The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: Justin on Final Annihilation of the Wicked

I. Apologies Amplify Intent of Everlasting Punishment

It is well to state at this point that since the ground covered by these key Ante-Nicene Fathers has been subject to many claims and counterclaims and much dispute, a rather full survey of such a pivotal writer as Justin is required. Parts of the portrayal are therefore more for reference and record than for cursory reading. The investigator needs the full coverage for examination—hence treatment in some depth. CFF1 816.1

Justin’s two Apologies are of unusual import because of the distinguished character of their recipients and their appeal to the Roman public. As noted, the First Apology had as its intended reader the Roman emperor. The Second Apology was sent to the Roman Senate. These Apologies are of special concern in our quest because of their sustained emphasis on the nature and destiny of the soul and the fate of the wicked. Justin is here striking not only against the positions of Platonism but against the errors and absurdities of Gnosticism, then coming to prominence, with its degradation of Christ and its immortality of the soul. This emphasis continues as a persisting theme, like the proverbial scarlet thread that runs throughout the cordage of the British Navy. The agitation of the time, both from within and from without, now forced the issues upon the church. CFF1 816.2

Although a few seeming contradictions appear, in which Justin is apparently in conflict with himself, nevertheless the same principles of Conditionalism that permeated his previous Dialogue With Trypho are iterated and reiterated, and clearly constitute his preponderant position. It is, moreover, particularly significant that Justin’s repeated declarations on the Conditionalist nature of the soul were neither opposed, reproved, nor repudiated by his contemporaries. He was living and writing in the formative period of the church, when its views had not yet become crystallized into creedal form. His were, in fact, but a continuation of the earlier views. And he was the leading Christian spokesman of his day. CFF1 816.3

The acceptance of Christianity had changed Justin’s view on the last things. Instead of considering death the beckoning gateway of the future life, as he had believed when a pagan, he now championed the truth of the resurrection, and thus denied the Platonic thesis of the inherent immortality of the soul that was now seeking a place in the church. The immortality of the righteous alone had become Justin’s settled faith. In numerous passages he asserts that immortality is the peculiar and exclusive possession of the redeemed—the gift of God, not bestowed as yet, but to be received at the resurrection. And he likewise stressed the Christian doctrine of coming retribution at the hand of a just and righteous God. CFF1 817.1

However, by natural bent of mind and by training Justin was a philosopher. He was steeped in its phrasings, and familiar with the Platonic postulate of the natural and inalienable immortality of the soul. At times he employed some of the thought patterns familiar to his distinguished readers, in an attempt to attract attention to the Christian faith and to win friends and adherents thereto. He assured his royal reader that the empire had nothing to fear from the Christians, as Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. In fact, he said, the Christians were his best subjects. CFF1 817.2

At times Justin drafted upon the language of the schools, which would be readily understood, as he sought to cushion unwarranted antagonisms between gospel truth and Greek philosophy. Some feel that he was not always uniformly consistent or wise. Few men are. But when he discarded philosophical mysticism Justin thought that at the same time he had rejected its errors. He assuredly championed the cause of Christianity and made a masterful pioneer defense of its doctrines. But already the rising cloud of departure was beginning to darken the Christian sky, though as yet but small and ill-defined. CFF1 817.3

1. CHRIST’S JUDGMENT PRECEDES PUNISHMENT OF WICKED

After various preliminaries, and declaring that Christians, though threatened with death, would scorn “to live by telling a lie,” Justin comes to the crucial question of the fate of the wicked. Seeing a common starting point, he calls attention to the fact that Platonism also looks for a judgment, with punishment for the wicked. Christians, he says, do the same, but with this distinctive difference—it is at the “hand of Christ.” Note it: CFF1 818.1

“And Plato, in like manner, used to say that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked who came before them; and we say that the same thing will be done, but at the hand of Christ, and upon the wicked in the same bodies united again to their spirits which are now to undergo everlasting [aionios] punishment.” ¹ CFF1 818.2

Justin here speaks of “everlasting punishment,” but not of unending conscious suffering, or punishing. It is only by assuming that aionios means endless, instead of “for the age,” that the thought of eternal punishing can find sustaining support. And inasmuch as this point appears at the very opening of his Apology, it will be wise to compass this aspect of Justin’s position at the very outset. We therefore digress long enough to trace this emphasis on the punishment of the wicked continuing on throughout the two Apologies. CFF1 818.3

2. “ETERNAL PUNISHMENT” NOT ETERNAL CONSCIOUS SUFFERING

Justin’s key references to the destiny of the ungodly are these: CFF1 818.4

“To undergo everlasting punishment” (First Apology, chap. 8, p. 165). CFF1 819.1

“To the everlasting punishment of fire” (ibid., chap. 12, p. 166). CFF1 819.2

“Suffer punishment in eternal fire” (ibid., chap. 17, p. 168). CFF1 819.3

“Eternal punishment is laid up” (ibid., chap. 18, p. 169). CFF1 819.4

“There will be burning up of all” (ibid., chap. 20, p. 170). CFF1 819.5

“Are punished in everlasting fire” (ibid., chap. 21, p. 170). CFF1 819.6

“Brings eternal punishment by fire” (ibid., chap. 45, p. 178). CFF1 819.7

“Punished in eternal fire” (Second Apology, chap. 1, p. 188). CFF1 819.8

“In eternal fire, shall suffer their just punishment and penalty” (ibid., chap. 8, p. 191).“The wicked are punished in eternal fire” (ibid., chap. 9, p. 191). CFF1 819.9

These ten citations are impressive. But it is in this immediate connection that Justin explicitly declares that, when the fires have done their work, the wicked then “shall cease to exist.” ² That is too explicit for misunderstanding. And in equally strong and definite language Justin stresses the inseparable fact that they will be punished only “so long as God wills them to exist and to be punished.” ³ The inescapable conclusion is that it then ceases. Theirs is therefore a terminable existence. At the end of the period determined by the will and justice of God, the punishment of wicked souls will cease by the very cessation of their existence. CFF1 819.10

Such is the obvious meaning, for Justin repeatedly denies the inherent, independent, and indefeasible immortality of the soul. God only, he maintains, has absolute, independent, original, and underived immortality. Justin obviously did not intend to teach an unending eternity of conscious misery in torment. Scholarly Dean F. W. Farrar, of Westminster, similarly observed that Justin’s words— CFF1 819.11

“imply an opinion on the part of St. Justin that at the end of a certain time, defined by the will of God, the punishment of souls shall cease either by the cessation of their existence or the removal of their punishment.” ⁴ CFF1 819.12

3. RIGHTEOUS DEEMED WORTHY OF INCORRUPTION

In chapter ten of Justin’s First Apology the question of “incorruption,” or “incorruptibility,“ is brought out, and God’s purpose in the creation of man and “all things“: CFF1 819.13

“He [God] in the beginning did of His goodness, for man’s sake, create all things out of unformed matter; and if men by their works show themselves worthy of this His design, they are deemed worthy, and so we have received—of reigning in company with Him, being delivered from corruption and suffering. For as in the beginning He created us when we were not, so do we consider that, in like manner, those who choose what is pleasing to Him are, on account of their choice, deemed worthy of incorruption and of fellowship with Him.” ⁵ CFF1 820.1

And as Denniston comments, “It is not possible to doubt that he [Justin] uses the word ‘corruptible’ throughout as equivalent to ‘perishable,’ or ‘liable to come to an end.’” ⁶ And the reverse would be true. CFF1 820.2

4. EACH GOES TO “PUNISHMENT OR SALVATION.”

Chapter twelve deals with the impossibility of the wicked escaping the “notice of God,” and the rewards or punishments that are to follow. Then he declares: CFF1 820.3

“Each man goes to everlasting punishment or salvation according to the value of his actions. ⁷ For if all men knew this, no one would choose wickedness even for a little, knowing that he goes to the everlasting punishment ⁸ of fire; but would by all means restrain himself, and adorn himself with virtue, that he might obtain the good gifts of God, and escape the punishments.” ⁹ CFF1 820.4

5. PRAYS FOR “EXISTING AGAIN IN INCORRUPTION.”

Chapter thirteen touches on the Christian’s worship of the “Maker of this universe,” the “unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all.” Thanking God through prayer and praise for our existence and blessings, we “present before Him petitions for our existing again in incorruption through faith in Him.” That is significant. And he adds, “Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose.” ¹⁰ Always he is countering the errors of Gnosticism and of Platonism. CFF1 820.5

6. PUNISHMENT IS PROPORTIONATE TO SIN

In chapter seventeen, on the Christian’s relation to civil obedience, including “taxes,” Justin declares: CFF1 821.1

“We believe (or rather, indeed, are persuaded) that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his deed, and will render account according to the power he has received from God, as Christ intimated when He said, ‘To whom God has given more, of him shall more be required.’” ¹¹ CFF1 821.2

Then, continuing his theme in chapter eighteen, Justin remarks on how all men die “the death common to all” (the first death), which— CFF1 821.3

“if it issued in insensibility, would be a godsend (note 1, p. 169: “a piece of unlooked-for-luck”) to all the wicked. But since sensation remains to all who have ever lived, and eternal punishment is laid up (i.e., for the wicked), see that ye neglect not to be convinced, and to hold as your belief, that these things are true.” ¹² CFF1 821.4

The wicked will live again after the resurrection and be duly punished by God. But to hold that the wicked are automatically annihilated at death would be to remove the deterrent of all future punishment. Justin then refers to the pagan practices of necromancy—divination, familiars, or familiar spirits—and touches on the opinions of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and Socrates, and the consideration given to such by the emperor. Justin then says that, as for Christians who believe in God, “we expect to receive again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible.” ¹³ CFF1 821.5

Justin stresses the resurrection in chapter nineteen (“The Resurrection Possible”), declaring that the righteous shall “in God’s appointed time rise again and put on incorruption.” And he adds that “hell is a place where those are to be punished who have lived wickedly.” ¹⁴ CFF1 821.6

7. QUESTION OF “SENSATION AFTER DEATH.”

Justin is careful to differentiate between the teachings of the pagan writers on the coming conflagration of all things. The Stoics even teach that God Himself will be “resolved into fire,” and the world “formed anew by this revolution.” The Christians, on the contrary, “understand that God, the Creator of all things, is superior to the things that are to be changed.” ¹⁵ Christian teachings are “fuller and more divine,” offering proof for what they affirm. Then follows one of Justin’s difficult statements: CFF1 821.7

“While we say that there will be a burning up of all, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of the Stoics: and while we affirm that the souls of the wicked, being endowed with sensation even after death, are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from punishment spend a blessed existence, we shall seem to say the same things as the poets and philosophers.” ¹⁶ CFF1 822.1

But from other passages it is obvious that the “sensation” after the “first” or common-to-all death comes at the resurrection of the wicked at the close of the thousand years. And the pain of punishment will continue only as long as God deems just, the wicked then passing into nonexistence. CFF1 822.2

The learned Prebendary Constable has an intriguing comment on this expression. First he asks, “Does Justin contradict himself? Some say he does.” Or was he ambiguous? But Constable follows these with another pertinent question: “Or, has Justin some philosophical theory which may appear to us, and really be, a very absurd one, but which relieves him of the charge of ambiguity and contradiction?” Constable immediately states, “The latter is our belief.” ¹⁷ This scholarly writer then recounts the strange philosophical theory current in Platonism, namely, of a secret, or divine, fire, in contrast with common fire. The former is used in “Divine judgments”—a fire that “does not consume what it scorches, but while it burns it repairs.” And he adds that this concept Justin “probably borrowed from Plato.” ¹⁸ CFF1 822.3

Constable adds that Justin evidently “supposes the fire of hell to burn on through eternity, and to be ever consuming and reproducing these ‘immortal members.’” And, according to the theory, “they must possess that sensitiveness to the action of fire which all consumable matter though devoid of animal life is possessed of, and without which it could not be consumed at all.” And he notes that the word “aisthesis, which he puts for the sensation of the members, is the very word” used by Plato in this way. Constable explains that this “‘kind of sensation’” is “not the sensitiveness of pain which the living animal feels when exposed to the heat of fire.” He presses this point that it is “unaccompanied with pain. Pain departed when the soul ceased to exist in hell.” ¹⁹ At the risk of redundancy, Constable summarizes the strange philosophical opinion of the time in these words: CFF1 823.1

“The members [limbs] of the damned, devoid of animal life and therefore incapable of pain, would for ever continue to grow and renew themselves. This he [Justin] thought, and truly, a kind of life, such as vegetables have, and so he calls them immortal. And thus we have Justin consistent with himself. Thus we are free to give their natural force to his descriptions of the utter destruction of existence in hell, i.e. of the existence of animal life.” ²⁰ CFF1 823.2

Constable is probably right in his evaluation. CFF1 823.3