The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IV. Little-known Conditionalists Open Witness of Century

Just after the turn of the century a group of little-known writers spoke out on various aspects of the principles of Conditionalism. We confine ourselves to the briefest reference. Here they are—English, Scottish, and Irish, and of Independent, Anglican, Baptist, and Church of Ireland persuasions. CFF2 253.1

1. In 1805 TIMOTHY KENRICK (d. 1804), minister of an Independent congregation at Exeter from 1784 to 1804, issued a two-volume collection of Discourses. Sermons II to IV are on the state of the dead, concerning which he specifically maintains that the soul dies with the body, and is restored to life at the resurrection. ⁵ CFF2 253.2

2. In the same year Glasgow-trained advocate ROBERT FORSYTH (1766-1846), of Edinburgh, in The Principles of Moral Science, discussing the future state, declares that this boon (immortality) is bestowed only on those who render themselves worthy of it. ⁶ CFF2 253.3

3. JOHN KENRICK, M.A. (fl. 1814-1850), scholarly teacher of the classics in Manchester College, Birmingham, was author of several historical works that touch on the nature and destiny of man as held in ancient times. A decided Conditionalist, in 1814 he produced The Necessity of Revelation to Teach the Doctrine of a Future Life. After examining all the arguments put forth in behalf of natural immortality, Kenrick casts them aside as probabilities, presumptions, and “speculations.” The Christian’s hope is of Life Only in Christ. The true doctrine of a future life is built solely on the Word, and the assurance “Because He lives, we shall live.” That is the “Rock of revealed truth.” He had no confidence in the shifting sands of “inference and analogy.” ⁷ CFF2 253.4

4. Then comes an anonymous 240-page work “By a Member of the Church of England,” entitled Eternal Punishment proved to be not Suffering, but Privation (1817). His position is expounded in the full title. ⁸ CFF2 254.1

5. Next, RICHARD WRIGHT (1764-1836), having broken away from Calvinism, and ministering to a congregation of General Baptists at Wisbeach, published a series of books—An Essay on Future Punishments (1808); An Essay on a Future Life (1819); The Resurrection of the Dead an essential Doctrine of the Gospel; and the Neglect of it by reputed Orthodox Christians, an Argument against the Truth of their System (1820); The Eternity of Hell Torments Indefensible (179-?). In his Resurrection of the Dead, Wright maintains that a “real resurrection must be preceded by the actual death of that which is raised; that which does not die cannot be raised from the dead; the resurrection made known in the Scriptures is a resurrection from the dead; whatever is to be raised from the dead must remain dead until it is raised.” ⁹ This too was Conditionalism. CFF2 254.2

6. And finally, RUSSELL SCOTT (fl. 1822), in an extensive Analytical Investigation ..., to which is added an Explanation of the Terms Sheol, Hades, or Gehenna, as employed by the Scripture Writers (1822), ¹⁰ is explicit in denouncing Immortal-Soulism as “adopted from the heathen philosophers.” Scott maintains that all future life is dependent upon the resurrection, whereas a majority have adopted “the heathenish notion of there being a principle in man, which is naturally immortal,” but which notion is derived from the “opinions of Alexandrian philosophers who became converts of Christianity.” CFF2 254.3

But this position, he affirms, “subverts the influence and destroys the effect of the death and the resurrection of Christ, the corner-stone of Christianity.” And he adds that the concept of the “continuation of existence, by the natural immortality of what is termed the soul of man, is, therefore, in direct opposition to the Scriptures of the New Testament.” As to the fate of the wicked, Scott declares they “die utterly,” which death involves the “extinction of his being, a return to the same state of non-entity from which he had been taken.” ¹¹ CFF2 255.1

7. Note must also be taken of an anonymous treatise published at Dublin, in 1835, “By a Clergyman of the Church of Ireland,” bearing the significant title Christ Our Life; or the Scripture Testimony concerning Immortality. ¹² It emphasizes these same Conditionalist views. These are lesser voices. CFF2 255.2