The Destiny of the Soul Part 35

previous descent into Hades, as the context proves "this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pa.s.s the saying which is written, 'Death shall be swallowed up in victory.

O Death, thou last enemy, where is thy sting? O Hades, thou gloomy prison, where is thy victory?'" The exposition just offered is confirmed by its striking adaptedness to the whole Pauline scheme.

It is also the interpretation given by the earliest Fathers, and by the Church in general until now. This idea of men being changed and rising into heaven without at all entering the disembodied state below was evidently in the mind of Milton when he wrote the following lines:

"And from these corporeal nutriments, perhaps. Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, And, wing'd, ascend ethereal, may, at choice, Here, or in heavenly paradise, dwell."

It now remains to see what Paul thought was to be the final portion of the hardened and persevering sinner. One cla.s.s of pa.s.sages in his writings, if taken by themselves, would lead us to believe that on that point he had no fixed convictions in regard to particulars, but, thinking these beyond the present reach of reason, contented himself with the general a.s.surance that all such persons would meet their just deserts, and there left the subject in obscurity. "G.o.d will render to every man to the Jew first, and also to the Greek according to his deeds." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." "So then every one of us shall give an account of himself to G.o.d." "At the judgment seat of Christ every one shall receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether it be bad." From these and a few kindred texts we might infer that the author, aware that he "knew but in part," simply held the belief without attempting to pry into special methods, details, and results that at the time of the judgment all should have exact justice. He may, however, have unfolded in his preaching minutia of faith not explained in his letters.

A second cla.s.s of pa.s.sages in the epistles of Paul would naturally cause the common reader to conclude that he imagined that the unregenerate those unfit for the presence of G.o.d were to be annihilated when Christ, after his second coming, should return to heaven with his saints. "Those who know not G.o.d and obey not the gospel of Christ shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence and glory of the Lord when he shall come." "The end of the enemies of the cross of Christ is destruction." "The vessels of wrath fitted for destruction." "As many as have sinned without law shall perish without law." But it is to be observed that the word here rendered "destruction" need not signify annihilation. It often, even in Paul's epistles, plainly means severe punishment, dreadful misery, moral ruin, and retribution.

For example, "foolish and hurtful l.u.s.ts, which drown men in destruction and perdition," "piercing them through with many sorrows." It may or may not have that sense in the instances above cited. Their meaning is intrinsically uncertain: we must bring other pa.s.sages and distinct considerations to aid our interpretation.

From a third selection of texts in Paul's epistles it is not strange that some persons have deduced the doctrine of unconditional, universal salvation. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." But the genuine explanation of this sentence, we are constrained to believe, is as follows: "As, following after the example of Adam, all souls descend below, so, following after Christ, all shall be raised up," that is, at the judgment, after which event some may be taken to heaven, others banished again into Hades. "We trust in the living G.o.d, who is the Savior of all men, especially of them that believe." This means that all men have been saved now from the unconditional sentence to Hades brought on them by the first sin, but not all know the glad tidings: those who receive them into believing hearts are already exulting over their deliverance and their hopes of heaven.

All are objectively saved from the unavoidable and universal necessity of Hadean imprisonment; the obedient believers are also subjectively saved from the contingent and personal risk of incurring that doom. "G.o.d hath shut them all up together in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." "All" here means both Jews and Gentiles; and the reference is to the universal annulment of the universal fatality, and the impartial offer of heaven to every one who sanctifies the truth in his heart. In some cases the word "all" is used with rhetorical looseness, not with logical rigidness, and denotes merely all Christians. Ruckert shows this well in his commentary on the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. In other instances the universality, which is indeed plainly there, applies to the removal from the race of the inherited doom; while a conditionality is unquestionably implied as to the actual salvation of each person. We say Paul does constantly represent personal salvation as depending on conditions, as beset by perils and to be earnestly striven for.

"Lest that by any means I myself should be a castaway." "Deliver such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." "Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of the lord." "To them that are saved we are a savor of life unto life; to them that perish, a savor of death unto death." "Charge them that are rich that they be humble and do good, laying up in store a good foundation, that they may lay hold on eternal life." It is clear, from these and many similar pa.s.sages of Paul, that he did not believe in the unconditional salvation, the positive mechanical salvation, of all individuals, but held personal salvation to be a contingent problem, to be worked out, through the permitting grace of G.o.d, by Christian faith, works, and character. How plainly this is contained, too, in his doctrine of "a resurrection of the just and the unjust," and of a day of judgment, from whose august tribunal Christ is to p.r.o.nounce sentence according to each man's deeds! At the same time, the undeniable fact deserves particular remembrance that he says, and apparently knows, nothing whatever of a h.e.l.l, in the present acceptation of that term, a prison house of fiery tortures. He a.s.signs the realm of Satan and the evil spirits to the air, the vexed region between earth and heaven, according to the demonology of his age and country. 22

Finally, there is a fourth cla.s.s of pa.s.sages, from which we might infer that the apostle's faith merely excluded the reprobate from partic.i.p.ating in the ascent with Christ, just as some of the Pharisees excluded the Gentiles from their resurrection, and there left the subject in darkness.

22 A detailed and most curious account of this region, which he calls Tartarus, is given by Angustine. De Gen. ad. lit. lib. iii.

cap. 14, 15, ed. Benedictina.

"They that are Christ's," "the dead in Christ, shall rise."

"No sensualist, extortioner, idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of G.o.d." "There is laid up a crown of righteousness, which the Lord shall give in that day to all them that love his appearing." In all these, and in many other cases, there is a marked omission of any reference to the ultimate positive disposal of the wicked. Still, against the supposition of his holding the doctrine that all except good Christians would be left below eternally, we have his repeated explicit avowals. "I have hope towards G.o.d that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and the unjust." "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." These last statements, however, prove only that Paul thought the bad as well as the good would be raised up and judged: they are not inconsistent with the belief that the condemned would afterwards either be annihilated, or remanded everlastingly to the under world. This very belief, we think, is contained in that remarkable pa.s.sage where Paul writes to the Philippians that he strives "if by any means he may attain unto the resurrection." Now, the common resurrection of the dead for judgment needed not to be striven for: it would occur to all unconditionally. But there is another resurrection, or another part remaining to complete the resurrection, namely, after the judgment, a rising of the accepted to heaven. All shall rise from Hades upon the earth to judgment. This Paul calls simply the resurrection, [Non ASCII Characters] After the judgment, the accepted shall rise to heaven. This Paul calls, with distinctive emphasis, [Non ASCII Characters] the pre eminent or complete resurrection, the prefix being used as an intensive. This is what the apostle considers uncertain and labors to secure, "stretching forward and pressing towards the goal for the prize of that call upwards," [Non ASCII Characters] (that invitation to heaven,) "which G.o.d has extended through Christ." Those who are condemned at the judgment can have no part in this completion of the resurrection, cannot enter the heavenly kingdom, but must be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence and glory of the Lord," that is, as we suppose is signified, be thrust into the under world for evermore. As unessential to our object, we have omitted an exposition of the Pauline doctrine of the natural rank and proper or delegated offices of Christ in the universe; also an examination of the validity of the doubts and arguments brought against the genuineness of the lesser epistles ascribed to Paul. In close, we will sum up in brief array the leading conceptions in his view of the last things. First, there is a world of immortal light and bliss over the sky, the exclusive abode of G.o.d and the angels from of old; and there is a dreary world of darkness and repose under the earth, the abode of all departed human spirits. Secondly, death was originally meant to lead souls into heaven, clothed in new and divine bodies, immediately on the fall of the present tabernacle; but sin broke that plan and doomed souls to pa.s.s disembodied into Hades.

Thirdly, the Mosaic dispensation of law could not deliver men from that sentence; but G.o.d had promised Abraham that through one of his posterity they should be delivered. To fulfil that promise Christ came. He ill.u.s.trated G.o.d's unpurchased love and forgiveness and determination to restore the original plan, as if men had never sinned. Christ effected this aim, in conjunction with his teachings, by dying, descending into Hades, as if the doom of a sinful man were upon him also, subduing the powers of that prison house, rising again, and ascending into heaven, the first one ever admitted there from among the dead, thus exemplifying the fulfilled "expectation of the creature that was groaning and travailing in pain" to be born into the freedom of the heavenly glory of the sons of G.o.d. Fourthly, "justification by faith,"

therefore, means the redemption from Hades by acceptance of the dispensation of free grace which is proclaimed in the gospel.

Fifthly, every sanctified believer receives a pledge or earnest of the spirit sealing him as G.o.d's and a.s.suring him of acceptance with Christ and of advance to heaven. Sixthly, Christ is speedily to come a second time, come in glory and power irresistible, to consummate his mission, raise the dead, judge the world, establish a new order of things, and return into heaven with his chosen ones. Seventhly, the stubbornly wicked portion of mankind will be returned eternally into the under world. Eighthly, after the judgment the subterranean realm of death will be shut up, no more souls going into it, but all men at their dissolution being instantly invested with spiritual bodies and ascending to the glories of the Lord. Finally, Jesus having put down all enemies and restored the primeval paradise will yield up his mediatorial throne, and G.o.d the Father be all in all.

The preparatory rudiments of this system of the last things existed in the belief of the age, and it was itself composed by the union of a theoretic interpretation of the life of Christ and of the connected phenomena succeeding his death, with the elements of Pharasaic Judaism, all mingled in the crucible of the soul of Paul and fused by the fires of his experience. It ill.u.s.trates a great number of puzzling pa.s.sages in the New Testament, without the necessity of recourse to the unnatural, incredible, unwarranted dogmas a.s.sociated with them by the unique, isolated peculiarities of Calvinism. The interpretation given above, moreover, has this strong confirmation of its accuracy, namely, that it is arrived at from the stand point of the thought and life of the Apostle Paul in the first century, not from the stand point of the theology and experience of the educated Christian of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER V.

JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

WE are now to see if we can determine and explain what were the views of the Apostle John upon the subject of death and life, condemnation and salvation, the resurrection and immortality. To understand his opinions on these points, it is obviously necessary to examine his general system of theological thought. John is regarded as the writer of the proem to the fourth Gospel, also of three brief epistles. There are such widely spread doubts of his being the author of the Apocalypse that it has seemed better to examine that production separately, leaving each one free to attribute its doctrine of the last things to whatever person known or unknown he believes wrote the book. It is true that the authors.h.i.+p of the fourth Gospel itself is powerfully disputed; but an investigation of that question would lead us too far and detain us too long from our real aim, which is not to discuss the genuineness or the authority of the New Testament doc.u.ments, but to show their meaning in what they actually contain and imply concerning a future life. It is necessary to premise that we think it certain that John wrote with some reference to the sprouting philosophy of his time, the Platonic and Oriental speculations so early engrafted upon the stock of Christian doctrine. For the peculiar theories which were matured and systematized in the second and third centuries by the Gnostic sects were floating about, in crude and fragmentary forms, at the close of the first century, when the apostle wrote. They immediately awakened dissension and alarm, cries of heresy and orthodoxy, in the Church. Some modern writers deny the presence in the New Testament of any allusion to such views; but the weight of evidence on the other side internal, from similarity of phrase, and external, from the testimony of early Fathers is, when acc.u.mulated and appreciated, overwhelming. Among these Gnostic notions the most distinctive and prominent was the belief that the world was created and the Jewish dispensation given, not by the true and infinite G.o.d, but by a subordinate and imperfect deity, the absolute G.o.d remaining separate from all created things, unknown and afar, in the sufficiency of his aboriginal pleroma or fulness.

The Gnostics also maintained that Creative Power, Reason, Life, Truth, Love, and other kindred realities, were individual beings, who had emanated from G.o.d, and who by their own efficiency constructed, illuminated, and carried on the various provinces of creation and races of existence. Many other opinions, fanciful, absurd, or recondite, which they held, it is not necessary here to state. The evangelist, without alluding perhaps to any particular teachers or systems of these doctrines, but only to their general scope, traverses by his declarations partially the same ground of thought which they cover, stating dogmatically the positive facts as he apprehended them. He agrees with some of the Gnostic doctrines and differs from others, not setting himself to follow or to oppose them indiscriminately, but to do either as the truth seemed to him to require.

There are two methods of seeking the meaning of the introduction to the fourth Gospel where the Johannean doctrine of the Logos is condensed. We may study it grammatically, or historically; morally, or metaphysically; from the point of view of experimental religious faith, or from that of contemporary speculative philosophy. He who omits either of these ways of regarding the subject must arrive at an interpretation essentially defective.

Both modes of investigation are indispensable for acquiring a full comprehension of the expressions employed and the thoughts intended. But to be fitted to understand the theme in its historical aspect which, in this case, for purposes of criticism, is by far the more important one must be intelligently acquainted with the Hebrew personification of the Wisdom, also of the Word, of G.o.d; with the Platonic conception of archetypal ideas; with the Alexandrian Jewish doctrine of the Divine Logos; and with the relevant Gnostic and Christian speculation and phraseology of the first two centuries. Especially must the student be familiar with Philo, who was an eminent Platonic Jewish philosopher and a celebrated writer, flouris.h.i.+ng previous to the composition of the fourth Gospel, in which, indeed, there is scarcely a single superhuman predicate of Christ which may not be paralleled with striking closeness from his extant works. In all these fields are found, in imperfect proportions and fragments, the materials which are developed in John's belief of the Logos become flesh. To present all these materials here would be somewhat out of place and would require too much room. We shall, therefore, simply state, as briefly and clearly as possible, the final conclusions to which a thorough study has led us, drawing such ill.u.s.trations as we do advance almost entirely from Philo.1

1 The reader who wishes to see in smallest compa.s.s and most lucid order the facts requisite for the formation of a judgment is referred to Lucke's "Dissertation on the Logos," to Norton's "Statement of Reasons," and to Neander's exposition of the Johannean theology in his "Planting and Training of the Church."

Nearly every thing important, both external and internal, is collected in these three sources taken together, and set forth with great candor, power, and skill. Differing in their conclusions, they supply pretty adequate means for the independent student to conclude for himself.

In the first place, what view of the Father himself, the absolute Deity, do these writings present? John conceives of G.o.d no one can well collate the relevant texts in his works without perceiving this as the one perfect and eternal Spirit, in himself invisible to mortal eyes, the Personal Love, Life, Truth, Light, "in whom is no darkness at all." This corresponds entirely with the purest and highest idea the human mind can form of the one untreated infinite G.o.d. The apostle, then, going back to the period anterior to the material creation, and soaring to the contemplation of the sole G.o.d, does not conceive of him as being utterly alone, but as having a Son with him, an "only begotten Son," a beloved companion "before the foundation of the world." "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with G.o.d, and the Logos was G.o.d. He was in the beginning with G.o.d. All things were made through him, and without him was nothing made that was made." The true explanation of these words, according to their undeniable historical and their unforced grammatical. There is an English translation of it, by Professor G. R. Noyes, in the numbers of the Christian Examiner for March and May, 1849, meaning, is as follows. Before the material creation, when G.o.d was yet the sole being, his first production, the Logos, was a Son, at once the image of himself and the idea of the yet uncreated world. By him this personal Idea, Son, or Logos all things were afterward created; or, more exactly, through him, by means of him, all things became, that is, were brought, from their being in a state of conception in the mind of G.o.d, into actual existence in s.p.a.ce and time. Thus Philo says, "G.o.d is the most generic; second is the Logos of G.o.d."2 "The Logos is the first begotten Son."3 "The Logos of G.o.d is above the whole world, and is the most ancient and generic of all that had a beginning."4 "Nothing intervenes between the Logos and G.o.d on whom he rests."5 "This sensible world is the junior son of G.o.d; the Senior is the Idea,"6 or Logos. "The shadow and seeming portrait of G.o.d is his Logos, by which, as by an a.s.sumed instrument, he made the world. As G.o.d is the original of the image here called shadow, so this image becomes the original of other things."7 "The intelligible world, or world of archetypal ideas, is the Logos of the world creating G.o.d; as an intelligible or ideal city is the thought of the architect reflecting to build a sensible city."8 "Of the world, G.o.d is the cause by which, the four elements the material from which, the Logos the instrument through which, the goodness of the Creator the end for which, it was made."9 These citations from Philo clearly show, in various stages of development, that doctrine of the Logos which began first arguing to the Divine Being from human a.n.a.logies with separating the conception of a plan in the mind of G.o.d from its execution in fact; proceeded with personifying that plan, or sum of ideas, as a mediating agent between motive and action, between impulse and fulfilment; and ended with hypostatizing the arranging power of the Divine thought as a separate being, his intellectual image or Son, his first and perfect production. They unequivocally express these thoughts: that G.o.d is the only being who was from eternity; that the Logos was the first begotten, antemundane being, that he was the likeness, image, immediate manifestation, of the Father; that he was the medium of creation, the instrumental means in the outward formation of the world. History shows us this doctrine unfolded by minute steps, which it would be tedious to follow, from the Book of Proverbs to Philo Judaus and John, from Plato to Justin Martyr and Athanasius. But the rapid sketch just presented may be sufficient now.

When it is written, "and the Logos was G.o.d," the meaning is not strictly literal. To guard against its being so considered, the author tautologically repeats what he had said immediately before, "the same was in the beginning with G.o.d." Upon the supposition that the Logos is strictly identical with G.o.d, the verses make utter nonsense. "In the beginning was G.o.d, and G.o.d was with G.o.d, and G.o.d was G.o.d. G.o.d was in the beginning with G.o.d." But suppose the Logos to mean an ante mundane but subordinate being, who was a perfect image or likeness of G.o.d, and the sense is both clear and satisfactory, and no violence is done either to historical data or to grammatical demands. "And the Logos was G.o.d," that is, was the mirror or facsimile of G.o.d. So, employing the same idiom, we are accustomed to say

2 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. i. p. 82.

3 Ibid. p. 308.

4 Ibid. p. 121.

5 Ibid. p. 560.

6 Ibid. p. 277.

7 Ibid. p. 106.

8 Ibid. p. 5.

9 Ibid. p. 162.

of an accurate representation of a person, It is the very man himself! Or, without the use of this idiom, we may explain the expression "the Logos was G.o.d" thus: He stands in the place of G.o.d to the lower creation: practically considered, he is as G.o.d to us.

As Philo writes, "To the wise and perfect the Most High is G.o.d; but to us, imperfect beings, the Logos G.o.d's interpreter is G.o.d."10

The inward significance of the Logos doctrine, in all its degrees and phases, circ.u.mstantially and essentially, from first to last, is the revelation of G.o.d. G.o.d himself, in himself, is conceived as absolutely withdrawn beyond the apprehension of men, in boundless immensity and inaccessible secrecy. His own nature is hidden, as a thought is hidden in the mind; but he has the power of revealing it, as a thought is revealed by speaking it in a word. That uttered word is the Logos, and is afterwards conceived as a person, and as creative, then as building and glorifying the world. All of G.o.d that is sent forth from pa.s.sive concealment into active manifestation is the Logos. "The term Logos comprehends,"

Norton says, "all the attributes of G.o.d manifested in the creation and government of the universe." The Logos is the hypostasis of "the unfolded portion," "the revealing power," "the self showing faculty," "the manifesting action," of G.o.d. The essential idea, then, concerning the Logos is that he is the means through which the hidden G.o.d comes to the cognizance of his creatures. In harmony with this prevailing philosophy one who believed the Logos to have been incarnated in Christ would suppose the purpose of his incarnation to be the fuller revelation of G.o.d to men. And Martineau says, "The view of revelation which is implicated in the folds of the Logos doctrine that everywhere pervades the fourth Gospel, is that it is the appearance to beings who have something of a divine spirit within them, of a yet diviner without them, leading them to the divinest of all, who embraces them both." This is a fine statement of the practical religious aspect of John's conception of the nature and office of the Savior.

Since he regarded G.o.d as personal love, life, truth, and light, and Christ, the embodied Logos, as his only begotten Son, an exact image of him in manifestation, it follows that John regarded Christ, next in rank below G.o.d, as personal love, life, truth, and light; and the belief that he was the necessary medium of communicating these Divine blessings to men would naturally result. Accordingly, we find that John repeats, as falling from the lips of Christ, all the declarations required by and supporting such an hypothesis. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." But Philo, too, had written before in precisely the same strain. Witness the correspondences between the following quotations respectively from John and Philo. "I am the bread which came down from heaven to give life to the world."11 Whoso eateth my body and drinketh my blood hath eternal life."12 "Behold, I rain bread upon you from heaven: the heavenly food of the soul is the word of G.o.d, and the Divine Logos, from whom all eternal instructions and wisdoms flow."13 "The bread the Lord gave us to eat was his word."14 "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life

10 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. ii. p. 128.

11 John vi. 33. 41.

12 Ibid. 54.

13 Quoted by G. Scheffer in his Treatise "De Usu Philonis in Interpretatione Novi Testamenti," p. 82.

14 lbid. p. 81.

in you."15 "He alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divine things whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16 "Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have everlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highest Divine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that, drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting life."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever."19 "Lifting up his eyes to the ether, man receives manna, the Divine Logos, heavenly and immortal nourishment for the right desiring soul."20 "G.o.d is the perennial fountain of life; G.o.d is the fountain of the most ancient Logos."21 "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me."22 Does it not seem perfectly plain that John's doctrine of the Christ is at bottom identical with Philo's doctrine of the Logos? The difference of development in the two doctrines, so far as there is a difference, is that the latter view is philosophical, abstract; the former, practical, historical. Philo describes the Logos ideally, filling the supersensible sphere, mediating between the world and G.o.d; John presents him really, incarnated as a man, effecting the redemption of our race. The same dignity, the same offices, are predicated of him by both.

John declares, "In him [the Divine Logos] was life, and the life was the light of men."23 Philo a.s.serts, "Nothing is more luminous and irradiating than the Divine Logos, by the partic.i.p.ation of whom other things expel darkness and gloom, earnestly desiring to partake of living light."24 John speaks of Christ as "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father."25 Philo says, "The Logos is the first begotten Son of G.o.d," "between whom and G.o.d nothing intervenes."26 John writes, "The Son of man will give you the food of everlasting life; for him hath G.o.d the Father sealed."27 Philo writes, "The stamp of the seal of G.o.d is the immortal Logos."28 We have this from John: "He was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin."29 And this from Philo: "The Divine Logos is free from all sins, voluntary and involuntary."30

The Johannean Christ is the Philonean Logos born into the world as a man. "And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." The substance of what has thus far been established may now be concisely stated. The essential thought, whether the subject be metaphysically or practically considered, is this. G.o.d is the eternal, infinite personality of love and truth, life and light. The Logos is his first born Son, his exact image, the reproduction of his being, the next lower personality of love and truth, life and light, the instrument for creating and ruling the world, the revelation of G.o.d, the medium of communication between G.o.d and his works. Christ is that Logos come upon the earth as a man to save the peris.h.i.+ng, proving his pre existence and superhuman nature by his miraculous knowledge and works. That the belief expressed in the last sentence is correctly attributed to John will

15 John vi. 53.

16 Philo, vol. i. p. 482.

17 John vi. 40.

18 Philo, vol. i. p. 560.

19 John vi. 51.

20 Philo, vol. i. p. 498.