NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN.
By N. V. Hull
DISCUSSION BETWEEN ELD. N. V. HULL, SEVENTH-DAY BAPTIST, AND ELD. R. F. COTTRELL, SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST.
(Continued from Review No. 2, Vol. xxviii.) Elder Hull's Twelfth Article.
Dear Brother,—In your reply to my previous letter, you commence by saying, “Concerning the duration of future punishment, we shall have no controversy. We are agreed that the final damnation and punishment of the wicked will be eternal. From the sentence there is no reprieve, and from the punishment there is no restoration. Hence it is eternal. But in regard to the nature of the punishment, we may differ in part, not wholly, I trust. I shall hold that the punishment of the wicked will eventuate in death, with no resurrection beyond it. This is eternal punishment.” Either I do not understand you, or in these sentences you not only differ widely from me, but you also contradict yourself. It is manifest, that punishment ends with consciousness. You cannot punish a tree or a stone, nor can you shame a horse. My position is, that the punishment of the wicked will be without end, the smoke of their torment ascending up forever and ever. Rev. xiv, 11. When torment ceases, punishment ends. This use of language is common and universal. Yours is special, and not justified by the language of past ages or the present. You say that loss or deprivation is punishment, as well as pain. But is not loss or privation punishment only in so far as they are designed to produce pain? When you say that the punishment of the wicked will eventuate in death, do you mean to say that death is a part of the punishment? I understand you to use the term death in the sense of cessation of consciousness. But how, if continued consciousness is not the natural condition of the human spirit, can its loss be a punishment? If you say that the punishment consists of the painful circumstances under which the spirit ceases to be conscious, then these painful circumstances are the punishment, and not the loss of consciousness. When you say that I will attempt to prove that the wicked will have eternal conscious suffering, you are right. Surely, I could not argue that punishment continued after consciousness ceased. That would involve the idea of being and not being at the same time, which is a contradiction. But in order that this discussion proceed intelligibly, it is needful that I define the terms life and death. In the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, besides the ordinary ones, those of every day life, they have special significations—significations peculiar to the religious ideas contained in the Book. Of this I have spoken in former articles. Physical death is the separation of the vital force from the particles of which the body is composed. In this state, all the powers of the body cease. There is remaining neither sense nor feeling. Dead men cannot think; in the grave there is no knowledge. This is the primary meaning of death. The word has several other meanings; but the one in which we are particularly interested is its figurative signification. When describing the moral or spiritual state of man, the word death describes the state of the sinner condemned. All have sinned, and are therefore in a state of death. See Eph. ii, 1, “You also being dead in trespasses and in sins.” 1 Tim. v, 6, “But she that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.” Luke xv, 24, “Because this my son was dead and is alive again.” These texts show that one under the curse of the law, or in a state of sin, is in Scripture phrase dead. But I proceed to show that life and death, in this figurative sense, are contrasted in the Bible, so as to show unmistakably their meaning. John v, 24, “Verily, Verily, I say to you, He that hears my word, and believes him that sent me, has everlasting life, and comes not into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” 1 John iii, 14, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loves not his brother abides in death.” Moral or spiritual death, then, is the result of wresting ourselves from the favor of God by sin. The state of sin in which the race is found, is not natural. Sin is destructive. Whatever man inherited from God, in his sinless state, he lost by sin. His alienation is a state of death. When man is born again, he is raised to life. “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” Col. iii, 3. And because this life in the new birth comes through Jesus Christ, he is called “our life.” Col. iii. 4. This, then, is the eternal life which we receive when we pass from death, or out of death into life. It is eternal life, because we need no other moral cleansing to fit us for Heaven. The resurrection proper takes effect upon the body, constituting it like unto Christ’s glorious body, and occurs at the end of the world. At the resurrection, the spirit having already come into the moral image of God by the transforming power of grace, is united to the spiritual body, and so the whole man is redeemed and stands perfect before God. On the word destroy, you say, “When applied to animals and men, it means to put an end to life, to kill, to slay, to extirpate.” In a general way, this is a fair definition; but that it is an exact definition, covering the term in all its uses, is far from being true. To define the term thus in its bearing upon this discussion is utterly delusive. Destroy, here, is the synonym of ruin. And is not a spirit or person ruined or destroyed, who is driven away into everlasting punishment? Will you please answer this question in your next, and say whether such an one is destroyed or not? The word apollumi, or its equivalent, translated in 2 Thess. i, 9, destruction, occurs in the New Testament between ninety and one hundred times, and is translated by the terms destroy, perish, loss, &c., and in every instance their meaning is determined by the context, or the nature of the things to which they are applied. But by no possibility can it have the meaning you have given it in various instances. To illustrate, take Matt. x, 6, 15, 24, where Jesus speaks of the lost sheep of the house of Israel. These persons were not dead, or killed, slain, etc. Indeed, I do not recollect a passage in which it has the meaning you give it, when it refers to man’s moral condition. Besides, in the case of 2 Thess. i, 9, the passage must be collated with other passages in the New Testament upon the same subject, and be interpreted in harmony with them. Especially must it be interpreted in harmony with the words of Jesus. Christ is chief, and any interpretation of Paul that makes him collide in the slightest degree with Jesus, must be avoided. Nor may the stronger words of Jesus be interpreted by those which even seem limited or weaker. I mean, the stronger must not be limited by the weaker. Take, then, the words of Jesus, Matt. xxv, 46, “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment,” and what other interpretation than the one I have given meets them in their fullness? Even Theodore Parker admitted that this was their meaning. We must not attempt to change them. You admit the idea of degrees in punishment; but this suggests some inquiries as to how your theory of the nature of future punishment allows of this. If I understand you, you hold that at the resurrection the wicked will be raised with material bodies, and then cast into a lake of material fire, and burned up. If so, what is to hinder their all being consumed at once? If the fire is as intense as supposed, how is it possible for these persons to live more than a few minutes? How long could you, constituted as you are, live in a seething lake of fire and brimstone? Besides, would not a wicked man, under such circumstances, die as soon as a good man, suppose the good man to be there? Upon this principle, the punishment being material, why will not the one guilty of but little, suffer as long and as intensely as the one guilty of much? Or, will you say that God will miraculously sustain the life of the one guilty of much, that he may be punished the more, and miraculously hasten the death of the other, that he may only suffer what is due? As to death, however, you make them all suffer alike. Is98this just? If there is a difference in that part of the penalty relating to the burning, why not of the dying also, provided that is a part of the penalty?