The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Farrar—Westminster Sermon Precipitates Crisis

I. Dean Farrar—Dramatically Repudiates “Dogma of Eternal Torment”

We now turn to a noted Anglican cleric who was neither a Conditionalist ¹ nor yet a Universalist, ² but who turned completely away from the Eternal Torment postulate, and whose epochal repudiation of that age-old dogma was dramatically declared in the impressive environs of historic Westminster Abbey, on November 11, 1877. It was in a sermon entitled “Hell—What It Is Not.” It resulted in a tremendous restudy of the entire question. And, as a by-product, it stimulated a resurgence and extension of the Conditionalist position. That is why the story is given considerable space here. CFF2 404.1

No such sermon had ever been heard in the venerable Abbey in its six long centuries. Moreover, it contravened a popular belief of fifteen centuries’ standing. It created a tremendous stir on both sides of the Atlantic. I refer, of course, to the epochal sermon of the then Canon F. W. Farrar, of Westminster, later Dean of Canterbury, and one of the most highly esteemed of British clerics. Let us first note the man. CFF2 404.2

FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. (1831-1903), celebrated Dean of Canterbury, was trained at the University of London and then at Cambridge. First headmaster of Marlborough, then Canon of Westminster (1876) and rector of St. Margaret’s, as well as chaplain of the House of Commons (1890-1895) and to the queen, he was finally made Dean of Canterbury (1895). Dr. Farrar was author of numerous scholarly works, and was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge and Bampton lecturer at Oxford. He admittedly exerted a profound influence on the thinking of the religious world. Hence his public questioning of the dogma of eternal punishing for the wicked provoked intense and prolonged controversy. CFF2 404.3

His chief books in this field were his Eternal Hole (1878) and Mercy and judgment (1881)—both of them the outgrowth of his celebrated sermon. They will be noted later. He was also a contributor to the well-known 960-page American symposium—That Unknown Country (1889). CFF2 405.1

1. REPUDIATION VOICED IN ABBEY, ON NOVEMBER 11, 1877

His own story of the epochal episode is detailed in chapter thirteen of That Unknown Country, from which I draft. He had been “stirred” to the “inmost depths” by “contemplating the brutal and unmitigated horrors of the doctrine of ‘Eternal torments.’” He was acquainted with the views of Universalists and of leading Conditionalists, several of whom he names. And he knew that many who had expressed “doubts or hesitations” as to Eternal-Tormentism had been ostracized “from their brethren by their opinions on this subject.” Some had been “stalwartly denounced” by Charles Spurgeon, and some had been ejected, as was the case with Prof. F. D. Maurice, who lost his professorship at King’s College. ³ CFF2 405.2

At last Farrar felt it his duty to express his convictions “unmistakably,” and publicly. The occasion was thuswise: On a dull, drizzling day—November 11, 1877—the dean “walked in the rain from his residence to the Abbey,” perfectly well aware of the gravity of what he intended to do. Hear him:
“I had to repudiate a doctrine which had been more or less universally preached by the majority of Christians for fifteen hundred years. I knew that to do so was an act which would cost me dear. I knew that during six centuries of the history of the present Abbey it was probable that no sermon had been preached which even greatly modified, much less repudiated with indignation, that popular teaching about hell which seemed to me a ghastly amalgam of all that was worst in the combined errors of Augustinianism, Romanism, and Calvinism. ⁴ CFF2 406.1

And he adds, soberly:
“The teaching of Jonathan Edwards, of Father Furniss, of Mr. Spurgeon, seemed to me to represent God as a Moloch for all except an infinitesimal fraction of the human race. ⁵ CFF2 406.2

Such was the setting. CFF2 406.3

2. EXPECTED CONDEMNATION, BUT RECEIVED WIDESPREAD APPROVAL

It was a courageous act, and Dr. Farrar spoke “with something perhaps of passion, but certainly with no ambiguity, and no reservation.” He was aware that such a sermon “could not escape the most savage animadversion” and that he could “hardly hope to escape paying the penalty of martyrdom in some form or other.” He was therefore not prepared for “the sort of electric thrill which that sermon flashed through two worlds.” ⁶ He had “smitten a chord of feeling, rarely touched at all, which vibrated sympathetically in a hundred thousand hearts.” Within a week “letters began to pour in upon me from every part of the United Kingdom, as they soon did from every part of the world.” ⁷ CFF2 406.4

3. WIDESPREAD PUBLICITY FOLLOWED BY CONCENTRATED ATTACK

Without Farrar’s knowledge or consent the sermon had been “taken down by reporters,” and was published in the same way in the Christian Age. In that and other “unauthorized forms” it had a circulation in excess of “100,000 copies.” ⁸ As a result, “denunciations” began to descend upon him. Farrar was CFF2 407.1

“assailed in scores of pamphlets; annihilated in hundreds of reviews; lectured against by university professors; and anathematized by Anglicans, Baptists, and Methodists in (perhaps) a thousand sermons.” ⁹ CFF2 407.2

Farrar himself published the offending sermon in authorized form as Sermon III in his book Eternal Hope, with more than twenty-six thousand copies in England, plus many thousands in America and Australia, and with translations in various languages. One leading London clergyman told the canon, “You have spoken out what nearly every one of us secretly thought.” ¹⁰ CFF2 407.3

Then the equivalent of a whole “library” full of “sermons,” “refutations,” “replies,” “examinations,” “revilings,” and “defenses” soon piled up. But, he observes, “not a single voice of any real authority was raised in my condemnation in my own or any other branch of the church.” ¹¹ Despite the agitation, the sermon marked a turning point in toleration. And Farrar adds, “I left the attacks made upon me unnoticed, and the books written against me unanswered.” He was conscious that he had both “time,” and “the conscience and reason of mankind,” on his side.” ¹² CFF2 407.4