Table of Contents

The Duration And Nature Of Future Punishment

Clinging to a Counterfeit Cross

By HENRY CONSTABLE, A.M.
Prebendary of Cork

Fifth Edition - 1875

CHAPTER XVI

Justin Martyr

THE period of the apostolical Fathers reaches down to the end of the first century and a half from the birth of Christ. During it, we find Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, testifying to their complete unity of opinion with us on the future of the wicked. We are immediately after introduced to the writings of a father who has on this subject given rise to the utmost perplexity as to what were his real sentiments—we refer to Justin Martyr. We claim him among our supporters, and have ranked him as such. We have always however allowed that there were passages in his writings which apparently rank him as a holder of Augustine's views. We have no wish to claim what does not belong to us: but we are satisfied that we are right. We will endeavour in this chapter to present a view of those opinions of Justin which have hitherto perplexed all his commentators without exception. We hope to present a more satisfactory view of this eminent father than that he put forward two diametrically opposite theories upon a vital question: for to such a conclusion we must come if we reject such a solution as we offer here.

2. We will first show reason for concluding that on this question of future punishment Justin agreed with us. There is not, we believe, in language a more unambiguous word than "existence," or "to exist," (ivmiv, eimi). When applied to living creatures it only signifies their having life or animation, as, "Men cannot exist in water, nor fishes on land" (Webster). In several places, Justin expressly states his belief, that no wicked being will continue to have an eternal existence. In one place he points to the original transgression of Adam as having exposed man to this. "When God formed man at the beginning," he says, "he suspended the things of nature on his will, and made an experiment by means of one commandment. For He ordained that, if he kept this, he should partake of immortal existence; but if he transgressed it, the contrary should be his lot." In another place he speaks of the soul's survival of the body in the intermediate state, and of the ultimate non¬existence of the souls of the wicked. "I do not say, indeed, that all souls die; for that were truly a piece of good fortune to the evil. What then? The souls of the pious remain in a better place, while those of the unjust and wicked are in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment. Thus some which have appeared worthy of God never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and to be punished." That in Justin's judgment a time would come when God would wish them not to exist appears from his positive declaration in another place where he includes the fallen angels in this doom of annihilation. "God," he says, "delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and mean shall cease to exist."

3. We will now consider the important word "destroy," (apollumi, apollumi,) as used by Justin. No doubt there are various shades of meaning attached to this word in all its forms. It is used figuratively, as when men known to be alive are said to be destroyed, i.e. to suffer injury of some severe nature. We also find it used hyperbolically, as when men say they or other, are destroyed, meaning some hurt which has a tendency to utter destruction. But what we want to know is the sense which Justin puts on it as its full proper natural sense, the sense, in which he uses it when there are no attending circumstances to point out that it is used in other than its ordinary sense. Justin has left us in no doubt here. His meaning for this word is, to bring to an end, to cause to cease to exist.

4. In his address to the Greeks he is speaking of Plato's opinion of the gods of the heathen, that they are not truly eternal; but come at some time into existence, and at another time cease to exist. Commenting on some of Plato's words, which appeared to bear this sense, he says, "These expressions declare to them who rightly understand them, the death and destruction of the gods that have been brought into being."1 There can here be no doubt what is Justin's meaning for "destruction." The idea of endless misery does not enter into it at all. He means simply by it the cessation of existence or being. We will refer but to one other place to show his meaning. The Augustinian theorists world tell us that when the future punishment of the wicked, and of devils, is spoken of by saying they will be destroyed, what is meant is that they will be tormented and suffer pain. Justin expressly distinguishes "torment" from "destruction," with reference to the future punishment of devils: he says, speaking of Christ, "This shall be the strength of Him alone, whose name every power dreads, being very much tormented, because they shall be destroyed by Him."2 Here Justin uses "destruction" as distinct from "torment" He says that evil powers now endure the one, at the prospect of the other. When we know Justin's meaning for the word "destroy," which is also its usual meaning with every Greek writer, we can have no doubt what is his view of future punishment, when he constantly uses this word "destroy" to point it out, without the smallest intimation that he uses it in any but its natural sense. The following is one out of numberless passages that might be quoted: "By whom (Christ) God destroys both the serpent, and those angels and men who are like him; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe upon Him."3

5. We will only advert to one other expression of Justin's in order to show reason for concluding that he held our view. We believe that, for the words "immortal" and "immortality," there is but one meaning, and that they describe a condition not subject to death, i.e. to the loss of existence. In numberless passages, Justin tells us, that immortality will be the peculiar, exclusive, possession of the redeemed, and that the wicked will not obtain it. In several places he lays down the principle that immortality is a gift of God, not bestowed upon any as yet, but promised at the resurrection. It is true that he sometimes speaks of the soul as immortal; but he also tells us he condemns the Platonic theory of its essential immortality: that he only holds it immortal as compared with the body, in that it survives in the intermediate state, while, if wicked, it will die with the body in hell: but of absolute immortality he has over and over declared that only the just will obtain it either in respect of body or of soul. "Those filthy garments," he says, "which have been put by you on all who have become Christians by the name of Jesus, God shows shall be taken away from us, when he shall raise all men from the dead, and appoint some to be incorruptible immortal, and free from sorrow in the everlasting and imperishable kingdom."4

6. We could easily add a great deal more to the same effect; but we think enough has been adduced to prove that Justin does in some parts of his writings teach a theory of future punishment which is identical with ours. This is all we as yet contend for. But in saying this we do not deny that in other parts of his writings there are passages which apparently affirm the Augustinian theory. We do not want to hide these. We only aim at truth. We will give the very strongest of these passages. We will then enquire what we are to do. Does Justin contradict himself? Some say he does. Does Justin write in a hazy, indistinct, ambiguous way, so that it is impossible to know what his meaning is? Very many scholars affirm this of him. Or, has Justin some philosophical theory which may appear to us and really be a very absurd one—which relieves him of the charge of ambiguity and contradiction? This latter is our belief. We will first give the strongest passages adducible from Justin's writings which are quoted in proof of his having held the Augustinian theory.

7. In his Dialogue with the Jew, Trypho, Justin has a very curious passage. He is speaking of the joy which the faithful, whether Jews or Gentiles, shall have in God. He proceeds to say that he does not believe that all Jews, simply as descended from Abraham in the flesh, will partake of this joy. "We will not," he says, "receive it of all your nation; since we know from Isaiah that the members of those who have transgressed shall be consumed by the worm and unquenchable fire, remaining immortal; so that they become a spectacle to all flesh." 5 I n his first Apology, he has another striking passage. He is speaking of the resurrection. Christ, he tells us, "shall raise the bodies of all men who have lived, and shall clothe those of the worthy with immortality, and shall send those of the wicked, endued with eternal sensibility, into everlasting fire with the wicked devils . ... And in what kind of sensation and punishment the wicked are to be, hear from what was said in like manner with reference to this; it is as follows: "Their worm shall not rest; and their fire shall not be quenched" (Isaiah 66:21); and then shall they repent, when it profits them not."6 We will merely add that Justin here, and in many other places, appears evidently to give to the term "unquenchable," as applied to the fire of hell, a meaning beyond what we attach to it. We hold that an unquenchable fire simply means a fire which cannot be quenched until it has consumed all on which it prayed. It then goes out itself, leaving behind it the tokens of the destruction it has wrought. We think, at all events we admit, that Justin means by the unquenchable fire of hell what the Augustinian theorists mean by it, viz., a fire which will never cease to burn throughout eternity. And now we have Justin's view of hell which he holds out as a solemn warning to the sinner. He holds that its flames will never cease to burn while God Himself lives: that it will have a perpetual fuel on which to feed, viz., the bodies, or members of the wicked that these bodies or members will be endowed with immortality so as to be capable of being thus endless fuel for endless fire; and that in the fire they will have a kind of sensation or sensibility. This is Justin's theory. Can we reconcile it with his substantial agreement with our view, or with his own declarations elsewhere that all life and existence will cease in the scene of future punishment? We can.

8. Justin Martyr, while a good and sound Christian, had a good deal of the philosophy, both in thought and word, about him, in which he had been educated. Of all the philosophers Plato was his favourite, though he repeatedly condemns some of his opinions. It was in his old philosopher's garb, as Eusebius tells us, that Justin was wont to preach the word of God. It is in a philosophic idea, very absurd as it appears to us, but, nevertheless, very commonly held at that time, and esteemed just as indubitable as we hold the principle of gravitation—it was in such a philosophic idea that we are to find what is to reconcile Justin Martyr to himself and to us. We may smile at the idea; but such men as Aristotle, and Pliny and Tertullian, and Augustine, did not doubt it. If we had lived in their time we should not have doubted it ourselves. It is possible we hold as first truths what are far more unsound. What if the immortality of the soul may be one such!

9. There was then in Justin's time, and had long been, a strange philosophical opinion as to the nature and qualities of a kind of fire, which by some was called "secret," and by some "divine." It had the supposed property of reproducing the material which it consumed. Tertullian thus speaks of it: "The philosophers." he says, "are familiar, as well as we, with the distinction between a common and a secret fire. Thus that which is in common use is far different from that which we see in Divine judgments, whether striking as thunderbolts from heaven, or bursting up out of the earth through mountain tops: for it does not consume what it scorches; but while it burns it repairs."7 We have thus the idea, represented as a common one, of a fire which perpetually burned and perpetually reproduced what it fed on, and this fire was supposed by the Christian fathers in general to be identical in this property with the fire of hell. "A notable proof this," says Tertullian, "of the fire eternal! A notable example of the endless judgment which still supplies punishment with fuel!" It is in this philosophical idea, held by Justin as by others, that we see the reconciliation of his apparently conflicting statements. We suppose him to have held that life, as we have it now, would cease in hell, that the souls of the wicked would die and perish there; but that a fire would continue to burn there throughout eternity; that the limbs or carcasses would be ever consuming and ever being reproduced to supply it with fuel; and in reference to this eternal reproduction he calls those limbs "immortal," and in reference to their being perpetually scorched and consumed he calls them possessed with a kind of sensation, such as all animal or vegetable matter is possessed of and exhibits when submitted to the action of fire. All Justin's expressions are suited to this view; and this view makes him throughout consistent with himself in his descriptions of future punishment.

10. Justin's description of the members of the wicked as immortal he probably borrowed from Plato, with whose writings he was perfectly acquainted, and who describes some of the members of the human body, after death, by this very phrase "immortal" (aqanata, athanata ), in reference to their long continuance in their organization.8 He supposes the fire of hell to burn on through eternity; and to be ever consuming and reproducing these "immortal members." As consuming, they must possess that sensitiveness to the action of fire which all consumable matter though devoid of animal life is possessed of, and without which it could not be consumed at all. And it is to be noted that the word aisqhsi, aisthesis, which he puts for the sensation of the members, is the very word which his master, Plato, uses to distinguish the substance which he supposes distinct from "incorporeal and intelligent substance," i.e. from the mind or soul. The latter he calls ousian aswmaton or ousian nohthn, in contradiction to ousian aisqhthn.9 That this is "the kind of sensation" with which he supposes them endowed, and not the sensitiveness of pain which the living animal feels when exposed to the heat of fire, is quite plain from his own words: for he refers his readers, in order that they may understand this, to the passage in Isaiah 66:24, which describes the action of the worm and of the fire upon carcases or dead bodies. The dead body, exposed to the action of fire, exhibits a sensitiveness to its action. Such is "the kind of sensation" which Justin supposes that the members of the wicked will throughout eternity continue to exhibit under the action of the eternal fire. He supposes that God will continue to exhibit this spectacle through eternity as a warning. But it is a spectacle unaccompanied with pain. Pain departed when the soul ceased to exist in hell. That it is not absurd to suppose that Justin held such a view may appear from the fact that one of the ablest modern works which has appeared on our side of the question has advocated the view that the fire of hell will continue to burn throughout eternity;10 and that Justin's view was in every particular that which we ourselves held for a time until we came to see the more simple and common sense of the term "unquenchable" as applied to fire. Justin did not see this, and hence the only difference, and that an unimportant one, from us. Imagining a fire burning on for eternity, he gathered naturally that it must have something to feed upon. Holding that animal life would not continue for eternity in hell, he laid hold of the idea, justified by the philosophical opinion of his time, that the members of the damned, devoid of animal life and therefore incapable of pain, would for ever continue to grow and renew themselves. This he thought, and truly, a kind of life, such as vegetables have, and so he calls them immortal. And thus we have Justin consistent with himself. Thus we are free to give their natural force to his descriptions of the utter destruction of existence in hell, i.e. of the existence of animal life. And thus we vindicate our claim to the testimony of Justin Martyr as holding our view of future punishment in the age immediately succeeding that of the apostles.

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Footnotes

1. * Address to the Greeks, c. xxii.

2.** Dialogue, Trypho, c. cxi.

3. † Dialogue, Trypho, c. c., xxxix.; 2nd Apology, c., vi.

4. * 1st Apology. c. xlii., lii.: Dialogue. Trypho, c. iv., v., xlvi., lxix., cxvii.; Address to the Greeks, xxiii.

5. * Dialogue, Trypho, c. cxxx.

6. † First Apology, c. lii.

7. * Apology, par. xlviii; Augustine City of God, xxi., iv.

8. * PLATO, Phaedo, par. 29.

9. † CUDWORTH, Intellectual System, c. 1.

10. ** DENNISTON, Perishing Soul.

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