p. 1 | THE EARLY FATHERS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 24, 1879

THE EARLY FATHERS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.

We must now introduce a different class of witnesses,—the early fathers. We cannot place as much reliance on them as upon the apostolic fathers, as they began about this time to be more or less corrupted by heathen notions; yet many of them still held to the old landmarks for a long time.

JUSTIN MARTYR, A. D. 164.

Justin Martyr, about A. D. 164, comes first after the apostolic fathers. He was a heathen philosopher, and after his conversion to Christianity, he still retained some of his old heathen notions. He was a learned man, and wrote much. We will quote enough to show his faith upon this question.

1. He earnestly contended for the literal resurrection of the dead, and tried to meet all objections to it. “They who maintain the wrong opinion say that there is no resurrection of the flesh.” This doctrine he then refutes.

2. The doctrine of the second advent of Christ is prominent in all his writings.

3. He did not believe that the souls of men went to Heaven at death. He says: “If you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this [the resurrection], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to Heaven, do not imagine that they are Christians.” Here we have it plainly stated that it was heresy in that age to teach that men's souls went to Heaven at death. Yet this is the very thing that the so-called orthodox denominations now generally teach, and the great mass of the common people among them never suspect but that this was always the faith of the church. But history shows it to be quite the contrary, as witness what Justin says above.

4. He refutes the heretical doctrine just then being introduced, that the soul alone is the man, and can act without the body. He says: “What is man but the reasonable animal, composed of body and soul? Is the soul, by itself, man? No; but the soul of man. Would the body be called man? No; but it is called the body of man. If, then, neither of these is by itself man, but that which is made up of the two together is called man, and God has called man to life and resurrection, he has called, not a part, but the whole, which is the soul and body.” Again: “How, then, did he raise the dead? Their souls or their bodies? Manifestly both.” Once more: “For as in the case of a yoke of oxen, if one or the other is loosed from the yoke neither of them can plow alone; so neither can soul or body alone effect anything if they be unyoked from their communion.” Can this be misunderstood?

5. He denies the immortality of the soul. Thus: “For he ordained that if he [Adam] kept this [God’s command], he should partake of immortal existence; but if he transgressed it, the contrary should be his lot. Man, having been thus made, and immediately looking toward transgression, naturally became subject to corruption.” Hear him state the subject: “Now that the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live, thus, then, it will not even partake [of life] when God does not will it to live. For to live is not its attribute, as it is God’s; but as a man does not live always, and the soul is not forever conjoined with the body, since, whenever this harmony must be broken up, the soul leaves the body, and the man exists no longer; even so, whenever the soul must cease to exist, the spirit of life is removed from it, and there is no more soul, but it goes back to the place from whence it was taken.”

This is so clear that the most bigoted must yield the point and admit that Justin did not believe the soul could live separate from the body.

6. Justin teaches the utter extinction of the wicked. “Wherefore,” says he, “God delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels, and demons, and men SHALL CEASE TO EXIST, because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature.” The wicked will cease to exist. This is unequivocal, and cannot be misunderstood. He did not believe in eternal misery. Again: “Thus, some which have appeared worthy of God, never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and to be punished.”

Much more to the same end might be given from him, but it is not needed. Justin frequently says that the wicked shall suffer “everlasting punishment,” “eternal punishment,” “in eternal fire,” etc., yet he positively declares that they shall cease to exist. So here we have a good example of the limited use of those terms. They are often so used by all the Greeks. Dr. Kitto says that Justin Martyr “held that punishments, at least sensible ones, would sometime cease.” Prof. Bush says he held to the sleep of the soul. Hagenbach, in his “History of Doctrines,” says Justin believed the soul to be mortal, and to perish with the body; that immortality was a reward to be acquired. Ballou says he held to annihilation. Thus: “In another place, however, he states his opinion upon this last point more particularly, and represents that the wicked will be, eventually, annihilated.” Of the faith of this father, Dr. Edward Beecher says, “That Justin did hold and teach the final annihilation of the wicked, the most eminent scholars concede. In the number of such Mr. Hudson appeals to Grotius, Huet, Röpler, and Dupin, Doederlein, Münscher, Munter, Daniel, Hase, Stork, Kerns, Otto, Ritter, J. B. Smith, Bloomfield, Gieseler.”

Gieseler, the church historian, says, “Justin appears to regard it as possible that the souls of the ungodly will be at some time wholly annihilated.” Sec. 45.

Another historian says of him: “Justin did not believe in endless torments, but in the final annihilation of the wicked.”

Jeremy Taylor clearly shows that the doctrine that souls go to Heaven at death, was not known to the primitive church, but was introduced at a late day by the Catholics. “It is,” says he, “a plain recession from antiquity which was determined by the council of Florence (1439) ‘that the souls of the saints are received immediately into Heaven, and clearly behold God himself, three in one,’ as who pleases to try may see it dogmatically resolved to the contrary by Justin Martyr, by Irenæus, by Origen, by St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Arethus Cæsariensis, Euthymius, who may answer for the Greek Church.” He also quotes a number of Latin authors, showing that they did not believe that souls went to Heaven at death.

Daillé, in his famous work on the “Right Use of the Fathers,” says: “That Heaven shall not be opened till the second coming of Christ and the day of Judgment, that during this time the souls of all men with a few exceptions, are shut up in the under world, was held by Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Augustine, Origen, Lactantius, Victorinus, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Œcumenius, Arethus, Prudentius, Theophylact, Bernard, and many others, as is confessed by all. This doctrine is literally held by the whole Greek Church at the present day. Nor did any of the Latins expressly deny any part of it, until the council of Florence, in the year of our Lord 1439.” So it is contrary both to the Bible and to the faith of the ancient church, that souls go immediately to Heaven at death.

TATIAN, A. D. 172, THE DISCIPLE OF JUSTIN MARTYR.

Tatian, who was the disciple of Justin, seems to have believed about the same as Justin concerning the soul. He plainly denies that it is immortal, thus: “The soul is not in itself immortal, O Greeks, but mortal. Yet it is possible for it not to die. If, indeed, it knows not the truth, it dies, and is dissolved with the body, but rises again at the last end of the world, with the body, receiving death by punishment in immortality. But, again, if it acquires the knowledge of God, it dies not, although for a time it be dissolved.” We must then set down Tatian as another believer in the mortality of man and the sleep of the dead.

“He denies,” says Dupin, “the immortality of souls; affirming that they die, and that they shall hereafter rise again with their respective bodies.” Dr. Adam Clarke says he believes “that the soul cannot be immortal without union with the Holy Spirit; but, partaking of the nature of flesh while living without God, dies with the body.”

Another historian speaking of the writings of Tatian, says: “He represents that such souls as have not the truth, or knowledge of God, die with the body, and with it rise to judgment at the end of the world, when they are to undergo ‘a death in immortality,’ by which he perhaps means annihilation. To the sinful demons he assigns the same final doom.”

There is a remarkable passage in this author’s writings showing what several scholars have suggested, viz., that many of the early fathers used the term “immortality of the soul” very loosely, only meaning by it that there will be a future life for man. Thus Tatian, reasoning with a Greek, says, You say “that the soul alone is endowed with immortality, but I say that the body also is endowed with it.” Does Tatian mean to say that the flesh is now immortal? Certainly not. He simply means that the flesh will be raised up, and live in the future, which the Greeks denied. In this sense we find the term “immortality of the soul” used among some of the early Christian fathers.

Tatian plainly teaches the sleep of the dead. Thus he says: “For just as, not existing before I was born, I knew not who I was, and only existed in the potentiality of fleshly matter, but being born after a former state of nothingness, I have obtained through my birth a certainty of my existence, in the same way, having been born, and through death existing no longer, and seen no longer, I shall exist again, just as before I was not, but was afterwards born.”

This language cannot be mistaken. He teaches that in death there is no more knowledge than there was before a man was born.

MARTYRS OF THE CHURCH OF LYONS, FRANCE, A. D. 177.

In the year A. D. 177, many of this church were cruelly martyred. Those who survived wrote an account of their sufferings, in which they say: “The bodies of the martyrs, after being abused in every possible manner, and thus exposed to the open air for six days, were at length burned and reduced to ashes by the wretches, and finally cast into the Rhone, that flows near at hand, that there might not be a vestige of them remaining on the land. These things they did as if they were able to overcome God, and destroy their resurrection, as they themselves gave out, that they might not have any hope of rising again, in the belief of which they have introduced a new and strange religion, and contemn the most dreadful punishments, and are prepared to meet death even with joy. Now we shall see whether they will rise again, and whether their God is able to help them, and rescue them out of our hands.”

This shows plainly that the only hope of those early martyrs was the resurrection, and their enemies thought that if they could destroy this hope, they would never have any future life.

ATHENAGORAS, A. D. 180.

Of this Christian father, Horne says, He “is the most polished and elegant author of Christian antiquity.” The following passages show that he held to the sleep of the dead: “And let no one think it strange that we call by the name of life a continuance of being which is interrupted by death and corruption. . . . I suppose some call sleep the brother of death, not as deriving their origin from the same ancestors and fathers, but because those who are dead, and those who sleep, are subject to similar states, as regards, at least, the stillness and absence of all sense of the present or the past, or, rather, of existence itself and their own life.” Hence, he naturally hangs all hope of a future life on the resurrection. Of man, he says: “The cause of his creation is a pledge of his continuance forever, and this continuance is a pledge of the resurrection, without which man could not continue.” Again: “But it is impossible for him to continue unless he rise again; for, if no resurrection were to take place, the nature of men, as men, would not continue.”

Athenagoras, then, still held the Bible doctrine of the sleep of the dead, and also taught, as Paul did, that if there is no resurrection, there can be no future life.