Question: What think you of Dr. Bullinger’s “Sprits in Prison” (Second edition revised, 1891)? A.B.
Answer: The greater part of this pamphlet prepares the way for the simple truth as set forth by Leighton, Pearson, and many more; quite as much as for Dr. B.’s notion that the “spirits in prison” are angels whom God cast down to Tartarus, and committed to chains or pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6). It may have force against the anile superstition, popularized in our day, whether for a broad-church purgatory or the vulgar Popish one. He seems to have overlooked Heb. 12:9 (a reference probably to Num. 16:22; 27:16). Besides, “spirits” we find here qualified doubly, by their present imprisonment, and by their past disobedience in the days of Noah, the cause of that safe keeping. But the language pointedly differs, both in connection and in strength of phrase, from that which describes the doom of those angels so singularly contrasted with the actual freedom of the dragon and his angels. The connection of 1 Peter 3:19, 20, is clearly with 2 Peter 2:5. For Noah, a preacher of righteousness, was the instrument by which the Spirit of Christ wrought in that day of divine long-suffering; the now imprisoned spirits were then the world of the ungodly on whom God brought the deluge, because they stumbled at the word, being disobedient. Dr. B., though he claims especial credit for it, fails to catch the touching force of the “For,” or rather “Because,” with which chap. 3:18 opens. “It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing; because Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust,” &c. He suffered once for sins. Let this suffice. Ours it is to suffer for righteousness and for Him. What has this to do with angels that kept not their own first estate, sinning atrociously and unnaturally? What had they to do with “disobedience” only? And why here baptism?
All is most appropriate to the unbelieving world which rejected Noah preaching in Christ’s Spirit; for it is not said that He went into the prison and preached there, but to the imprisoned spirits. The apostle is combating such objections to Christianity as present suffering, spiritual power only through the word, comparatively small numbers, absence of Christ, &c. This he does effectually by laying down Christ’s unique suffering for sins, leaving us to suffer as He did also for righteousness. To this he adds the most solemn judgment that befell the world of old, which our Lord also compared to the coming day of His appearing, when His word and Spirit (cf. Gen. 6) were despised. None need wonder if few be saved now or by-and-by, seeing that eight only passed safely through the flood. In connection with this he speaks of baptism as the standing sign, not of new birth as men say, but of salvation, the request or demand of a good conscience Godward by Christ’s resurrection. The water, through which Noah and his family were saved, was the power of death for all outside the ark. Christ’s resurrection was not only God’s honor on Him and His work, but peace to the believer; and if Christ be not yet come in power and glory, He is at God’s right hand, which in itself is higher still, gone into heaven, angels, authorities, and powers being subjected to Him, whatever the unbelievers scoff at on earth.
Dr. B.’s reasoning is valid against “the larger hope” as well as purgatory. But his own application is quite irrelevant. For the revealed use of the guilty and apostate angels in 2 Peter 2 and Jude differs totally from the scope of 1 Peter 3, and is a warning to false teachers of licentious life or even apostate from Christianity, not an encouragement to Christians who shrank from suffering, and were tried by the paucity of their brethren, and did not adequately stay their souls, conscious of salvation, on Christ’s exaltation on high, the pledge of His sure appearing in glory. He is right, as we have long pointed out, as to the difference of ἐκήρ. in chap. 3. and εὐηγ. in chap. 4. But his notion of “spirits” has exposed him to a heterodox view of “the seven Spirits of God” in the Revelation, as some unreliable men had taught before him. Think of “grace and peace” from angels, no matter how high their rank! So he errs as to Acts 8. where the “Spirit” stands in contradistinction to “the angel.” Compare Acts 12. and 13. Each is appropriate. But this is a trifle compared with misinterpreting Rev. 1:4, 4:5, &c., or even “sojourners of the dispersion” which Dean Alford mistook, and thereby the true bearing of the Epistle.