DEFECTIVE REASONING

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 24, 1881

DEFECTIVE REASONING.

"Everlasting punishment . . . life eternal—the qualifying words are the same in the original. The punishment of the wicked and the life of the righteous are alike everlasting. If the word used by the sacred writer signifies a limited period in the one case, it signifies the same in the other; so that when it is proved that eternal punishment is not endless, it is also proved that there is a limit to the felicity of the righteous. All the finely-spun theories in the world cannot get rid of this result. But in no conceivable way could the unending torment of the incorrigibly wicked be expressed with greater clearness or emphasis than in this sharply drawn antithesis."

The above paragraph is from a lesson comment on Matt. 25:46. The principal defect is this: it makes punishment to be synonymous with torment. A school-boy ought to know better than to commit such an error as this. Fine, imprisonment, torture, death, are all comprised in the word punishment. But the word does not designate either, and cannot be synonymous with either. There is no such thing as the "sharply drawn antithesis" which the writer would fain make out. There is no absolute antithesis between punishment and life. We grant that there is one implied in the text, because the punishment is death, which is the antithesis to life. "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life." Instead of the "unending torment" of the wicked being clearly expressed in the text, it is not even hinted, or referred to by implication. "Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction." 2 Thess. 1:9. Death, destruction, will be the punishment of the wicked, and it will be everlasting. This is positively the truth of the Scriptures, because it is plainly stated in many texts which contain neither figures nor symbols. We wish that all who handle the sacred Scriptures would candidly reason, and never wildly assert.