The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

V. Digest of Storrs’s Famous “Six Sermons”

1. INDEFEASIBLE IMMORTALITY INVOLVES ETERNAL SUFFERING

Storrs’s purpose in his Sax Sermons is set forth in the subtitle—to present an answer to the question “Is There Immortality in Sin and Suffering?” Sermon I states the question specifically. CFF2 308.2

Will the wicked who live and die in their sins continue eternally, or without end in a state of conscious existence? Or once more—Is the punishment God threatened to sinners an eternal state of suffering and sin? This involves the question of immortality. For if all men can be proved to be immortal it seems to follow from the Bible that the finally impenitent will be left in a state of endless suffering and sin.” ³⁴ CFF2 308.3

From this Storrs plunges into the usual “arguments in proof of man’s immortality” ³⁵ such as that the soul is “indestructible, and therefore immortal” ³⁶ Declaring that such a concept comes from Plato, he quotes from the noted Conditionalist archbishop Whately in support. ³⁷ And after a four-page citation from Whately, Storrs asserts that— CFF2 308.4

“there is no truth in the oft repeated assertion that all nations and people have believed in man’s immortality, or an endless conscious survivance of a fancied entity called the soul.” ³⁸ CFF2 309.1

2. SUPPOSED “INDESTRUCTIBILITY” OF SOUL IS PURE ASSUMPTION

Storrs further declares:
“The attempt to prove the immortality of the soul, from its supposed indestructibility, is without force or truth, and with it falls the whole catalogue of assumptions, with which it is connected. He who created can destroy—‘Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’—in gehenna.” ³⁹ CFF2 309.2

Storrs next turns to the Biblical evidence on “eternal,” “Immortal,” and “immortality,” ⁴⁰ making the usual Conditionalist argument, and concludes with: CFF2 309.3

“Men by sin have been cut off from the tree of life—they were starving, dying Christ cometh: the bread of life—the feast is spread, hungry dying souls are invited, without money and without price Come, eat and LIVE If you stay away, you DIE O come to Christ and live—yea, live forever and not die Amen.” ⁴¹ CFF2 309.4

3. DEATH IS TOTAL DEPRIVATION OF LIFE

In Sermon II (“Ye shall not surely die Genesis 3:4”) Storrs states that the Old Serpent—
“commenced his attack on our race by saying they should ‘not surely die,’ if they did disobey God. He was successful in that game, and has played the same card, in some form, on men, ever since he first swept Paradise with it.” ⁴² CFF2 309.5

Satan turned the card so as to “insinuate” that man should be “kept alive in eternal and indescribable torments, for sins committed on earth, or hereafter to be committed in the theological hell, where it is impossible for the miserable ones to cease from sin!” ⁴³ Storrs then comments:
“This doctrine has kept more away from God, and driven them into infidelity, than any other doctrine that was ever promulgated I am solemnly convinced that it has done more to destroy men than all other errors put together.” ⁴⁴ CFF2 309.6

And he adds:
“The death God has threatened, as the wages of sin, is not immortality in misery, but an actual and total deprivation of life.” ⁴⁵ CFF2 310.1

This, then, is the “question at issue“:
“Is the punishment of the wicked interminable being in sin and suffering? or an eternal cessation from life?” ⁴⁶ CFF2 310.2

He insists it is the latter. CFF2 310.3

4. PERISHING IS CEASING TO EXIST

Storrs then turns to the “terms employed to denote the punishment of the wicked“:
“Perish—Utterly perish—Utterly consumed with terrors—Destroy—Destroyed—Destroyed forever—Destruction—To be burned—Burned UP with unquenchable fire—Burn them up, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch—Perdition—Die—Death—Second Death etc.” ⁴⁷ CFF2 310.4

For the precise meaning of “perish” he cites Grimshaw—“to cease to have existence—to die—to decay.” ⁴⁸ Then Storrs states, concerning John 3:16:
“Here perishing and life are put in opposition, and the term perish is explained by the apostle himself, to mean death, and not life in misery.” ⁴⁹ CFF2 310.5

Clearly, perishing is to cease to exist. Storrs next answers stock objections in the usual Conditionalist fashion, maintaining that the fate of the wicked is “deprivation of life.” ⁵⁰ His “Concluding Remarks” are definitive: CFF2 310.6

“The conclusion is irresistible, that the final doom of all the impenitent and unbelieving, is that they shall utterly perish—shall be ‘destroyed forever’—their ‘end’ is to be ‘burned up, root and branch,’ with ‘fire unquenchable’—they shall not have everlasting life, or being, but be ‘punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord,’ the universe of God will be purified not only from sin, but sinners—and ‘the works of the devil’ will be destroyed, exterminated.” ⁵¹ CFF2 310.7

This will be followed by the sinless, painless, deathless new earth. ⁵² CFF2 310.8

5. DEATH IS “EXTINCTION OF CONSCIOUS BEING.”

Sermon III (on eternal life) deals with further problem texts pertaining to immortality and eternal suffering. Here he again cites from Bishop Watson’s Institutes in support:
“That the soul is naturally immortal is contradicted by Scripture, which makes our immortality a gift, dependent on the will of the giver.” ⁵³ CFF2 311.1

Storrs adds that sinful men are afflicted with a “fatal disease” (sin), and that it—
“will result in death, or in utter extinction of conscious being, unless it is removed. All men are dying. The death to which they are hastening is the effect of sin, and sin is the transgression of the law of their moral nature, which will as certainly result in the entire dissolution of the man, so that he will cease to be man.” ⁵⁴ CFF2 311.2

6. FATHERS MINGLED PHILOSOPHY WITH WORDS

Sermon IV (“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:21”) deals with the common assertion that “the fathers believed in the endless torments of the wicked.” ⁵⁵ In reply Storrs cites church historian Mosheim, who declares that in the “third century” some of the Fathers “degenerated much from primitive simplicity,” and resorted to “artifice” and “falsehood.” he also cites Enfield, who states that some of the Fathers “seemed intent on uniting heathen philosophy with Christianity,” and began “clothing the doctrines of religion in an allegorical dress.” ⁵⁶ He then marshals the Biblical testimony of John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, Peter, James, John, Jude, and Paul. ⁵⁷ And he concludes that in contrast with pagan fable— CFF2 311.3

“God, has set life and death before us. We are called upon to choose life. God invites, commands, expostulates, entreats, and warns; but God cannot compel man to turn from death without destroying man’s moral agency, which would be, in fact, to unman man, and make him as incapable of higher happiness as any other mere animal. Man must turn and live, or he will pass on and die,—die because he would not have life;—die because he is unfit for any purpose of life—wholly disqualified for the employment of life.” ⁵⁸ CFF2 311.4

7. IMMORTAL-SOULISM DERIVED FROM PLATONISM

In Sermon V (on searching the Scriptures), referring to various churchly views, Storrs states that “truth lies scattered among all denominations; none of them have the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Some have more than others.” ⁵⁹ CFF2 311.5

In answering the question “If this doctrine is true, why has it never been found out before?” Storrs replies that he lays “no claim to being the discoverer of it.” ⁶⁰ Citing other Conditionalists before him by name, he comes to Henry Grew’s tract, which he found in 1837. First he depreciated it, then studied it for several years, conversed with ministers about it, and finally accepted and began publicly to present the Conditionalist position in 1841 and 1842, when his original Six Sermons were delivered in Albany, New York. ⁶¹ Then he says:
“The notion that there is [immortal] life in the soul of the wicked, or a principle that cannot die, was taken from the Platonic Philosophers, and was introduced into the Church, as a Scripture doctrine, in the third century.” ⁶² CFF2 312.1

In support he again quotes from Mosheim:
“Its [Immortal-Soulism’s] first promoters argued from that known doctrine of the Platonic School, which was also adopted by Origin [sic] and his disciples, that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls; or in other words, that the faculty of reason, from which proceed the health and vigor of the mind, was an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth.” ⁶³ CFF2 312.2

8. NO EVIDENCE OF “ETERNAL SIN AND SUFFERING.”

In Sermon VI Storrs brings his series to a close, stressing again that— CFF2 312.3

“the converts from heathenism seemed intent on uniting heathen philosophy with christianity. Hence they must find an abundance of mysteries in the Scriptures: and the practice of allegorizing, i.e. making the language to contain something that does not appear in the words, commenced and generally prevailed, before the third century.” ⁶⁴ CFF2 312.4

To this he adds:
“In these sermons I have endeavored to show that man by sin lost all title to immortality; and had it not been for the ‘seed of the woman’ the race would have utterly perished, or ceased to be, and would have been as though they never had been. There is not a particle of evidence that the original threatening embraced a state of eternal sin and suffering.” ⁶⁵ CFF2 312.5

And he concludes his series by issuing the call “Come to the LIFE-GIVER,—lay hold on ETERNAL LIFE.” ⁶⁶ CFF2 313.1

Such were the simple sermons that nevertheless had far-reaching results. CFF2 313.2