The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

III. Eternal Torment Involves Pagan “Dualism” Postulate

There is yet another angle to this question that must not be overlooked. The postulate of an eternal Paradise and an eternally coexistent Hell—introduced from Platonism into the religious thinking of sections of Judaism and Christianity presupposes the metaphysical Dualism of two eternal and incompatible principles (that always were and always will be), which notion sprang out of pagan ethnic religions, such as Persian Zoroastrianism. But such a concept is utterly foreign to Scripture, both Old Testament and New alike. Contingent evil may be explained by the positive exercise of liberty and will. But unless one accepts the dogma of an eternal Dualism, the presence of evil involves a beginning, and consequently and logically and inevitably calls for an end. Eternal sinning and eternal suffering are contrary to the testimony of Holy Writ. CFF1 23.4

To hold that the final result of the wrong exercise of human freedom means the perpetual revolt and eternal suffering of a given number of creatures, automatically involves the notion of the eternal duration of an evil principle and a state of unending rebellion against God and good-and thus an infinity of evil as eternally opposed to the infinity of good. But to hold such a theory is to inject an alien pagan Dualism into the true concept of the Supreme Being. According to Scripture there is only one Absolute, Infinite, Omnipotent One God, the eternal I AM, “Who only hath immortality” (1 Timothy 6:16). And the day is verily coming, according to Holy Writ, when He will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Opposition will have ceased and passed forever. CFF1 24.1

The deducible conclusion from such an inspired postulate is that of the end, or ultimate extinction, of the devil and the principle of evil, and of all who persist in following him. When God is “all in all” sin and death will be no more, and there will be no place for any beings, celestial or human, who are without right moral relation to God. The concept of the Eternal Torment of the wicked involves a shocking calumny against both the justice and the very nature of God, as revolting upon mature thought as it is dangerous and un-Biblical. And the dogma of indefeasible immortality for man is to assign to the soul the impossibility of neither beginning nor end, such as the Neoplatonic Christian philosopher, Origen of Alexandria, held, which is perilously akin to pantheism, the original source of this perverted concept. ² CFF1 24.2

As might be assumed, Old Testament eschatology is simple, logical, and majestic, without a single element detrimental to the loftiest concepts of Deity and the divine philosophy of history, and with nothing to revolt the moral senses—nothing of the weird extravagances replete in pagan speculation and myth. And the New Testament evidence only intensifies this noble view. CFF1 25.1