Just now, that of Eternal Retribution is strenuously combated, not only outside of the church, but to some extent within it. The simplicity of the faith was departed from, when under hellenizing influences in the church the Heathen Orcus was substituted for the Biblical Hades. The rejection of the doctrine of Endless Punishment cuts the ground from under the gospel.
The common opinion in the Ancient church was, that the future punishment of the impenitent wicked is endless. None of the evangelical churches have introduced the doctrine of Universalism, in any form of it, into their symbolical books. Rationalism has many of the characteristics of deism, and is vehemently polemic toward evangelical truth.
The passage 1 Corinthians 15:25-26, teaches that all evil shall be overcome
Misery cannot increase, but must decrease
The sympathy which the saved have with their former companions, who are in hell, will prevent the happiness of the saved
Rothe (Dogmatics, Th. 2, Abth., 2 Sections contends for the annihilation of the impenitent wicked, in the sense of the extinction of self-consciousness. Respecting the future offer of mercy, Dorner asserts that “the final judgment can take place for none before the gospel has been so addressed to him that free appropriation of the same was possible” (Christian Doctrine, 3, 77). Paul asserts that “the free gift came upon all men unto justification,” this is severed from the preceding verse, in which the “all”.
The paucity of the texts of scripture that can with any plausibility be made to teach Universalism sometimes leads to an ingenuity that is unfavorable to candid exegesis. To prove his assertion, that sin by its very nature finally ceases to be, he quotes Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” This means, according to him, that sin ultimately consumes and abolishes itself (muss sieh sehliesslich selbst verzehren und aufheben), and this is its “wages” or punishment. This Essay actually obtained the prize offered by the Hague Association for the defense of the Christian Religion.
THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT
The place of future retribution
The grave
The view of the Reformers is stated in the following extract from the Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia (Article Hades): “The Protestant churches rejected, with purgatory and its abuses, the whole idea of a middle state, and taught simply two states and places-heaven for believers, and hell for unbelievers. Hades was identified with Gehenna, and hence both terms were translated alike in the Protestant versions. The English (as also Luther’s German) version of the New Testament translates Hades and Gehenna by the same word ‘hell’, and thus obliterates the important distinction between the realm of the dead (or nether-world, spirit-world), and the place of torment or eternal punishment; but in the Revision of 1881 the distinction is restored, and the term Hades introduced.” The same change is made in the Revised Old Testament, published in 1885.
The Authorized version renders Sheol sometimes by “hell,” in the sense of the place of punishment, and sometimes by “grave”-the context determining which is the meaning. The Revisers substitute “Sheol” for “hell,” and whenever they leave the word “grave” in the text, add the note: “The Hebrew is Sheol,” in order, as they say, “to indicate that it is not the place of burial.” Had they been content with the mere transliteration of Sheol, the reader might interpret for himself. They deny that Sheol means hell” in the sense of “the place of torment,” and assert that it signifies the abode of departed spirits, and corresponds to the Greek Hades, or the Underworld” (Preface to the Revised Old Testament).
IN THE FIRST PLACE, SHEOL SIGNIFIES THE PLACE OF FUTURE RETRIBUTION
When the human body goes down to Sheol in the sense of the “grave,” this is an evil. They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels” (Malachi 3:17). If Sheol is not the place where the wrath of God falls upon the transgressor, there is no place mentioned in the Old Testament where it does.
The proof that Sheol does not signify hell would, virtually, be the proof that the doctrine of Hell is not contained in the Old Testament; and this would imperil the doctrine of the final judgment. There is not a passage in the Old Testament that asserts, or in any way suggests, that the light of the Divine countenance, and the. I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live;” in (Proverbs 8:36),.
IN THE SECOND PLACE
- The place of retribution
- First of all, Christ’s solemn and impressive parable of Lazarus and Dives demonstrates that Hades is the place of future punishment
- Secondly, Hades is represented as the contrary of Heaven, and the contrary of heaven is Hell
- Fourthly, Hades is represented as the prison of Satan and the wicked
- The future infinite and endless age, or aeon, is denominated, in Scripture,
- First, death is the opposite of birth, and birth does not mean the
- Secondly, the spiritually dead are described in Scripture as conscious
- Sixthly, the advocate of Conditional immortality, in teaching that the extinction of consciousness is the “eternal death” of Scripture, implies that
- Eighthly, the fact that the soul depends, for its immortality and consciousness upon the upholding power of its Maker does not prove
- First, by the fact that in Scripture the disembodied state is not called
I knew a man in Christ about four years ago, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell” (2 Corinthians 12:2). Our Lord affirms that the future existence of the soul is so dearly taught by “Moses and the prophets,”. All the Messianic matter of the Old Testament is absurd, on the supposition that the soul is mortal.
Every prayer to God in the Old Testament implies the immortality of the person praying. God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave; for he shall receive me” (Psalm 49:15). The doctrine of the intermediate or disembodied state, as it was generally received in the Reformed (Calvinistic) churches, is contained in the.
It is found in the writings of many of the fathers, but not in any of the primitive creeds. It is connected with the heathen doctrine of the infernal divinities, and the infernal tribunal of Minos and Rhadanmnthus. Whenever this visible world in the sense of the matter constituting it is meant, the word employed is kosmo>v and not aijw>n.
Of these, 51 relate to the future happiness of the righteous; 7 relate to future punishment: namely,. Respecting the nature of the “everlasting punishment,” it is clear from the Biblical representations that it is accompanied with consciousness. An attempt has been made to prove that the punishment of the wicked is the extinction of consciousness.
This “private judgment” at death, is reaffirmed in the “general judgment” of the last day. According to these words of the Redeemer, the light of the gospel is not accessible in the darkness of death. It is “intermediate,” only in reference to the secondary matter of the presence or absence of the body.
THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT
In the third place, endless punishment is rational, because sin is an infinite evil; infinite not because committed by an infinite being, but against
The person who transgresses is the same in each instance; but the different worth and dignity of the objects upon whom his action terminates makes the. The incarnation and vicarious satisfaction for sin by one of the persons of the Godhead, demonstrates the infinity of the evil. The incarnation of Almighty God, in order to make the remission of sin possible, is one of the strongest arguments for the eternity and infinity of penal suffering.
But even in human punishment, no reference is had to the length of time occupied in the commission of the offense. In the fourth place, that endless punishment; is reasonable, is proved bythe preference of the wicked themselves. They are sometimes so described by the opponent of the doctrine, or at least so thought of.
The bestial and shameless vice of the dissolute rich, that has recently been uncovered in the commercial metropolis of the world, is a powerful argument for the necessity and reality of “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.”. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated. We have thus briefly presented the rational argument for the most severe and unwelcome of all the tenets of the Christian religion.
It is the theme of the Inferno, and is presupposed by both of the other parts of the Divine Comedy. And the greatest of the Shakespearean tragedies sound and stir the depths of the human soul, by their delineation of guilt intrinsic and eternal. This is all that the defender of the doctrine of retribution is strictly concerned with.
But with the Christian Gospel in his hands, the defender of the Divine justice finds it difficult to be entirely reticent and say not a word.
FOOTNOTES
See his discussion of the Limbus Patrum and Christ’s Descent into Hell, in his Answer to a Challenge of a Jesuit in Ireland (Works, Vol. III.). It is more easy for one to say that “the ship sank with a hundred souls,” than to say that it “sank with a hundred bodies.” And yet the latter is the real fact in the case. To be “in the grave,” in the abstract sense, is to have the elements of the body mingled with those of the earth from which it was taken (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
Justin Martyr (Trypho, Ch. 5) simply says that “the souls of the pious remain in a better place, while those of the wicked are in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment.”. 8 Baumgarten-Crusius (Dogmengeschichte 2:109) finds three stadia in the development of the dogma of the Descent to Hades. Another proof of the correctness of this interpretation is the fact that Christ’s preaching to “the spirits in prison” was pneu>mati, alone.
Christ’s descent into Hades was his remaining in the state of the dead, for a season. This is the meaning, when in common phrase it is said that “a man has gone into eternity”; and that his happiness, or misery, is “eternal.” The. Grotius defines penalty as “the evil of suffering which is inflicted on account of the evil of doing.” The great English jurists, Coke, Bacon, Selden, and Blackstone, explain punishment by crime, not by expediency.
The proud spirit of the moralist is one phase of it; the self-indulgent spirit of the voluptuary is the other. In illustration of the former, consider the temper of a certain class of intellectual men toward the cross of Christ. They “scorn delights, and live laborious days.” But present for their acceptance those truths of the New.
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