The Spirits in Prison by James White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · May 27, 1875

The Spirits in Prison.

By James White

OUR belief that this text, 1 Pet. 3:18-21, refers only to those who lived in the days of Noah, "while the ark was preparing," and not at all to conscious spirits in limbo, to whom Jesus preached between his death and his resurrection, has, by many, been considered as bordering on infidelity. Protestants have contended that it proved the separate existence of the human spirit, and Catholics and Mormons have taken up the statement and offered it as evidence that probation and the offer of salvation is extended to the dead. We have often wondered that Protestants should thus prepare fuel for the fire of their enemies, but their prejudices seemed too strong to permit them to look at the subject in a candid and impartial manner. Now we are pleased to find that no less a work than the Princeton Review comes out squarely on the truth of this text, and the Interior, the influential Presbyterian paper of Chicago, strongly indorses the truth.

Let it be noticed that the teaching of the text is simply this: The spirits now in prison were once preached to by Christ, through the same spirit by which Jesus was raised from the dead. Dr. West infers that as the spirits of the just were not preached to after death, that, therefore, they were happy in Heaven. This inference is worthless, for Peter says nothing on the subject. As to what the text actually does teach, without any regard to inferences, we fully agree with the Dr. in his article in the Princeton Review, and we believe this article will have no slight influence in doing away with the prejudice so largely existing against the truth.

The words with which the Interior introduces the article are worthy of approval. They are as follows:—

"There are some passages of Scripture which, by common consent, are allowed to be 'obscure.' And the fact that they have this reputation is, perhaps, the reason that a great many persons feel justified in having no opinion about them, or an opinion which gravitates toward the view of a leading commentator, but for which no defense is attempted. It is creditable to a man's modesty, if it does not evince his indolence, for him to say, 'This passage is one in the interpretation of which the ripest theologians, and the most accomplished philologists, are unable to agree, and what right have I to an opinion.' It is not always remembered that in Biblical criticism, as in other departments of inquiry, there is a great deal of slovenly writing and immature thinking, that authors are not indifferent to labor-saving expedients, and that where one man, as Alford, for example, undertakes to write a commentary on the entire New Testament, he will be apt, in some cases, to reach his conclusions too rapidly, and particularly if a particular conclusion is one to which he leaned, irrespective of the passage under consideration, and coincides with the views of older exegetical authorities. After all that has been written by way of exposition and elucidation of the entire New Testament, there is much yet to stimulate the industry of those who, by culture and taste, are qualified to enter this important field of inquiry. In proof of this we have a good illustration in Dr. West's article on the 'Spirits in Prison,' which has just appeared in the Princeton Review. 1 Pet. 3:18-21, is one of those passages in Scripture whose difficulties have been such as to keep most men from dealing with it. Those who are boldest in referring to it are those who are confident that it teaches that Christ preached in hades after his crucifixion, to the antediluvians. Those who reject this interpretation are too apt to do so with a timidity and a hesitancy while they admit that it is a difficult passage, and seems to teach a doctrine which nevertheless they do not believe. It is time that this passage, the horizon of which, as Dr. West says, 'virtually sweeps the whole circle of revealed truth unto salvation,' should be taken out the hands of those who use it as a locus classicus in proof of a revolting dogma; should be redeemed from the sphere of obscurity to which orthodox interpreters, in their timidity, have too often consigned it; and should be made, as it is so seldom made, the theme of pulpit discourse, so that by a presentation of the separate elements which compose it, the whole redeeming work of Christ may be brought out. To this end we invite especial attention to the article from the pen of Rev. Dr. West, an article which deserves the highest praise whether we consider the writer's diction, his logic, his controversial skill, his theological grasp or his competency in the sphere of philological criticism."

In noticing the mistakes of interpreters the Interior gives an illustration of the meaning of Peter's words as follows:—

"The next mistake of interpreters is that of supposing that the passage teaches that when Christ preached to the antediluvians, they were in prison. But it does not. Suppose one should say, 'Many a time I played with the poor wretch in prison, and I remember what a disobedient boy he was, and how he taxed his parents' patience.' Would anybody think that he went into prison to play with the criminal? Would it not rather occur to every one that the time of the playing referred to the time of the disobedience, and it was after that period that, the imprisonment occurred? This then is what Peter means: Christ preached to the antediluvians in a state of unbelief and particularly when Noah was building the ark. Those antediluvians for their unbelief were punished, and are now 'Spirits in prison.' Christ preached to them, therefore, before he became incarnate. Yes; Peter says, he preached to them in that divine nature, in virtue of which he rose from the dead."

We have not seen the Review, though, we would be pleased to see the whole article; but the following, which the Interior calls "a single sentence" of the article, it gives as a summing up of the results of the writer's inquiry, and as a fair specimen of the style of the essay:—

"To say, then, in face of all these facts of grammar, history, and theology, that Christ actually went into phulake to preach, when Peter says no such thing; that the preaching Christ did to the contemporaries of Noah was subsequent to the crucifixion, when Peter says it was in the days of Noah; that it was more than two thousand years after the ark rotted, when Peter says it was when the ark was building; that it was to the disobedient, A. D. 33, when Peter says it was to the disobedient, B. C. 2377; that it lasted about one day, or a day and a half, when Peter says it lasted one hundred and twenty years; that the consequence of it was a deliverance of the disobedient out of phulake when Peter shows that the consequence of it was a putting of them into phulake; that, again, it was to pious spirits the preaching was sent, when Peter makes mention of none there save the impious; that it was done in a subterranean cavern—'tenebrosa cavositas'—in Hades, when Peter says it was done in Eastern Asia, or on the Armenian plateau between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea; that it was done by the human soul of Christ, or by a semi-pantheistic ubiquitous soul and body together, when Peter says it was done before Christ ever had a human soul or body either; that phulake is a place where pious antediluvians went when the flood arose above their dwellings, when Peter says they went into the ark, and were saved by water; that it was a place of holy repose and expectation for the Old Testament church, when forty times out of the forty-five in the New Testament, it means a jail or place of penal detention, and the other five times; a watch or police; to say that God's long-suffering toward the antediluvians extends over into another world, when God says it was given them, once for all, during one hundred and twenty years in this, and then forever withdrawn—to assert all this in face of the reformed critics and theologians, some of whom towered in intellectual grandeur even above the loftiest of the church fathers and the schoolmen, and in face of the best modern critical apparatus, is not only to set at defiance all established principles of interpretation, but unconsciously to wage war against the laws of the Greek language and the usus loquendi of the Sacred Text."

The Interior, with a mixture of truth with facetiousness, says, "It will be as hard to answer that sentence as it is to read it through in one breath." Perhaps this sentence will answer the purpose of those who will know how to use it as well as the whole article would. We venture the prediction that this paragraph will be read in the hearing of many thousands within the next few months. James White.