The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VI. Canon Aitken—Champions Conditionalism for Quarter Century

WILLIAM H. M. HAY AITKEN (1841-1927), Canon of Norwich Cathedral, England, was educated at Wadham College, Oxford. Ordained in 1866, he served as curate of St. Dudes, London (1865-1871). Then, following an incumbency in Liverpool, he became a mission preacher in 1875. He was appointed General Superintendent of the Church Parochial Missionary Society, and made canon of Norwich Cathedral in 1908 ⁸² Aitken was author of seventeen volumes, ⁸³ published between 1875 and 1905, including Eastertide (1889) and Temptation and Toil (1895). He was also a contributor to the Clergyman’s Magazine. But it is to be particularly noted that he was advanced to his canoncy twenty-five years after his undeviating espousal of Conditionalism. CFF2 372.5

After years of intensive systematic study, Aitken developed a revulsion against the doctrine of the eternal suffering of the wicked. He thought it was inconsistent with divine love. He further felt that he could no longer preach it. This resulted in inevitable controversy and opposition. To him the essence of the gospel was nothing less than “salvation from sin itself, and only secondarily from the consequences of sin.” He came to urge “positive acceptance of Divine love,” rather than “ a negative escape from Divine wrath,” for the “two lines of appeal” were obviously “poles apart.” Believing the gospel to be the “gift of the eternal life,” and “eternal life imparted only as a gift,” dependent upon man’s “voluntary acceptance,” he concluded that “the terrible, inescapable opposite of life must be death—death as absolute and annihilatory as life is indestructible, endless, and ever-abounding.” ⁸⁴ CFF2 373.1

Aitken saw “that this conclusion negatived the orthodox belief in the natural immortality of the soul.” But he was convinced that there is nothing in man that is “inalienably and essentially divine,” except his “potentiality for divinity.” He has “a capacity for being made into an immortal being.” He is “not essentially immortal, but he may be immortalized. Eternal life is not his actual possession until he has linked himself voluntarily and by faith to his proper life-centre, God.” ⁸⁵ Its enjoyment must “depend upon the maintenance” of its true “relations with the Creator.” CFF2 374.1

Contrariwise:
“The soul who dies impenitent is as a branch cut off from the parent tree. It cannot live, for it has broken contact with the source of life. To conceive of such an one as persisting through all eternity in hideous, unspeakable, useless, undisciplinary torment is a blasphemy against Universal Love such as can only arise by an ignorant misreading of certain scriptural passages, which are equally capable of being interpreted in another way.” ⁸⁶ CFF2 374.2

1. ETERNAL DESTRUCTION A STATE, NOT A PROCESS

Aitken put his convictions into a paper, prepared about 1883, for private circulation in his Council of the Church Parochial Mission Society, which had become uneasy over his Conditionalist concepts. The two irreconcilable views of “eternal destruction” were here set forth in contrast—either it is “a process of destruction going on for ever and ever, or a state of ruin everlastingly maintained.” The former, he insisted, “involves a contradiction of terms,” for “the conservation of identity indefinitely extended is the negation of the idea of destruction,” which is “utter dissolution and extinction of the object to which it is applied.” ⁸⁷ CFF2 374.3

Aitken then placed Conditionalism over against the orthodox position, and that of the Universalists, or Restorationists. And he supported his position by an appeal to the declarations of Jude, James, Peter, John, John the Baptist, and Christ Himself—“utterances which are difficult to explain in any other sense than that of their literal meaning, which is annihilation of the wicked.” ⁸⁸ CFF2 375.1

2. “WORD AND WORK” CLOSES COLUMNS TO HIM

Early in 1883 a leading Evangelical journal, Word and Work, opened its columns to a “long and acrimonious discussion of conditional immortality.” It was occasioned by the dismissal by the Church Missionary Society of one of its ablest men for adopting and teaching this postulate. Aitken wrote a long letter to the editor proposing a “calm, dispassionate discussion” in Word and Work. But this was sharply declined, and Aitken’s “heresy” was strongly condemned without opportunity of reply. ⁸⁹ CFF2 375.2

3. FOUR QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED BY AITKEN

Canon Aitken then asked a series of questions: (1) If the “terror of eternal torment” is backed by divine revelation, “should we not expect that it would be revealed in precise and unequivocal language?” (2) “Is it not surprising that there is no distinct and categorical statement, from Genesis to Revelation, to the effect that all the wicked shall suffer torment for ever, whether of body or mind?” (3) “Does it not seem passing strange that no indication of such doom is to be met with in the Old Testament canon?” Would God “spring” such a “horrible doom without due warning?” And (4)— CFF2 375.3

“Is it not passing strange, since this doctrine of eternal suffering is (as you teach) of such immense importance that we ought to be denied Christian fellowship for not holding it, that we find no mention of it in the Epistles of St. Paul, St. James, St. John and St. Jude? (I protest in common honesty against St. Paul’s ‘eternal destruction’ being quoted as a negative instance.) It is to the Epistles that we usually go for our doctrinal conclusions upon subjects of a theoretical character. Why are we not taught the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the ‘Catholic,’ or, as I prefer to call it, the ‘mediaeval’ corollary of its eternal sufferings? Is it not wonderful that St. John, the author who above all others deals with destiny, makes no mention of eternal suffering in his Gospel, nor does St. Luke in either his Gospel or the Acts? CFF2 375.4

“Is it not a thing most astonishing that, if the immortality of the soul is a great fundamental verity, it is nowhere stated in Holy Scripture; while, on the other hand, modern Christians who believe it can hardly ever preach a sermon or pray a prayer without using the non-scriptural, if not unscriptural, phrase, ‘immortal souls,’ ‘never-dying souls’?” ⁹⁰ CFF2 376.1

4. No “INFINITE PENALTY” FOR “FINITE SIN.”

Aitken then challenges the editor to “find anything between the covers of your Bible” to sustain the “terrific theory of an infinite penalty for finite sin”—for “any punishment that is eternally inflicted is infinite in extent, though not necessarily in degree.” ⁹¹ CFF2 376.2

5. MANY PULPITS SEALED AGAINST HIM

As a result, a “storm of controversy” ensued among men of learning over the issue, and Aitken now had his “first taste of the rancour of the dogmatic spirit.” The rector of Cheltenham canceled Aitken’s appointment to conduct a mission in his parish. Other pulpits were soon “sealed against him.” But Aitken had taken his stand against the “protracted tortures of the lost through periods so vast that geological ages of this planet are a mere watch in the night as compared with them.” So, one after another turned against him and released him from standing appointments, as correspondence of 1883 discloses. ⁹² However, this phase passed. CFF2 376.3

6. CHURCH PAROCHIAL MISSION SOCIETY CONTINUES TO USE HIM

Canon Aitken was given full opportunity to state his views before the Council of the Church Parochial Mission Society, where he told of his change of view, and gave the “scriptural grounds upon which it was supported.” The Council, while dissociating itself from the doctrine of Conditional Immortality, “refrained from condemning the holders of that doctrine,” and declined to dismiss him. ⁹³ Nevertheless, ostracism continued in various quarters. One American university that had purposed to confer the degree of D.D. upon him during his first American mission, and which attracted great crowds, ⁹⁴ withdrew it when it learned that he was a Conditionalist. ⁹⁵ CFF2 376.4

Aitken’s final declaration on Conditionalism was his Foreword to Eric Lewis’ Life and Immortality, written in 1924. Here, in discussing the “ultimate doom of the impenitent” and the variant interpretations of the Scripture terms, Aitken appeals to the reader to “lay aside all prejudice” and “patiently pursue a process of critical enquiry” by— CFF2 377.1

“comparing Scripture with Scripture, and honestly discriminating between their original and natural meaning and any traditional significance that for one cause or another may have become attached to them.” ⁹⁶ CFF2 377.2

7. NO ETERNAL TORMENT FOR BRIEF EARTHLY LIFE

Commending the “thoroughness and transparent honesty” of Lewis, which had led to his “conclusions” on scriptural grounds only, and alluding to the “palpable sophistries” of popular arguments and the “misuse of the word ‘annihilation,’” Aitken then refers to the “grievous and God-dishonouring error” of Eternal Torment. He states:
“The doctrine of Eternal Torment has lost its hold on the common sense and moral sensibilities of mankind. People don’t and won’t believe that an infinitely good and merciful God can consign His own offspring (Acts 17:28. 29) to measureless aeons of torture in retribution for the sins and weaknesses of a few swiftly passing years here on earth.” ⁹⁷ CFF2 377.3

8. DEATH THE FORFEITURE OF ETERNAL LIFE

Declaring the dogma of Eternal Torment to be “positively demoralizing,“ he appealed for a restudy of the question, “untrammelled with traditions of the past.” And he adds:
“Must not reasonable men feel in their own hearts that if they wilfully refuse the offer of life, made to them at the cost of a Saviour’s death, they certainly deserve to forfeit that which they have thus despised?” ⁹⁸ CFF2 377.4

Aitken urges men to “buy the truth” at “whatever price,” and says, commending the Lewis presentation: “I have not succeeded in finding any flaws in his logic or any wresting of Scripture to suit his theories.” ⁹⁹ CFF2 378.1

Aitken’s summarizing thought is that it is the “same Divine revelation that tells us all we know of God’s great mercy in Christ Jesus, that solemnly affirms that the wages of sin is death.” That was the testimony of the noted Anglican missioner, for nineteen years the canon of Norwich Cathedral. CFF2 378.2