Post-Reformation
Thought
(The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries)
The Nineteenth Century
The nineteenth century witnessed an increasing rebellion against the doctrine of eternal punishment. As Orr says, in his Progress of Dogma, "All this of necessity provoked a reaction. We see already a decided weakening of the doctrine in Arminians like Limborch. Deism and the easy-going theology of the illuminist period, with their lighter views of sin, protested against the orthodox view. Then the stronger intellect and conscience of the nineteenth century took up the opposition. The general enlargement of knowledge, the better acquaintance with other civilizations and religions, reflection on the unnumbered millions of the heathen world who had never heard of Christ, the stronger feeling of the complexity of the problem of responsibility awakened by discussions on heredity, operated in the same direction of fostering doubt and provoking inquiry."1
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The influential German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), was a universalist. In one of his books, he says, "Through the power of Redemption there will result in the future a general restoration of all human souls."2 In another book he gives the following reasons for his position: "(a) Christ's words in Matthew 25:46, Mark 9:44, John 5:29, are figurative. (b) The passage in 1 Corinthians 15: 25-26 teaches that all evil shall be overcome. (c) Misery cannot increase, but must decrease. If it is bodily misery, custom habituates to endurance, and there is less and less suffering instead of more and more. If, on the other hand, it is mental suffering, this is remorse. The damned suffer more remorse in hell than they do upon earth. This proves that they are better men in hell than upon earth. They cannot therefore grow more wretched in hell, but grow less so as they grow more remorseful. (d) The sympathy which the saved have with their former companions, who are in hell, will prevent the happiness of the saved. The world of mankind, and also the whole universe, is so connected that the endless misery of a part will destroy the happiness of the remainder."3 Schleiermacher also objected to the disproportion between the finite offense and the infinite punishment. He felt that if the whole family of God were not restored, it would be a defeat of the divine purpose.
The German Mediating School in general questioned eternal punishment and considered a further chance of salvation after death as possible.
Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) believed that the capacity of wicked men diminished by a natural law until they might possibly waste away completely at some remote time. Lyman Abbott (1835-1922) a Massachusetts pastor, taught annihilation. The Andover School taught continued probation, at least for those who have not rejected the gospel.
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Tennyson's In Memoriam (1849) probably did more than the writings of any theologian of his time to break down belief in the historic doctrine of eternal punishment and to popularize universalism. Some of his lines which apply to the subject are:
"That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That no one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last — far off — at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul.I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope."
At this time there was a great deal of controversy in England revolving around the so-called "Damnatory Clause" in the Athanasian Creed. The clause is Article 43 and reads as follows: "And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire." This is followed by the concluding article, Number 44, "This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved."
The leaders of the Broad Church movement in the Church of England rejected the traditional doctrine. Richard Whately (1787-1863), Archbishop of Dublin, who was heterodox
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with regard to other doctrines as well, held to a position of annihilationism or conditional immortality. F. D. Maurice (1805-1872) emphasized the idea that the New Testament word for "eternal" referred to quality rather than duration. As a result of his casting "an atmosphere of doubt about the word 'eternal' " he was expelled from his position in King's College. He himself, however, denied that he had intended to cast such doubt, and denied being a universalist. H.B. Wilson (1803-1888) expressed the hope that infants would grow up after death and that the perverted would be restored. He was brought to court for his larger hope. In considering the case, the Judicial Committee referred to the withdrawal of the Forty-second Article to which we have already referred. The controversy continued sporadically, and when the Episcopal Church in the United States separated from that in England it ratified the Prayer Book in 1789, but in so doing deliberately omitted the Athanasius Creed as a standard of faith. In England, Dr. Hey and Dr. Thomas Arnold fought vigorously against the Damnatory Clause, and the orthodox side was represented by Dr. Lidden and Dr. E.B. Pusey (1800-1882). The latter's book What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment (1880), is one of the classics in defense of the orthodox position. In reality, however, Pusey practically depopulated hell by stressing the fact that many are saved whom we do not recognize as saved, and that many turn to God in their dying moments without our knowing it. In a sermon Everlasting Punishment, preached in Oxford University in 1864, Pusey said, "Gather in one in your mind an assembly of all those men or women from whom whether in history or in fiction your memory most shrinks . . . Conceive the fierce fiery eyes of hate, spite, phrenzied rage, ever fixed on thee, glaring on thee, looking thee through and through with hate . . . "
Frederick William Farrar (1831-1903) replied to Pusey in the book Eternal Hope, the most important of his many
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volumes of sermons, published in 1877, and in the book Mercy and Judgment in 1881. Farrar was not a Universalist, but contended that there was room for repentance beyond the grave, and that eventually the majority of men will be saved. He admitted the possibility of some being lost. "I cannot tell whether some souls may not resist God for ever, and therefore may not forever be shut out from His presence, and I believe that to be without God is 'hell'; and that in this sense there is a hell beyond the grave; and that for any soul to fall even for a time into this condition, though it be through its own hardened impenitence and resistance of God's grace, is a very awful and terrible prospect; and that in this sense there may be for some souls an endless hell."4 One interesting statement that Farrar made on the subject was, "I would here, and now, and kneeling on my knees, ask that I might die as the beasts that perish, and for ever cease to be, rather than that my worst enemy should endure the Hell described by Tertullian, or Minutius Felix, or Jonathan Edwards, or Dr. Pusey, or Mr. Furniss or Mr. Moody, or Mr. Spurgeon, for one single year." Actually, this extremely grotesque concept of hell was not held by those on either side of this controversy.
There were also other German theologians besides the disciples of Schleiermacher who denied eternal punishment in this period. Carl Nitzsch taught restorationism. He said, "The thought of an eternal condemnation (Mark 9:44; Matthew 25:41, 46) is so far a necessary one that there can be in eternity no constrained holiness, no happy unholiness. But there is no ground for saying that the truth of God's word of God's kingdom necessitates the existence of beings eternally condemned, or that God perpetuates any personal existence only to deprive it of the possibility of becoming holy and therefore happy."5 On the basis of 1 Peter 3:19,
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which mentions "preaching to the spirits in prison," and Hebrews 11:39-40, "These received not the promises," he says. "There are traces of a capacity in another state of existence for comprehending salvation, and for a change and purification of minds": to which he later adds, "It is the Apostolical view, that for those who were unable in this world to know Christ in his truth and grace, there is a knowledge of the Redeemer in the other state of existence which is never inoperative, but is either judicial or quickening."
Hans Lassen Martensen (1808-1884), a Danish bishop, took a similar view. He states, "The kingdom of the dead is a kingdom of subjectivity, a kingdom of calm thought and self-fathoming, a kingdom of remembrance in the full sense of the word, in such a sense, I mean, that the soul now enters into its own inmost recesses, resorts to that which is the very foundation of life, the true substratum and source of all existence. Hence arises the purgatorial nature of this state . . . they continue spiritually to mould and govern themselves in relation to the new manifestation of the Divine will now first presented to their view."6
Richard Rothe (1799-1867) taught that the impenitent wicked would be annihilated, that is, that there was for them an extinction of self consciousness.7
Julius Muller (1801-1878) seems somewhat contradictory in his statements. His general position, however, seems to be that he believed in hope beyond the grave, but not in Universalism. He says, "The way of return to God is closed against no one who does not close it against himself; therefore those who have not yet closed it against themselves, in that the means of salvation, the redemption in Christ, has not yet been offered to them, will indisputably hereafter, when beyond the bounds of this earthly life, be placed in a
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condition to enter upon this way of return to God if they choose. And this of course also refers to those to whom, although belonging to the outer sphere of the Christian Church, the real nature of the Gospel has nevertheless not been presented; indeed we may venture to hope that between death and the judgment of the world many deep misunderstandings, by which numbers were withheld from the appropriation of the truth, will be cleared away."8 He also states, however, "The doctrine of an universal restoration is decisively excluded by the declaration of Christ under our consideration respecting the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost."9
Isaak August Dorner (1809-1884) in his Christian Doctrine, comes to these conclusions, "We must be content with saying that the ultimate fate of individuals, namely, whether all will attain the blessed goal or not remains veiled in mystery." "There may be those eternally damned, so far as the abuse of freedom continues eternally, but in this case man has passed into another class of beings."
Frank Delitzsch (1850-1922) did not believe that immortality is inherent in human nature but that it is a future gift of God, yet he considered annihilation as an extreme improbability. He believed in opportunity for salvation for the dead up until the judgment day, but not thereafter.
Samuel Cox (1826-1893), an English Baptist, was one of the leading universalists of the time. His Salvator Mundi, or Is Christ the Saviour of all Men? a defense of restorationism, was his best known book. He also wrote The Larger Hope, a Sequel to Salvator Mundi (1883). He stated very dogmatically, "While our brethren hold the Redemption of Christ to extend only to the life that now is, and to take effect only on some men, we maintain to the contrary, that it extends to the life to come, and must take effect on all men at the
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last." In 1877, Cox made this statement: "Few of the more thoughtful and cultivated preachers of the Gospel now hold the doctrine of everlasting torment."
Whether or not this last statement was true we hold to be questionable. John Henry Newman (1801-1896) certainly held that belief. He said in a sermon in 1871, "The poor soul struggles and wrestles in the grasp of the mighty demon which has hold of it and whose every touch is torment. 'Oh, atrocious!' it shrieks in agony."
John Charles Ryle (1816-1900), Bishop of Liverpool, certainly believed in it. He said, "Let others hold their peace about hell if they will — I dare not do so. I see it plainly in Scripture, and I must speak of it. I fear that thousands are on that broad road that leads to it, and I would fain arouse them to a sense of the peril before them. What would you say of the man who saw his neighbor's house in danger of being burned down, and never raise the cry 'Fire'? Call it bad taste, if you like, to speak of hell. Call it charity to make things pleasant and speak smoothly, and soothe men with a constant lullaby of peace. From such notions of taste and charity may I ever be delivered. My notion of charity is to warn men plainly of their danger. My notion of taste is to declare all the counsel of God. If I never spoke of hell, I should think I had kept back something that was profitable, and should look on myself as an accomplice of the devil."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon assuredly believed the doctrine. In a sermon, The Bridgeless Gulph, he stated: It is labor in the fire, but no ease, no peace, no sleep, no calm, no quiet; everlasting storm; eternal hurricane; unceasing tempest. In the worst diseases there are some respites . . . there is no peace in hell's torment." He once delivered a sermon entitled Heaven and Hell to an audience of twelve thousand persons at Hackney. Some impression of how Spurgeon preached on the subject may be gathered from the following quotations from that sermon: "The second part of my text
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is heart breaking . . . Here is a dreary task to my soul, because there are gloomy words here."10 "There are some ministers who never mention anything about hell. I heard of a minister who once said to his congregation, 'If you do not love the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be sent to that place which it is not polite to mention.' He ought not to have been allowed to preach again, I am sure, if he could not use plain words."11 "The angel, binding you hand and foot, holds you one single moment over the mouth of the chasm. He bids you look down — down — down. There is no bottom; and you hear coming up from the abyss, sullen moans, and hollow groans, and screams of tortured ghosts."12 "Ye are to be cast 'into outer darkness;' ye are to be put in the place where there will be no hope. For, by 'light', in Scripture, we understand 'hope'; and you are to be put 'into outer darkness', where there is no light — no hope."13 "They are forever — forever — forever — lost! On every chain in hell, there is written 'forever.' In the fires, there blaze out the words, 'forever.' "14
In a sermon, God the All-Seeing One, Spurgeon says, "Where hell is, and what its miseries, we know not; except 'through a glass darkly,' we have never seen the invisible things of horror. That land of terror is a land unknown, God has put somewhere, far on the edge of his dominions, a fearful lake that burneth with fire and brimstone."15 "Into that place we dare not look. Perhaps it would not be possible for any man to get a fair idea of the torments of the lost, without at once becoming mad."16 "Whilst they lie in their chains, they look upward, and they see ever that fearful
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vision of the Most High; the dreadful hands that grasp the thunderbolts, the dreadful lips that speak the thunders, and the fearful eyes that flash the flames that burn their souls, with horrors deeper than despair."17
In another sermon, Woes to Come, Spurgeon says, "You cannot compare the pains of this life with the agonies to be endured hereafter. Could all the misery that ever startled the keepers of our hospitals be conceived, it could not convey the least idea of the pains of the spirits that are doomed to dwell in eternal fire and everlasting burning. The woe, however, will act its terrible part on the soul. The memory aghast — hope and fear, thoughts and imaginations, conscience and judgment, all will be racked, every one be stretched on a bed of fire, every nerve strained to its utmost, every vein made a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on."18 "Many of you are hanging over the mouth of hell by a solitary plank, and that plank is rotten! O think, when you come into the place of torment, what will you say then as you lie in the mighty heat?"19 One can well imagine what an impression such preaching left on the people as well as what a reaction it produced in the minds of others.
Even liberal thinkers at this time believed in a form of hell. Schilder gives as examples James Martineau (1805-1900), in Types of Ethical Theory, Theodore Kaftan, R. Seeburg, and Girgensohn. Shilder also quotes Bahels as saying, "Believe me, people, that eternity isn't going to be as easy as you think it is, that eternity is going to be difficult."
New confessional statements were less plentiful in the nineteenth century, but an important one, the Wesleyan Methodist Catechism, states:
"What sort of place is hell?
A dark and bottomless pit, full of fire and brimstone.
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How will the wicked be punished there?
Their bodies will be tormented with fire, and their souls
by a sense of the wrath of God.
How long will their torments last?
The torments of hell will last for ever and ever."
This passage, however, was toned down somewhat in 1925.
In the nineteenth century there were those who could not subscribe to any of the major theses regarding the subject of the fate of the wicked after death. For example, E.H. Plumptre (1821-1891), after setting forth what he believed to be the teachings of the New Testament supporting universalism, and also those supporting eternal punishment, says, "I do not attempt to formulate a reconciliation of the two contrasted views which I have endeavored to set forth faithfully, as each of them finding an adequate, or at least an apparent, support in the teaching of the New Testament. We seem landed, as in other questions, God's fore-knowledge and man's free-will, God's predestination and man's responsibility, in the paradox of seemingly contradictory conclusions. I do not say that any such reconciliation is for our faculties and under our conditions of thought possible. We must, it may be, be content to rest in the belief that each presents a partial aspect of the truth which may one day be revealed in its completeness. We may at least tolerate, as the Church of the third and fourth centuries tolerated, those who hold either to the exclusion of the other. We may endeavor to appropriate to ourselves whatever is profitable in the way of encouragement or warning, of hope or fear, in each."20 One wonders, however, how there can be any real encouragement or any real warning in such a sea of uncertainty as that suggested by such a position.
In general, the Roman Catholic Church continued to propagate an extremely physical version of hell. Bishop Challoner in 1843 said, "The very fire that burns there
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contrary to the natural property of that element is black and darksome and affords no light." "The dismal music with which the poor wretches shall be forever entertained in this melancholy abode which shall be no other than dreadful curses and blasphemies, etc." Father Furniss, whose Books for Children are said to have sold four million copies, gives this description of a child in hell in Book X, "The Sight of Hell": "The little child is in this red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It hurts its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven." He also says, "Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and ever without stopping."
The Twentieth Century
We now turn to our own century. Within the Protestant Church, there are three main groups: those who believe in eternal punishment, those who believe in universalism, and those who hold to annihilationism. These positions will be discussed in subsequent chapters. We conclude our historical study with a summary of the present day Roman Catholic teaching, and that of neo-orthodoxy.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the location of hell is unimportant. Her theologians say that the nature of the punishment is twofold. There is the pain of loss (poena damni) and the pain of sense (poena sensus). The first is the worst part of the suffering of hell; it consists in the fact that the damned are deprived of the highest good, the vision of God. The second part of the punishment comes from wicked passions, remorse, despair, and external circumstances. The Roman Catholic Church has never defined officially whether or not the fires of hell are literal flames or not, and therefore there is a difference of opinion at that point.
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The Neo-orthodox are here, as in all other doctrines, paradoxical in their position. In a recent book, "Eternal Hope," Emil Brunner (1889-1966) discusses the subject.21 He points out the necessity for a final judgment, else God's relationship to the world would become irrelevant.
But Brunner goes on to say: "Yet in the repugnance to the traditional interpretation of judgment, with its antithesis of the blessed and accursed — so familiar to us in medieval art — there comes to expression a highly significant insight even though it be perhaps only by way of dim surmise. This static symmetry picturing the two opposites, apparently in complete conformity with the words of Jesus about a last universal judgment, is somehow essentially false. While the picture-symbol shows inevitably this symmetry, the intention of the words of Jesus is quite different. The picture suggests: there are these two alternatives, the one and the other, the salvation of the blessed, the damnation of the accursed; but the Word of Jesus is a summons calling for a decision, a Word exhorting to penitence and promising grace. In contrast to the plastic representation, the living Word just does not know this symmetry — notice the linguistically unsymmetical treatment of those on the left hand and those on the right. The fundamental intention of the Word of Jesus is utterly asymmetrical and anti-static. It is a dynamic Word, a Word implying God's movement towards Him. The meaning is not: these are the two realities. Rather it is: come forth from perdition unto salvation."
Brunner goes on to point out that in his opinion the purpose of the Biblical teaching of the final judgment is not to produce a sense of security in the hearts of the impious.
He then says: "It is therefore not surprising that the doctrine
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of forgiving Grace — the doctrine of justification — finds its crown in a proclamation of universal redemption. God wills that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. 'For it pleased the Father that He, Christ, should reconcile all to Himself through the blood of His Cross, whether it be things on earth or things in heaven.' 'To Him, Christ, has He given a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the honor of God the Father.' That is the revealed Will of God and the plan for the world which He discloses, a plan of universal salvation, of gathering all things into Christ. We hear not one word in the Bible of a dual plan, a plan of salvation and its polar opposite. The Will of God has but one point, it is unambiguous and positive. It has one aim, not two."
Brunner then continues by stating that because of the sovereignty of God no one can ultimately resist Him. He considers that the fact of hell would mean an incomplete victory for an omnipotent God, which is to him unthinkable.
Brunner goes on to say: "Thus it is understandable that the aim not to obscure this unmistakable ground-tone of Biblical revelation by any subordinate harmonies leads to the attempt to qualify all affirmations about the last judgment by making the latter an interim affair after which alone that which is truly the ultimate will come. Hence the expressions by which the New Testament emphasizes apparently the finality of the last judgment and of the damnation of the reprobate are so interpreted as to impart to judgment the character of a transitional stage, of a pedagogic cleansing process. Aionios does not mean eternal, but only eschatological; the inextinguishable fire, the worm, that dieth not, the apoleia, the destruction, the second death, etc., all these quite unequivocal expressions in themselves are subjected to such a protracted process of exegetical chemistry that they lose the definiteness of their ultimate character . . .
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"What then is our conclusion to be — the word concerning judgment and separation, heaven and hell, or the message of universal redemption? Both aspects remain juxtaposed in their harsh incompatibility. We cannot even assign them to their respective witnesses. They stand in the same epistle, in fact in the very same chapter. And the one, by its very absoluteness, logically excludes the other. Which of them is the ultimately valid point of view?
"Our answer is: both voices are the Word of God. But God's Word — and this we must repeat over and over again to the point of satiety — is a Word of challenge, not of doctrine."
After considering such words we are forced to conclude that here we have what appears to be double talk which, however, lands us in as complete a universalism as any position which ignores judgment completely. Brunner's concept of God's sovereignty evidently destroys the meaning of human decision. Here we have also a clear proof that in spite of his lip service to the Bible, the neo-orthodox theologian is basically subjective in his interpretation. While Brunner appears to be basically a universalist, he severely criticizes Barth for his apparent universalism. He disagrees with Barth's position because he says it would mean that "we cannot speak at all about being lost. There is then no possibility of damnation, and therefore no divine final judgment."22 Brunner considers Barth's position at this point to be absolutely opposed to the teaching of the New Testament.
Reinhold Niebuhr's (1892-1971) position is at least expressed more simply and is apparently a little closer to the historic position of the Christian faith. A few quotations from his writings will give us some idea of his attitude:23 "It is unwise for
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Christians to claim any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell." "Literalistic conceptions of the allegedly everlasting fires of hell have frequently discredited the idea of a final judgment." "It is prudent to accept the testimony of the heart, which affirms the fear of judgment."
Karl Barth (1886-1968) is almost impossible to understand at this point. He holds to the universal election of all men in Christ. He believes in the absolute sovereignty of God and seeks to avoid the slightest trace of synergism. He believed that the covenant embraces all, the only difference among men being that all do not yet know of this saving fact. At the same time he refuses to go on to the doctrine of apokatastasis (the reconciliation of all men). How he can hold to the one without the other is impossible to understand. On the one hand he speaks of the answer of unbelief to the gospel message as "fatally dangerous," and on the other hand he speaks of the reality of unbelief as ontologically impossible. According to Barth, we are not to concern ourselves with this paradox, for he says, "To reflect today with unseemly seriousness about the possibility of the eternal damnation of this one and that one, and tomorrow with an equally unseemly cheerfulness about the ultimate reconciliation of one and all is one thing: another (and that is the charge that has been given to the Christian Church) is to regard oneself obliged to witness with Christian word and deed to Jesus Christ as Lord not only but as the Redeemer of the world and, as such, its future."24 This is still not a satisfactory explanation, and once again we are left with the feeling that we are confronted with double-talk, and basically with universalism.25
Paul Tillich (1886-1965) also comes close to universalism. In fact,
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D.E. Roberts says, speaking of Tillich, "By means of his doctrine of participation, he arrives at a form of universalism."26 Tillich's position will be clarified when the final volume of his Systematic Theology is published.
Another influential thinker of our own day, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948), an existentialist within Russian Orthodoxy, has much to say on the subject of hell.27 He states that the modern rejection of hell makes life too easy and superficial. On the other hand he feels that belief in hell makes moral life meaningless because all that man does out of fear of hell and not out of the love of God has no religious significance. He says that if hell exists, disinterested love of God is impossible. Therefore belief in hell turns men into hedonists and utilitarians. However, it is easy to deny hell only if men deny freedom and personality. According to Berdayaev, hell is necessary not for the triumph of justice but to prevent forcing men into heaven. On the other hand, for him it is impossible to reconcile the idea that God created the world if he foresaw hell. To admit hell would be to deny God. Hell is subjective, not objective, it means complete self-centeredness, it is a denial of eternity, it seems endless in subjective experience. If the light of God ceases, torment of hell ceases, and there will be return to non-being. Divine light is the source of torments because it is a reminder of man's true calling. Hell is not inflicted by God, but by man himself. The wholeness of personality disappears in hell in consequence of self absorption. The "wicked" create hell for themselves, the "good" for others. Berdyaev believes that the doctrine of eternal punishment is based on gospel texts without consideration for the metaphorical. He thinks that the new Christian consciousness is
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worried about the gospel words about hell. However, if out of pity we admit the universal nature of salvation, we must deny human freedom. Freedom demands hell, but rebels against it, this antimony is indissoluble. There is no justice in punishing by eternal torments, since sins are committed in time. "True believers" send "heretics" to hell in accordance with human, not divine justice. Hell is nothing other than complete separation from God. "The horror is to have my fate left in my own hands." "If there is no Christ and no change of heart connected with Christ, hell in one form or another is inevitable." "There was a time when the intimidating idea of hell retained the herd-man within the church; but now this idea can only hinder people from entering the church." Berdyaev's final conclusion: "A higher and maturer consciousness cannot accept the old-fashioned idea of hell; but a light-hearted sentimental optimistic rejection of it is equally untenable. Hell unquestionably exists . . . but it . . . is temporal." Berdyaev's position is therefore: although the way of the sinner is exceedingly hard, the final result is annihilation.
Very recently, the first book on the subject in many years written by a well known author was published. John Sutherland Bonnell is the author, and his book is entitled Heaven and Hell. However, only one chapter deals with hell. In this chapter Bonnell summarizes the three main positions. He describes the doctrine of everlasting punishment in a less favorable light than the other two positions, but his final conclusion is: "Which, then, of these three concepts of the fate of the impenitent shall we accept? Happily, we are not compelled to choose any one of them, for none has the right to demand our exclusive allegiance. In this matter, as in many another, the Christian is entitled to maintain an open mind. There are points of merit and demerit in all three of them. Our wisest course, as we contemplate this
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awful mystery, is to leave the issue in the hands of a just and merciful God."28
In concluding the historical portion of our study, here is a brief summary of the trends which have manifested themselves down through the centuries with regard to the doctrine under consideration. The Church Fathers held various opinions regarding future punishment, but most of them favored the idea of eternal punishment. The theologians of the Middle Ages were unanimous regarding eternal punishment, and in general presented it in very extreme forms. The Reformers believe in the doctrine, as did both Protestants and Roman Catholics for some time after the Reformation. In the eighteenth century a rebellion against the doctrine started. Caused in part by the extreme forms in which the doctrine was sometimes propagated by its adherents, this rebellion swelled into a mighty revolt in the nineteenth century, a revolt which continues to the present day. At the same time, many continued and still continue to hold the traditional doctrine, although rarely in the grotesque forms in which it was held during the Middle Ages.
Chapter 7 || Table of Contents
1. Orr, Progress of Dogma, p. 347.
2. F. Schleiermacher, Der Christl. Glaube, ii, p. 506.
3. F. Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, 163, Anhang.
4. F.W. Farrar, Mercy and Judgment, p. 485.
5. Carl Nitzsch, Christliche Lehre, p. 376.
6. H. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, p. 460.
7. R. Rothe, Dogmatics, II, ii 46-49, 124-131.
8. Julius Muller, On the Christian Doctrine of Sin, p. 483.
9. Ibid., p. 481.
10. C. H. Spurgeon, Spurgeon's Sermons, I. (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan), 309.
11. Ibid., p. 309.
12. Ibid., p. 313.
13. Ibid., p. 314.
14. Ibid., p. 314.
15. Ibid., IV, p. 166.
16. Ibid., p. 166.
17. Ibid., p. 167.
18. Ibid., XIII, 96.
19. Ibid., p. 97.
20. E.H. Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison (London, Isbister and Co., 1898).
21. Emil Brunner, Eternal Hope (Translated by Harold Knight, Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1954).
22. E. Brunner, Dogmatik, I, 376.
23. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II Human Destiny (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943), p. 294.
24. K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV 1, p. 129.
25. Note: For a thorough discussion of Barth's position see G.C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, and especially Chapter X, "The Universality of the Triumph" (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1956).
26. G. W. Kegley, and R.W. Bretall, edit., The Theology of Paul Tillich (Macmillan Co., New York, 1952), David E. Roberts "Tillich's Doctrine of Man," p. 129.
27. N. Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man (Charles Scribners' Sons, New York, 1937), p. 338f.
28. J.S. Bonnell, Heaven and Hell (Abingdon Press, New York, 1956), p. 40.