• 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 V

The Greek of the New Testament

WE have in our last chapter brought forward a variety of phrases from the New Testament descriptive of future punishment. All must see that on the true sense to be given to these terms our views of the doctrine of the New Testament must very mainly rest. Other considerations indeed, and these also drawn from Scripture, will occur, bearing with vast power upon the momentous question before us, but still the proper and true sense of the terms just discussed must ever occupy a leading place in the mighty argument. We must therefore, even at the risk of appearing tedious, dwell somewhat further upon them.

2. The New Testament was, in the wise purpose of God, written in the Grecian language. Well may we thank God for this selection; for in no other language of the old world could His mind have been conveyed to man with equal perspicuity and clearness. In this Greek tongue all the phrases we have been speaking of are found in constant and perpetual use. Before the Gospel was preached, their meaning was fully established in the cultivated and the common mind of the human race. What is more, they were all in common use, and applied to, and their sense established, with reference to this very point now under discussion. Immortality was not a question for Jewish and Christian thought alone: it was the question of questions for the universal human mind. Made originally for immortality, the thought of it, even when man is fallen from it, still lingers in his breast. It comes up to him like a dream of the olden time, or some bright vision or horrible phantom of a time to come. According to the circumstances of his life and the tone of his mind, it is regarded as a boon most devoutly to be longed for, or an evil most earnestly to be shunned, or a weary burden at which the spirit of man faints, and longs, rather than endure it for ever, for annihilation, or re-absorption into the Great Spirit of the universe.

3. The question of the immortality of the soul, accordingly, was the question of questions in the various schools of Grecian philosophy. The resurrection of the body to eternal life, which was the grand hope of primitive times,¹ and which is the grand article of faith brought to light by the Christian revelation, took no place in heathen speculation. It may seem from researches into Egyptian tombs and hieroglyphics that some traces of the primitive tradition of a resurrection lingered in the old land of the Pharaohs. But when Grecian sages brought the lore of fertile Egypt to the rocky promontory of Attica, they brought with them certainly no idea of Egypt's faith in a resurrection, if such were reallythere ever entertained. Such an idea, if presented to the Greek by the priest of Zoan or of Memphis, was to the Grecian intellect but as foolishness. They saw the body return to the dust, and there they left it for ever, and even thought that its complete destruction was a gain. Their whole thoughts, and speculations, and hopes, and fears, and reasonings, and raillery, were directed to the soul or life of man. When man's immortality was discussed in the schools and by the philosophers of Greece—by some gravely maintained, by others as gravely refuted, and by the majority treated as a jest—the entire grand question of man's immortality turned upon the immortality of his soul. If we look to the reasonings of our Christian teachers from Tertullian to Bishop Butler, to the theses of our Christian schools from Alexandria to Oxford and Paris, we will find that they have followed with docile spirit the impulse given by Epicurus, Aristotle, and Plato.

4. One of the noblest specimens of human reasoning that has ever charmed, exalted, or, for our part we must add, bewildered the human intellect, is found in the dying discourse of Socrates to his friends, handed down to a deathless fame in the Phaedo of Plato. Its object was to prove the immortality of the soul—that it could never cease to be— that through whatever changes it might pass, whatever pollutions it might suffer, whatever fearful torments it might endure, there was that deathless principle of the human soul which asserted an eternal life and utterly refused to die. It could never be, according to Plato, a thing of yesterday, an existence of the past but not of the present, a figure once jotted down in the book of life and then blotted out of it for ever.

5. In what terms is the denial of its mortality conveyed? In the very terms in which the punishment of the wicked is asserted in the New Testament! When the latter says the soul shall die, Plato says it shall not die; when the latter says it shall be destroyed, Plato says it shall not be destroyed; when the latter says it shall perish and suffer corruption, Plato says it shall not perish and is incorruptible.² The phrases are the very same, only that what Plato denies of all souls alike the New Testament asserts of some of the souls of men. But the discussion of this question was not confined to the school of Plato, or to his times. Every school of philosophy took it up, whether to confirm Plato's view, or to deny it, or heap ridicule upon it. All the phrases we have been discussing from the New Testament had been explained, turned over and over, handled with all the powers of the perfect masters of a perfect language, presented in every phase, so that of their sense there could be no doubt, nor could there be any one ignorant of their sense, before Jesus spoke, or an evangelist or apostle wrote. The subject had not died out before the days of Christ. It never could and never will die out. In every city of the Roman world were schools of Grecian thought in the days of the apostles. In every school the question before us was discussed in the phrases and language of the New Testament. In Jerusalem and Rome, at Athens and Corinth, in Ephesus and Antioch—wherever a Christian preacher opened his mouth to speak to man of his future destiny—were Platonists, or Epicureans, or Stoics, or Alexandrians, to whom the question ofimmortality was a question of solemn thought, with whom the phrases in which the preacher addressed them as to their solemn future were familiar household words.

6. And what did the Christian preacher declare, and the Christian writer write, to that world-wide community, which was ruled and bound together, not merely by the power of Roman will, but by the sceptre of the Grecian tongue? In sermon and disputation, in Gospel and history, in epistle and revelation, the propagators of the new religion asserted of the persons of the wicked—i.e. of souls and bodies re-united at the resurrection—that which Plato had denied could happen to any soul. The cultivated intellect of the world, as well as the popular mind, read in the words of Christ, of Paul, of John, of Peter, of James, that what one of its schools of philosophy taught could happen to no soul, and what another taught should happen to all souls, the rising school of the Nazarene taught would happen to those whom its phraseology described as "unjust," "wicked," "unbelievers." Plato's noble conception, itself, in an imperfect shape, but the utterance of the longing of the human heart for its original inheritance, was taken up by the New Testament, only that it had here given to it its true direction, and had the eternal life after which it yearned connected with the God of life manifested in his Son. In Jesus Christ was that "life" which Plato fancied might exist in the soul itself. This "life" He would bestow upon His people, realising for them more than the conception of Plato. But, away from Him, there was no life. On those who would not come to Him there would come finally—after stripes, few or many—theend pictured for all by Epicurus. The Gospel brought together the fragments of truth scattered through all human systems, and in them all poisoned with error. Those who would soar, the Gospel raises to God; those who would revel in the sty of sensuality, or live without God in the world, it sinks to the level of the beasts that perish.

7. We will apply these general observations somewhat more particularly. In its descriptions of future punishment, the New Testament uses the terms we have been discussing in the following way: "If ye live after flesh, ye shall die:" "the wages of sin is death:" God will "destroy them that corrupt the earth:" "as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law:" the disobedient "shall be punished with everlasting destruction :" "he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." These texts comprise most of the Greek terms under consideration.

8. Now according to the schools both of Origen and Augustine, all these terms, applied to the condition of the wicked after the judgment, are in perfect harmony with the idea of their immortality. According to the school of Origen, these terms, "death," "corruption," "destruction," and others, describe the salutary process through which the wicked will be in the coming age brought to the blessed life of the just. According to the school of Augustine, these terms are most properly descriptive of the endless misery of the lost. We think it is the late Professor Stuart of Andover who has said that the copious Greek language affords no other terms so properly descriptive of a life of misery. We will put this claim to the test.

9. Plato was a Greek, and one of the greatest masters of the Grecian language. Plato also held precisely the Augustinian view of future punishment. Indeed it is from him that our Christian divines have derived it. Rome follows him more implicitly than our great Protestant theologians; for she has accepted his purgatory, which these latter have rejected: but in the doctrine of an endless life of misery for some, hereafter, Plato is at perfect accord with the majority of Christian teachers. We should expect then that since Plato held the Augustinian view he would use these appropriate terms in describing it! This master of the Greek tongue would lay hold of the very best words in his language to set forth his views! Or; at least, if by some unaccountable oversight he never once used them, we should certainly expect and demand that he would not explicitly reject them as unfit and unsuitable words to describe this view of his. But this is the very thing which Plato has done. He has told us, over and over again, by every variety of expression, that these phrases, one and all of them, are utterly unfit and improper to describe such a life as the Augustinian inflicts on the sinner, or indeed to describe a life of any kind at all. He lays down that these terms cannot, and ought not to be applied to any immortal being: that they are wholly inconsistent with the very notion of existence. When therefore we find that the New Testament constantly uses these terms to describe the future condition of the ungodly, we must either admit that in so doing the New Testament denies their immortality, or we must assert that the Greek of Plato and the Greek of the New Testament are two distinct and different languages. But this latter is a theory which noGreek scholar will maintain. If it were established, we might close our New Testament as a useless book. If it cannot be established, then we must admit that the New Testament, in thus describing the future of the wicked, denies the immortality of their existence, and thus overthrow the fallacies alike of Augustine and Origen.

10. We will apply this test to another writer. Josephus was a contemporary of the apostles, and his Greek is universally allowed to correspond to that of the New Testament. He has not written much as to his own views of future punishment; for it is seldom maintained now that the discourse on Hades, attributed to him in an uncritical age, is from his pen. When he does come to speak upon the subject it is where he describes for his Gentile readers the theological views of the chief Jewish sects. He would have smiled at the idea that in addressing Greeks he did not speak the language of their great writers, and would have asked for what purpose he wrote to Greeks if he did not write in their tongue. But in giving his account to the Greeks of the religious views of the sect of the Essenes he expressly states that the views of these latter were identical with those taught to the Greeks, evidently referring especially to that doctrine of the immortality of the soul which was taught and vindicated by Plato.³ Josephus thus adopts the ordinary terms among the Greeks, and in especial the terms of Plato, as having the same meaning with him as they had with them. If there could be any doubt upon this point, of which we cannot see the possibility, Josephus would remove it himself; for he has, in describing the variousopinions of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, used several of the most important terms in use in the New Testament and in Plato in the very same sense that Plato has used them.⁴ We have then to say of Josephus what we have said already of Plato, that in his idea of the meaning of the Grecian language the terms which the New Testament has most constantly used to describe future punishment are altogether inconsistent with the idea of the immortality of the wicked. This is altogether a different question from what were Josephus' own opinions of the nature of future punishment. We only here lay down the indisputable position that, if Josephus himself held the Augustinian view, he would have described it in different terms from those which we have seen the New Testament most commonly to use, and would have said that the use of those terms was totally opposed to a theory which maintained for the wicked an eternal life of misery, or indeed any existence at all. He would have described these terms as only expressive of a theory which taught annihilation.

11. We will apply another test. Plato held the Augustinian view that some would be punished by an everlasting life of misery. What are the terms in which he describes this everlasting condition? It will not be denied that Plato knew or used the best and most appropriate language in which to set forth his views. He tells us then that the soul of the reprobate will not be "destroyed," will not suffer "destruction," will not "perish," because it possesses "immortality," and is "indestructible," andimmortal." ⁵ Such, according to Plato, are the proper terms by which to describe an eternal condition. Not one of these are ever used in the New Testament to describe the future condition of the lost. Let our opponents, whether they follow Augustine or Origen, show us but one such term applied to the wicked, and we will allow that we are wrong. Surely God, in setting forth the future of the wicked, would use the language that would best express it.

12. We will show from the language of Professor Bartlett, of Chicago, the exceeding importance which our opponents attach to the use of such terms as we have above referred to in the present controversy. He is showing from the apocryphal book of Enoch that the Augustinian view of future punishment was held by some in the Jewish Church at a period considerably before the birth of Christ. He quotes for this purpose the following words: "They shall be with the wicked, and like them, but their souls shall not be put to death in the day of judgment, nor shall they come out from hence." Professor Bartlett's comment on these words is: "There is no ambiguity here."⁶ He tells us, and he is perfectly right in telling us, that one such expression as stating that the wicked will "not be put to death" in the future retribution puts it beyond any dispute that the use of such language held the eternal misery of the lost. Why then does Scripture never use these unambiguous words in describing the punishment of the wicked? There can be but one answer given, viz., because Scripture never teaches the immortality of the wicked. Its teaching is unambiguous, but in the opposite direction:its teaching is that "the soul that shineth, it shall die."

13. We will apply another test. There were at and before the time of Christ very many who taught the doctrine of annihilation. They held that there was no future life of any kind for any man, but that when men died they completely perished, and that soul as well as body were alike and for ever destroyed. Such was the Epicurean school of Philosophy among the Gentiles, and the Sadducean school of theology among the Jews. Now in what terms and by what language did such men set forth their views? Simply and entirely by their application to all men alike of the very terms which the New Testament applies to the future punishment of the wicked. Every scholar knows this to be the case. The friends with whom Socrates conversed on the day of his death, as related in the Phaedo of Plato, were Epicureans, whom he sought to reason into the adoption of his own grander views. The writings of Epicurus are lost, but we know from some fragments of his preserved by other writers what his terms on this question were. We know how the Sadducees spoke, from Josephus and other authors. The composition in the Latin tongue by the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius shows us what were the corresponding terms in Latin used by those of his school. Now from these and other sources we learn that the Epicurean philosophy described its miserable theory of the final annihilation of all at death by exactly the same terms in which the New Testament sets forth that which will happen to the wicked in hell. If the New Testament by the use of these terms is supposed to teach an eternal life of misery for the wicked, then theSadducees and Epicureans of that same period must also be supposed to have taught such a life for all mankind. We could with just as much truth and reasonableness establish an eternal life of misery for mankind from the writings of Epicurus and Lucretius as we can from the writings of Scripture; for if "to die," and "perish," and "be destroyed," mean to exist in misery, these are the very terms in which Epicurus and Lucretius spoke of the end of all men. Will our opponents tell us that the apostles of Christ taught the doctrine of Plato in the language of Epicurus? They really hold this strange view; but which of them will venture to defend it? If it could be maintained it would give a fatal wound to the authority and value of Holy Scripture as speaking an intelligible language.

14. Even at the risk of wearying our readers, we will apply yet one more test of the true meaning of the terms of the New Testament applied to future punishment. There are, scattered throughout heathen writings, at and before the time of Christ, various descriptions of such an eternal misery of being as the Augustinian theory maintains. Whether such descriptions were really believed by those who gave them is another question; but, both in poetry and prose, we have such descriptions given. Now we call upon the holders of eternal misery to select from all these descriptions a single one of those phrases which the New Testament has constantly applied to future retribution. According to them, these terms are the very best, the strongest, and the most suitable to express its exceeding misery. If they are, let them bring forward but one example from the writings contemporaneous with the New Testament to show that they were so considered. If they cannot do this, let them honestly confess that the terms of the New Testament are unsuitable to express their view, and therefore do not express it.

15. Such a confession has virtually been made. In the second, third, and succeeding centuries of Christ, Christian teachers taught the theory of Plato. We say they introduced it into the Christian Church: our opponents say that they only taught what had been handed down from apostolic days: but both we and they allow that Athenagoras and Tatian, Tertullian, Athanasius and Augustine, taught beyond a question the eternal misery of the wicked. Now we cannot and do not mean to deny that these writers, at least most of them, used the terms of the New Testament which we have been discussing, and applied them to future punishment. As they were Christian teachers, they could not possibly avoid doing so; for these terms were so applied in the Scriptures of which they were the defenders and the expounders. But they were not satisfied with these terms They have shown their dissatisfaction by the adoption and perpetual use of other terms never once applied in the New Testament as they apply them. The old nomenclature of Plato is revived by the Fathers of the Christian Church. We hear in Christian writings the voice that never speaks from the New Testament. We hear from Athenagoras what we do not hear from Paul, that the wicked are incorruptible: we hear from Tertullian what we do not hear from John, that the souls of the wicked are immortal: we hear from Augustine what we do not hear from Christ, that the existence of the lost is as indestructible as that of God himself. These are their favourite expressions when they explain and vindicate their theory of punishment. The terms of the New Testament, considered in our previous chapter, are more rarely used; or are painfully explained away; or are sometimes positively contradicted: while the terms derived from Plato overlay and supersede them. Of what is this the confession? It is the confession that the above terms of the New Testament are insufficient to express the Augustinian theory, and therefore do not express it.