The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

V. Summarizing Conclusion Concerning the Apostolic Fathers

It has often been asserted that the dogma of the Innate Immortality of the soul and the Eternal Torment of the wicked, as later taught by Tertullian and finally established by Augustine, was always the position of the Early Christian Church. But the scholarly investigations of Henry Constable, Anglican Prebendary of Cork, Ireland, led him to reply with positiveness, “We wholly deny it.” And after his exhaustive study of the Apostolic Fathers, Constable declared that they were just as much opposed to the everlasting-torment theories of Augustine as to the theories of Origen and his universal-restoration concept. Here is the key statement of Constable’s sweeping conclusion: CFF1 801.2

“From beginning to end of them [the Apostolic Fathers] there is not one word said of that immortality of the soul which is so prominent in the writings of the later fathers. Immortality is by them asserted to be peculiar to the redeemed. The punishment of the wicked is by them emphatically declared to be everlasting. Not one stray expression of theirs can be interpreted as giving any countenance to the theory of restoration after purgatorial suffering. The fire of hell is with them, as with us, an unquenchable one; but its issue is, with them as with Scripture, ‘destruction,’ ‘death,’ ‘loss of life.’” ⁶⁷ CFF1 801.3

Constable even went so far as to issue this challenge to his contemporaries, which appears in each of the six editions of his major treatise, “We challenge our opponents to controvert our view of them in a single particular.” ⁶⁸ And it should be added that no one during his lifetime, when discussion over the question was rife, ever undertook to disprove his contention. CFF1 801.4

On the point of the total destruction of the wicked, Constable’s general conclusion, based on thorough research, and covering the Apostolic Fathers as a whole, is: CFF1 802.1

“Every one of the men who were contemporaries of the apostles, and have left to our time any of their writings, agree with our view of future punishment as consisting in the destruction of the ungodly, their becoming as a thing of nought.” ⁶⁹ CFF1 802.2

In similar vein is the testimony of the scholarly Dr. Petavel: CFF1 802.3

“The apostolic Fathers never speak of a native immortality; an immortal life is in their view the exclusive privilege of the redeemed. The punishment of the rejected consists in a gradual destruction of their being, which finally becomes total. This punishment is called eternal, as being definitive and irremediable; we have already shown in the Scripture this use of an adjective, qualifying not the momentary action but the permanent results of the action. Neither do the apostolic Fathers speak of a universal salvation; they teach that the unquenchable fire will consume its victims; in a word, they all with one accord appear to be Conditionalists.” ⁷⁰ CFF1 802.4

With the findings of these two specialists the findings of our own independent researches are in complete accord. CFF1 802.5