to be understood only as “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10) is.  The objection that if these souls could appear to the writer as objects of sight, clothed in white robes, etc., they were not pure spirit, but clothed with some kind of body, proceeds on the assumption that the soul in the separate state can be and is absolutely disembodied – an assumption which itself is open to doubt.  On this point some remarks will be offered in the following section.  On the whole, the Scripture evidence is in favour of a state of consciousness after death.  As compared with the present life, the intermediate state is one of repose, “they rest from their labours” – of self-inspection rather than of outward activity; the soul is thrown upon the centre of its moral being; memory remains, furnishing food for this inward process; intercourse with God in Christ, and with those who have gone before, seems to be carried on.  In short, it is, as compared with the full restoration of personality at the resurrection, an imperfect state, but by no means one of insensibility.  And the argument from analogy, that we may lose a part – and even a large part – of our bodies without any sensible effect on our mental powers, though not so cogent as regards the survival of the soul after death, is of use to confirm the conclusion that if it survives it may be active independently altogether of our present bodies.

      For the opposite view it is urged that the New Testament writers constantly describe the death of Christians by the word sleep, and that they pass over the intermediate state as seemingly of little importance to the Christian; that the Second Advent and the resurrection of the body are the great facts to which they direct his thoughts.  It is so, as stated.  “Some,” says S. Paul, “are fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:6); of Lazarus, we read in John 11:11, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go to wake him out of sleep.”  That the body sleeps, it is argued, cannot be supposed; it is the soul then that is meant.  But the usage is easily accounted for.  The visible symptom of death is the cessation of motion and sensibility in the body; and the nearest resemblance to that state, in the living being, is presented in sleep.  Motion is suspended, and sensibility, if not lost, is less active.  Sleep, therefore, in all ages, and among all writers – heathen as well as Christian – has been chosen as the most appropriate image of death – “speculum mortis,” as Tertullian calls it.  A death-like slumber is a common expression amongst us.  The inspired writers adopt the same image; but they intended also, no doubt, to convey by it consolation to the living.  Sleep to the weary is grateful, and death to the Christian is a release from earthly trial; sleep is succeeded by an awakening, and death to the Christian is the gate to a joyful resurrection.  As to the reticence of Scripture on the state between death and the resurrection, it is accounted for by this state’s being only a provisional and transitory one; and, moreover, by the circumstance that no living generation of Christians can be sure that it will not in their day come to an end by the return of Christ to judgment – the great object of their expectation.  Thus it is that S. Paul’s statements in 1 Thess. 4:15–17, which have been thought to raise difficulties respecting the limits of inspiration, may be explained.  “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord” is equivalent to “We which are alive, if we remain,” etc.  The Church, in the Apostle’s view, consists, partly of those who have fallen asleep in Christ, and partly of those who are still in the flesh; and the Church militant may always cherish a hope that Christ will appear in its day, and therefore may always adopt the Apostle’s language, “We which are alive, if we remain,” etc.  It does not follow that he enjoyed a positive assurance of remaining, or intended to convey such a meaning to those to whom he wrote.  Generations have passed away since he wrote, and their hopes have not been fulfilled; still each succeeding one might, and may, cherish the hope of being among the favoured ones who, without dying, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.  But however scanty the revelations touching the intermediate state may be, they do not favour the hypothesis that the soul is unconscious therein.

      It is not to be denied that certain passages may be made to fit in with this hypothesis.  Thus when S. Paul expected to be with Christ the moment after his death (Phil. 1:23); that if he were absent from the body he would be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8) – this, it is argued, refers to his resurrection, and presents no difficulty.  For time is measured by the succession of ideas, and where there is no such succession, the longest time seems but a moment.  To a sick person, unable to sleep, a single night seems intolerably tedious; the same night to a sound sleeper is but a moment.  If the soul, then, is insensible in the separate state, departure hence would be, to the perception of the departed, coincident with the resurrection and being with Christ.  But it is not probable that S. Paul had such a refined conception in his mind when he wrote; or that he would not, in consoling the Thessalonians for the apparent loss which their departed friends suffered, have employed so obvious an explanation.  On the whole, we conclude that, though this interpretation of the Apostle’s words may be tenable, it is neither necessary nor preferable.  If he should depart, his soul would be with Christ; this seems his plain meaning.  The same remarks apply, with even greater force, to the opinion expressed in the most elaborate treatise of modern times on eschatology, that of Kliefoth.  The writer admits that the disembodied soul is conscious, exercises the faculty of memory, and is capable of intercourse with other souls; but he holds that it has no connection with either time or space.  At present we are only concerned with time.  To be out of time, and yet to think, to remember, to rejoice or suffer, to communicate with others, seems a contradiction in terms.  It is only in time, and through the succession of ideas that, as far as our experience extends, such energies are possible.  In fact, the writer makes eternity commence with death, which is certainly inaccurate.  We may go further, and express a doubt whether eternity, as the attribute belongs to God, can be predicated of any created being.  The felicity of the saints has a beginning; and never-ending rather than eternal seems the epithet appropriate to it.  Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the intermediate state belongs to time.  Practically the learned writer’s theory ends in a psychopannuchia, or sleep of the soul; for if eternity, in the strict sense of the word, sets in with death, it is difficult to understand how the soul can exist out of time and yet be conscious of impressions which can come and go only in time. [Delitzsch, too, attempts to combine, in the separate state, eternity with time and space.  “Since, therefore, eternity may be in such wise immanent in time and space (?), that these forms of existence continue after death, for the creature, the souls of the blessed are in eternity so far as it is partly the element of their life, and partly time and space are impregnated with it, and thereby lose their limiting effect.”  (Bib. Psych., A. vi. § 6).  Is there not a confusion here between αιώνιος in the sense of duration and αιώνιος as denoting the life in God (John 17:3)?]

§ 105.  Development

      It has already been observed (§ 69) that by Roman Catholic writers (Bellarmine, Möhler) the necessity of Purgatory is inferred, not merely from the possibility of there being outstanding debts which have not been fully discharged in this life, but because Christians leave the world with sinful tendencies, or the remains of them, which must be finally extirpated by the purgatorial fire.  Bellarmine admits that the fomes of concupiscence is, at death, destroyed, and therefore temptation has no longer any material to work upon, but says nothing about the effects of bad habits, the scars they may leave on the soul, and how these are to be removed.  According to Möhler, Purgatory is not merely a forensic but a purifying agency. [Symbolik, § 23.]  Under its former aspect it directly affects the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement; under the latter it teaches that sin, in some form, accompanies the soul of the Christian into the separate state.  Under either aspect it can plead no Scripture warranty.  If the body is, as S. Paul seems to say, especially the seat of sin, we may well believe that with the deposition of the body all remains of sin are obliterated.  But while we thus reject the notion of a purgatorial purifying process, we may admit that in the intermediate state development in one direction or the other is possible.  Development is the law of every created being, as long as reason and conscience continue.  We never stand still, either morally or intellectually; our habits, whether for good or for evil, are becoming daily more fixed.  In the matter of sanctification progression is its life, “we all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory,” from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18).  There seems no reason why in the separate state, and indeed after the resurrection, the same law should not prevail.  The ways of Providence, here often mysterious; questions about the heathen, or infants, or the mass of the called but not chosen, so perplexing; antinomies in the scheme of salvation not yet reconciled – problems of this kind may occupy attention, and gradually approach solution, as the soul is prepared to receive such accessions of knowledge.  If the soul is to enjoy closer fellowship with Christ than was here possible, as S. Paul anticipates (Phil. 1:23), this can hardly be without a growth in love and purity.  Deficiencies may be supplied, weaknesses strengthened, and yet no sin enter.  In short, it would be contrary to analogy to suppose that either in the separate or the final state the soul should remain stationary, without progress in an upward direction; and a development in the opposite direction is also conceivable.  We see in the present life frequent instances of such changes for the worse; the conscience becoming more hardened, habits of sin more confirmed, alienation from the life of God more pronounced.  This, too, may go on in the separate state and afterwards.  But as regards the blessed dead, a difficulty may suggest itself which this seems the appropriate place to notice.  A bodiless spirit, it may be urged, is, as far as our experience extends, incapable of such moral development.  Our bodies are, at present, the means of communication with the outer world, of receiving and transmitting its impressions; if this outward vehicle were removed, and the soul reduced to feed upon itself without assimilating fresh materials, it might seem as if the essential conditions of improvement were absent.  But the question may be raised whether even in the separate state the soul is without a body of some kind.  It is, indeed, very difficult to form any conception of what a pure created spirit can be.  We have no aid from experience or analogy for solving the problem.  It would seem that a created spirit must occupy space, and have a local habitation; and if so, be subject to the conditions thereto belonging, such as circumscription and a whereabouts.  But this seems to imply some kind of material investiture, not only here but in the intermediate state.  And Scripture, to say the least, is not against such a supposition.  The difficult passage (2 Cor. 5:1–5) is susceptible of more than one interpretation, and among others it may be paraphrased thus: “We know” (are fully assured) “that if our earthly house of this tabernacle” (our present bodies) “were dissolved, we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  For in this” (tabernacle) “we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven; if” (that is, since) “we shall be found clothed, not naked.  For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.”  The main object of the Apostle’s hope and prayer, as thus expressed by him, is that he might be spared the necessity of dying, and that the spiritual body of the resurrection might, by the change spoken of in 1 Cor. 15:52, without death, be superinduced upon his mortal body.  If, however, it should be otherwise, if his earthly house were dissolved, still at the resurrection he would receive it again in a glorified state.  This is according to his usual teaching.  But, though obscurely, something further seems to be implied.  In the event of death we know, indeed, that we shall have (at the resurrection) “a house not made with hands”; but S. Paul calls this house “a superinduction” (επενδύσασθαι), a clothing upon a previously existing tabernacle, imperfect, indeed, as compared with that final change, but still real.  “Even in the event of death” (we may suppose him to say), “and before the general resurrection, we shall not be found absolutely naked.”  In either case, whether the Parousia finds us alive, or we shall be raised from the dead, a super-clothing will form the nature of the change, a superstructure on something already existing.  That is, in effect, some kind of tabernacle is provided for the soul in the separate state, so that it shall never be reduced to a bare spiritual essence. [The meaning and connection of 2 Cor. 5:3 have sorely exercised the commentators.  Usteri and Olshausen make it refer to the clothing of the believer with the righteousness of Christ – “If when He comes again we shall not be found destitute of this saving protection”; an exposition which has little to say for itself.  Delitzsch (who, however, holds that the soul after death has an “immaterial body”), thus translates: “We long to be clothed while yet living, although those who sleep will, at the Parousia, be in no inferior condition; they will, by being raised in new bodies, not be found naked,” which seems a truism, and to add nothing to the train of thought (Bib. Psych., vi. § 5).  So Reiche and others.  J. P. Lange and Martensen may be cited as supporting the view taken in the text.  The present έχομεν may, no doubt, be equivalent to the future considered as certain; and hence no stress can be laid on it to prove an intermediate body.]  In confirmation of this interpretation we may refer to the parable in which Dives recognizes Abraham and Lazarus; to the preaching of Christ to the spirits in prison, which is hardly conceivable without some kind of bodily organs in the latter; to the promise to the thief on the cross; to the white robes given to the martyrs (Rev. 6:11; and to the great multitude clothed in such robes and with palms in their hands (Ibid., 7:9).  To set down all this to poetic imagery is to push the principle of symbolism too far.  To the above we may add that “the place,” out of the “many mansions” in His Father’s house which Jesus is preparing for His people (John 14:2, 3), implies a literal alicubi of souls; and that there is nothing figurative in the statement that when He comes again, “them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring visibly with Him” [Will bring them with Christ from heaven, to receive at the resurrection the more perfect clothing of the spiritual body.] (1 Thess. 4:14).  The appearances of Samuel (1 Sam. 28:14) and of Moses and Elijah on the Mount, particularly of Moses, point in the same direction.

      Various speculations have been put forth respecting the nature of the intermediate body, if such may be supposed to exist.  Delitzsch speaks of an “immaterial corporeity,” with which the departed soul is invested.  The soul, he argues, is even in this life never without an image (ειδος, forma, effigies) of itself, conformable to its progress either in holiness or in sin.  The soul which has entertained and improved the grace of the Holy Spirit throws itself out into an immaterial and invisible image, which accompanies it beyond the grave, and is the pledge of the future glorified body.  Here it was kept by the body of sin and death, released therefrom it will exhibit its native properties.  But even here it occasionally breaks through the barrier of the flesh, as we see in Moses, when he came down from the Mount (Exod. 34:29), and Stephen, when he stood before the council (Acts 6:15).  It is by virtue of this counterpart of itself that the soul has the power, like the angels, of visibility; it enabled Samuel to appear (though not to Saul), and Moses to be seen on the mount of transfiguration.  Transferred at death to immediate proximity to Christ, the soul with this its effigies will be transformed more and more into Christ’s likeness, until it becomes ripe for the reception of the resurrection body.  In the case of the unconverted, the process is the reverse.  Their souls, too, possess an immaterial image, but defiled by sin it shines with no spiritual splendour, and in proportion as sinful habits gain the mastery, it deteriorates continually, until it is transferred to its own place in Hades. [Bib. Psych., vi. 5, 6.]  The theory is ingenious, but labours under difficulties.  An immaterial corporeity, if the latter word is to be taken in a real sense, seems a contradiction in terms.  The thinnest, most ethereal body must still possess the essential properties of body; but Delitzsch denies any such to his form, or ειδος, of the soul; such, therefore, is a mere reflection, as in a mirror, of itself.  If such a form belongs essentially to the soul, it must indeed accompany the soul into the separate state; but how can it be considered an investiture, or clothing, of the soul?  Martensen contents himself with observing that “A certain bodily clothing of the soul in the regions of the dead must be supposed,” without further explanation. [Dog., § 276.]  Others (e.g., Rinck [Zustand nach dem Tode, Kap. 4.]) made the nervous system the seat of the soul; which system quickened, in the case of Christians, by the Spirit of God, invests the soul after death with a suitable clothing, and prepares it gradually for the final change.  But the nervous system, equally with every other constituent of our present body, undergoes decomposition at death, and turns to dust.  These physical theories seem as unnecessary as they are fanciful.  Scripture, though it always designates the departed by the terms πνεύματα or ψυχαι, does not compel us to believe them wholly out of time or space.  A supernatural world of their own appears to surround them, from which they receive, and upon which they make, impressions; apparently they recognize, and are recognized by, those who had preceded them; the souls of the blessed enjoy closer intercourse than here below with Christ in His glorified humanity; from all which we may infer that they are not without a clothing, whatever notion of it we may form.  Now, if the resurrection body is, as all admit, no product of nature or of self-evolution, but of an immediate exercise of almighty power, why may not the same power – and as directly – provide departed souls with a material clothing, sufficient for present needs, though only a foretaste of, or preparation for, the more perfect vehicle of communication to be afterwards bestowed?  To return to the subject of this section: development thus becomes possible, but under conditions unlike those of the present life, with its external distractions.  “They rest from their labours” – it is a state of comparative repose – but “their works do follow them” (Rev. 14:13); the remembrance, if nothing more, of these works; but even this furnishing materials of a searching and purifying inward process.  And, thus they may even in the separate state grow in grace, and in ripeness for the full “redemption of the body” at the appearing of Christ. [The idea of Bengel, and some others, that the resurrection of departed saints is continually going on, as they become ripe for it, may be referred to in connection with this section.]

§ 106.  Probation

      The treatment of this question is so closely connected with the interpretation of the two well-known passages in the first Epistle of S. Peter (3:18–20, 4:6), that no apology is needed for prefixing an examination of them.  On the former some remarks have been offered in § 46; but singly, and in their connection, they demand a fuller inquiry.

      The Revised Version runs thus: “Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing” (3:18–20).  “Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.  For unto this end was the Gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” (4:6).  In the first draught of the third of our Thirty-nine Articles (1552) 1 Peter 3:19 was quoted as referring to the descent of Christ into hell (Hades): “His body lay in the sepulchre until His resurrection, but His ghost departing from Him was with the ghosts that were in prison, or hell; as the place of S. Peter doth testify.”  So much controversy had arisen respecting the meaning of the passage that in Parker’s revision allusion to it was omitted, and the bare fact retained, that “it is to be believed that Christ went down into hell” (Art. iii.).  The controversy turned mainly on the question whether the fact mentioned by S. Peter occurred previously or subsequently to the incarnation; whether the Apostle refers to the preaching of Noah (“a preacher of righteousness,” 2 Pet. 2:5), to his contemporaries, during the hundred and twenty years while the ark was a preparing; or to a preaching of Christ Himself to the dwellers in Hades, either during the three days’ sojourn in that separate state, or on some other occasion.  The former interpretation is supported by the authority of Bishop Pearson, and of some distinguished names abroad, such as Von Hofmann (Schriftbeweis); the latter by Bishop Horsley, and the majority of modern commentators. [        Archbishop Leighton is sometimes cited as favouring the Noachitic interpretation; it has been overlooked that in a note on the passage he abandons his former opinion: “Thus I then thought, but do now apprehend another sense as probable if not more, even that rejected by most interpreters, viz., the mission of the Spirit and preaching of the Gospel by it, after Christ’s resurrection.”]  The reasons for it seem decisive.  The subject of the chapter throughout is Christ the incarnate Son, Christ in His whole person; it is the same Christ who suffered for our sins that is said to be quickened in spirit, and to have preached to the spirits.  We know that holy men of God – Noah among others – spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost; but we never read that Christ in His whole Person spoke through them, nor could it have been so; and to make S. Peter affirm this is not only to beg the question, but to antedate the incarnation.  It may be urged that if Noah preached by the Holy Ghost, he preached virtually by Christ, since the second and third Persons of the Holy Trinity are, as regards the Godhead, one; but, in fact, it is more than doubtful whether by the word “spirit” (τ? πνεύματι) in the passage we are to understand the Holy Spirit.  Bishop Middleton’s canon [“I have had occasion to signify (see on Rom. 8:13) that there is no indisputable instance in the New Testament in which anything is said to have been done or suffered by the Holy Spirit, where πνευμα, whether in the genitive or the dative case, is not governed by some preposition.”  Doctrine of Greek Art, 1 Pet. 3.  Nevertheless a doubt may exist whether Rom. 7:13 is not an exception to the rule.] may admit of exceptions, but on the whole it is in accordance with the usage of Scripture.  But further: it is not the usage of Scripture to attribute the resurrection of our Lord (ζωοποιηθεις being taken in its natural sense) to the Holy Spirit; but occasionally to Christ Himself (“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”), more commonly to the Father (Acts 13:33, Ephes. 1:20).  If εκήρυξεν, too, is to retain its usual meaning, it will follow that Noah was commissioned not only to warn the Antediluvians of their impending danger, but to disclose to them the plan of salvation by Christ; that is, that Noah and his contemporaries enjoyed a privilege which was denied to Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets who “searched diligently what the Spirit of Christ that was in them did signify when it testified the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow” (1 Pet. 1:10); and that divine revelation was not progressive, but retrograde, the knowledge vouchsafed to the world before the flood being withdrawn from the world after the flood.  And, to repeat what was remarked in § 46, the word rendered “went” (πορευθεις) is no expletive, as when we say, he went and did or said so and so, but significant; He took His departure, or went on a journey, which can hardly be understood except of a personal ministration of the Saviour Himself. [Comp. ver. 22.  ός εστιν εν δεξια του Θεου. πορευθεις εις ουρανον]  Might we connect ποτε with εκήρυξεν, “he preached once upon a time in the days of Noah,” it might furnish a ground for the Noachitic interpretation; but in fact it belongs to απειθήσασι, “who once upon a time were disobedient”; which removes any remaining doubt on the subject.

      The transaction then occurred between the death and the resurrection of Christ; but when, during this interval, is again matter of debate.  The usual supposition is that it took place during the reposing of Christ’s body in the grave, His soul preaching in Hades.  There as a spirit He preached to spirits; πνεύματι πνεύμασι, spiritu spiritibus, congruens sermo, as Bengal remarks; and if we may assume that some kind of bodily investiture belongs to the soul in the separate state (see § 105) this interpretation is tenable; but it is hardly consistent with the natural meaning of the terms used.  Christ is said to have been θανατωθεις σαρκι, put to death in the flesh, that is the body of His humiliation, the body which could suffer and die; but to have been ζωοποιηθεις πνεύματι, literally restored to life, or raised again, in spirit; thus the parallelism is preserved, which is not the case with any other mode of interpretation.  As regards the meaning of ζωοποιηθεις, the word ζωοποιέω occurs eleven times in the New Testament, [John 5:21, 6:63; Rom. 4:17, 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:22, 36, 45; 2 Cor. 3:6, Gal. 3:21, 1 Tim, 6:13, 1 Pet. 3:18.] including the passage before us, and in none of them can it be said to have any other meaning than that of restoration to life from the dead, whether natural or spiritual death.  It is impossible, of course, for those who hold that the preaching to the spirits took place between Christ’s death and His resurrection to understand the word in its usual sense; and accordingly various other meanings have been assigned to it, none of which is satisfactory.  Thus it has been translated “preserved in life,” which implies that apart from a special exercise of Divine power Christ’s soul would have shared the death of His body; which, it is presumed, few will maintain.  By others (e.g., Bishop Wordsworth) it is supposed that Christ’s soul being liberated from the body acquired increased active powers, e.g., of locomotion; an idea not only opposed to Scripture, but of doubtful tendency as betraying a leaning to Gnosticism.  Nowhere in Scripture is it affirmed to be a gain to be free from the body; nowhere is the body represented (as the Gnostics held) as a cage from which the imprisoned soul longs to be free; on the contrary, it is for the redemption of the body, its resurrection or its change, that Christians are said to be waiting (Rom. 8:23).  A modification of this sense is more tolerable.  If we understand by πνεύματι, the Divine nature, as it seems to signify in Rom. 1:4, “quickened in spirit” may mean that the soul of Christ was, by virtue of its continued union with Deity, endued with extraordinary power, so, e.g., as to be able to pass over the gulf which no mere human soul could do (Luke 16:26), and preach to the antediluvians.  But this is still a departure from the usual signification of ζωοποιέω.  We are thus led to place the transaction not before but after the resurrection; whether directly after that great event, or at some other time during the forty days sojourn on earth.  It only remains to discover a fitting sense for πνεύματι.  It is evidently contrasted with σαρκι, and since that means a body, the predominant element of which was σαρξ (not σωμα), a body subject to infirmity, why may not πνεύματι signify a body the predominant element of which is πνευμα?  There is, S. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 14:44, a σωμα πνευματικον; and in the next verse Christ in His whole person is called πνευμα (ο έσχατος Αδαμ εις πνευμα ζωοποιουν); πνευμα so far as the predominant quality of His glorified body is spiritual.  And such may be the signification of the term in the clause of the series 1 Tim. 3:16, εδικαιώθη εν πνεύματι.  “God was manifest in the flesh” (the body of humiliation); “was justified” (perceived to be what He claimed to be) “in spirit” (in His risen body); “was seen” (in this latter body) “by angels, etc.”  If this meaning be allowed, the whole passage runs smoothly; Christ died in the flesh, but was raised again in a spiritual body; in which body He took a journey to Hades, and preached there.

      The passage in the next chapter is too explicit to need much comment.  Christ, the Apostle says (ver. 6), is ready to judge both the quick and the dead; for with this end the Gospel was preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.  This can hardly refer, as some have held, [Leighton, Commentary.] to departed Christians who, while alive, had heard and received the Gospel, for there would then be no contrast between “the living” and “the dead”; these Christians might be called both living and dead, living at one time, dead at another.  Nor can we understand by “the dead” the spiritually dead, for the living who had been converted and had died in Christ were at one time spiritually dead, and thus again there would be no contrast.  The passage seems to refer back to chap. 3:19, and it adds the reason of the preaching of Christ to the souls in Hades.  Christ is to judge all men, and that there may be material for the judgment, the Gospel must be proposed to all men for acceptance, either in this life or afterwards; the judgment will turn on their attitude towards Christ thus revealed to them.  Now since the vast majority of the human race depart this life without having even heard of a Saviour, provision, the Apostle seems to say, is made in the intermediate state to redress this disadvantage.  To a certain class of such sinners, the antediluvians, Christ Himself preached; whether He continues this personal ministration or delegates it to others we are not told.  Nor does it appear why the antediluvians should be specially mentioned above other sinners.  Perhaps to the Apostle’s mind the human race was divided into two portions by the catastrophe of the flood.  Those who lived after it lived under a temporal covenant of mercy of which the rainbow was the sign; to rectify this inequality may have been the reason why the antediluvians were favoured by a message of mercy from Christ Himself.

      But was it a message of mercy?  The older Lutheran theologians agree on the meaning of ζωοποιηθεις, but they hold that the object of Christ’s preaching was to confirm the condemnation of the antediluvians.  But until the close of all things the work of Christ must be presumed to be a work of mercy, and the word εκήρυξεν is generally employed for proclaiming the Gospel.  1 Peter 4:6 is express to the point.  “The Gospel was, and is, preached to the dead, in order that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”  It is obvious that the former clause is not a principal but a subsidiary one; for the Gospel is never preached that men may die.  The sense is: they were preached to, in order that, although they had suffered death, the penalty of sin, after the lot and fashion of all men, yet they might live to God spiritually.  As to the result of the preaching nothing is revealed.

      To sum up: Christ after His resurrection, that is, in His spiritual body, proceeded on an errand of mercy to Hades, the place where impenitent sinners who lived before the flood were confined, and preached the Gospel to them.  He showed Himself in His resurrection body as the Lord of life to “things in heaven,” the angels (1 Tim. 3:16); to “things on earth,” His disciples during the forty days; and to “things under the earth,” the shades below (Phil. 2:10).  Thus He proved that no barriers were too strong for Him to overcome, that He had “the keys of hell and death” to open and shut, to enter and depart as it pleased Him, and that Satan was a conquered foe.  That the disembodied soul of Christ, during the three days, went to the place of torment in Hades is an unauthorized conjecture.  But how it was occupied in that interval we are not told explicitly, but we may form a conjecture (see § 107).

      And now the question remains, How do these passages of S. Peter bear upon a future probation?  That the event stands alone on the page of Scripture; that we have no intimation of its ever having been repeated; that the passages are capable of another interpretation; all this must be admitted, and it follows that positive assertions on the subject are out of place.  If, however, the Noachitic interpretation is, for the reasons given, hardly tenable, we have before us a revelation of great importance and significance.  It is the chief one of the very few instances in which a corner of the veil which hides the unseen world from our view is lifted, and a glimpse beyond vouchsafed.  To have this veil wholly drawn aside would neither be profitable nor safe for us.  What we have to do here is to make use of our privileges, and fulfill our stewardship; and the scenes beyond the grave, if fully disclosed, might be so overpowering as to indispose (as in the case of the Thessalonians) to the ordinary duties of life; to say nothing of the superstitious or worse uses to which the information might be put.  The fact, however, remains that on one occasion Christ Himself preached, with a salutary aim, to souls in Hades formerly impenitent; that is, that in this instance at least probation did not end with this life.  The universal proposition, therefore, that it does so end in all cases is met at once by this exception; and equally so the attempt to elevate this opinion into an article of faith.  If, indeed, unequivocal testimony of Scripture to that effect could be produced, it would settle the question, and we should have to conclude that the passages of S. Peter must be otherwise explained.  But this testimony is not forthcoming.  It will not be pretended that such texts as “where the tree falleth, there it shall be” (Eccles. 11:3) have any bearing on the question.  Our Lord, in Matt. 12:32, speaks of a sin “which shall not be forgiven either in this aeon, or in that which is to come.”  What this sin is has been matter of debate from ancient times but without entering into that question, we may observe that on the face of it the passage extends the possibility of forgiveness beyond the present life.  The Jews, as is well known, commonly called the time before the coming of Messiah αιων ουτος, and that after αιων μέλλων, both limited by the present life; but as Christ had actually introduced this latter aeon by His coming, His words in Matt. 12:32 refer to a still future aeon, beyond this life; and if so they seem to imply the possibility of forgiveness in it.  The general impression which the parable of Dives and Lazarus conveys is not that of final separation.  The term son (τέκνον), used by Abraham, is not consistent with such an idea ; and, in fact, the sufferings of Dives appear to have broken up the crust of his selfishness, and wrought some improvement in his state of mind.  There is, no doubt, a “great gulf” between Abraham’s bosom and the Hades in which the rich man found himself; impassable, indeed, to all but Christ, who appears to have traversed it, and if once, why not again?  S. Paul tells us that we must all appear before the judgment seat, to receive the things done in the body (2 Cor. 5:10); no doubt the things done in the body will come into judgment on that day, but so may what has been done or left undone in the intermediate state.  It is quite in the style of Scripture to pass over this latter in silence.  “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. ix. 27); a judgment, beyond doubt, awaits all men immediately after death, but that this is the judgment is another question.  In truth, however, this passage refers to the final judgment, as appears from the next verse: “Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.”  Men die once, judgment awaits all at the Parousia; again the intermediate state is passed over in silence.  “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap” (Gal. 6:7); the principle is unquestionable, but it is to be observed that the warning here, as all through the Epistles, is addressed to those supposed to be real Christians, and even real Christians need to be reminded that the measure of their future reward depends on the present discharge of their stewardship.

      Scripture, then, does not compel us to believe that all probation ends with the present life; and, therefore, does not compel us to abandon the natural interpretation of the passages of S. Peter.  They stand alone, and much is wanting to fill up the outline.  We cannot say that such a ministration of the Word, whether by Christ Himself or by His ambassadors, is going on in Hades; we cannot tell whether any of those to whom Christ preached repented.  But neither are we forbidden to infer that for the heathen who never enjoyed the privilege of hearing the Gospel; and even for the multitudes in Christian countries who through the fault of parents or the Church more than through their own have grown up in practical heathenism; some means may in the intermediate state be provided for bringing the question directly to them, whether they will receive or reject the salvation which, as we are told, is intended for all men.  And the admonition still remains in full force, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).  No one can tell for certain that if he here receives the grace of God in vain, another opportunity will be vouchsafed to him.

§ 107.  Locality

      Scripture employs a variety of terms to describe the locality, or the state considered as a locality, of the departed; such as Scheol [Commonly derived from שָׁאַל, to demand, orcus rapax; but the more probable etymology is from an ancient verb, signifying to be hollow.  Scheol was supposed to be a cavity or abyss (Rom. 10:7), either under the earth – the earth being supposed to be a plane (Ps. 63:9), whence the expressions “the nether parts of the earth” (Ezek. 31:18), τα κατώτερα της γης (Ephes. 4:9) – or in the centre of the earth, καταχθονίων (Phil. 2:10).] or Hades, Abraham’s bosom, paradise, heaven, Gehenna.  In the earlier books of the Old Testament Scheol signifies the kingdom of the dead, the common abode to which, after death, both good and bad depart. [Samuel, recalled from the dead at Saul’s request, tells the king, “Tomorrow thou and thy sons shall be with me” (in Scheol) (1 Sam. 28:19).]  Thus Jacob expected to go down mourning into Scheol, to be with his son Joseph (Gen. 37:35); and that his gray hairs would be brought down with sorrow into Scheol (42:38).  The Authorized Version renders the word “Scheol” by the grave; but Jacob, who imagined that Joseph was torn in pieces by a wild beast, could not have hoped to be buried in the same sepulchre with his son.  The same remark applies to the promise to Abraham that he should go “to his fathers in peace,” which cannot mean that he should be buried in the grave of his ancestors in Ur of the Chaldees, for in fact he was buried in Canaan in the cave of Machpelah.  To “go to his fathers,” to be “gathered to his people,” means to join them in Scheol, where they were supposed to form a kind of community.  The gloomy views which prevailed on the nature of Scheol, and the hope which gradually dawned on believers of deliverance from it, have already been described (§ 104).  We may ask whether these gloomy views were merely subjective, that is, to the apprehension of the Old Testament saints, or whether they had a foundation in fact.  It has been held by some that never since the promise of a Saviour was given did the souls of believers, even under the Old Testament, pass into Scheol as the common receptacle of good and bad, but into another place, Abraham’s bosom or paradise; and this either a division of Hades or some other locality we know not where.  There they remained in comparative repose, until the resurrection of Christ opened the way to a higher stage of bliss, “In My Father’s house are many mansions.”  As regards a division of Scheol into two parts, there is no trace of it in the Old Testament; such prophecies as that of Daniel (c. 12) refer not to the intermediate state, but to that subsequent to the resurrection.  The hope of the old fathers was not to find a paradise in Scheol, but to be delivered from it; they never speak of it or any part of it, otherwise than as a valley of the shadow of death, to be dreaded, not desired.  The parable in Luke (16:22) describes Lazarus as carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom, but it does not make this latter a division of Hades, though it does establish a separation of the good and the bad, and so far is in advance of the Old Testament.  We conclude, then, that the mournful anticipations of the ancients, as regards the separate state, were founded on fact; that their condition in Scheol, though in some respects superior to that on earth, was in others inferior: superior in that they were in the safe keeping of God, and enjoyed an increased measure of the divine presence; inferior in that it was a place of gloom and inactivity, of hope rather than of fruition.  All this was changed at the coming of the Saviour.  His birth was, we cannot doubt, announced to the old fathers in Hades, and probably by the same ministration of angels which was employed to make it known to the shepherds of Bethlehem; and the intelligence which transformed a promise into a fact must have essentially affected their state if not their locality; inspiring them with a joy to which they had hitherto been strangers.  It was probably on this occasion that Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ, saw it and was glad (John 8:56).  No record of such a revelation is found in the history of Abraham while on earth; if such there was, it was suffered to pass into oblivion.  But if the birth of Christ was made known to the patriarch, and to his spiritual seed, in Hades, the reference of our Lord is accounted for; and the circumstance fits in well with the progressive character of revelation.  Notwithstanding this communication the old believers remained in Hades, because redemption had not yet been accomplished, nor the veil which hid the most holy place rent asunder.  But after the resurrection of Christ, the atonement having been effected, another change is visible.  Departed saints are no longer in Hades at all, but with the ascended Saviour in heaven itself, or the vestibule of it; the paradise to which S. Paul w caught up, and heard words not allowed to man to utter (2 Cor. 12:4). [The Jews in the time of Christ are said to have held a twofold paradise; one subterranean, to which the souls of men of average piety were at death translated; the other above the heavens, reserved for eminent saints.]  Thus Stephen, at the approach of death, sees the glory of God in heaven and Jesus there, and commends his spirit to the Saviour, which implies that he hoped on his departure to enjoy the most intimate communion with that Saviour.  “Ye are come,” we read in Heb. 12:22–24 (even in this life, and surely hereafter), “to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, whose names are written (or enrolled) in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.”  Not merely do Christians after their departure hence individually live to God, but they are constituted into a polity, or community, the heavenly Jerusalem, the spiritual counterpart of the earthly one.  “Our commonwealth,” S. Paul says, “is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20).  Similar are the visions of the Apocalypse.  In chap. 6:9–11, the souls of the martyrs are represented as “under the altar,” the altar, it is true, of burnt offering (θυσιαστήριον) in the outer court of the temple, but still the place of God’s special presence; not in Hades.  In chap. 7 not merely the martyrs, but the great multitude of all nations, who had come out of great tribulation and been faithful unto death, stand before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple.  If it be objected that these souls of the blessed cannot be in the very place in which Christ is, since they had not, like Him, risen from the dead, be it so; the paradise of disembodied spirits may be on the confines of the holy of holies, and yet not actually within it (“In My Father’s house are many mansions”); the Saviour may be with them and they with Him, in the sense of His appearing amongst them from time to time, and not infrequently, but still not in such continued intercourse as will be after their resurrection.  So far their condition may be imperfect, but in Hades, or any division of it, they are not.

      Does Scripture throw any light on this change of locality as regards the blessed dead?  Whatever we suppose to have occasioned it must be looked for between the death and the ascension of Christ.  The Church has ever believed that His soul went to Hades, and so it is stated in the earliest creed.  Made sin for us, it was necessary that He should share in the common lot of sinful man, even to this lowest point of humiliation.  We know, too, that His soul was not left there.  But how long He remained in Hades is not specified, either in Scripture or the creed.  We have already seen reason to believe that the preaching to the spirits in prison did not occur in His disembodied state, but after His resurrection.  We are at liberty, then, to suppose, with many of the Fathers and the Reformers, that He merely appeared in Hades, and then left it, carrying with Him the souls of the ancient believers, including that of the thief, to the paradise just described.  Some such triumphant rescue seems to be indicated in Ps. 68:18, a passage which is applied by S. Paul to Christ (Ephes. 4:8).  Literally, it is “Thou hast led captive Thy captives,” [αιχμαλωσίαν in the LXX version, the abstract for the concrete, as in Judg. 5:12: “Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive.”] and we may understand it either as “Thou hast led captive thine (and Thy Church’s) enemies” (Satan and Hades), [Comp. Col. 2:15: “Having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (the cross).] or “Thou hast delivered Thy saints” in Hades from the bondage in which they were held.  Either way interpreted, the passage favours the notion of a public emptying of Hades of its pious occupants, under the conduct of their Redeemer, not yet risen, indeed, but conqueror over their spiritual enemies.  After conducting them to the heavenly paradise, and remaining with them during His disembodied state (disembodied as compared with the resurrection body), He rose from the dead.  Between His resurrection and ascension, He paid in His whole person, the visit to Hades recorded in 1 Peter 3:18; passed the gulf which none but He could pass; and preached to the antediluvians confined there.

      The question may be asked, Does Scheol, or Hades, exist now?  If it was emptied by Christ of the Old Testament saints, and the New Testament saints, on their departure, never go to Hades at all but straight to the heavenly paradise, what inhabitants can Hades now have?  If the preaching of Christ produced a salutary effect on some there (on which Scripture is silent), they, like the thief, would pass from it into paradise; if the offers of mercy were rejected by the majority (only too possible), these would remain in Hades, and in no state or place of enjoyment.  Those of the antediluvian sinners who continued impenitent after the preaching of Christ would receive the reward of their former sins, and especially of this their impenitence, in some place of “torment,” until, if ever, suffering had wrought a salutary change.  By parity of reasoning, those who in this life had the Gospel distinctly proposed to them, and as distinctly rejected it, must be supposed to pass at death into Hades, and into some state of retribution, until, if ever, they are brought to a better frame of mind.  There remains the vast mass of the heathen to whom Christ never was preached.  Extra Christum nulla salus; properly understood, the saying is true; but by the older theologians, both before and after the Reformation, it was, like its mediaeval equivalent, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, applied to establish harsh conclusions.  These theologians, as a rule, ignored any intermediate state, and taught that eternal life and eternal punishment, as the case might be, followed at once upon death; [Piorum animas statim, postquam a corporibus sunt separatae, essentialem beatitudinem consequi; impiorum vero animas damnationem suam subire; credimus.  Baier, Comp., P. i., c. 8, § 16.] and, since extra Christum nulla salus, the heathen, as a body, were consigned to endless perdition. [To justify their decision, they maintained that, in fact, the Gospel was preached to all the heathen by the Apostles, and pleaded S. Paul’s words: “Have they not heard?  Yea, verily their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world” (Rom. 10:18); e.g., to North America and Australia!]  With the recognition that an intermediate state is really an intermediate one, [The author of “Scripture Revelations,” etc. (Archbishop Whately), justly remarks that if every individual’s destiny is determined at death, the day of judgment becomes merely the publication of a sentence already pronounced.  L. iv.] milder views have prevailed.  The heathen to whom Christ was never made known do not, indeed, at death, pass into paradise, but into Hades; but the very notion of Hades is that it is not a final state; and if the preaching of Christ may be regarded as a specimen of what is going on there, some ministration of the word, by means unknown to us, may still be addressed to heathen souls in the intermediate state: with various result, it is true; the hypothesis by no means involves a universal restitution.  For this ministration will find differences of receptivity in Hades analogous to what we see in the present life and in Christian countries.  Some heathens, as S. Paul intimates, endeavoured to live up to the light which they possessed, and some gave themselves “over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:28).  What a difference between a Scipio or a Marcus Aurelius and a Nero!  But to all, we may hope, salvation will, in some way, be offered before the final judgment.  Whether many or few have accepted the offer the last day alone will disclose.

Second Advent

      The Second Advent of Christ, not death, not the intermediate state, is throughout the New Testament the great object of Christian expectation.  To wait for the coming of Christ, “that blessed hope, the appearing of our great God and Saviour” (1 Cor. 1:7; Tit. 2:13), sums up the proper attitude of the Church, whether militant on earth, or triumphant in paradise.  For it will not only be a manifestation of Christ’s essential glory, but will usher in events of surpassing moment to all beings, rational and irrational.  It will bring the history of redemption to a close, and finally fix every man’s destiny.

      In Old Testament prophecy the first and second advents are not clearly distinguished.  A day of the Lord is announced, one of vengeance on His enemies and of redemption to Israel; the glory of the Lord shall arise on Zion, and the Gentiles share in its brightness; a king shall reign in righteousness, and a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; on Mount Zion the Lord will provide a feast for all people; He will swallow up death in victory, and wipe away tears from all faces; then shall it be said, This is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save us (Isa. 13, 60, 32, 35, 25).  All nature is to share in the blessing.  A new heaven and a new earth will take the place of the old (Isa. 65:17); the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, rapine and destruction shall cease; and righteousness and peace prevail over the world as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 11).  It is obvious that these glowing descriptions are applicable both to the first and to the second advent, the two events occupying, in ancient prophecy, the same line of vision.  In the New Testament they fall into their proper places, the one a fact, the other an expectation; the one the actual introduction, the other the completion of redemption.

      The testimony of Christ in the Gospels, except on one point, is explicit.  “The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels” (Matt. 16:27); but as regards the precise time, “of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32).  The Deity in Christ, by an act of condescension to our weakness, emptied itself of this knowledge in the person of the incarnate Son, the Kenosis of Phil. 2:6, 7.  When He does come, it will be to hold a final assize, and to render to every man according to his works (Matt. 25:31–46).  His coming will be unexpected as “a thief in the night,” yet not without preliminary signs and warnings, which it is the duty of the Church carefully to note.  Such are: the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world (Matt. 24:14); the appearance of false Christs and false prophets (Ibid., 24); the rise of Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3); great persecution of the Church (Matt. 24:21); an extensive apostasy (Ibid., 12); signs and wonders not of heavenly origin (2 Thess. 2:9); convulsions, both in the political and the natural world, of unusual severity (Matt. 24:7); the final conflict, ending with the destruction of Antichrist and his followers (2 Thess. 1:7–10).  “When these things come to pass, lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.”  The nature of these signs explains why the Second Advent has sometimes been prematurely expected, and sometimes lost sight of as an object of Christian hope.  The history of the Church abounds with manifestations of evil and tribulation which have been thought to portend, each in its turn, the speedy appearance of Christ, to the disappointment of the pious but sanguine observers.  Each age, in its interpretation of passing events, needs the warning of S. Paul to the Thessalonians (2 Thess. 2).  On the other hand, the postponement of the Advent has sometimes produced skeptical doubts on the subject: “Where is the promise of His coming? for all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4).  In the nature of the signs predicted (if we except the “lying wonders” of the last time) there is nothing unusual; what will make them harbingers of the Parousia is the peculiar form which they will assume immediately before the event, and of which former occasions furnished no example.  In the great discourse of Christ (Matt. 24), recorded by the three Evangelists, His Second Coming is closely connected with the impending judgment on Jerusalem; recalling to mind that feature of ancient prophecy above mentioned, the combination of proximate and remote events in the same prediction.  That the Apostles did not, at the time, distinguish between these two events is plain from their request, “Tell us when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?”  (ver. 3); but in the Epistles the events no longer appear in connection, although the coming of Christ is spoken of as possibly at hand (see on this point § 104).  There is a coming of Christ now under the form of visitation, as in the case of Jerusalem, and in the warnings addressed to the seven churches of Asia (Apoc. 2–3); there was a coming of Christ when His divine Vicar, the Holy Ghost, came down on the Church on the Day of Pentecost; there will be a coming to judgment.  The first and the last have a certain resemblance to each other, which may be the reason why in the discourse (Matt. 24) the lines of demarcation are not strictly drawn.  It would be foreign to the province of dogmatic theology to discuss all the matters connected with the Second Advent; in fact, it would involve an exposition of the Apocalypse.  Only some salient points can be noticed.

§ 108.  Chiliasm

      By this term is denoted the opinion, extensively prevalent in the second and third centuries of our era, and from time to time revived in the Church, that the Advent of Christ will be followed by a millennium, lasting (as the name imports) a thousand years, the main features of which will be: the personal reign of Christ on earth during that time, and a resurrection, previously to the general one, of the just, who will reign with Christ; a binding of Satan, and the enjoyment by the Church of a measure of spiritual and temporal felicity beyond anything yet experienced; the conversion of the Jews as a nation, and their restoration to the promised land; the release of Satan at the expiration of the thousand years; a fresh and terrible outbreak of Satanic agency; and at the moment when things are at their worst, and Satan and his host are arrayed against Christ and His Church, the appearance of the Saviour, a victory over the powers of evil, and the final judgment.  Subordinate differences of view may be found in different writers on the subject, but the above would probably be accepted as a correct general description of Chiliasm.  What all agree in is, that the Second Advent will be a pre-millennial one – introducing, not following, the millennium; and, further, that this blissful period will be the result, net of the ordinary development of Christianity as we see it, but of some extraordinary interposition from heaven.

      Chiliasm, even in its most pronounced forms, may appeal to antiquity.  In the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas an analogy is drawn between the six days of creation ending in the day of sabbatical rest and the six thousand years during which the Church is to be militant, to be succeeded by the corresponding spiritual Sabbath of the millennium; one thousand years being in God’s sight but a day, According to Eusebius (Hist. iii. 28), Cerinthus taught that the kingdom of heaven would be established on earth, with Jerusalem as its centre, and that the millennium would consist in an unlimited indulgence of sensual delights.  This noxious element has appeared more than once in the history of the doctrine, and notably at the time of the Reformation among the Anabaptists and other enthusiasts; not without a leaning to dangerous political theories, such as the community of goods (see our Article xxviii.).  It led both branches of the Protestant Church formally to repudiate Chiliasm, [Conf. Augs., P. i., 18.  Conf. Helv. (Expos. simp.), c. xi.] without distinguishing between the doctrine itself and the travesty of it by carnally minded persons.  The principal Protestant theologians of the seventeenth century summarily dismiss it as a dream.  To return to earlier history, Justin Martyr, admitting that some rejected the tenet, professes himself as favourable to it.  Irenaeus tells us that Papias, a disciple of S. John, and contemporary with Polycarp, was an advocate of pre-millenarianism; and that he himself had been induced to adopt it by certain presbyters who professed to have seen that apostle. [Adv. haer., v., c. 33.]  Tertullian, while repudiating the sensual fancies of Cerinthus, intimates that, at least in its purer form, Chiliasm was the prevalent doctrine in his time, not excepting his friends the Montanists, who might have been supposed unfriendly to it. [Adv. Mar., c. 24.]  It may, then, be assumed that during the first three centuries, in one form or another, the pre-millennial Advent, with the reign of the saints on earth for a thousand years, in the enjoyment of bliss only short of that of heaven itself, was the general expectation of Christians.  How far it found its way into the Church, through the Jewish converts, is uncertain; but it is not improbable that the latter did not, with their conversion, renounce the views touching the kingdom of Messiah in which they had been nurtured, and that the Gentile Christians, in order to smooth the path for such conversions, either avoided the subject or adopted the Jewish interpretation of prophecy.  The first decided opposition came, as might be expected, from the school of Alexandria.  To Origen, with his platonic notions respecting the evil of matter, the idea of a physical millennium was very distasteful.  His writings against it produced some ferment in Egypt, which was with difficulty allayed by Dionysius of Alexandria, who, though himself a disciple of Origen, by his prudent management reconciled the disputants.  About the middle of the fourth century Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, wrote against Dionysius, and with this the controversy in the East seems to have come to a close.  In the West the popular belief held its ground, and was defended by Lactantius, and Victorinus bishop of Pettau.  But Augustine gave it its death blow.  He avows that he himself at one time had believed in a millennium, but had abandoned it for the allegorical interpretation of Apoc. 20:1–6, which he proceeds to explain at length.  The present Christian dispensation is the millennium; the first resurrection is the spiritual one of which S. Paul speaks (Rom. 6:4); the binding of Satan means that by Divine grace souls are rescued from his dominion. [De civit. Dei, xx. 7–9.]  In the Middle Ages the temporal supremacy of the Church assisted to divert the thoughts of Christians from a future reigning with Christ on earth.  Already the Church enjoyed this privilege: kings had become her nursing fathers; Antichrists had confessed themselves vanquished; the saints reigned in a veritable millennium.  It is only in recent times that interest in the subject has again revived.  Of this England and Germany share between them the credit.  Joseph Mede and J. A. Bengel, in their respective countries, were the founders of the modern pre-millenarian schools, which, agreeing in the fundamental point of a millennium yet to come and on earth, differ widely in their descriptions of it, particularly on the question whether, along with the restoration of the Jews to Canaan and their hegemony over other nations, the Jewish sacrificial institute and temple services are to be revived in Jerusalem.

      As regards Scripture evidence, the weak point of Chiliasm is that Old Testament prophecy and the Apocalypse, confessedly symbolical in character, are the foundations on which it chiefly rests.  Neither in the discourses of Christ nor in the Apostolic epistles is any clear trace of it to be found.  The tares and the wheat, we are told, are to grow together until the harvest, and no separation is to be made until that time comes (Matt. 13:39–40), that is, until the end of the world.  But a personal reign of Christ on earth with His risen saints seems to imply a separation before the end arrives.  The second Advent is apparently followed at once by the judgment (Matt. 25:31), but a millennium interposes 1,000 years between the two.  In 1 Thess. 4:16 the contrast is between the departed and the quick at the advent, not between the resurrection of the just and that of the rest.  Such passages as “I appoint unto you” (the Apostles) “a kingdom as My Father hath appointed unto Me: that ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29, 30); or “I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29); can hardly, in the absence of others more explicit, sustain the theories that have been built upon them.  It is otherwise with Apoc. 20:1–6, which, indeed, is the stronghold of Chiliasm, and it must be admitted that, except on some such hypothesis, the passage is not an easy one to explain.  The event predicted is to take place after the destruction of “the beast” and “the false prophet” (chap. 19:20), that is, Antichrist and his host, and therefore cannot be referred to any past epoch in the history of the Church, still less, with Augustine, to the introduction of Christianity.  The period of 1,000 years may indeed signify only any complete number, but that by “the first resurrection” is meant (according to Augustine) regeneration by the Holy Spirit, can hardly be reconciled with the statement that “the rest of the dead lived not again till the 1,000 years were accomplished” (v. 5).  Are these dead subsequently raised to be understood as merely regenerated?  If this is inadmissible, and their resurrection is to be taken literally, why not the former?  As regards the silence of the earlier Scriptures on the subject, it may be contended that revelation is progressive, and that it may have been reserved for the last book of the Canon (according to the usual date) to furnish this addition to our knowledge; and for the extravagant or sensual pictures of it soberer interpreters may disclaim responsibility, every doctrine of Scripture, it may be urged, is liable to such perversions.  Thus much may be said for the literal interpretation of the Apocalyptic passage in the main; but attempts to fix the times of the great events which it describes have so often proved themselves erroneous that we may well abstain from such calculations.  Nitzsch well observes, “The prophecy of Scripture is an inspired vision and description of the future of the kingdom of God, always indeed occasioned by contemporary events of history, but reaching in a perspective, more or less shortened, to the consummation of the plan of redemption.”  The evidence of a Divine providence in temporal history, and the bearing of the latter on the fulfillment of the promise (Gen. 3:15), not literal exactness in detail, are its proper subjects.  Hence it expounds history only in its leading features, and so far as it illustrates fundamental spiritual truths; analogy and symbolism are its appropriate methods of expression.  Chronology it does not deal with; the prophetical times are symbolical.  The prophets themselves, in their most important prophecies, were ignorant of the times when these things should be (1 Pet. 1:11).” [System der christlichen Lehre, § 35.]

      It will be wise, then, not to attempt to expound the vision of Apoc. 20:1–6 too literally, either as regards the duration, or the details, of the state of things therein described.  Nevertheless, the symbolism of Scripture is generally that of a fact, not of an idea; and this rule applies here.  We may not be able to distinguish accurately between symbol and fact, or, in view of the parables which predict a mixed state of good and bad until the end, to understand how the wheat can, before that end comes, be gathered into a garner; or how such a serious apostasy as is described in 2 Thess. 2 can be supposed to take place after the millennium; “the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power” it is not for us to know; still, the vision must be intended for our instruction.  It seems to justify a general expectation that there awaits the Church – after its long and painful history, culminating in a special crisis of tribulation – a season of spiritual revival, of expansion of its boundaries, of victory over the powers of evil, such as has not been experienced since the Pentecostal effusion, and surpassing even that.  And, moreover, that this revival will take place on earth, and before the final end arrives.  If Chiliasm did nothing more than direct our attention to this prospect, it would still deserve a niche in what may be called the esoteric department of revelation.  Christians are bound to inquire into the meaning of such passages as Apoc. 21:1–6, even if the result of the examination should never pass the bounds of probability.

§ 109.  Resurrection of the Body

      The intermediate state is an imperfect one, among other reasons especially for this: that, however the soul in that state may not be wholly “unclothed” yet, the body with which it is invested cannot be that which, under the article of the resurrection of the body, Scripture leads us to expect.  Like the state itself, it must be of an intermediate nature.  In the Creed we profess what we learn from Scripture, that the body, which is sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption, that the apparent victory of death is only an apparent one, and that the conqueror must himself eventually succumb to an Almighty Deliverer, at whose summons all that are in the graves shall come forth, to a resurrection either of life or the reverse.  Thus was set at rest the great question which by the heathen philosopher was treated as unworthy of consideration (Acts 17:32), and even among the Jews was so far a matter of doubt that the ancient saints “through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:15).  In the case of the Christian his assurance of a resurrection to life rests not merely on the declarations of Scripture to that effect, but on facts which guarantee it – the resurrection of Christ the Head which is a pledge of that of the body, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, through whom the resurrection is effected.  Once revealed, the fact is seen to harmonize with the plan of redemption.  Man was created not subject to death, but capable of dying; through sin death came in, not as a natural condition of humanity, but as a penalty, an interruption of the intended order of things; it is obvious that redemption would be incomplete if it did not restore the whole man, body as well as soul, to at least Adam’s state before the fall.  The body is equally with the soul the handiwork of God, and indeed was first created; and it was indispensable to the part which man was to fill in the newly created world (Gen. 1:28).  A redemption which should end with a purely spiritual resurrection, such as that of Hymenaus and Philetus, would fail to repair the damage caused by sin, and be anything but a full restoration of fallen man.  It would reduce the hope of the Christian to the “blessed immortality” of Deism; instead of the very definite object of S. Paul’s expectation, “we look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body into the likeness of His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:21).  The Apostle here, as usual, includes himself amongst those who might expect to see the coming of Christ; but whether they shall be changed or raised, it is the same great event to which the hope of Christians is directed.

      As regards the process by which the new body comes into being, Scripture gives us little information.  It has already been observed (§ 105) that, however the body of the intermediate state (if such there be) may form a link between our present body and that of the resurrection, the latter, in the last resort, comes into existence by an act of Almighty power.  It is only with reservations that we can accept Martensen’s hypothesis, that the future resurrection of the flesh has the way prepared for it by a hidden process of natural development, here and in the separate state. [Dog., § 276.]  Still less does Delitzsch’s view commend itself, that the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, implants in us a seed of immortality, an elixir vitae (φάρμακον αθανασίας), which issues in the resurrection body.  [Bib. Psych., vii.]  The similitude used by S. Paul of the grain of corn sown in the ground and reproducing itself in the ear does indeed furnish an analogy sufficient to refute the followers of Hymenaus and Philetus, but it does not hold good on all points.  The fact that the produce is the same in kind as the grain that was sown, seems to imply, no doubt, that in the latter there was contained a germ or type, by force of which, according to laws impressed on it by God, it reappears in the ear; but it is not the same grain that reappears, whereas the resurrection body is the same body that was laid in the grave, though in a glorified condition.  For the Apostle’s purpose it was sufficient to note the fact that the grain dies, and appears again under a new form.  So, he justly argues, the body may die, and yet be raised in another condition.  An important distinction, however, is that the death of the grain is the appointed natural means of its reappearance; whereas the death of the body was not the appointed means of its transition to a higher condition; it is unnatural to man to die, and therefore the restoration of the body to the disembodied soul cannot proceed in the way of natural law; in other words, must be miraculous.  And so it is represented in Scripture: “They that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth” (John 5:28, 29); “the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible” (1 Cor. 15:52); “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).  The resurrection of Christ, the pledge and pattern of ours, is described in the same way.  It was not, indeed, possible that He should be holden of death (Acts 2:24); there was a meetness for and a necessity of His rising again; and yet the event itself is ascribed to a special exercise of divine power; it was God who “raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death” (Ibid.).

      The time of the resurrection appears in Scripture immediately connected with the second Advent; which, as has been observed (§ 109), is not easy to reconcile with the millenarian scheme.  It seems inconsistent, too, with another opinion, that the resurrection (at least, of the saints) is a successive work, commencing with those who are said to have come out of their graves at the death of Christ (Matt. 27:53), and thenceforward going on to the present time.  As each soul in paradise becomes ripe for the change (so runs the theory) it is restored to its body; and these are the risen Christians who are represented as accompanying the Saviour from heaven, and forming with the changed quick His assessors at the judgment.  The great name of J. A. Bengel is sometimes associated with this opinion; but though he was a decided pre-millenarian, and quotes, [Gnomon, Apoc., xx. 5.] seemingly with approval, Tertullian’s remarkable words, “The resurrection of the saints goes on during the millennium, sooner or later, according to their merits,” it does not appear that he extends this continuous resurrection beyond the millennium.  A certain order and succession of procedure may be thought expressed in such passages as 1 Cor. 15:23: “Every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterwards they that are Christ’s at His coming; then cometh the end”; Thess. 4:16, 17: “The dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain,” etc.; but that the time extends over a thousand years is another matter, and it is not the impression which the plain statements of Scripture convey.  The resurrection of the saints at Christ’s death is an isolated and exceptional fact, and can hardly he taken as initiating a series.

      The main question on this subject is the relation of our present body to the future one; how far the latter will be the same body, in what respects it will agree with, and in what it will differ from, its predecessor.  The view of the older theologians, Protestant and Romanist, that the resurrection body will be the same substantially, though differing in qualities, as the body that was laid in the grave; that the particles of matter which, in the process of decomposition, were scattered far and wide and passed into many combinations, will by a miracle be collected together again, and wrought into an organization the same as that in which the soul here dwelt [Resurrectio mortuorum formaliter consistit in reproductione, seu reparatione ejusdem quod per mortem cecidit corporis; ex atomis seu particulis illius corporis; hinc inde disjectis atque dissipatis; in redunitione ejusdem cum anima.  Hollaz, P. iii., § 2, c. 9, Q. 24.]; is encumbered with many difficulties.  It is founded probably on a too literal application of the figurative language of the vision in Ezek. 37.  The analogies employed by S. Paul are rather against such a supposition.  The ear of corn which springs from the decayed grain is not composed of the particles which went to form that grain, and is only the same in the sense of being the same in kind, as has been already observed.  “All flesh is not the same flesh”; that is, although the resurrection body will be “flesh,” as Christ’s body after He rose was “flesh and bones,” yet there are various kinds of flesh, and the flesh which turned to corruption is not necessarily the flesh of the risen body.  This is all that is necessary to the Apostle’s argument, and the Apostles’ Creed makes no further demand on our faith.  “I believe in the resurrection,” not of the body (corporis) but of the flesh (carnis), as against the notion of an ocular illusion, or the doctrine of Hymenaeus, Philetus, and their followers, ancient and modern. [Credo in carnis resurrectionem (Apostles’ Creed).  The Nicene Creed has, “I look for the resurrection of the dead,” and nothing more.  The Athanasian is fuller: “At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies”; and true it is that the soul will find itself in its old habitation, but that habitation changed and renewed.]  The particles of our present bodies are in a state of continual flux; they undergo a complete change in certain intervals; which set of particles, those in existence at death or prior combinations, would, on the supposition referred to, be the subject of the divine agency?  The truth is, what is permanent in our bodies is not these changing particles, but the elementary substances of which they are composed, and which belong to all material bodies as distinguished from mere spirit.  These remain permanent, while the particles come and go; they will be found, too, in the glorified body, but glorified and with corresponding surroundings.  This last point it is necessary to bear in mind, in order to understand the Apostle’s argument.  The constituents of our present body derive their nutriment from the air, earth, water, etc., of the present earth; a glorified body may in some analogous manner be nourished from without, but if so, it must be from a glorified environment.  And this, in fact, Scripture foretells.  “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” but “it waits for the manifestation of the sons of God,” and its expectation is not vain; for “the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19–22); “we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13).  The risen saints, then, will find a new paradise (and on this earth) prepared for them; all creation will share in the spiritual change; and the renewed elementary substances of their bodies will be repaired (if the particles of those bodies, too, are in a flux) from a renewed earth and heaven. [Whether the glorified body will need such reparation may be matter of doubt.  In view of such passages as Matt. 22:30, “In the resurrection they are as the angels”; and 1 Cor. 6:13, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them,” we can hardly assume that the resurrection body will need to be replenished like ours.  Yet Christ, after His resurrection, partook of natural food (Luke 24:43); and though His body may not at that time have been fully glorified, it could not have been a natural body (Χοϊκόν).]  On the whole it appears that the future body will not be composed of the disjecta membra of its predecessor, and yet that it will, in the constituents which form a body, be the same, and find itself in a corresponding new world.

      There will be found another point, too, of identity between the present and the future body.  Each individual body now possesses a certain organization, or arrangement, of its constituent elements, whereby it is distinguished from the countless millions of other bodies around it, even as the soul which inhabits it is not a simple being, but a complex one, to which no other soul is exactly alike.  It is this peculiar organization which moulds the features, the stature, the expression, into an individual whole.  If it be destroyed, although the constituents of a body may remain, it is no longer the same man whom we have known, and with whom we have held intercourse.  Soul and body are thus wedded together; and when the soul is, after a temporary separation, reunited to its former companion, it will find itself embodied in the same peculiar organization of which it retains the memory.  It will be in its old home; in the body familiar to it by years of association, with which its history and memories are inseparably connected.  This identity of organization is necessary to the mutual recognition of the blessed departed; and the heavenly state would be shorn of its glory if it were supposed that husbands and wives, parents and children, relatives and friends, would not meet there as those who had only been parted for a time, and were no strangers to each other.  All such notions, therefore, as that of Origen, that the saints will be raised in the form of spheroids as the most perfect of mathematical figures; involving, of course, the demolition of distinctive organization; must be dismissed as unscriptural.

      Thus, there are two extremes to be avoided as regards the relation of the present to the future body.  It is not de fide that the resurrection will consist in bringing together the decomposed parts of the earthly body, and combining them into a new one; such a miracle is indeed conceivable, but it involves great difficulties.  But it is de fide that the new body will be one of “flesh” of some kind or other.  On the other hand, the tendency of the speculations already referred to; as that a “nerve body” (grundgestalt, as Martensen calls it) accompanying the soul into the intermediate state is the germ of the resurrection body; or that the soul in that state develops from itself a body; is to separate too much the resurrection body from the present one, and to reduce the miracle to a process of nature.  The risen saints will appear in their former bodies, but with new qualities and new surroundings. And such seems to be the meaning of the Apostle’s words, There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body ‘ (1 Cor. xv. 44), or the same body may exist in two different states. By the natural body he does not mean that in which Adam before the fall was created, [“The Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7).  So far, even Adam, unfallen, had only a σωμα ψυχικον – a body animated by a natural intelligent soul, as the bodies of the lower animals are by a natural impersonal soul.  He had not a σωμα πνευματικον.] but the body which we inherit from fallen Adam, the body which is sown in corruption because it is the seat of the sin which cleaves even to the regenerate.  The spiritual body, on the contrary, is the body which even here is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and which hereafter will be endued with qualities fitting it to be a perfect organ of the sinless soul.  It will be raised in incorruption, not to die again; it will be raised in glory, no longer subject to the humiliations of its present condition, or to congenital or accidental blemishes; it will be raised in power, capable of fully responding to the volitions of the soul – volitions which are now impeded by the weakness of its instrument.  Of some of the bodily organs the use will no longer exist, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage,” they live an angelic life; but, withal, the soul will feel itself no stranger in this its house from heaven.

      One more illustration is used by S. Paul: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory.”  As far as the argument for a resurrection is concerned, he might have contented himself with the remark that “there are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial,” just as there are different kinds of flesh; but he goes on to note the fact that among the celestial bodies themselves there are differences of glory.  This is an additional circumstance; and seems intended to intimate that, although all Christians will rise with spiritual bodies, there will be amongst them, even as regards the body, degrees of glory, in proportion to the measure of sanctity attained, or of service rendered, in the preliminary state of probation.

      This seems all that Scripture reveals, and all that it concerns us to know, on this subject.  The ingenuity of the Schoolmen raised numerous other questions, some of which savour of vain curiosity, while others are of still more questionable character; and to such Scripture furnishes no answer.  It is enough for us to be told that “our vile body” will be transformed into the likeness of Christ’s glorious body; a privilege which would not have belonged to Adam and his posterity even if sin had not intervened to arrest the natural progress of the race from one degree of glory to another.

§ 110.  The Judgment

      The well-known saying, “The world’s history is the world’s judgment,” contains truth so far that the history of mankind furnishes proof of a superintending Providence, which, on the whole, has shown itself on the side of virtue and against vice, which has distinguished (the proper meaning of judgment, κρίσις) between good and evil.  But the last judgment which Christians look forward to is a matter of prophecy, not of history; of faith, not of sight; it is the final issue of the evolution of the kingdom of God, the manifestation of the Church in its essential glory, and the separation from it of heterogeneous admixtures.  In all the creeds it appears as an article of faith.

      There is a twofold spiritual judgment mentioned in Scripture; one affecting each individual on his quitting this life, as we learn from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, retributory in character, but not final; the other both retributory and final.  The former is an individual process, is successive, and takes place in the unseen world; the latter is public, applies to mankind collectively, occurs at one time, viz., the Second Advent of Christ, and is personally conducted by the Redeemer.  So it is represented in Scripture: “He hath appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness, by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).  “The day of the Lord,” “that day,” are common expressions in the Epistles, denoting that the subject was familiar to those to whom the Apostles wrote, and needed no explanation.  There is a manifest propriety in the incarnate Son’s being appointed Judge.  Like all other acts ad extra, this one is ultimately that of the whole Trinity; but it “terminates,” in the language of the schools, in the Son.  Through the Son redemption was accomplished; through His appointment the Gospel is to be preached to all nations; the history of the Church, and of the world, too, so far as its history is connected with that of the Church, is presided over by Him (“All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth,” Matt. 28:18); who so fit, when the end comes, to announce publicly what this plan of salvation has issued in, who have accepted and who have rejected it?  To which may be added, that He who as God can institute a process of inquiry of the most searching character, “bringing to light the hidden things of darkness, and making manifest the counsels of the hearts,” will, as man, and one who knows what temptation and suffering are, be specially qualified to enter into all the circumstances of each case, and to apportion praise and blame accordingly.

      But how far may this day be called a day of judgment?  The analogy of human tribunals must not be applied too literally.  The ordinary notion we form of these is that, whereas before the trial commences the guilt or innocence of the accused party is matter of doubt, now the case is judicially investigated, evidence produced, and, after the verdict of the jury, sentence pronounced.  The prisoner is assumed not to be guilty before proof, nor is he acquitted before his innocence is established.  The reason is that both judge and jury are fallible men, who can neither read the heart nor possess a certain knowledge of all the facts of the case.  A human trial, therefore, is strictly a process of investigation.  But we cannot ascribe this character to the so-called judgment of the quick and dead.  The Judge is omniscient, and has no need of evidence to convince Him; He presides with a perfect knowledge of the character and history of every one who stands before Him; He has already in Himself pronounced a judgment from which there is no appeal, and respecting which there can be no mistake.  It is evident, in fact, that the great day will be one rather of publication and execution than of judgment strictly so-called.  In fact, a human judge would never open his proceedings as we are told Christ will open them – “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”; “Depart from Me, ye cursed,” etc. – because the business of a human judge is to investigate the case, not to anticipate the sentence.  The Saviour will be perfectly acquainted with the “work and labour of love” on the one hand, which He rewards, and with the neglect of Christian duty on the other, which He condemns; and the judgment will be merely public proof that He had taken note of this diversity, unknown to the parties concerned.  An ingenious writer urges in favour of the sleep of the soul in the intermediate state, that, on the other hypothesis, “each man would not only know his final condition, but actually enter upon his reward or punishment, before the resurrection, immediately on his death; so that the judgment would be, in fact, forestalled.” [Scripture revelations on a future state. L. iv.]  But whether the soul sleeps in the separate state or not, the judgment is equally forestalled.  If probation is at an end with this life, death fixes the destiny of each individual; if it continues through the intermediate state, the judgment closes it; so that, in either case, the judgment only publishes a foregone conclusion.  To the individual himself, any doubts respecting his position are then removed; but the Judge takes His seat on the throne with no such doubts – those before Him are in His view either blessed or cursed.

      These remarks may assist us in reconciling some statements of Scripture which at first sight seem at variance with each other.  The judgment is described as universal – “He will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31); “We” (Christians) “must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10) – and yet the saints are spoken of as exempt from this liability, and even as assessors of Christ at the last day.  S. Paul blames the Corinthians for appealing to heathen tribunals in trivial matters of dispute: “Is there not a wise man among you?  Not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?  Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?  And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?” (1 Cor. 6:1–3).  To interpret this merely of the convincing and reproving office which the Church, by its very existence, exercises towards a sinful world, is unsatisfactory; not to mention that the judgment in question is described as future – “The saints shall judge” (κρινουσι) “the world.”  Other passages, too, if not directly to the point, seem to refer to some special privilege.  Such are: 1 Thess. 4:14, “Them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him”; and ver. 17 of the same chapter, “We which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them” (the risen saints) “to meet the Lord in the air.”  The fact is, that for neither saints nor the world is the last day one of judicial inquiry, but of promulgation and separation.  The saints will have already, in this life, judged themselves; they will have repented of their sins and accepted Christ as a Saviour, and therefore will not be judged of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:31).  These cannot come into condemnation.  The Lord knows them that are His, whether in life or after death; transfers them at death to paradise; and at the last day pronounces them publicly (what, perhaps, was not known before) the blessed of His Father.  But both for those on the right and those on the left hand the day will be one of public attestation.  The prerogative of the saints, according to Matt. 25, is that they will first receive this attestation; and then they may well be supposed as assisting at the judgment of the rest.

      The essential feature of this final act is the separation of Christ’s mystical body from all incongruous admixtures.  Neither in this life, nor in the intermediate state, is this perfectly accomplished.  In the latter, indeed, the departed saints, whether of the Old or the New Dispensation, occupy a locality of their own, into which evil does not enter.  But at the Saviour’s coming the Church militant on earth must necessarily be a mixed body, and so may be the inhabitants of Hades itself.  The meaning of the judgment day is that this state of things is no longer to continue.  On that day the tares and the wheat will be not only discriminated by an unerring eye, but they will be no longer in juxtaposition.  “The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity: then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:41–43).  This will be the “manifestation” (properly the revelation, αποκάλυψις) “of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19).  At present they are more or less hidden; severed publicly from the ungodly world, whether within or outside the Church, they will appear with Christ in glory (Col. 3:3, 4).

§ 111.  Apokatastasis

      The word is derived from Acts 3:21: “Whom” (Jesus Christ) “the heavens must receive until the times of restitution” (αποκαταστάσεως) “of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”  It is matter of debate whether the relative ων refers to χρό: ων or to πάντων, which immediately precedes it.  If the former, we must translate, “the times of the restitution of all things, of which times the prophets have spoken”; and this may seem to favour the doctrine of universal restitution.  If the latter, the sense will be “the restitution of all things which the prophets declare should be restored,” which has no bearing on that doctrine.  From so ambiguous a passage no positive conclusions can be drawn.

      The first writer who openly taught the doctrine was Origen, and he has had followers both in ancient and in modern times.  All fallen beings, he held, not excluding the devil and his angels, will, if they do not repent under this dispensation, pass through aeons of chastisement proportioned in length to their demerits; but in the end, through these sufferings and the instruction of superior spirits, they will experience a salutary change, some sooner some later, and be restored to the favour of God and a substantial measure of bliss.  There will be plenty of time for these healing influences to operate, for aeon will follow aeon in an endless succession.  Both the Gregories (of Nazienzus and of Nyssa), the latter more openly than the former, exhibit traces of the influence of Origen; and the same may be said of some teachers of the school of Antioch.  Origen was condemned at the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 543, but his views continued from time to time to reappear in the Church.  Scotus Erigena, in the Middle Ages, defended a theory similar in character.  At the Reformation the Anabaptists adopted it, as we learn from the Augsburg Confession: “They” (the Protestants) “condemn the Anabaptists who think that both for devils and men there will be a termination of future punishment” (A. xxvii.).  About the middle of the eighteenth century in Germany a great impulse was given in this direction by F. C. Otinger, a mystical writer, and more of a Theosoph than of a theologian, but a deep thinker and remarkable for his piety, the friend and admirer of J. A. Bengel.  One of his sayings has passed into a proverb, “Corporeity is the end of the ways of God.” Relying chiefly on 1 Cor. 15:27, 28, and Ephes. 1:9–11, he argues that all things must eventually be gathered up under one head, Christ, and every jarring discord, after serving its end, resolve itself into harmony.  With such a divine purpose a permanent alienation of the creature from the Creator is incompatible.  Restored at last, condemned sinners will render thanks to God for their chastisements, which they will then see to have been paternal and for their good.

      As regards Bengel himself, the evidence is not so clear.  His sentiments, as reported by his biographer Burk (chap. xiii.), are as follows: “The restoration of all things is not a fit subject for public disputation. [It is doubtful whether the saying commonly ascribed to Bengel, “He who holds the doctrine of universal restitution, and publicly preaches it, is telling tales of God out of school,” is really his, or that of his reporter.  But the extract in the text from Burk’s Life seems similar in sentiment.]  That the word αιώνιος has two significations is undeniable, and thus the Scriptural expressions κόλασις αιώνιος, ζωη αιώνιος seem to admit of unequal meaning. ... On the absolute eternity of future punishment, it is worded in the Latin edition of the Augsburg Confession qui statuunt, “who determine”; but in the German it is qui docent, ‘who teach’; which latter pleases me better, for in holding this doctrine we ought to keep it to ourselves, and not to force it on others, for it is considered an undecided point. ...  ‘Until thou hast paid the very last mite’; there will be no remission till the last payment is made, the whole of it will be exacted and enforced.  But surely the expression ‘until’ cannot mean the same thing as absolute eternity.  There are sacred truths which forbid us to insist on the eternity of hell torments with that emphasis of absoluteness which we find in the well-known hymn, ‘Eternity, thou thunder-word,’” etc.  It would seem, then, that this eminent and pious Biblical critic rather inclined to (Stinger’s views, but held it prudent to abstain from public discussion or preaching of them.  In this century the greatest name on the side of universal restitution is that of Schleiermacher.  He remarks in his “Glaubenslehre” that if future punishment is supposed to consist in the anguish of an awakened conscience, this would prove that the condemned are in a better frame of mind than they were while living, and give better promise of recovery (e.g., Dives in the parable seems improved by his sufferings, and displays a sense of his former misconduct).  Self-reproach for neglected or rejected salvation must contain in itself some idea of that salvation, and also a capability of partaking of it; the idea of it must alleviate present misery, the capability of it presupposes a salutary change of mind.  To which we may add that the bliss of the saints cannot be supposed perfect as long as they know that a considerable part of mankind is consigned to endless misery; this part possibly comprising many with whom they had been here connected by ties of relationship or friendship.  And that they must have this knowledge is undeniable.  However distinct the abodes of the blest and the lost may be, ignorance that many are lost would hardly be compatible with a perfect state; and if it could, the announcements of the day of judgment would render it impossible.  Commiseration would be heightened by the remembrance on the part of the blest of a time when they themselves were no better than others, and equally deserving of condemnation.  On the whole, the milder view has as much to say for itself as the sterner, and has as much support from Scripture. [Glaubenslehre, § 163, Anhang.]  Such are the arguments of Schleiermacher, who, accordingly, expresses a hope that no soul will eventually be lost, the only difference being that some will be restored sooner, some later (see § 74).

      The considerations urged by Origen and his followers, that sin is rather a weakness, deserving of pity, than an active principle of enmity against God, and that the disproportion between endless punishment and the sins of a few years casts a reflection on the justice of God, are met by the fact that the atonement provided to do away the guilt of sin necessitated the incarnation and death of the second Person of the Holy Trinity.  In presence of this stupendous fact, objections from human reason, or theosophic speculations, are reduced to silence.  The question is, what does Scripture say on the subject?  It must be admitted that certain passages, especially in S. Paul’s epistles, have not, on the other hypothesis, as yet received a fully satisfactory interpretation.  “As through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation, even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life.  For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so, through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:18, 19).  The parallelism seems to demand that “all men,” or “the many,” should, in both clauses, signify the same thing.  In ver. 12 it is literally all mankind (πάντας ανθρώπους) upon whom, the Apostle says, death, in consequence of Adam’s sin, passed; and, in fact, death does so pass upon all men, even upon infants and others who cannot sin after “the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (ver. 14).  That “all men” and “the many” (οι πολλοι) are equivalent in meaning, is proved by the substitution of the latter for the former in reference to the same fact, viz., the universal prevalence of death on account of Adam’s sin (ver. 15).  Why the Apostle should have used the one expression for the other we may not be able to say; but as regards the “judgment” on all men, it is undeniable that he does so.  The “free gift,” then, it is urged, must be equally comprehensive, and include “all men,” eventually, if not at present, or under this dispensation.  Various modes have been suggested of removing the difficulty.  It is only the redeemed Church, say some, which the Apostle has in view in ver. 19, when he says, “the many shall be made righteous”; but in the previous clause, “the many were made sinners,” it is all mankind that is meant.  He speaks of the Divine intention that all should be saved, say others; but, again, the previous clause refers to a condemnation in fact, and not merely in intention.  The offers of the Gospel, it is urged, are addressed to all ; the atonement is (objectively) sufficient for the whole world; but the expression “the many shall be made” (κατασταθήσονται) “righteous” seems to imply more than a mere possibility of being made so, not to remark that the same word (καταστάθησαν) previously used must signify a real participation in Adam’s fall.  If we limit the salvation spoken of to the elect (as the Calvinistic expositors generally do), why should not the consequences of the fall be also limited to a portion of mankind?  The most probable solution appears to be that a tacit condition is implied in the Apostle’s statement, thus; the many will be justified on the supposition that they believe in Christ; but it cannot be called quite satisfactory.  “He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet.  The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.  And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:26–28); this passage stands alone, as regards its matter, in the New Testament, a circumstance which adds greatly to its difficulties.  But in general, its purport seems to be that the mediatorial office and saving work of Christ are to continue until all “things shall be subdued unto Him” (ver. 8).  Subdued in what sense?  It may no doubt mean that the powers of evil (Satan and his host) shall be compelled to acknowledge Christ as Lord; and so may the passage Phil. 2:10, 11 (which bears some resemblance to this one) be understood, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”; yet such an unwilling acknowledgment of the supreme dominion of Christ, such a forced submission covering an unreconciled hostility, seems to have little connection with the end aimed at, that “God may be all in all,” that God may be the ruling principle in all creatures.  “That in the dispensation of times He might gather together all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth” (Ephes. 1:10; comp. Col. 1:20); a great expansion of Christ’s saving work, both in heaven and on earth, seems here indicated, and the expression “all things” apparently assigns no limit to it.  In this instance, again, expositors have laboured, not with complete success, to reconcile St. Paul with other statements of Scripture.  But since those statements are also part of Scripture, they must be allowed their full weight.

      There are some general considerations which may well make us pause before committing ourselves positively to an interpretation of these passages in favour of a general Apokatastasis.  The first is, that we might expect so very important a doctrine to be clearly revealed, instead of being left to be inferred from a few texts, and these chiefly from one inspired authority.  If true, it must profoundly modify our views of sin and of redemption; and the rule is that the more important a point is, the more prominent is it on the page of Scripture.  The second is, the apparent finality of the proceedings of the last day.  Up to this point, time and history are running their course, and no public separation of the tares and the wheat has taken place; but with it the destiny of mankind, one way or the other, seems accomplished, and time itself will be no more.  Either, then (as some have thought), the wicked will be annihilated, or there must remain a portion of the rational creation permanently alienated from its Maker.  For Christ appears as a Judge, and no longer as a Saviour; Satan and his angels are consigned to the place prepared for them; and they who have cast in their lot with him follow him to this place.  The drama seems closed, with no intimation of its revival thereafter.  The third, and the most important, is that universal restitution is not according to the analogy of the method of redemption in the present life.  That method is, to offer to all men salvation, and to offer, too, spiritual aid to all who seek it; but also (see § 59) to confer special grace on some, whereby the will is inclined to accept such offers.  That is, effectual calling is not universal; were it so, there would be no such thing as election to eternal life.  Not only so, but such calling seems subject to conditions, not so much as regards the degree of criminality of the previous life, as the duration of an unconverted state.  It is seldom that they who have passed a long life of willful sin are brought at last to repentance; the change is not impossible, as the case of the thief on the cross proves, but it is of rare occurrence.  This amounts to saying that evil may in some cases become a second nature, so that even effectual grace can find no point of contact to fasten upon.  The conscience may, as Scripture terms it, be seared with a hot iron, the cautery destroying life in the part affected.  If even in our short life of threescore years and ten such an insensibility to the motions of the Holy Spirit may supervene, to what a measure of obstinacy they who, during the long ages of the intermediate state, continue to reject the overtures of mercy (if such are there made to them), may bring themselves, it is impossible to say.  Even effectual grace works with and by the will, and presumes a scintilla of moral feeling and conscience still to exist; but in the case supposed these traces of the image of God may be quite obliterated.  The anguish which Schleiermacher makes a proof of improvement may be nothing but despair and impotent rage.  To restore such a case of spiritual ruin would be almost equivalent to the creating of a new personality.  This may be conceivable, but it would be turning the operations of grace, as we see them around us, into the operations of nature, working as natura naturans, by blind necessity and irresistible force.  Free will, a perilous prerogative but the condition of all virtue, would be annihilated.  As long, then, as conversion involves, to any extent, the cooperation of free will, and proceeds not by a law of physical necessity, so long the possibility of endless punishment exists; on the simple ground that if the sin is endless so is the punishment.

§ 112.  New Heavens and a New Earth

      Scripture opens with paradise lost and closes with paradise regained, and both on the present earth, though not both in its present condition.  The first chapter of Genesis describes the creation of our planet out of nothing, and its preparation to be the abode of a sinless but not redeemed race of rational beings; the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation portray new heavens and a new earth, destined, after the solemnities of the last day, to be occupied by the redeemed Church.  What lies between is the history of redemption in prophecy, and in its progress from the first coming of Christ to the second; its Pentecostal outburst, its revivals, its conflicts with sin and Satan, and the apparent termination of its probationary character simultaneously with the end of all things.

      The same reasons which lead us to see in the resurrection of the body the complement of redemption in its fullness render also a renovation of the present earth matter of natural expectation.  Man was created for the earth – to rule over and replenish it; in it was placed his paradise, and the sacrament of his immortality; there he was to enjoy the most intimate communion with his Maker.  The lower creation, in all its departments, corresponded to this exalted destiny.  When the Divine Artificer surveyed the work of His hands, He pronounced all ‘ to be very good ‘ (Gen. i. 31). With the fall all nature sympathized, as far as it could sympathize with it – certainly all nature shared in it.  “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3:17, 18).  The animals no longer enjoyed, under a mild rule, such happiness as they were capable of, but were transformed either into ravenous beasts of prey, to be destroyed lest they should overrun the earth, or into slaves of a tyrannical master: “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom. 8:22).  Now, if the earth is to be the scene of paradise regained, it is necessary that a reversal of the curse should take place.  New heavens and a new earth must supersede the old, otherwise there would be a discrepancy between the glorified Church and its local environment.  Such is the strain of ancient prophecy: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered, or come into mind: behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy; and I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in My people; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying”; “They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them”; “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord” (Isa. 65:17–25; comp. 11).  Let it be granted that such prophecies may be applied to the restoration of the Jews from captivity, or to the first advent of Christ in its intended results; it is another question whether such partial fulfillments exhaust them.  Especially when we observe that the New Testament takes up the theme, with an evident reference to prophecy, and almost in the same language.  We Christians, S. Peter says, should be “looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the” (present) “heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat: nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:12, 13).  This is the “regeneration” which our Lord speaks of in Matt. 19:28, and to which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews alludes when he says, “unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come” (την οικουμένην) “whereof we speak” (chap. 2:5).  This is the “restitution” (αποκατάστασις) “of all things, which the prophets foretold should be restored” at the second coming of Christ (Acts 3:21).  And this, though described in figurative language, is the fact underlying that language which the Apocalypse (in chaps. 21, 22) presents to our view.  The older expositors, owing to their practical ignoring of the intermediate state, and their making heaven and Gehenna to commence at once on death, were compelled to resolve the Apocalyptic vision into an affair of pure spirit; but “corporeity is the end of the ways of God.”  We must be careful indeed not so to understand it as to introduce under the Gospel what is inconsistent with the fundamental truths of the latter, such as the restoration of the theocracy with its system of earthly sacrifice and priesthood [Elliott, Hor. Apoc., vol. iv., p. 229 ff.]; but neither must we take it to be a mere poetical description, without foundation in fact.  If chap. 20:1–10 refers to a millennium of some kind, which we are not concerned to deny, plainly with verse 11 commences a new vision, representing a new stage in the history of the kingdom of God.  The dead, small and great, stand before God; the books are opened, and the dead are judged out of those things which are written in the books (verses 11, 12).  Then comes the end.  The first heavens and the first earth are passed away, and the New Jerusalem descends upon an earth “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

      By what agency the change will be affected is not left in doubt.  “The world which then was” (that is, before the Flood) “being overflowed with water, perished”; but “the heavens and the earth which now are, are reserved unto fire against the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 3:6, 7).  And so S. Paul: “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God” (2 Thess. 1:7, 8).  Both water and fire are purifying, but the latter after a far more searching manner than the former.  Whether the present system is to be destroyed and a new creation to succeed it, or merely to be transformed, we are not told; but the latter is more in accordance with the corresponding change in the bodies of the saints.  These will not be annihilated but changed; and the earth, too, may pass through its baptism of fire, and yet remain substantially the same that it was.

      “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9); but the inspired seer was charged to record in the vision with which he was favoured certain salient particulars respecting the life to come; under symbol, indeed, but plain enough to the discerning mind.  “Wherein dwelleth righteousness”; from the second paradise, now comprising the whole earth, sin will for ever disappear, both the sin which cleaves to the individual Christian and impedes his progress, and the sin around him in the present world and even in the Church, so often a stumbling block and a discouragement to him.  With their cause, too, the effects of sin will cease; “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall be any more pain, for the former things are passed away” (Apoc. 21:4).  “The tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them” (Ibid., 3).  It was the privilege of God’s ancient people to have God dwelling in the midst of them; under earthly and typical forms indeed, the tabernacle and then the temple, the bright cloud filling the sacred edifice, the most holy place, with (as some think) the shekinah or symbol of the divine presence between the cherubim shadowing the mercy seat, the ark of the covenant.  There the divine sovereign of Israel was to be met, and from that place, through the high priest, He communicated with the people.  These things were framed after “the pattern shewed to Moses in the mount” (Heb. 8:5); but the heavenly archetype itself now descends on earth, and fills it with a glory of which the bright cloud and the shekinah were but images.  In Eden God conversed with man face to face; under the typical dispensation through a human priesthood; in the new earth again face to face, inasmuch as “the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne,” and who “feeds His people and leads them to fountains of living waters” (Apoc. 7:17), is also God manifest in the flesh, God Himself under the veil of humanity, a veil which mitigates indeed the splendour of “the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Tim. 6:16), but allows the full measure thereof which the glorified soul can receive to transpire.  Therefore S. John saw no temple there, for the “glory of God and the Lamb are the temple of it”; and therefore the inhabitants have no need “of candle, for there shall be no night there,” nor of “the light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light” (Apoc. 21:22, 22:5).  This does not mean that the revolutions of day and night or of the seasons will cease, which would amount to a reversal of the laws which govern our present system; but that spiritually there will be no night there, the beams of the Sun of righteousness, shining direct on the soul, will never be intercepted by even a passing cloud of sin or sorrow.  As to the new Jerusalem itself, “the assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven” (Heb. 12:23), now about to take up its abode on earth, it is in form a cube, signifying perfection, [“This most holy place was a room of state of equal length, breadth, and height, or a cube of about twenty cubits (near thirty foot), all overlaid with pure gold.”  Lowman, Hebrew Ritual, c. ii.] has twelve gates, three towards each quarter of the world, to allow of free ingress and egress; guarded by twelve angels, not to bar the way, as in Gen. 3:24, but to remove every impediment (comp. Ezek. 48:30–35); the foundations bear the names of the twelve apostles, as, in fact, the Church is “built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets” (Ephes. 2:20); the gates are of pearl, the street of pure gold, the walls adorned with precious stones; all that in the present world is valuable or beautiful lends its aid to convey some conception of the future inheritance of the saints (Apoc. 21:16–20).  As the first Eden had its river to water the garden, and its tree of life, these are not wanting in the second; “a pure river of the water of life, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,” clothes the new earth with heavenly verdure, and on either side of it grows the tree of life with its monthly produce of fruit, and even its leaves endowed with salutary properties (Apoc. 22:1, 2).  Those who live close to the tabernacle in the midst of the holy city partake of “the fruit,” the choicest communications from heaven; but even its less advanced members, “the nations,” have a share in the blessing; they move in a remoter orbit, but still under the attractive influence of the central sphere, and not without a measure of His beams; “the leaves” are theirs, to repair what is wanting, to strengthen what is feeble, to turn their convalescence into spiritual health, and at last to prepare them for one of “the many mansions” nearer to the fountain of light. [Pre-millenarians understand this “healing of the nations” to refer to the sending of the Gospel from Jerusalem, the centre of millennial glory, to the unconverted heathen nations around it, in order to bring them into the fold of Christ.  They urge that “healing” (θεραπεία) cannot be applied to glorified saints, who are already healed.  But the word does not necessarily signify the application of medical remedies; it may be used for strengthening, or completing the cure – for progress from a lower to a higher stage of convalescence.  See Delitzsch, Bib. Psych., vii,, § 4.]

      Why, it may be asked, should the city be called “the new Jerusalem”? and why should mention be made of “nations” in a state of things where such distinctions may be thought out of place?  Without endorsing the cruder speculations which have sometimes appeared in connection with the future of the Jewish people, it may be admitted that the prophecies of the Old Testament – such, for example, as Isa. 60 to which the Apocalypse evidently alludes – seem to extend beyond the mere incorporation into the Christian Church of “the remnant, according to the election of grace” (Rom. 11:5) of the Jewish people.  Jerusalem, the city over which Christ wept, bears in Scripture divers meanings; but all such applications are founded on its original designation to be the seat of God’s chosen people, the depository of prophetic revelation, the cradle of Christianity; the foundation, in the persons of the Apostles, of the Christian Church, and in their writings “judging” even now “the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28), the spiritual Israel of the New Covenant.  Since “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:29), we may suppose that in “the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory,” there will exist a Jerusalem – not the old one, and yet not a purely spiritual one – occupying the same locality, and inhabited by the same race; in no respect, as regards spiritual privileges, superior to the wild olive-tree grafted into the original stock, but still the spiritual metropolis of the renovated earth; – whither, through its twelve gates, “the kings of the earth” shall repair, bringing with them “their glory and honour,” and wherein “the nations of the saved” shall from time to time “walk in the light of it” (Apoc. 21:24).  “I must by all means keep this feast” (the Passover?) “that cometh in Jerusalem” (Acts 18:21) so spake the Apostle of the Gentiles, the chosen vessel to proclaim the truth “that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the Gospel” (Ephes. 3:6); that under the Gospel “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, but Christ is all and in all”; who “withstood Peter to the face” when that Apostle wavered on the essential point of the spiritual equality of Jew and Gentile (Gal. 2).  Perhaps, “in the regeneration,” which the typical Jewish feasts have given place to something analogous, the same Paul may be found leading “the fullness” (πλήρωμα, Rom. 11:25) of the Gentile Church through the gates of the holy city, to celebrate there the new Paschal feast (Matt. 26:29), the marriage supper of the Lamb, the pledge of eternal union with His bride.

      “The nations”  (τα έθνη) “shall walk in the light of it.”  Not merely shall the redeemed Church form, spiritually, one fold under one Shepherd, but as the saved of the Jews may reappear as a polity in their native land, so the saved of each Gentile nation may arrange themselves into communities under a government (“kings of the earth”), with political and social duties suitable to their glorified state.  Heaven has been too often represented exclusively as a place of rest, its inhabitants having no occupation but praising God, or indulging in contemplation.  Such, indeed, is the character and such the employments of that state; but praising God comprises not merely “singing the song of Moses and the Lamb” (Apoc. 15:3), but active service, arduous duty – even conflict with evil, if such should be found outside the sacred precincts.  If the present life is a preparation and a school of training for another, that other, it should seem, must afford scope for the active habits acquired here – for the wisdom, foresight, courage, and endurance which our temporal experience is so fitted to form in us – and also furnish a field for the exercise of the moral sentiments, which Christianity does not suppress, but purifies and extends.  The saints, clothed with white robes, “serve God day and night in His temple” (Apoc. 7:15).  The family, the state, freed from all imperfection, may transplant themselves into paradise, and flourish in perpetual youth on a kindlier soil and under a purer heaven.  And “upon all the glory there shall be a defense” (Isa. 4:5); the gates of the city are always open (Apoc. 21:25), because no enemy is to be apprehended; and the tree of life, ever accessible, yields its fruit all the year round, the means and the pledge of endless felicity.

      He that testifieth of these things saith: “Surely, I come quickly.”  The whole Church, on earth and above, responds with one voice: “Amen.  Even so come, Lord Jesus.”

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