Eternal—But in What Sense?
[Under this heading The Interior (Presbyterian) prints a contribution signed “Layman,” to which it prefixes the following editorial note: “For the most part The Interior has been content to preside over the debate on eternal punishment in our Piths and Points forum without expressing favor for one argument above another. But the following summary of what appeals to us as Scriptural truth is so admirably stated and so carefully balanced that we can not forbear to give it the imprint of editorial sanction. So sane an utterance might well, it seems to us, be the last word in this debate.” We can only wish that all the utterances upon this subject were as “sane,” and we think our readers will be interested in this contribution.—Ed.] “In my own experience years ago, I worshiped God with abject, servile fear, and in mortal terror and trembling, and did not truly love him. All the instincts of pity, mercy, sympathy, kindness, and love which God himself implanted in the human breast, revolted against the conception of God embraced in the ancient pagan doctrine of eternal punishment ingrafted on the word of God by philosophy and the Church of Rome. But I know him now as a tender, loving Heavenly Father, merciful, just, and good, and not as a vindictive, implacable tyrant. “Christians generally are agreed that there is punishment for the incorrigibly wicked, and most of them agree that it is eternal—the only point of difference being whether the meaning of ‘eternal’ with reference to punishment is to be construed in the sense of an imperishable existence, forever continuing and conscious, with limitless suffering and endless misery, or whether it means punishment eternal and everlasting in its settled finality. “Two men are condemned to death for crimes; one is pardoned and restored to favor, the other is hanged. The judge, in the interests of justice, sentenced the latter; the officers of the law executed the criminal, who loses his life, and is destroyed, blotted out, and perishes, and is no more; and justice is satisfied. The punishment is eternal and everlasting so far as the criminal and all are concerned. There can never be a restoration or recovery; no penitence nor pardon can now avail; nothing can be done to change what has been done in the way of punishment, for it lasts forever, throughout eternity, and is hopelessly beyond any recall or possibility of mitigation, pardon, or restoration, because the punishment is fixed, permanent, and eternal in the sense of eternal finality. The wrath of the state then abideth forever, unchangeable. “In like manner the wicked are to appear before the great Judge to receive sentence for the deeds done in the body, and receive a final punishment, which God’s Word everywhere declares is destruction. “I am unable to find anything in Scripture that promises permanent eternal future life, or immortality, to the wicked, either in a state of misery or otherwise, or of any imperishable, indestructible existence for them; and Christ promises eternal life simply,—not a happy life to one, and a miserable life to another. The promise of eternal life is addressed always to the righteous only, to God’s elect, and not to the world. “All mankind have a natural capacity and longing for eternal life or immortality; but it is a gift of God, a reward to those only who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for it. ‘He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life.’ It is not flesh nor intellect that is immortal, but the spirit from God, that is to survive and inherit, because God is a spirit; and he that hath not the Spirit of God is none of his. “The theological doctrine of the eternal persistence of sin, the perpetual continuity of evil, and of an imperishable, indestructible existence of eternal suffering for it, is abhorrent to any just and sane mind, and is not according to the plain words of the Bible, as I understand it. The whole universe seems working toward the highest ultimate good, and to a state of perfect purity and righteousness wherein all sin and evil is to be wholly eliminated, we hope, and God’s perfect, divine will is to be wholly and supremely done. In this state, the moral idiot, the degenerate, the wholly vicious, those helplessly incapable of any moral or spiritual ideas, will not exist in endless punishment, but will be as chaff to be burned up with fire that no one can quench; or as David says, ‘Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish;’ or as Peter puts it, ‘These, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, . . . shall utterly perish.’ “I can not conceive of the tender, sympathetic, loving, gentle Jesus as being the Judge to sentence to eternal, continuing punishment those who have sinned,—a majority of his children,—and I can not reconcile my mind to the old theology that makes him appear so, or as an accessory to such a tremendous, awful fate. “Our difficulties have been with theological definitions, not with God’s Word; and if language is not allowed its plain, obvious meaning, then the Bible should not be given to the people, but only interpreted for them. To illustrate: The familiar text, ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,’ as interpreted by the old theology would read, ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not have an imperishable existence of punishment but have everlasting, unended bliss.’ Try the same interpretation in the hundreds of texts pertaining to the fate of the wicked, where such words as ‘perish,’ ‘utterly consumed,’ ‘destroy,’ ‘destroyed forever,’ ‘burned up,’ ‘death,’ etc., occur, and see how the sense is altered. “When ‘death and hell’ are cast into the lake of fire at the second death, and sin and evil in the universe are then forever blotted out, as we hope, and the wicked utterly destroyed; when death is abolished,—for ‘the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,’—then we can look forward to that happy future when there shall be no more curse, nor death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. Then shall the righteous whose names are in the Lamb’s book of life, eat of the tree of life—put on immortality, and be forever with the Lord.”