• Introduction - To the American Reader
• Preface to the Fifth Edition
• Author's Preface
• CHAPTER 1. Future Punishment Is Eternal.
• CHAPTER 2. Eternal Death
• CHAPTER 3. Testimony Of The Old Testament.
• CHAPTER 4. Testimony Of The New Testament.
• CHAPTER 5. The Greek Of The New Testament.
• CHAPTER 6. The Primary Sense Of Terms Vindicated.
• CHAPTER 7. The Illustrations Of Scripture.
• CHAPTER 8. The Resurrection Of The Wicked.
• CHAPTER 9. The Divine Justice.
• CHAPTER 10. The Extinction Of Evil.
• CHAPTER 11. Examination Of Particular Texts.
• CHAPTER 12. Distinctions In Future Punishment.
• CHAPTER 13. Theories Of Punishment And Christian Missions.
• CHAPTER 14. Some Objections Answered.
• CHAPTER 15. The Apostolic Fathers. Clement Of Rome.
• CHAPTER 16. Justin Martyr.
• CHAPTER 17. Irenaeus, Martyr And Bishop Of Lyons.
• CHAPTER 18. Rise Of The Theory Of Eternal Life In Hell.
• CHAPTER 19. Tertullian.
• CHAPTER 20. Rise Of The Theory Of Universal Restoration Origen.
• CHAPTER 21. Conclusion.

The Duration And Nature Of Future Punishment

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By HENRY CONSTABLE, A.M.
Prebendary of Cork

Fifth Edition - 1875

CHAPTER XVIII

Rise of the Theory of Eternal Life in Hell

THE doctrine of life and immortality through Christ, held by the Apostolical Fathers, and the best of their immediate successors, began at an early period to be altered and corrupted. Philosophy was the means which Satan used to introduce the error which first struggled with and finally succeeded in strangling the truth. The noblest system of philosophy that had ever emanated from the human mind, that of Socrates and Plato—the idea in that philosophy which seemed most akin to the grand truth of Christianity, the immortality of the human soul—was the weapon which Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light, used to fight, and to fight with terrible success, against the truth. He will confound the immortality taught by Plato, with the immortality taught by Christ: he will persuade men that there is not much difference between them: he will flatter the religion of the despised Nazarene by showing that in one main feature it is sustained by the noblest minds of Greece and Rome: he will introduce Plato as the precursor of Christ, of Paul, of John: he will show that Christ did but open out more fully and stamp His authority upon what Plato had been painfully striving after in the schools of Athens. His point established, the astute mind of the fiend saw he could introduce into the church a doctrine which would blacken the character of God, alienate the human mind from Him, send men for refuge from its excessive horrors to imaginary purgatories, keep the human mind in perpetual agitation, veering ever between a cruel dogma, a destructive leniency, or an indiscriminate infidelity. All this he saw with his penetrating intellect would be gained, could he but induce the church to believe that Plato taught the truth on the question of the immortality of the soul. He succeeded by means of philosophers who became Christians; but who brought with them into the church more or less of their philosophy. They forgot, or did not choose to follow, the example of Paul in philosophic Corinth: "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."¹ They would know something of Plato too. Had not his grand soaring mind all but anticipated Christ?

2. The reader of Scripture knows how earnestly and frequently Paul warned the church against philosophy.² He is the only one of the apostles who has distinctly done so. But he, well-acquainted with all the philosophical systems, has spoken out clearly and emphatically in their condemnation. Clement of Alexandria, on his words in Col. 2:8, says, that Paul is "branding, not all philosophy, but the Epicurean and the Stoic."³ He considered much of the Platonic philosophy as a "divinely-ordered preparation of the Greeks for faith in Christ." Paul himself, however, made no exception of this kind, nor did he consider that there was any real affinity between the Gospel of his Master and any system in credit with the Greeks.⁴ He does not condemn the Stoic and Epicurean schools and exempt that of Plato. He prohibits with all the weight of his authority the introduction of any philosophical system or dogma into the church. He warned that it would spoil and corrupt; not elevate, refine, or strengthen truth. It might be and was true that every system of philosophy had its portion of truth; but he knew that every system also was poisoned with error. Plato, as a guide for the church, stood no higher with him than Zeno, Pythagoras, or Epicurus. While he has quoted more than once from the poets, he has never quoted from the philosophers of heathenism.

3. Many of the early fathers forgot this warning of the apostle; and it is among these precisely that we find the origin of error in the Christian church upon the great doctrine of future punishment. Educated in Platonism, they did not like to renounce it, and they flattered themselves that they might, with great advantage to the cause of Christianity, bring a portion at least of their old learning into its service. Origen, in the third century, expresses this general bias, when he says that, "If any one were to come from the study of Grecian opinions and usages to the Gospel he would not only decide that its doctrines were true, but would, by practice, establish their truth, and supply whatever seemed wanting, from a Grecian point of view, to their demonstration, and thus confirm the truth of Christianity:" and he accordingly advised those who would understand Holy Scripture "to extract from the philosophy of the Greeks what may serve as a course of study as a preparation for Christianity."⁵ Milner testifies to the injurious effects produced by Platonism upon Christianity in the second and third centuries.⁶

4. The influence of Plato appears even in the language of such men as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Both of them use expressions which we never find in the apostolical fathers. Some doubt may perhaps, not without reason, be thrown upon the genuineness of some of the phrases in Irenaeus, coming to us through a translation made at a period when the Augustinian error ruled in the church. Of the phrases in Justin, however, there is no reason to doubt. The true doctrine of punishment held by these fathers prevented the Platonic language from having its natural effect. Thus, if Justin in one place speaks of the immortality of the soul, and even supposes that philosophers derived their ideas of its immortality, from Moses and the prophets, he in another shows how little he was influenced by this philosophic dogma, by his full and graphic description of the manner in which a soul may die and "cease to exist."⁷ All that he meant by the immortality of the soul was that it did not die when the body died, but remained alive in the intermediate state between death and resurrection.⁸ He used a philosophical and unscriptural phrase: but the general truth of his doctrinal views presented its injurious effects upon his own teaching. He helped however materially by such language to produce the effects which its use must eventually bring about. Had he protested against the language of the Platonists as he did most plainly against the logical consequences which the Platonists drew from their language, Justin might have done in the second century what we are doing in the nineteenth.⁹ But Justin loved the language of philosophy while he rejected its spirit. In his very dress he wore the garb of the philosopher, while his heart was true to Christ. In this he did deadly injury to truth though he dreamed not of doing it. He helped to sow seed the nature of whose fruit he had no knowledge of.

5. But the seed of Platonism fell into different soil than the hearts of men like Justin, Irenaeus, and even Clement of Alexandria. It produced among the successors in time of Justin effects which it did not produce in him, and which were yet its natural and inevitable effects. Frequently reasoning against portions of the Platonic philosophy, often affecting to despise it, the Christian fathers as a general rule adopted the Platonic dogma, "every soul is immortal."¹⁰ This became the motto upon the patristic banner. On this point Plato took rank, not among prophets and apostles, but above all prophets and apostles. A doctrine which neither Old Testament nor New taught, directly or indirectly, nay, which was contrary to a great part of the teaching of both, these fathers brought in with them into the church, and thus gave to the old sage of the academy a greater authority and a wider influence than he had ever attained, or ever dreamed of attaining. It was, in effect, Plato teaching in the church, under the supposed authority of Christ and His apostles, doctrines subversive of and contrary to what they had one and all maintained. This dogma of Plato was made the rigid unbending rule for the interpretation of Scripture. In this lay its deadly effect on truth. No Scripture, no matter what its language, no matter what the natural usual sense of its language, could be interpreted in a sense inconsistent with Plato's theory. Under its influence, words assume new, unnatural, distorted, far-fetched meanings. Christ and Paul, and John and Peter, all are forced to Platonize. The deduction of reason, more than half doubted by the reason of Plato himself, scouted by the reason of the vast majority of mankind, was by these Platonising fathers palmed off upon men's minds as the teaching of Revelation. What Socrates taught with faltering tongue, what Plato held in one place and rejected in another, what Cicero hoped might be true while he dreaded that it might not, Tertullian and Augustine taught as an indubitable truth.

6. We do not find the origin of the doctrine of eternal existence for the wicked among any of the names which we have for one reason or other learned to respect. We find it with men whose names are now scarcely known. The very first who can with truth be brought forward as holding it is Athenagoras. He lived from about A.D. 127, to A.D. 190. He was born at Athens: was educated there in the philosophy of Plato: became a Christian, and settled at Alexandria; where his great object seems to have been to show that Christianity and Platonism were one and the same in substance. His name commanded no respect in his own day, and his writings were suffered to sink into almost entire oblivion.¹¹ They deserved the neglect they met with. Beyond any question, he held the doctrine of eternal life for the reprobate as it was afterwards elaborated by Augustine. He rested it on the ground of the immortality of man, and this immortality of man he based upon an argument of reason. He laid it down that God's object in making man was that man might live. Hence, he argues, as God's end cannot positively be defeated, man must continue to live for ever, be he good or evil, miserable or happy. "Nothing," he tells us, "that is endowed with reason and judgment has been created, or is created, for the use of another, whether greater or less than itself, but for the sake of the life and continuance of the being itself so created." Again he says: "According to the view which more nearly touches the beings created, God made man for the sake of the life of those created, which is not kindled for a little while and then extinguished;" and he thence argues that "since among the works of God that which is useless can have no place," and "since the cause of man's creation is seen to lie in perpetual existence, the being so created must be preserved for ever." Hence, he concludes, that as the wicked must live for ever they must meet with an eternal life of misery.¹²

7. The argument of Athenagoras is well deserving the attention of our modern Augustinian theorists. It shows them the source and origin of their creed. It is based upon the reasoning of such men as Athenagoras. It is pre-eminently a rationalistic deduction. The wicked must be miserable for ever, because they must live forever; and they must live forever because God made them for the purpose of living! This is the rationalism of Athenagoras adopted blindly by men who ought not to drink at such a fountain. It seems to us rationalism of a wretched kind. One text of Scripture Athenagoras never dreams of advancing for his opinion: but then he has in place of it his masters sonorous phraseology for our nature. With him, as with Plato, the soul is immortal: it must continue to live: it was made immortal at its creation, and cannot be subjected to death; for it is, and was, and always will be incorruptible. Athenagoras, being a Christian as well as a Platonist, took the liberty to add to his master's theory. Plato dropped the body altogether at death, and was only too glad to do so, as being with him only a clog, a prison, a curse to the soul. Here Athenagoras was compelled by his Christian position to strike out a new line for himself, which diverged, we must say, as much from Scripture as from Plato. The body, which our Alexandrian philosopher very properly supposes to be an essential part of man, and not merely an old garment or an old house which the wearer or the tenant could quit at will, was originally created immortal, but became mortal by Adam's sin. With this part of his theory no fault can be found. It is perfectly scriptural. It is in what follows that he errs. He supposes that at the resurrection the bodies of all men, the wicked as well as the righteous, will resume their original immortality. The glorious chapter of St. Paul, in which he describes the resurrection of the just, and the change which passes upon their corrupt, dishonoured, weak, and natural bodies, to fit them for an eternal life, is, without the smallest hesitation, applied by Athenagoras to describe the resurrection of the wicked.¹³ Monstrous as the idea is, abstaining as most of our modern Augustinians do from this perversion of Paul's grand chapter, such an application is absolutely necessary to their theory; and Athenagoras was but reasonable here. The mortal body must put on immortality and incorruption if it is to endure an eternity of pain.

8. The truth is that if the reasoning of Athenagoras was correct, it would have led him to the theory of Origen and not to that of Augustine. That it did not do so is to us conclusive proof that at this period of church history the theory of a restoration from hell was one of those things of which so much as the remotest idea had not crossed the imagination of any one pretending to be a Christian. The time had not come for it, the time could not come, until the human mind was compelled to fly to it for refuge from a diabolical creed. For, most assuredly, the reasoning of Athenagoras correctly carried out would have led him to the conclusion of Origen. One of his principles is that God's object in creating man could not be defeated: another of his principles is that "God made man for Himself," that "the final cause of an intelligent life and rational judgment, is to be uninterruptedly with those objects to which the natural reason is chiefly and primarily adapted, and to delight unceasingly in the contemplation of Him who is, and of His decrees."¹⁴ No other conclusion could logically follow but that all men, however fallen, must be some time or other restored, so as to answer the end for which they were originally created. Their restoration to a holy delight in God was just as much a consequence of Athenagoras' principles as the restoration of their bodies to immortality, or the eternal existence of the entire man. But the meteoric light of Universalism was not visible in the sky of the second century. If it had even but faintly coloured it, our Alexandrian philosopher would have anticipated Origen instead of Augustine.

9. One word more, before we take our leave of Athenagoras. It bears reference to his use of a most important scriptural word. We beg the attention of our Augustinian friends to it, and to its bearing upon this controversy. Athenagoras was an excellent Greek scholar, and knew the meaning of that Greek word which is rendered by our English word "perish." He also tells us repeatedly the sense which ought to be put upon it. Thus in one place he describes the Epicurean doctrine of the annihilation of body and soul by their saying that they "perish:" in another place he states that it has the very same meaning as that strong expression "to annihilate:" in another he opposes that which is perishable to that which is eternal: and in another he describes the old Stoic doctrine, that all things will one day come to an end, by saying that "they will perish."¹⁵ How then does Athenagoras use this word when he comes to speak of the future life both of just and of unjust? He denies that the term can be applied to either class! He tells us that if the unjust were said to perish it would be equivalent to saying that they would be annihilated! He accordingly boldly says, speaking of the unjust as much as of the just: "God has not made us that we should perish."¹⁶ Will our Augustinian friends save us the trouble of application. They know that God's Word has repeatedly said that the wicked will perish. Will they not then come over to our opinion that the wicked will, according to God's Word, be annihilated? It is an ugly long Latin word, but after all it only means, as we use it, "to be destroyed," "to come to nought." Will they not allow so much as that Athenagoras knew the meaning of one of his own Greek words? This is all we ask them to allow; the rest will follow. If to "perish" means to be "annihilated"—and Athenagoras tells us that is its proper meaning—then, surely, the Bible teaches the annihilation of the wicked. If we are to follow good old Moses Stuart's axiom, that "We are to come to our conclusions by enquiring what the language means which the sacred writers have employed, and that the meaning of this is to be made out by philology, i.e. by an investigation conducted agreeably to the principle of language," we cannot avoid this conclusion.¹⁷ Surely Athenagoras knew the meaning of his own Greek language, and we only follow him to this extent. Where he goes beyond this, and contradicts the Bible, by saying that they, who, according to the Bible, will perish, shall not perish, here we take the liberty to leave Athenagoras for the Word of God.

10. While Athenagoras, the Platonist, is at Alexandria, maintaining the novel doctrine of eternal life in hell, he has a worthy fellow-labourer in Mesopotamia in the person of Tatian. Dr. Roberts has, with great liberality, placed him in his list of Ante Nicene Fathers. Mosheim has, with more propriety, placed him in his list of Ante Nicene Heretics, as a founder of the sect known as Encratites, Hydroparastes, and Apotactites. It is curious and instructive to trace, where we can, the progress of error. Tatian had been in his earlier years a scholar of Justin Martyr, and after the death of the latter professed great reverence for his old master's opinions, and affected to consider them identical with his own. Justin, a great admirer of Plato, had, as we have seen, to a great extent adopted the phraseology of Plato concerning the soul, and called it immortal and incorruptible. We have already explained that all which he meant by these phrases was that the soul was immortal as compared with the body, not dying with it, but existing in a separate state in Hades, while, after the judgment, he taught that it would die with the body in hell. Tatian, aware that Justin taught prominently the death of the soul, introduced a theory of its death which might seem to harmonise with that of Justin, while it was really contradictory to it. He supposed that when the body of the wicked died the soul also died with it, being forsaken by the higher spirit; but that at the resurrection it is raised to life again with the body. This early heretic held beyond a doubt the Augustinian theory of punishment. He speaks of the wicked as, at the resurrection, "receiving the painful with immortality," and that their soul "rises again at last, at the end of the world, with the body, receiving death by punishment in immortality."¹⁸

11. Tatian's description of eternal punishment is well worthy of notice. It will be remarked that in order to express his view he is obliged to introduce a term of the utmost significance not found thus applied in Scripture. That term is immortality. In all its various definitions of the eternal punishment of the lost Scripture never once speaks of their immortality. In his short address, Tatian introduces it at least twice. The introduction of a new phraseology is significant of the introduction of a new doctrine. On this, however, we will say more a little farther on. The other matter we would note is the hopeless confusion of language, the perplexed jargon, which the introduction of this new doctrine necessitates. The expression, "receiving death by punishment in immortality," is in itself a contradiction in the terms. Ask a child or an unlettered person what it means, and you will see their perplexity. The constant use of this kind of language blinds people to its lingual enormity. What is there like it in Scripture? Scripture always contrasts death and life as exact opposites. Tatian makes death and immortal life to be one and the same! The notion of people receiving death by their receiving immortality in any condition is a barbarity of language worthy of the barbarous creed which has introduced into Christian literature a jargon which is mistaken for theology of a very exalted kind.

12. To a period perhaps somewhat later than the time of Athenagoras and Tatian belong "The Recognitions of Clement," and "The Clementine Homilies." These poor productions, in which heresy and error vastly predominate over truth, were attributed in ignorant ages to Clement of Rome. Indeed, even still, some men in high places in the Christian community are found to maintain that they are from his pen.¹⁹ They are generally, however, esteemed spurious; and as such we treat them. Of these two works it is not known whether both are from the same hand, or which, if from different hands, was written first. We will first give a passing notice of "The Clementine Homilies."

13. It is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the exact sentiments of the writer of this work on our question of punishment. In different parts of it he appears to hold opposite opinions, in one place teaching our view of destruction, and in another the Augustinian heresy. Thus, in one passage, he says, "Those who do not repent shall be destroyed by the punishment of fire, even though in all other things they are most holy. But, as I said, at an appointed time a fifth part, being punished with eternal fire, shall be consumed. For they cannot endure for ever who have been impious against the one God." We could not more plainly describe our own view, except that we do not pretend to define the proportion of mankind to be punished, or suppose that the impious may be very holy persons. But in another place he is equally distinct for the Augustinian view. Here he makes Peter thus address the wicked: "Though by the dissolution of the body you should escape punishment, how shall you be able by corruption to flee from your soul which is incorruptible? For the soul even of the wicked is immortal; for whom it were better not to have it incorruptible. For, being punished with endless torture under unquenchable fire, and never dying, it can receive no end of its misery."²⁰ Here we have a genuine Augustinian utterance. We beg our readers to mark the novel phrases, "incorruptible," "immortal," "never dying," which are never applied in Scripture to the wicked, but are judged essential by the spurious Clement to express his theory of punishment. Into the attempt to reconcile the passages we will not enter. Their contradiction may indicate interpolation, as some suppose to have been the case. If the entire work is from the same hand, he would seem to have lived at a period and a place where opinion was changing from the apostolical to the Augustinian point of view, and that he sometimes gives us one view and sometimes the other.

14. "The Recognitions of Clement" very strongly resembles "the Clementine Homilies." Various reasons have been given for the strong family likeness. In one respect, however, as it appears to us, they differ. In "The Recognitions" we see nothing of the inconsistency of statement which we have remarked in "The Homilies." "The Recognitions" are, so far as we know, thoroughly and consistently Augustinian. The immortality of every soul is laid down repeatedly in the most distinct terms. The argument on which its immortality is based is the justice of God. As God frequently leaves the wicked unpunished in this life, the writer supposes that they must suffer anguish for eternity in the next; and that, consequently, the soul must be immortal to endure it. The writer supposes that the wicked might have been sufficiently punished in this temporal life by temporal sufferings; but as these temporal sufferings have not here been inflicted they must be converted into eternal sufferings in the next life, which is very usurious interest to enforce for deferment of payment, seeing the deferment was not the act of the wicked but of God Himself. Having thus satisfactorily proved the immortality of the souls of the wicked, the rest follows as a matter of course. The eternity of pain follows from the eternity of existence. To common logicians it might appear that the apostle Peter, through whom the writer utters his own sentiments, seems to reason in a circle. He first insists that the wicked ought to suffer eternally in the next life, and that therefore their souls must be immortal: and then he proceeds to demonstrate that, since their souls are immortal, they must suffer through eternity. But, whatever we may think of the quality of his reasoning, his theory of punishment is of the genuine Augustinian type. The heathen offenders and the ungodly among professing Christians suffer alike. "If," he says, "any persist in impiety till the end of life, then, as soon as the soul, which is immortal, departs, it shall pay the penalty of its persistence in impiety. For even the souls of the impious are immortal, though perhaps they themselves would wish them to end with their bodies. But it is not so; for they endure without end the torments of eternal fire, and to their destruction have not the quality of mortality."²¹

15. It is indeed instructive thus to note the origin, among men of the lowest character, of views, which, subsequently adopted by men of a far higher reputation, have for long centuries depraved and corrupted the doctrine of the church. A brief sketch of the plan of "The Recognitions" may therefore not be without use. It is on the plan of "The Clementine Homilies." A century or more has passed since Clement, the fellow-labourer of Paul, has passed to his rest, and another man, of a different mould, seeks to impose his own views upon the church under a venerable and venerated name. He accordingly supposes the genuine Clement to have been, while yet a philosopher, distracted with doubts as to the nature of the soul. He hears of Christ and His apostles, and meets Peter at Caesarea. His inquiries give rise to a long and strange argument between Simon Peter and Simon Magus on this intricate question, in which Peter discusses the famous "genitus" and "ingenitus," with all the glibness of Plato, and enters on the most mysterious questions in so sophistical and strange a way that, but for the name, one would be much more disposed to attribute the sentiments to the magician than to that "servant and apostle of Jesus Christ," who has left us two precious epistles. Peter, in this most extraordinary controversy, affirms the soul to be immortal in its nature, and of a changeless substance which can know neither influx nor deflux, addition nor subtraction, mutilation nor conjunction, until we fancy, save for the different style, that we are listening to the Athenian philosopher enlightening his disciples, or to Augustine, gravely discussing the quality of a soul. One cannot help feeling disposed at times to think the magician is much the best reasoner of the two. Indeed, Peter himself seems to have suspected the same; for at length, baffled apparently by Simon's pertinacity of opposition and the keenness of his arguments, the weary apostle takes refuge in a vision, which demonstrates what he had failed to prove to Simon Magus by his arguments—the immortality of the soul. In the writings of Athenagoras and Tatian, in the shameless forgeries and unhallowed vagaries of "The Recognitions" and Homilies of Clement," lies the mean origin of a dogma which now overshadows the Christian church.