| 157. After Judgment. Future Punishment. | ||||
The doctrine of the Fathers on future punishment is discussed by Dr. Edward Beecher, l.c., and in the controversial works called forth by Canon Farrar's Eternal Hope (Five Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. 1877. Lond., 1879.) See especially | ||||
Dr. Pusey: What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? A Reply to Dr. Farrar's Challenge. Oxf. and Lond., second ed. 1880 (284 pages). | ||||
Canon F. W. Farrar: Mercy and Judgment: A few last words on Christian Eschatology with reference to Dr. Pusey's "What is of Faith? London and N. York, 1881 (485 pages). See chs. II., III., IX.-XII. Farrar opposes with much fervor the current opinions about Hell, and reduces it to the smallest possible dimensions of time and space, but expressly rejects Universalism. He accepts with Pusey the Romanizing view of future purification (instead of probation ), and thus increases the number of the saved by withdrawing vast multitudes of imperfect Christians from the awful doom. | ||||
After the general judgment we have nothing revealed but the boundless prospect of aeonian life and aeonian death. This is the ultimate boundary of our knowledge. | ||||
There never was in the Christian church any difference of opinion concerning the righteous, who shall inherit eternal life and enjoy the blessed communion of God forever and ever. But the final fate of the impenitent who reject the offer of salvation admits of three answers to the reasoning mind: everlasting punishment, annihilation, restoration (after remedial punishment and repentance). | ||||
I. Everlasting Punishment of the wicked always was, and always will be the orthodox theory. It was held by the Jews at the time of Christ, with the exception of the Sadducces, who denied the resurrection. It is endorsed by the highest authority of the most merciful Being, who sacrificed his own life for the salvation of sinners. | ||||
Consequently the majority of the fathers who speak plainly on this terrible subject, favor this view. | ||||
Ignatius speaks of the unquenchable fire; Hermas, of some who will not be saved, but shall utterly perish, because they will not repent. | ||||
Justin Martyr teaches that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receive eternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages. Briefly, he says, what we look for, and have learned from Christ, and what we teach, is as follows. Plato said to the same effect, that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked when they came to them; we say that the same thing will take place; but that the judge will be Christ, and that their souls will be united to the same bodies, and will undergo an eternal punishment (aivwnivan kovlasin) and not, as Plato said, a period of only a thousand years (ciliontaeth' perivodon) In another place: We believe that all who live wickedly and do not repent, will be punished in eternal fire (ejn aijwnivw/ puriv). Such language is inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin M. has been claimed. He does, indeed, reject with several other ante-Nicene writers, the Platonic idea that the soul is in itself and independently immortal1 and hints at the possibility THE final destruction of the wicked,1 but he puts that possibility countless ages beyond the final judgment, certainly beyond the Platonic millennium of punishment, so that it loses all practical significance and ceases to give relief. | ||||
Irenaeus has been represented as holding inconsistently all three theories, or at least as hesitating between the orthodox view and the annihilation scheme. He denies, like Justin Martyr, the necessary and intrinsic immortality of the soul, and makes it dependent on God for the continuance in life as well as for life itself. But in paraphrasing the apostolic rule of faith he mentions eternal punishment, and in another place he accepts as certain truth that eternal fire is prepared for sinners, because the Lord openly affirms, and the other Scriptures prove it. Hippolytus approves the eschatology of the Pharisees as regards the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, the judgment and conflagration, everlasting life and everlasting punishment; and in another place be speaks of the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines a beam from the radiating voice of the Word. According to Tertullian the future punishment will continue, not for a long time, but forever. It does credit to his feelings when he says that no innocent man can rejoice in the punishment of the guilty, however just, but will grieve rather. Cyprian thinks that the fear of hell is the only ground of the fear of death to any one, and that we should have before our eyes the fear of God and eternal punishment much more than the fear of men and brief suffering. The generality of this belief among Christians is testified by Celsus, who tells them that the heathen priests threaten the same eternal punishment as they, and that the only question was which was right, since both claimed the truth with equal confidence. | ||||
II. The final Annihilation of the wicked removes all discord from the universe of God at the expense of the natural immortality of the soul, and on the ground that sin will ultimately destroy the sinner, and thus destroy itself. | ||||
This theory is attributed to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others, who believed only in a conditional immortality which may be forfeited; but, as we have just seen, their utterances in favor of eternal punishment are too clear and strong to justify the inference which they might have drawn from their psychology. | ||||
Arnobius, however, seems to have believed in actual annihilation; for he speaks of certain souls that are engulfed and burned up, or hurled down and having been reduced to nothing, vanish in the frustration of a perpetual destruction. | ||||
III. The Apokatastasis or final restoration of all rational beings to holiness and happiness. This seems to be the most satisfactory speculative solution of the problem of sin, and secures perfect harmony in the creation, but does violence to freedom with its power to perpetuate resistance, and Ignores the hardening nature of sin and the ever increasing difficulty of repentance. If conversion and salvation are an ultimate necessity, they lose their moral character, and moral aim. | ||||
Origen was the first Christian Universalist. He taught a final restoration, but with modesty as a speculation rather than a dogma, in his youthful work De Principiis (written before 231), which was made known in the West by the loose version of Rufinus (398). In his later writings there are only faint traces of it; he seems at least to have modified it, and exempted Satan from final repentance and salvation, but this defeats the end of the theory. He also obscured it by his other theory of the necessary mutability of free will, and the constant succession of fall and redemption. | ||||
Universal salvation (including Satan) was clearly taught by Gregory of Nyssa, a profound thinker of the school of Origen (d. 395), and, from an exegetical standpoint, by the eminent Antiochian divines Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) and Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 429), and many Nestorian bishops. In the West also at the time of Augustine (d. 430) there were, as he says, multitudes who did not believe in eternal punishment. But the view of Origen was rejected by Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustine, and at last condemned as one of the Origenistic errors under the Emperor Justinian (543). | ||||
Since that time universalism was regarded as a heresy, but is tolerated in Protestant churches as a private speculative opinion or charitable hope. | ||||