The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

IV. Major Area of Disagreement Between Christ and Pharisees

We must not conclude this survey without stressing the fact that the nature and destiny of man was a major area of disagreement between Christ and the Pharisees. He was a Scripturalist, sustaining the unvarying teaching of Moses and the prophets on the nature and destiny of man. They were Platonists, having left the scriptural platform and espoused the Innate-Immortality postulate of Platonic deduction and philosophy. Christ was a Conditionalist, proclaiming eternal life and immortality as a gift, restricted to those only who should believe and receive Him as the Life and the Resurrection. They were Immortal-Soulists, holding to the natural, inherent, constitutional immortality of the human soul. To that position they were now irrevocably committed. CFF1 265.2

1. DIFFERENCES AS OPPOSITE AS LIGHT AND DARKNESS

As to the destiny of man, Christ taught the ultimate and utter destruction of the willful sinner. Man, as a rejector of life, truth, and light, is mortal, and hence susceptible to death and destruction. But the Pharisees taught that the soul of man is innately and indefeasibly immortal and indestructible, and that therefore the damned will live on forever in excruciating torment. The difference was sharply drawn and mutually exclusive. The contrast was as fundamental as the difference between light and darkness. CFF1 265.3

This matter of the soul and its destiny was an area of fundamental disagreement between Christ and the Pharisees. On this issue their positions were diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. But they were not only totally opposite, they were mutually destructive. If Christ was right, they were wrong. If Christ’s teachings were true, theirs were erroneous—and vice versa. Obviously, if Christ was victorious, they were defeated. There was no escape from such a conclusion. CFF1 266.1

It was over this basic issue that the culminating crisis came in their relationships, as they rejected His truth and chose to cling to their own error. It was the irreconcilability of the two positions, among other things, that finally led them completely to reject Christ and His distasteful teachings on the life, death, and destiny of man. They would have none of His life program. CFF1 266.2

On this there could be no compromise, no capitulation. That meant that He must be silenced, put out of the way. His witness must be crushed—otherwise their own position was doomed. It was a question of stark survival, for they saw the outcome with crystal clearness. He must go. CFF1 266.3

2. CHRIST MUST NOT BE ARRAYED AGAINST CHRIST

That is why it is inconceivable that Christ, in this controverted parable based on the fictitious but representative characters of Dives and Lazarus, in their fabled converse, cannot logically, scripturally, or ethically be made to support the Pharisaic position on an error that Christ came to counteract and overthrow. To do so is to array Christ against Himself (Matthew 12:25; Mark 3:24, 25; Luke 14:17, 18), and in this instance the Dives-Lazarus narrative against the total emphasis and weight of His whole message and mission. CFF1 266.4

It is to take the unthinkable position of siding with the Pharisees against Christ. And it is to place Christ in the inconceivable position of adopting the false reasoning of Platonic pagan philosophy as against the inspired revelation of the Scriptures of truth. It is unquestionably to take the path of deviation from the straight and narrow way of truth and life. And it involves charging Christ with supporting the gross absurdities inherent in a literalistic, Immortal-Soulist interpretation of the story of Dives and Lazarus. It is virtually to undo His entire life’s testimony in a sellout to the Pharisees. That cannot be! CFF1 266.5

In the light of these sobering facts and fundamental principles, and in the light of Christ’s impeccable truthfulness and His own personification and embodiment of truth, we must therefore deny and reject the validity of the literalist interpretation of this parable-fable as supporting the Innate Immortality of the soul and the Eternal Torment of the damned. Christ, we maintain, was consistent and truthful, and unwavering to the end in His adherence to, and enunciation of, the truth as to man and his destiny. CFF1 267.1

We must not place Christ in the unthinkable position of endorsing the Platonic error that was so repugnant to His very nature as the Fountainhead of life and truth. He must not be betrayed in the house of His Christian friends. He must not be crucified upon a cross of Innate-Immortality error. CFF1 267.2