Conditional Immortality by Samuel Minton

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 20, 1875

Conditional Immortality.

By Samuel Minton

We find the following article in The Christian World, of April 9, 1875, a paper published in London, England. It is the third and concluding letter of a series the preceding numbers of which we have not seen. But the very able manner in which the subject is treated in this number, and the conclusions which Mr. Minton shows to be both logical and scriptural, we are sure will greatly interest our readers. This subject is attracting great attention in England.

(To the Editor of the CHRISTIAN WORLD.)

Sir,—I think Mr. Baldwin Brown would scarcely deny that it is on the moral aspect of the question he mainly rests his case. “The larger teaching of Scripture” simply means the teaching of those particular texts which appear to support his own view. The natural meaning of a vastly larger number of texts cannot be their real meaning, because it would teach something “degrading to man and dishonoring to God.” This is just the most difficult part of the subject to deal with concisely, because of its intimate connection with the great moral mystery—the permission of evil. The moment we attempt to grapple with any aspect of that portentous fact, we get enveloped in such a cloud of smoke that it is difficult to know where we are. But still I will endeavor, with the very limited space at my command, to show that the moral difficulties which our brother has raised are very far from sufficient to overthrow the plain and positive declarations of Holy Writ.

It certainly cannot be degrading to any creature however exalted, to say that it must necessarily be forever dependent upon the Creator for the continuance of its life, and that the same power which created can at any time destroy it. Does any one feel that man is being degraded when we sing of Jehovah, “He can create and he destroy?” Nay, can we conceive of the Creator bringing any being into existence that he could not put out of existence? I cannot; I believe such a thing would be utterly impossible.

The only question, then, is, whether man would be degraded by any single member of his race being actually put out of existence. Surely Mr. Brown will admit that an affirmative answer to this question would be about as tremendous a stretch of human pride as could well be conceived. Immortality is such a marvelous gift to be bestowed upon any creature that it is hard enough to believe in it at all. But for a whole race of beings to say they will feel degraded if any one of their number is not allowed to live as long as the Creator himself must surely be the ne plus ultra of self-exaltation. Mr. Brown cannot mean this. But, then, what does he mean?

He is so undiscriminating in his allegations against “these annihilationists,” that he may perhaps refer to some views which he supposes us to hold as to man’s nature being reduced to the level of the brutes by his fall, and only restored to its original condition in regeneration; so that the regenerate are a “caste of immortals,” moving about among beings of another order. If any one holds such a view, let him defend it. For myself, I believe that every man’s physical constitution remains to the day of his death exactly the same in kind as it was created in Adam, though probably with a considerable loss of its original power and beauty. The only difference between one man and another is of a moral kind; and on that difference, whether it become unalterably fixed in this life or the next, depend the issues of life and death. What is there “degrading” in this? Mr. Brown may be right or wrong in his severity to “saints” and tenderness to “sinners,” but he will not deny that there are such distinctions, or that our Lord and his apostles make them to be of tremendous importance. The difference between wheat and tares, between “the children of God and the children of the devil” is not one of “caste;” neither does it make the one to be “mortals,” and the other “immortals.” They are both alike mortal; but those who have “counted themselves unworthy of eternal life” will “perish,” while those who have believed in God’s only begotten Son, and sought for immortality by patient continuance in well-doing, will “not be hurt of the second death,” for “if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever.”

Well, then, if there is nothing in this “degrading to man,” is there anything in it “dishonoring to God?” How? I confess I am at a loss to conceive, except on the assumption that the Creator must never withdraw from a creature any gift that he has once bestowed upon it. But that would require every animal to be immortal, or, at the very least, to be compensated hereafter for its sufferings here. Mr. Brown speaks of their life being a pleasure to them. To some of them it is. But what are we to make of those animals whose lives few of us would be willing to endure, even to obtain an eternity of blessedness? If the intelligent, confiding, faithful, affectionate dogs, whom friends in human form have subjected to the frightful agonies of vivisection, were gifted with our friend’s eloquence, they might declaim against the “pitilessness” of those who would deny them immortality, in as burning words as any that he has used of those who, while overwhelmed with gratitude for the marvelous gift of eternal life, which they believe has been bestowed upon them in Christ, and deeply sympathizing with the groans of creation, can feel no confidence that all their suffering brethren will sooner or later partake of the same stupendous blessing.

But has not man a vastly higher nature than the brute? Assuredly. And that tells tremendously against his prospect of immortality, if he violates it. For, difficult as it is to conceive of the Creator’s bestowing such a gift upon a creature that could never know or love the Giver, it is infinitely more difficult to conceive of his bestowing it on one who might, but would not, love him for it. I very much doubt if infinite love could bear never to be loved by an immortal dog; I am quite sure that it could not bear to be eternally hated by an immortal man. Our friend hopes that this will never occur; he trusts to the power of the cross to bring every human being into loving harmony with the Creator. But he admits that the absolute “freedom of the human will” must render it uncertain. And that alone would require some limitation to be put upon the scope of those “particular texts,” on which he mainly depends, and which, if taken alone, would undoubtedly lend him strong support. We go further, and maintain that other declarations of Holy Scripture too numerous to be overlooked, as well as too plain and positive to be evaded, absolutely forbid us to understand this “larger teaching” in the extreme sense for which Universalists contend. They assert in every shape and form that some men never will yield to the power of the cross; that they will “receive this grace of God in vain,” that the gospel which proclaims it will prove to them “a savor of death unto death;” that it will become “impossible to renew them again unto repentance;” and that for them “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.” To pronounce it “dishonoring to God” that such should perish, is to say, either that God dishonored himself by creating free agents liable to evil, or that, having created them, he is bound in honor to keep them alive forever at any cost to himself, to the universe, and to them. So far from their destruction being inconsistent with perfect love, it is only one manifestation of that love. To borrow the language of the Rev. Samuel Cox from his article in Good Words, “For those who will be evil, what greater mercy can be shown than that they should be destroyed out of their misery by the love from which they will not accept any higher boon?”

The amount and kind of mental or bodily suffering which will precede or accompany that destruction we may contentedly leave with the Judge of quick and dead. That it will be something very terrible, much more terrible in some cases than in others, neither reason nor the language of Scripture can permit us to doubt. But whatever may be the actual process by which the consuming fire of divine wrath will devour the adversaries—and of that we can form not the slightest conception—we may be perfectly sure that there will be nothing in it to shock the deepest instincts of righteousness or love, but that the conscience of the whole universe will be satisfied, and all creation will say, Amen.

So likewise may we confidently trust God to wipe away the tears that may start to our eyes at the thought of those whom we loved, as long as there remained anything in them to love; but it will not be the “doomsman’s stroke” that causes our regret; it will be that, through “judging themselves unworthy of eternal life,” they sunk to a depth of moral corruption which rendered that stroke inevitable. The reconciliation in Christ of all things that were created by Christ—“and without him was not anything made that was made”—will be none the less “real,” because countless forms of life have passed away forever, some without immortality being placed within their reach, and some through refusing to accept it. All things will be none the less “very good,” because many things once became so hopelessly bad as to necessitate their removal. The dark cloud of evil that had once been allowed to settle on creation will have been rolled away. And as eternity unfolds the ever-extending glory and happiness which have been evolved out of it, and which, unless the Creator loves evil for its own sake, could not possibly have been obtained in any other way, we shall be less and less inclined to ask, which now sometimes we can scarcely help doing, whether any conceivable result can be worth such a cost. Our lips will never falter as we exclaim, “Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” nor shall we have to add from the bottom of a trembling heart, and in the perplexity of a bewildered intellect, “How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

What is there “miserable” in this? Nothing, that I can see; nor, I believe, that my honored friend can see. It is not the doctrine of conditional immortality that excites his “intense repugnance,” but certain other doctrines, which he supposes to be connected with it, and which certainly are sometimes conjoined with it in a more or less definite form. Transubstantiation has been engrafted on the incarnation; but it would hardly be fair to make it a prominent feature, if not the main foundation, of an attack on “the miserable doctrine of incarnation.” We hold that “mortal man” is offered immortality in Christ; and that this is the plain, natural, and intended meaning of “the record which God has given of his Son.” We hold that “the crown of life” is a prize freely offered to us in Christ, to be sought for “by patient continuance in well-doing,” and, if won, to be cast at the feet of Him who purchased it for us with his own blood. A variety of answers may be given to the multitude of questions that naturally arise as to the practical consequences of this doctrine; each of which answers should be discussed on its own merits. But the doctrine itself should not be made responsible for any consequences except such as necessarily result from it. For myself I am unable to see one that creates any moral difficulty in accepting what, after having for years considered everything that can be said on all sides of the question, still appears to me the undoubted, consistent, and most emphatic testimony of holy Scripture.

We are no more the “discoverers” of this truth than Luther was the discoverer of justification by faith. On the contrary, we have always declared that it was the prevalent, if not universal, faith of the church for the first two centuries; that it is taught in the writings of later “fathers;” and that although, like many other truths, it was almost buried out of sight during the Dark Ages, it has never been without witnesses since the Bible itself was disentombed at the Reformation. Luther wrote: “I permit the pope to make articles of faith for himself and his faithful, such as, that the soul is the substantial form of the human body, that the soul is immortal, with all those monstrous opinions to be found in the Roman Decretals.” In the Book of Common Prayer we ask “that we may rise to the life immortal,” “that we may so pass through things temporal as finally to lose not the things eternal;” and for our Queen, that God may “crown her with immortality in the world to come.” Locke maintained that only “he who doeth the will of God abideth forever;” Milton expressed it in the Paradise Lost; Olshausen, no mean scholar or divine so far from holding that the necessary immortality of every human soul is “always assumed in holy Scripture as unquestionable,” declared that “the doctrine and the name are alike unknown to the entire Bible;” Archbishop Whately argued in his own pointed way that life means life, and death means death, in the Bible as well as in any other book; Archbishop Thompson says in his Bampton Lectures, “Life to the godless must be the beginning of destruction, since nothing but God, and that which pleases him, can permanently exist.” But time would fail to tell of Watson, of Foster, of Alford, with a host of other divines, great and small, living and dead, in our own and other lands, who, though neither individually nor collectively infallible, have cast into the scale a weight of authority which can scarcely be neutralized by the remark, that “very clever men” can make Scripture say anything. Some of those who are weak in this world may of late have been chosen to popularize this doctrine in a way that, for more reasons than one, would have been hardly possible to the great and the learned. But in either case, the only question is, whether the doctrine be of God or not. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

Thanking you for your courtesy in granting me so much space, and sincerely hoping that I have not said a word to wound the feelings either of Mr. Baldwin Brown or of those who sympathize with his views—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, SAMUEL MINTON. 20 Warwick-square, S. W.