The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

II. Threefold Basis of “Eternal Life in Hell” Postulate

The theory of “eternal life in hell” received maximum power and force under the weight and influence of Tertullian, unprecedented advocate of the underlying dogma of universal Innate Immortality. He now stood in the forefront as the outspoken champion of these twin dogmas. Let us now note the basis of his contentions. CFF1 954.1

1. THREE AXIOMS UNDERLYING ETERNAL-TORMENT POSTULATE

Three great axioms or principles, undergirded Tertullian’s entire teaching on future punishment. The first two were philosophical dogmas, without any pretense of support from Scripture. The third was allegedly, but fallaciously, drawn from Scripture. Specifically, these were: (1) The indefeasible immortality of all souls; (2) the presumptive distinction between “divine” and “common” fire in the punishment of the wicked; and (3) the devious turn given to such Bible terms as “destroy,” “consume,” “unquenchable.” Let us now examine the grounds upon which they were based, the arguments used to support them, and the conclusions to which Tertullian was led. They are vital to his thesis. CFF1 954.2

2. INVOKES PLATO IN AFFIRMING IMMORTAL-SOULISM

As to the first premise, Tertullian held as strongly as Plato to the inalienable immortality of the soul. CFF1 954.3

It is to be particularly noted that all Christian Fathers who use this “immortal soul” phrase or thought were not only familiar with but likewise in accord with this position in the writings of Plato. And it is also to be observed that none of such early Christian writers ever sought for support for this doctrine by primary appeal to Scripture, but had recourse instead to arguments similar to those used by Plato. Thus Tertullian invokes Plato by name, both for term and teaching. In two separate treatises Tertullian links his position inseparably to that of Plato, resting on him for support. Thus: CFF1 954.4

“Some things are known even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many; the knowledge of our God is possessed by all. I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato, when he declares, ‘Every soul is immortal.’” ¹⁵ CFF1 954.5

3. REJECTS PLATO’S PRE-EXISTENCE CONTENTION

However, Tertullian as a Christian rejects Plato’s pre-existence contention—that souls are unborn and uncreated, and thus have existed from all eternity. Instead, Tertullian holds that they were created “substances,” having a beginning in time, thus again showing his familiarity with Plato’s teachings, to which he alludes: CFF1 955.1

“For when we acknowledge that the soul originates in the breath of God, it follows that we attribute a beginning to it. This Plato, indeed, refuses to assign to it, for he will have the soul to be unborn and unmade.” ¹⁶ CFF1 955.2

But Tertullian remains in firm agreement with Plato by name, on the main point, when he asserts further: “It is essential to a firm faith to declare with Plato that the soul is simple; in other words uniform and uncompounded.” ¹⁷ CFF1 955.3

But having once been born or created, the soul thenceforth, he contends, possesses a life of which it cannot be deprived. Its continued existence is like that of God. So Plato’s dogma,” ‘Every soul is immortal,’” ¹⁸ became Tertullian’s basic premise from which he never deviated. The “soul” could not die or cease to exist. Fallen or unfallen, righteous or wicked, redeemed or reprobate, it possessed an immortal life. CFF1 955.4

4. DEFINITIVE DECLARATION OF SOUL’S ORIGIN

This Immortal-Soul postulate Tertullian sought to sustain, without knowledge of the Hebrew, from the Biblical account of the creation of man in Genesis 2:7, holding that immortality is expressed by man’s becoming a “living soul.” (He failed to note, however, that the expression was likewise applied to the lower creatures in Genesis 1:20, 21, which neutralized his argument.) But he relied on the expression “God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” drawing inconsistent deductions therefrom. CFF1 955.5

5. TERTULLIAN’S DEFINITION OF THE SOUL

And now we come to Tertullian’s amazingly definitive description of the soul: CFF1 956.1

“The soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal, possessing body, having form, simple in its substance, intelligent in its own nature, developing its power in various ways, free in its determinations, subject to the changes of accident, in its faculties mutable [subject to change], rational, supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one (archetypal) soul.” ¹⁹ CFF1 956.2

This “breath of God” concept appears in five places, in as many chapters (3, 4, 7, 9, 11). It was not, therefore, an inadvertent use. CFF1 956.3

Tertullian thus assumed the soul to have been made, or created, out of some part of God—His breath—and hence immortal. Yet he immediately declares it subject to “changes of accident” and “in its faculties mutable.” And in order to disagree with him, Tertullian cites Plato’s amazingly elaborated philosophic opinion that “the soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal, ... invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual.” Little wonder that Tertullian immediately adds, “What more could he [Plato] attribute to the soul, if he wanted to call it God?” ²⁰ CFF1 956.4

6. CONGLOMERATION LEADS INTO HOPELESS PERPLEXITY

Tertullian hastens to make this differentiation between the soul and God: CFF1 956.5

“We ... who allow no appendage to God (in the sense of equality), by this very fact reckon the soul as very far below God; for we suppose it to be born, and hereby to possess something of a diluted Divinity, and an attenuated felicity, as the breath (of God), though not His spirit; and although immortal, as this is an attribute of divinity, yet for all that passible, since this is an incident of a born condition, and consequently from the first capable of deviation from perfection and right.” ²¹ CFF1 956.6

In this Treatise on the Soul Tertullian not only contends that “the soul is the breath, or afflatus of God” (chaps. 3, 4, 11), but asserts its “immortality” (chaps. 2-4, 6, 9, 14; also 24, 38, 45, 51, 53, 54); illustrates its “corporeity” (chaps. 5-8); its “endowment with form or figure” (chap. 9); its “simplicity in substance” (chaps. 10, 11); and its “inherent intelligence” (chap. 12). Its “rationality,” “supremacy,” and “instinctive divination” are treated in his De Anima. Such is Tertullian’s detailed concept of the soul. ²² CFF1 956.7

This effort to combine human philosophy and divine truth led Tertullian into hopeless perplexity. His philosophic theology was but “emasculated Platonism,” as Constable aptly calls it. ²³ The soul is Godlike, but in its “mutability” it is like any other creature of time. Notwithstanding, man, Tertullian maintains, is possessed of an immortality akin to that of God, and in itself is part of the divine substance. ²⁴ CFF1 957.1

7. DREW SUPPLEMENTAL SUPPORT FROM MONTANIST “VISIONS.”

But in addition to the two philosophical and the one “Biblical” argument for the soul’s Innate Immortality, Tertullian claimed to have supernatural support in the form of personal revelations through the prophetic gift—“We too have merited the attainment of the prophetic gift.” And he also produced the substantiating testimony of a second witness, a Montanist sister, “whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation,” and who had seen “visions” of an immortal soul. ²⁵ CFF1 957.2

On the strength of these combined reasons and “revelations,” Tertullian expounded the mystery of the characteristics and qualities of the soul, as a “corporeal substance.” ²⁶ And he attributed to it “form and limitation,” together with that “triad of dimensions” (“length, and breadth, and height”), as well as “colour,” “substance,” “eyes,” “ears,” “a finger,” “bosom,” and “a tongue,” and other members! But he still insisted that the possession of these does not militate against the soul’s immortality. As to the “sister’s” revelation Tertullian said; CFF1 957.3

“After the people are dismissed at the conclusion of the sacred services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision .... ‘Amongst other things,’ says she, ‘there has been shown to me a soul in bodily shape, and a spirit has been in the habit of appearing to me; not, however, a void and empty illusion, but such as would offer itself to be even grasped by the hand, soft and transparent and of an etherial colour, and in form resembling that of a human being in every respect.’ This was her vision, and for her witness there was God.” ²⁷ CFF1 958.1

Amazing indeed! CFF1 958.2

Such was Tertullian’s argument and belief on the “immortality of the soul,” and the grounds thereof. CFF1 958.3