There is nothing new under the sun. The Jewish Mystics and Cabbalists, and the Gnostics of the second and third centuries (against which last Paul warns us, and who, though beginning earlier, were in those centuries fully developed) held the doctrine of the non-immortality of the soul and its end, just as heretics on these points do now. They were divided even into the same two classes as now, i.e., some held the soul died with the body, others that it would be cast into the fire afterward, on being judged, and then consumed. Not only so, but they founded their teaching on the same reasonings as to nephesh, psuche, chaia, and ruach, etc. It may be well, therefore, after showing the facts to be so, to examine the various words and ascertain their use in Scripture, as well as that of some others sought to be employed to the same end. The doctrine of Jewish Rabbis was not, as is evident, that of Jesus Christ being eternal life, or they would not have been Jewish Rabbis. But, wherever they found it, basing it on the merit of works and keeping the law, as we may suppose, they taught that the higher spiritual life was a distinct thing from the animal life, and received at a distinct time. Their system is not uniform; more scriptural, but in many parts the same as our modern doctors, and the Gnostics completely so. The records of Jewish mysticism are comparatively of late date, but they record early opinions, many of which are found in early Christian fathers, such as Origen, Jerome, and others, and in Philo, and even Josephus. The Gnostics formed their systems in the same countries, Syria, and particularly Alexandria, the great seat of all these opinions. My impression is that all these views came from the East. But I have not used research enough to verify this, nor is it necessary for the reader. My object is to meet from Scripture the assertions of ancient and modern error. In the present case by inquiry into the use of words.
The Jewish doctors distinguished three souls: the nephesh, the ruach, and the neshama. The nephesh they held, as our moderns also tell us, to be the animal soul, the soul by which the body lives; ruach is the spirit suited to the middle world; neshama that suited to the upper, and in which was the image of and union with God. Thus in the book Sohar we have: " Let a man sanctify himself and they shall sanctify him more, and when a man is sanctified with the holiness of his Lord, he is then clothed with a holy mind, which is the inheritance of the holy one, and then he becomes heir of all things, and such are called the sons of the holy blessed God, as is written in Deut. 14 Ye are the sons of Jehovah your God.'" This doctrine of the three souls or parts of man pervades the Sohar. " Nephesh, the animal soul, is annexed to the body; the spirit to the soul (ruach to nephesh); and mind, the neshama or superior spirit, to the ruach. Some of them held that, if the child at least behaved well, having only the nephesh; he got the ruach at thirteen and a day old, and the neshama at twenty or twenty-one. Otherwise not. Some held there are those who never had any soul but the nephesh; others, that and the ricach; and others, again, the neshama also,-and they would be with God. If they had only the nephesh it remained in the grave with the body,-ended with it.
There was another system, which Origen applied even
to Christ, that the higher soul could not come into this world without taking a secondary soul, and so, consequently, the body Indeed, according to him, they are born here according to their conduct in a previous existence. Josephus says the Pharisees held the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls. It would seem that this trinity of the soul was some way connected with their speculations about the Godhead, the Memra, Shechinah, and a tissue of irreverent absurdities, which I need not enter into here.
In all ancient mythology and tradition, heathen and Jewish, will be found the craving of the human mind after truths which revelation gives us in their perfection. Infidels have, consequently, alleged these truths were borrowed from the traditions; than which nothing can be more false. They were the source of Arianism, and Gnosticism, Universalism, and Annihilationism. Thus Rationalists tell us that the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, was derived from the Alexandrian, or even Palestinian, Jews. These had their Memra, those their Logos, and Philo speaks largely of it, and makes the visible world itself an expression, so to speak, of the Logos, a living expression of it. But mark the real bearing of this. The reason was, that the supreme God could not by any possibility be in connection with matter. The mystic Rabbis held God for a kind of nonexistence, because there was no such connection with what we hold to exist. Hence there was a secondary God, the Logos, or Word, which partook of his nature but was not the Supreme, and he then revealed himself and was in communication with the creature. Yet in general, matter (Hule) was a thing evil in itself, a bond to the soul, and eternal, too.
Now Christianity teaches the exact contrary of this doctrine of the Logos. The Logos is God,-created everything,-and the very essence of Christianity is the immediate personal connection, in incarnation, between God and the creature-God and man in one person. All the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily. " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," that Word which, in the beginning, was, when all began. In eternity He was God, and personally, too, with God. By Him was everything made, and the Father dwelt in Him, and He was in the Father. " We know Him that is true, and are in Him that is true, even in His Son. He is the true God and eternal life." One of the striking facts of the 1st Epistle of John is that it is impossible to separate Christ and God. It is one Person, one Being. Thus: " And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He shall appear we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming" (ii. 28). Whose coming? Clearly, Christ's. Continue: " If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him." Of whom? Of God: and so it follows: "Behold what manner of love the Father bath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Here, clearly, the Person or Being of whom he speaks is God. But continue: " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it bath not yet appeared what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him." Here it is, again, Christ; for it is: " Christ our life shall appear." And " He was -manifested to take away our sins, ' continues John him—self. That is, the apostle, the Spirit of God, does take up, and, in a great measure, anticipatingly, the question -of the Logos, and gives us the exact opposite to the Platonic and Alexandrian doctrines,—the full divine -truth in answer to all the wanderings and speculations which the cravings of need and the glimmerings of tradition had led men's hearts to suggest to themselves and to systematize.
The other form these speculations took was wilder, if not worse. There was a fullness, a pleroma, of Godhead, which, in spiritual abstractions, of which depth—man, church, wisdom, and other scriptural subjects formed part in male and female characters; an idea which entered into all Brahminical, Rabbinical, Egyptian, and Gnostic theology, the Egyptian being nearest to the Rabbinical. This plerōma was limited by horos (boundary). The plerōma was within; outside was hule, or matter. The male and female of each pair were called suzugies, or yoked pairs. Sophia (wisdom), one of the lower members of the plerōma, wanted to unite herself with, penetrate into by research, bathos, or depth, the first origin of the whole plerōma. She got outside the limit (horos), and hence this world, a mixture of matter and spirit. Christ, a new member of the plerōma, came out to disengage what was spiritual from what was material, and bring it back within the limit, or horos. This branched out into a thousand forms and speculations, useless to follow here. It connected itself with Manicheeism in Persia, and reached on to the Bulgarians and Albigenses in France and Italy. But for a long time it was the great plague of the church. They forbade to marry; commanded to abstain from meats; Christ had no real body; (there was no atonement, could not be if He was not a man;) abstinence, and disengaging spirit from matter, that was really -saving. This error, also, the Spirit anticipated. The apostle John carefully tells us that confessing Jesus Christ come in flesh was essential to Christianity; that the Word was made flesh; that they had touched Him with their hands and Paul, that all the fullness (plerōma) was pleased to dwell in Him; that He was not an aeon, as they were called, but that all the fullness (plerōma) of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily; that every, creature of God is good and to be used with thanksgiving; marriage honorable in all.
It may be asked why I refer to all this. First, the divine perfection of Scripture is interesting. It anticipated and met all the wandering speculations of the human mind. But there is another reason. The doctrines of the soul's mortality and of annihilation have their origin in these speculations; they were the doctrines of the Rabbis and Gnostics also, of whom we have been speaking, and are met by the Scriptures. Some of the Rabbis, holding a little more to Scripture, were not so far gone in their speculations as their fellow doctors and modern Annihilationists. They held that it was by the communication of the neshama, the highest kind of life, that man became a living soul; but that if he was not faithful, denied this life, he lost it.
I shall now give the passages from Rabbis and Gnostics which confirm what I have just said. First, the general idea from the Rabbis. Rabbi Abr. Seba says: " God has created three parts (souls) of men, the nephesh, the ruach, the neshama. ' In another mystic book; " Three forms of souls are in men: the first the neshama, the intelligent soul; the second the ruach, the speaking soul; the third the nephesh, the animal soul, which always lusts." There are other passages to which I have already alluded, but these will suffice to give the idea. The doctrine was, as I have already remarked, largely developed in the mystic Jewish writers. There were rewards suited to each. The Gnostics added their notions as to ' the evil of matter. The fleshly (sarkikos) connected itself with the soul life (psuchikos); translated " natural man," in Scripture, and "flesh." For Scripture, as I have said, meets all these questions, and gives the divine answer to them. Truth is one, but it meets, consequently, all error,-all that is not truth. The simple soul has only need of the truth itself,-thank God. But there is in it what meets gainsayers. So we read in Jude—" sensual (psuchikoi),.not having the spirit." The Gnostics treated the question according to their views of matter, using. Scripture, of course;—man was hulikos, material (hulic, from hule, matter), choaos, from choos (1 Cor. 15:4747The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:47)); " the first man," translated " earthy," [ literally, " of dust," from Gen. 2:7;3. 19; then psuchikos,! "having a soul," and pneumatikos, " spiritual." But all this with them was man as man; for they held, as Origen and Grecian philosophers, that the spirit, or neshama, being from the upper world, could not be connected with matter without taking the cover, or embodiment of a soul,-a ruach, to speak with the Rabbis. This took, then, a nephesh, or animal soul and body. If this last soul-here was their religion-was not spiritually married to that above, it, it remained a mere beast's or animal life, and died. The mystic Rabbis and Gnostics were exactly on the same ground here as modern deniers of immortality.
My reader will now see why I have referred to all these views. We are now exactly on the ground of modern Annihilationists, and, as will be seen, of both classes of them; for they differed then as now. The mystic Rabbis say men who have only nephesh die, simply. The nephesh goes down and remains in the grave. If it got united to the ruach, then it did not. " There is a garment," they said, " which subsists and which does not subsist, is seen and is not seen; with this the psuche (animal soul, or nephesh) is clothed." But the nephesh was not for thorn immortal, and where this only was, there the life of the soul was in the blood, and as an infidel would draw from Ecclesiastes:-" That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them. As the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they all have one breath. So that a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." That is, indeed, all that is seen "under the sun," as to " the life of our vanity." The Positivists, as one class of infidels are called, go no further. They have not the sense to add, with the Preacher,-" Who knows the spirit of man? it goes up on high; and the spirit of the beast? it goes downward to the earth." So one modern class believe death is simple death-ceasing to exist. If a man has not received the divine life, the neshama, his nephesh dies with his body, like a beast. They have answered the "Who knows? " of the Preacher, -have taken, as the Positivists, the ignorance they are in as a proof that there is nothing beyond it. The beast ceases to exist, and so does the man: nephesh is all the one has, nephesh is all the other has; both go to dust alike. They lie in the hell like sheep, death gnaws upon them. The mystic Rabbis are found again, and the ancient Gnostics. The nephesh has not put on the enduma aphtharsias, the garment of incorruptibility and immortality. It has gone down under death, and there it lies. So in the Cleinentinae, 20 (early Gnostic writings pretending to be Clement's), on Gen. 2:77And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7), he attributes to the breath of God, Theou pnoee, as an indescribable clothing of the psuche, its being able to be immortal.
But I shall be told that all do not hold this. They believe in resurrection, judgment, punishment, and then destruction, or, if preferred, as one of their teachers once put it, " the soul will lose its personality and individuality and pass off into its elements; for nothing is ever annihilated." It is true there are the two classes, and so there were then. Hear the Clementinae, 3:6: " Those who have not repented will come to an end (to telos exousi) by the punishment (kolaseos, the word in Matt. 25) of fire. They will be put out (extinguished), becoming extinct by eternal fire: puri aionio sbesthentes aposbesthesontai." Here is exactly the other class of modern Annihilationists, the intellectual and theological children of the mystic Rabbis, and the Gnostics of the early ages, the object of special warning on the part of the Spirit of God in the apostles Paul and John, as the special power of evil in these days.
If we examine Scripture, we shall see it furnish the simple truth, and, at the same time, by its statement of it, meet all these human wanderings. It speaks of nephesh, and ruach, and neshama, but it speaks in a way which, in a few sentences, sets aside all the speculations of men. In the leading text on the subject,-the revelation of God on the subject, we read God formed man (as a potter, vayizar) dust from the ground, and blew into his nostrils a breath of life, (a nishmath chaia), and man became a living soul (a nephesh chaia). Here we find that it was by God's breathing this highest power of life from Himself that man became a living soul. He had formed his body before, as He saw good, and it was by the communication of life from Himself that He animated the form He had made. The animals had issued, by His will, from the earth. He had said, " Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind (a nephesh chaia come forth) (yozu), and it was so." Not so with man. God consults solemnly as to his creation, and resolves to make man in His image, after His likeness. So God created man in His image, and gave him dominion, and God blessed him, and God spake to him, and gave him to know his place, his food, the beasts' food. He was the vessel of divine communications, as of the divine breath of life, and the object of divine counsels. He was to have a helpmeet for him, as an intelligent and affectionate and devout creature. God made a paradise, a dwelling for him, and for none else, gave him his easy and pleasant service, putting him into the garden.
But more than this, He put him into conscious relationship with Himself, as son of God, and put him under responsibility, giving him a law not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That would bring death in. The sea monsters were made to multiply themselves, beasts created after their kind, and we know they multiply, and it is enough. But not only God formed the human form, and animated it from Himself,—of which there is no hint as to beasts, but He formed, builded, the woman, too, by a mysterious process, which gave her a simple, and the closest, tie to the man; builded her, as the word is, Himself,—and when He had, presented her Himself to Adam.
Man is said to be of the race—the offspring—of God (Acts 17:2828For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (Acts 17:28)); and Adam is called son of God, (Luke 3:3838Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. (Luke 3:38)). "In him we live, and move, and have our being," and, though fallen, are still recognized as made after the image of God James 3:99Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. (James 3:9)). So God, though He found him lost, could come down and walk in Paradise and have intercourse with Adam. And it is the more important to recognize that he was fallen, because it gives the distinct and definite witness, that, though death had come in, man was still the responsible being he was before, having to say to God in a double way,—the exercise of present government in the earth, and exclusion from God's place of blessing and His presence. The case of Cain shows us the same thing, the responsibility and its results being distinctly stated. " If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? if ill, sin (or a sin-offering; which I doubt not is the sense) lieth at the door." Man's relationship, and responsible relationship, with God is thus clearly placed before us. The whole history of Scripture up to his rejection of Christ is the development of it. Sin, from the entrance of lust up to hatred of God, is as fully, as sadly, brought out. He had a soul capable of affections towards God; for it was found that the mind of the flesh was enmity against God. This, mark, was the unregenerate man, the man with only a psuche, a nephesh chaia, if they will have it so. He, God's offspring, had a soul capable of feelings towards God in this relationship. Alas! enmity was his state.
But I am told that Hebrew will tell us wonders, and I have only to make some square Chaldaic letters and immortality disappears. Let us follow the Scripture use of these Hebrew words. Now I think it will be found that neshama is the act of respiration, or breathing. If from God in the power of the life in Him, but breathing. Ruach, spirit (but used for the Spirit of God, a wind, or other spirit, the spirit of man, or even of beast, in Ecclesiastes), is that by which man or beast breathes—the life which expresses itself in breathing. Hence, in the flood, all wherein was the nishmath mach chaiim, the breath of the spirit of life, died, man or beast, all whose present life was sustained by breathing. Nephesh chaia is the actual result, in a living individual. The man or beast doing this is a nephesh chaia, a living soul, any living animal, man or beast. And nephesh so fully gives the idea of what is individual, seen and known, moving about, represented to us by bodily presence, that it is used for a dead body, because the same once-living form is there. An Israelite was not to profane himself by a dead body (nephesh), rightly so translated, but there is no neshama nor roach. So we should call dead relatives by their names and show their corpses as themselves, though we well know there is no life in them. It is called nephesh meeth, a dead body, or simply nephesh. Priests were not to profane themselves by it, unless for their nearest of kin.
But the Scripture rejects the thought of the soul's not living distinct from the body, where it uses nephesh properly for the soul of a man, as it does, see 1 Kings 17:21,2221And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again. 22And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. (1 Kings 17:21‑22), where Elijah prays that the child's soul may return to him again, and the Lord heard him and it returned. On the contrary, but proving the same point, Saul says of Eutychus, "his soul is in him" Acts 20:1010And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. (Acts 20:10). What the creation, therefore, affords us is he most careful elaborate distinction between man and other animals. they, by God's will, springing up out of the earth, to live by breathing, and being nephesh chaia, a living individual being with a body, having breath, neshama, and a roach, a life which lived by breathing,—man having all this, too, as every one on the face of the earth knows, without knowing. Hebrew at all.. But it teaches us that man got to be such on the earth in a totally different way from other living animals, namely, by God's breathing from Himself into him, when He had formed his body of the dust, a breath of life, and that thus he became a living soul. Hence he was the offspring (genos, offspring, race, kind, generation, is the only true meaning of this word, and it is so used in Acts 17) of God, lived and moved and had his being in Him, and was in responsible relationship with, Him, intelligently subject to a law, and, alas! not only disobedient but capable of hating God, capable of such an apprehension of Him as ought to have drawn out love, but from his moral state brought out hatred; capable of receiving communications from God as in nature and place in relationship with Him. It teaches that he has, in fact, received these communications, and that God has dealt with him—as acceptable, if good, or, if sinful, as the object of a provided sin-offering when in that natural state, no question of the gift of eternal life having been raised. The whole of Scripture proceeds on this ground, exactly where the gift of eternal life is not spoken of. That is a new thing given, but man is dealt with all through as a responsible being, where it is not given, and this, whether, to use the first grand statement of it, you say sin, or, as I should, a sin-offering, lies at the door. The death of Christ, though, surely, a means, and, in fact, a needed means of it—applies not to the gift of eternal life in the first instance, but to a responsible sinner, a child of Adam.
The Old Testament saints, however obscurely, did gather the truth of the subsistence of the soul after death, and the resurrection, too, I admit obscurely, but they gathered it. Abraham looked for the City which bath foundations. The Preacher speaks of the spirit's returning to God who gave it. The Psalms told of the King's soul not being left in Hades, nor His body seeing corruption; and in God's presence fullness of joy (Psa. 16); and being satisfied when one awoke after God's likeness (Psa. 17). Many suffered, looking for a better resurrection; to say nothing of Job's hope shining through his wasting disease. And the Lord's judgment is pronounced on the Sadducees that they greatly erred, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God; and we read in Luke not only there was a resurrection, but " all live unto God." They are dead for man, they are not so for God. But eternal life, we are told, is " God's gift in Christ," and so only. Admitted, fully. But first, then, let it be admitted that eternal emphatically means eternal; for otherwise, after the reception of eternal life, a man may as little have immortality as before; and after its reception even, in the Scripture use of immortality, that is true, for mortal applies to his body, and it is only in resurrection that the saint ever puts on immortality. But that (the gift of eternal life in Christ alone) has nothing to do with the question of the immortality of the soul. It neither proves it nor disproves it,-save only that, in a very vague way, it suggests immortality, because the gift of eternal life to a beast would make him a wholly new kind of being. Eternal life, though above and out of the reach of man's responsibility, yet is connected with it. It is grace to a being capable of it, while remaining the same being, and dealt with on the footing of his previous responsibility. Were it given to a beast, it would have no connection at all with it as a being, or have anything to say to its previous existence. It would be itself a simply new being. But while eternal life is a new gift to man, in Christ, and comes in Christ become man, yet it is fully connected with, and refers to, man as previously existing, is, by the word acting on his mind, heart, conscience, and, while a new thing, in itself, wholly, acts in and connects itself with him to whom it is given, so that he remains the same person, and by it recognizes and takes notice of all that he was before, as a responsible and the same person. The " I " remains the same. The nature is acted on, and by it judged and condemned, and the " I " for so acting in it.
The gift of eternal life proves, as far as it goes, an immortal soul that has relationship to God, not a beast's estate,-" made to be taken and destroyed,"-" the beasts that perish." Indeed, why should such language as here quote be used if man was just the same? But Scripture does not so speak. It does express the darkness of man, who sees his present life disappearing and knows nothing beyond, but even then, it carries him onward, in thought and hope,-cravings, not knowledge that the spirit returns to God who gave it. It does not know, but asks " who knows the spirit of man? It goes up above." There is not knowledge here; there is the heaving desire of what was breathed from God-not the answer to it. Man had plunged himself in darkness. Death was there,-what beyond? Hope, saintly confidence in God, a deliverer and a deliverance to come which would not leave believers without hope. But life and incorruptibility were brought to light by the gospel. They were not brought to light before; mind, he does not say, did not exist. The poor and shallow sophistry that would use this to say, they began to be then, must deny that saints had life, from God too, were born of God; or that Enoch and Elijah were other than fables, or exceptions to the truth as to others, even in their souls; and Abraham's faith vain, and that God was the God of the dead, not of the living. They were brought to light, then, in the Gospel revelation, because they were there to be brought to light, though the incorruption had only been wondrously exhibited, the life dimly apprehended, though certainly there, and not the subject of the immediate government and revelation of God. In Christ life has become the light of men, and we have the light of life, we do not walk in darkness.
But I am told, God only has immortality. Undoubtedly. But if this use be made of it, the saint has not it.. The angels are mortal, too. But both statements are clearly unscriptural,-see Luke 20:3636Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. (Luke 20:36), not to cite other passages..It is not, therefore, what the passage means it is a false use of it. God only has, possesses, immortality in Himself, independently. But we, all men, live, move, and have their being in Him who is so. None of us have it, independently, in ourselves. All things subsist by Him. But whether a being is perishable or not by his creation, is a question of fact. The angels do not die. God only possesses in Himself immortality. On the other hand, thneetos (mortal) is never applied to the soul, always to the body, as Rom. 6:12; 8:11; 212Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. (Romans 6:12)
11But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (Romans 8:11) Cor. 4:11;5. 4; 1 Cor. 15. 53, 54; and, which is the important point here, man is mortal when he certainly has eternal life and his soul will never die. Mortality applies to his body. He is only called mortal in the New Testament, when, by the confession of all, he has a life which can never die. That is, mortality does not apply to his soul at all, as used in the New Testament, where the truth is brought to light. So as to death. In the Old Testament, it is applied to the fact of dying, and,—generally, darkness lies beyond. It is sought to use " The soul that sinneth it shall die" as meaning that the soul shall die after death, or, as the out-and-out Annihilationists would say, in death itself. These last fly in the face of Scripture, because, to say no more of it, after death comes judgment. But if it is not in death, then death does not mean ceasing to exist,-as, in fact, it never, does,-but ceasing to exist in the way and relation ship men were living in. Of the second death we will speak further on. Man ceases by death to be a nephesh chaia,-a living soul and body in this world,-and becomes, as to this world, a nephesh meeth,-a dead body, or body of death. But, if we turn to the passage in Ezekiel where the expression is found, and whence it is taken, we, shall see that it has nothing to do with the death of the soul as apart from the body, but a man's death as living in this world. Such a use of soul, for person, is common now. I say it is a town of fifteen thousand souls. Who misunderstands me? Israel complained that they were in trouble and cut off for their fathers' sins; that the fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth were set on edge (Ezek. 18:22What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? (Ezekiel 18:2)), and, such was the law, the son bore the iniquity of the father-the iniquity of the father was brought upon the children. This should no longer be done. As the soul of the father, so the soul of the son, was Jehovah's. The soul that sinned, it should die. A devout father had a wicked son: "should he live? (verse 13) he shall not live; he bath done all these things; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him." So when the righteous turned away from his righteousness and committed sins, he should die in them. As the Lord said: " If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." " Our father," say the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27), " died in the wilderness; he died in his own sin." But with a wicked father, if the son bath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and bath done them, he shall surely live: the soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. " Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord, and not that he should turn from his ways and live?" So if the righteous turn from righteousness, in his sins that he hath sinned, in them shall he die. What light may be thrown on the, final result by the New Testament, is another question. But in Ezekiel what is spoken of is a man belonging to this world dying in his sins. Death never means ceasing to exist. It is used for other things than physical death, The woman that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives. The believer has passed from death unto life. He who loves the brethren has passed from death unto life. That is, when applied to the soul, it has nothing to do with ceasing to exist, but means separation of the soul from God, as a state of a soul which was alive, as to existence, not possessing divine life, but as much alive, as a being, as when he had. So Rom. 7:1010And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. (Romans 7:10), and verse 24, teaches us the same truth. Paul found the commandment to be to death;' but he was just as much alive, as to existence as ever. The sin unto death is physical death. In a word, death means either simple physical death as we see it; or separation from God,-not having divine life,-when a' man is alive.
We have now to see if physical death is the extinction, or even the sleep of the soul. And, farther, we must search the New Testament, where these things are brought to light. First, it is stated that all live to God. This is given as a general principle, when the living state of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is declared to the Sadducees, who held annihilation doctrine. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Thus far it may be reasoned that it only applies to the saints whose God God is. The Lord therefore adds: "For all live unto Him." It is a general truth not merely applicable to Abraham and those that had his faith. It is true of all: pantes gar auto zosin. And this is the more important because the Lord is speaking of saints. For though they were born of God, He does not rest the truth of even their being alive on that, but says: "God is not the God of nekron, but of zonton,—not of dead men, or bodies, but of living persons. What is the great principle on which it is founded?—" For all live unto him." No one is really dead as regards God. Accordingly, the Lord charges His disciples not to fear them that can kill the body and have no more that they can do, but Him who, after He has killed, can cast into hell. That is, death is positively declared not to be the end or cessation of existence. Death means men killing the body, and no more. Killing (apokteino;—thanatoō is more to have a person put to death, as in a persecution, or judicially) and death are fully correlative, as may be seen in Rom. 7. Further, the parable of Dives and Lazarus plainly pictures the same truth. Death is no ending of existence for wicked more than for just. Hades was known to the Jews, and Hades was owned of the Lord as true.
And this leads me to the question: Is the state after death, for just or unjust, a state of unconsciousness? Is the soul asleep? The reader has the answer from Luke 16 already. But a word more. It is never said nor hinted that the soul sleeps after death. That is all a fable. Death is called sleep or falling asleep, as to the just. But there is not the most distant suggestion that the soul sleeps. When Christ told His disciples, " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," He explained the word. Lazarus, apethane, has died. " He spake" we are told, "of his death," not of his state after death. Falling asleep is a man living in this world's dying, not his state after dying. Stephen fell asleep, not Stephen's spirit, which surely was received up by Christ, as Christ's had been by the Father. Did He cease to exist, or was He unconscious? Again, the Lord said to the thief, replying exactly to the point in question: " To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Did that mean, he should go to sleep and know nothing? Paul thought it far better to depart and be with Christ. Did that mean, go fast asleep and know nothing? To be absent from the body and present with the Lord,—which meant, that he should be fast asleep, and not know whether the Lord was there or not I have said the thief's case applies directly to the point. The thief, in his bright faith owning Christ to be King when all had forsaken Him, asked, thinking only of that, that the Lord would remember him when He came in (not into) His kingdom. The Lord's answer is, " You shall not wait for that happiness. I have a heavenly place for my people's souls meanwhile; to-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Which means, I promise you, you shall be fast asleep and know nothing till the kingdom comes! Are we to be mocked with such interpretations? Finally, the rich man in Hades, and the poor in. Abraham's bosom were very far from being asleep. We are told it is only a picture on Jewish principles. No doubt. But it is the Lord's picture, who meant to teach us by it, and certainly not that the dead are fast asleep, but just the contrary.
But we are told it is in the second death they are extinct. But this destroys itself, for then death does not mean ceasing to exist; for if death meant ceasing to exist, there could be no second death, for the being would have ceased to exist in the first. It is all a fable, so using death. Christ has died. The saints have died, just as truly as the wicked. They may have a life which the wicked have not, but they have as truly died, and they have not become extinct nor ceased to exist. And if the wicked undergo a second death, death does not mean ceasing to exist; for they died the first death, and did not cease to exist, for they have to undergo the second. But then, we are told, the second will be-not because it is death we have seen,-and we must look to Scripture to see if that is meant by the second death, i.e., if ceasing to exist is what is meant. Scripture teaches the contrary. Men at the final judgment are cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. The second death is the punishment of the lake of fire,—;—not that punishment's teasing by the punished ones' ceasing to exist. The punishment destroys them, we are told, as the Clementine Gnostics had told us before. But then, the lake of fire, the punishment, is the second death, not their ceasing to exist so that the punishment ceases. " They have their part in the lake of fire, which is the second death," existing there in it, having their part in it, is the time they are in the second death. Their part is not said to be punishment, ending by death, but the actual punishment of the lake of fire. So the Devil, that deceived the nations, was cast into the lake of fire, and shall be tor- mented day and night forever and ever... There is no word of the close of their existence and of torment being the second death. It is the punishment itself, of the lake of fire, which is so called, the outer darkness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
This naturally leads me to the word eternal (aionios). We are told it does not mean eternal. If I go out of Scripture I find the fullest proof that it means eternal. Aristotle defines it, aien on, always existing. I have found several others, but I quote only one passage from Philo, because it is so directly to the point, and is the Greek used at the time of our Lord: en aioni de oute pareleluthen ouden oute mellei alla monon huphesteke,- in eternity nothing is either past or to come, but only subsists-it is proper eternity. What we have then to look to is how aionios, the adjective, is used in Scripture. Now. I say that the word regularly means, in Scripture, " eternal,' in the sense of contrast with any period of time. " If our earthly house of thiS tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!' (2 Cor. 5:11For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Corinthians 5:1)). " To whom be honor and power everlasting". (1 Tim. 6:1616Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. (1 Timothy 6:16)). " The God of all grace, who has called us to His eternal glory" (1 Peter 5:1010But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:10)). "And being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him" (Heb. 5:99And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; (Hebrews 5:9)). "Having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:1212Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews 9:12))." They which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance " (Heb. 9:1515And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. (Hebrews 9:15)). " Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God " (Heb. 9:1414How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:14)). " For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal " (2 Cor. 4:1818While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18), and Rom. 16:2626But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: (Romans 16:26)), which is conclusive. Now these suffice to show that the regular meaning of aionios, in its own plain and absolute sense, is eternal. Where it is used of punishment, in Matt. 25, it is in purposed and express contrast used of life; the one have eternal life, the others eternal punishment. The duration of the punishment of the wicked, and of the life of the just, are expressed by the same identical term,—4 may add, that of the existence of God Himself. And this term is put in contrast elsewhere with all that has a temporary duration, so that I do not see how it could be stated more plainly.
But we do not escape these efforts to elude what is plain, even by this. Punishment, we are told, does not mean punishment. It means pruning, or I know not what, cutting off a branch-lcolasis is the word. It is used in one other place in Scripture: " Fear hath torment." Its scriptural sense is torment. So in a passage I have quoted from the Clementinae, it is used as torment. And that is its meaning-punishment, or torment. This, according to this verse, is eternal, not temporal. But the verb kolazo (punish) is found elsewhere in the New Testament. Acts 4:2121So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people: for all men glorified God for that which was done. (Acts 4:21): " Finding: nothing how they might punish them." So 2 Peter 2:99The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: (2 Peter 2:9): " Reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished." This is the plain sense of the word.
But the word destroy, also, is referred to, to show that though the punishment is everlasting, the punished are not. A thing hard for a simple mind to understand. For if there remain none to be punished, it is hard to conceive how punishment remains. Hard to suppose that where the Lord uses the figure, " their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched," they die, or cease to exist, though the worm and the fire remain, though it be their worm that does not die. Still we will see if destroy means what is said. It is very hard to understand " everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord " to mean, that nothing exists. What is out of the presence of the Lord? What is everlasting destruction? If a thing ceases to exist, and destruction means that, it cannot be everlasting. But the truth is, on their own showing, the passage has not this sense at all. For this happens at Christ's appearing, at the beginning of the Millennium, when there is no destruction, in their sense of it, at all. They are punished with destruction, but in that destruction, they still subsist, as is admitted. It is the time of weeping and gnashing of teeth in outer darkness (Matt. 13). That destruction is everlasting in which the punished ones subsist.
But the word does not mean this ceasing to exist. The angel of the bottomless pit is called Apollyon, or Abaddon, the destroyer, in Greek and Hebrew words. But he can destroy nothing. It is written, " O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help." " I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." " Destroy not thy brother with thy meat, for whom Christ died." " And through thy knowledge shall thy weak brother perish." " If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." " Zacharias perished between the temple and the altar." " Carest thou not that we perish?" " The scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him." " Not willing that any should perish, but ' that all should come to repentance." "Art thou come to destroy us?" (Mark 1:2424Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. (Mark 1:24).) In Matt. is an analogous case. They say, " Art thou come to torment us before the time?" This was in the bottomless pit. But Satan, we read, is tormented in the lake of fire " forever and ever "-the term used for the existence of God. Matt. 10:3939He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 10:39), "He that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." " For when they shall say Peace and safety, then sudden destruction shall come upon them,"-confessedly here not ceasing to exist. 1 Tim. 6:99But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. (1 Timothy 6:9), " Foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." "They perish in the gainsaying of Core." " So the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished."
The word, then, is used for ruin, moral or physical. It is false to say it means simply a ceasing to exist. It may mean a ruin of the state in which a thing existed; hence the driving a human being from the Lord's presence, or his present state of alienation from it; and it is so used. I doubt a single passage could be found which proves it means causing to cease to exist. I have known Annihilationists object to the name, because nothing can be annihilated. But if so, their whole theory falls to the ground. It is merely making a physical thing of the soul, dispersed, then, into its elements, instead of moral ruin for which, as to the soul, the word is certainly used, as we have seen. I have cited passages where apollumi, apoleia, and olethron are used. The root is all the same. The statements made on these subjects set aside one another. If death be ceasing to exist, there can be no judgment after. It is in vain to say they are raised; for if they have ceased to exist there is no one to raise. Nor can punishing, or destruction, in the sense of ceas- ina to exist, come afterward.
My object has been, to go through the words by which, or as to which, Annihilationists seek to puzzle simple minded Christians,-not to reason out the subject. I add only two or three words to show why their fair words and smooth speeches do not attract me, where they seem fairest. We have seen that the morally dead and the lost may be alive, and that Scripture so speaks. But if the soul be simply mortal, with the body, and there is no life, out of Christ, beyond this, where do sinners get the life they are punished in till burned out? It must be from Christ, for creation has not given it to them. That is, they get, not their wicked life, in which they are fallen, and enemies to God, but a new life of Christ, in which to be punished in another world. I do not see the moral sense or attractiveness of this doctrine. Further; I understand an immortal soul that is at enmity with God and excluded from Him, though once formed to own Him, being forever miserable. But why God, out of pure pleasure, should keep alive a soul to torment it for a time, only to burn it out at the end, for no possible effect, I cannot conceive., It does not alarm men now. For tell them that they will simply perish in the end, and it is, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The infidel finds it a very comfortable and reasonable doctrine. It is in vain to say, it is not honest to say, that men fear total destruction and perishing more than anything, for its advocates resist eternal punishment because it is dreadful to think of. They know, it is not the same thing. No doubt man does not like dying or perishing, in itself, as to this world, where he is alive,-but to come to an end in a future one, where there is only torment, he likes very well.
My horror of this doctrine is, its weakening our sense of the nature of sin, of our responsibility, and of the atonement. If sin means eternal exclusion from God's presence, it is dreadful enmity against God now, exclusion from God then. If death is the only wages of sin, Christ had no more to suffer for me. Nay, if I am a Christian, He had nothing to suffer, if I die before the Lord comes. I have paid the wages myself. If it be only some temporary punishment I had incurred, He had only that to bear. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me" has lost its force. It is in vain to say, He gives us life. He can, in itself, quicken without dying. If He died, He died for my sins, and bore them. If death be the wages, millions of saints have paid them. And if a partial punishment be all I had to bear, it is all Christ had to bear. The sense I have of sin and its desert is not, being forsaken of God, shut out from Him when I can know what it is, but a temporary punishment, a quantum of offense,-which is all I have to think of, and all Christ had to bear, if anything.
It is alleged, I have been told since I wrote this, that there is another view held, namely,-that the soul, having its life in Christ is in Christ when a man dies, and is, so to speak, lost in Him, and then at the resurrection becomes a conscious person again. This is a mere notion, and a foolish one too. It destroys not consciousness nor has anything to do with sleeping, but personality. It applies only to saints, and as to them is in direct violation of the testimony of Scripture, which attributes personality to the saints when gone hence. "To-day shalt thou be with me." There are the distinct persons. Again, " present with the Lord." There must be a distinct person to be present with the Lord. And so with other texts. That our life is hid with Christ in God, the only allusion to an idea approaching it in Scripture, proves, as far as it goes, the contrary; because it is spoken of saints living on the earth, where their personality is unquestionable. But the best answer to it is, it is a mere human invention. In the hiding in God we are associated with Christ. He also now is hid in God,-I suppose a conscious person,-and it is in contrast with our appearing to others when He appears, not to any living personality in which we enjoy His presence. It is, we have seen, spoken of our present state, when living personality is unquestionable.
There is another word I have omitted to notice, basanizo, and basanismos, torment. This, we are told, comes from a Lydian stone used to test gold. Very likely, but the conclusion that, therefore, the words, when passed into common use, meant " to prove," and not " to torment," is simply false. Thus, Matt. 8:66And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. (Matthew 8:6): " My servant lieth sick, grievously tormented." What has that to do with the lapis Lydius? 2 Pet. 2:88(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) (2 Peter 2:8), " He [Lot] vexed his righteous soul." In Rev. 9:55And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. (Revelation 9:5), the verb and the noun are used for the torment of a scorpion's sting. Matt. 14:2424But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. (Matthew 14:24): " tormented by the waves." So of the men, Mark 6:4949But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out: (Mark 6:49),-showing how the etymological meaning was wholly forgotten for the fact of torment.
Rev. 14:1111And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. (Revelation 14:11): those who worship the beast are tormented forever,-have no rest. Rev. 18:1515The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, (Revelation 18:15), we read of Babylon's torment; xx. 10, the devil is tormented day and night. Is he put to the proof as gold by the lapis Lydius? Matt. 18:2424And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. (Matthew 18:24), the unforgiving servant delivered to the tormentors. The attempt to deny that basanismos, because that in its etymology it is borrowed from the lapis Lydius, means torment, in the ordinary sense of the word, is a mere fraudulent effort to pervert the plain fact.
There are a number of Hebrew words out of which something has been attempted to be made, in one tract I have seen, as acharith, tikvah, opher, etzem and otzem, tzelem, and others; but what is said of them does not really deserve any notice. It astounds somewhat a person who has the smallest acquaintance with Hebrew, or can use a dictionary and concordance. But I recall the reader's attention to the fact, that " this mortal" is said distinctly of the body, not of the soul. " This mortal shall put on immortality," " our mortal bodies" and the like. That consequently we read of killing the body, and having no more that they can do. We read of God, as the "Father of spirits"; "the- God of the spirits of all flesh"; and " that formeth the spirit of man within him." The fact that the angels do not die and are not mortal is the plain proof that it is a false use of God only having immortality, using it to prove men have not immortal souls; for the same argument would prove angels were also mortal,-which is false. But of this I have spoken. It is immortality in and of Himself.
It has been attempted to say, there is no appeasement of wrath with God. The words ilaskesthaz, ilasmos, ilasterion all have exactly this sense. They meet the qualities or attributes, in God, which are necessary and must be maintained or He is not God as He is, or not God at all, to maintain what He is, His holiness and righteousness. But He is supreme in love.
I press, too, on my reader that when a man receives eternal life, he takes notice of all his past evil and sin as that for which he is responsible. If a beast received eternal life,-and the theory makes animal life the same in all,-could a beast hold himself- responsible for all his previous conduct as a guilty, responsible soul? Are they to be judged as in their nature capable of guiltily rejecting Christ? If not, the whole theory is a disgraceful fraud on our minds. If athanasia was literally, as to the fact, to be applied only to God when Paul wrote it, then the saints who had got eternal life had no immortality even then, or else mortality applied only to their bodies, which is the fact in Scripture, for, as I have said, the saints are spoken of as mortal, like the rest. Thus it is evident that mortal, corruptible, death applies to the state in which we are down here as men living on the earth, where death is entered by sin, and to the separation of soul and body. It is, as Scripture speaks, killing the body, and has nothing to do with the soul A person who, in his soul, has eternal life, has not athanasia more than another,-has still to put it on. That is, it has nothing to do with the dying nature of the soul, or the contrary. It means that it cannot cease to exist in the state in which it exists at present; not that it has it in itself, as God, but that is its condition by His will. What puts on immortality is what was liable to death,—this body which could be killed in a saint as in a sinner, for the saint lives because Christ lives,-his soul cannot die more than Christ now; yet he is as mortal as the sinner, and so, in fact, did Christ die. Did he cease to exist, or did He not truly die? Does it cease to be true that God only hath immortality, when we are raised,- for then we certainly have athanasia
When I find all these efforts to falsify the use of words, I know the source of this doctrine, and that no lie is of the truth.
B. M.