The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Edwards—Supreme Exponent of Never-ending Torment

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758), Calvinist pastor of the Northampton, Massachusetts, Congregational church, and short-time president of Princeton before his death in 1758, was recognized as one of the most influential religious leaders of Colonial American history. A child prodigy, Jonathan began the study of Latin at six, and had a good knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew when he entered Yale at the astonishing age of thirteen. Of ultra-Calvinistic convictions, he defended the extreme postulates of election and predestination, struggling to stem the incipient turn toward Arminianism. He rejected freedom of the will, as commonly understood. In it all he was an intense worker, his labors leading to a religious revival, which he analyzed in his Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Words of God (1737). CFF2 272.3

Picture 1: Jonathan Edwards, Charles Chauncy
Left: Jonathan Edwards (d. 1758) Champion of Eternal Torment.
Right: Charles Chauncy (d. 1787) Promoted Universalism in Opposition to Calvinism’s Doctrine of Election.
Page 273

Edwards was unquestionably the fountainhead of the rigid Puritanism of his time, “shaking all New England over the roaring flames of hell,” as one historian phrased it. ¹⁰ His Calvinism was postulated on a God of wrath, says Parrington. ¹¹ He profoundly believed that those who are saved are saved only by the arbitrary will of a wrathful God. This appeal to fear was predominant in his celebrated sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741), perhaps his most terrific declaration. But this concept lay back of all his sermons. CFF2 273.1

It should also be noted that Edwards fell a prey to the new Whitbyan postmillennial theory of a figurative resurrection and a temporal millennium, introduced without an antecedent second advent. This seemed to fit in with his concept of the nature and destiny of man. But Rationalism was beginning to rear its head in America. And there was already a growing dissatisfaction over the extremes of Calvinism on the part of not a few. A crisis, yes, a revolt, was in the making. CFF2 273.2

The almost unbelievable lengths to which Edwards carried his extreme position on unending Eternal Torment may be seen from these three harsh declarations. They must be sensed because of their bearing on our quest. CFF2 273.3

1. EXCRUCIATING TORMENTS “NEVER, NEVER” END

The ghastly horrors of an endless Hell of unmitigated torment are portrayed in these terrifying words:
“Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment for ever and ever; to suffer it day and night, from one day to another, from one year to another, from one age to another, from one thousand ages to another, and so adding age to age, and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and every member full of racking torture, without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him; without any possibility of diverting your thoughts from your pain; without any possibility of obtaining any manner of mitigation, or help, or change for the better any way.” ¹² CFF2 274.1

2. NEVER BE DELIVERED FROM EXCRUCIATING TORMENT

The staggering prospect of Edwards’ endless-torture scheme for the lost was pressed home in vivid picturizations. It presented sheer, endless hopelessness:
“To help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into the midst of a glowing brickkiln, or of a great furnace, where your pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally touching a coal of fire, as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire, as full within and without as a bright coal of fire, all the while full of quick sense; what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace! And how long would that quarter of an hour seem to you! ... And after you had endured it for one minute, how overbearing would it be to you to think that you had to endure it the other fourteen! CFF2 274.2

“But what would be the effect on your soul, if you knew you must lie there enduring that torment to the full for twenty-four hours! And how much greater would be the effect, if you knew you must endure it for a whole year; and how vastly greater still, if you knew you must endure it for a thousand years!—O then, how would your hearts sink, if you thought, if you knew, that you must bear it for ever and ever! that there would be no end! That after millions of millions of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end, than ever it was; and that you never, never should be delivered.” ¹³ CFF2 274.3

3. KEPT IN HELL SOLELY FOR ENDLESS SUFFERING

Cruelty beyond that of any earthly tyrant was ascribed to God in His dealing with the damned: “Those wicked men who died many years ago, their souls went to hell, and there they are still; those who went to hell in former ages of the world have been in hell ever since, all the while suffering torment. They have nothing else to spend their time in there, but so suffer torment; they are kept in being for no other purpose.” ¹⁴ CFF2 274.4

Small wonder that the human mind, with its instincts of common justice and mercy, revolted against such a caricature of God in His alleged fiendishness. And little wonder that many, still under the concept of universal, Innate Immortality, turned to the escape proffered by Universalism. CFF2 275.1