The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Farrar’s Written Record of His Tremendous Researches

1. SCRIPTURES ABSOLUTELY SILENT ON “ETERNAL TORTURE.”

Dean Farrar’s Eternal Hope (1878) comprises the five sermons preached in the Abbey in November and December, 1877, including the famous “Hell—What It Is Not.” At their close is a “Brief Sketch of Eschatological Opinions of the Church.” His opening sentence states significantly that “the Scriptures” are “absolutely silent as to ‘endless torture.’” ¹³ Then he reviews the opinions of the early Fathers, many of whom taught the “total destruction of sinners,” and that “all evil will ultimately disappear.” ¹⁴ Some, on the contrary, taught ultimate restoration. Also, he told how, under Augustine, “we find the first distinct outline of that doctrine of Purgatory which robs the opinion of endless torments of its most pressing horrors.” ¹⁵ He further states that CFF2 408.1

“‘none of the first four General Councils lay down any doctrine whatever concerning the everlasting misery of the wicked, or directly or indirectly give any interpretation of the Scriptural expressions which describe their condition.’” ¹⁶ CFF2 408.2

2. DARK SHADOW OF AUGUSTINE FALLS ON MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY

But it was the “‘dark shadow of Augustine,’” wrote Farrar, that was “‘thrown so powerfully over the current theology that there was little question about the endlessness of the torment.’” From Gregory “the Great” (d. 605) till Anselm, “the theology of Western Christendom slept her winter sleep.” But “the Reformers mostly held to the old Augustinian conceptions, except in so far as they rejected Purgatory.” “Abandoning the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church, they took refuge in the infallibility of Scripture.” Nevertheless there was a constant raising of the “voice of reason and conscience” in “revolt against a doctrine Eternal Torments which they found irreconcilable with the love of God.” But “the Reformers did not follow up their negation by an affirmative doctrine.” ¹⁷ CFF2 408.3

3. DEPLORES SPECIOUS ARGUMENTS FOR ENDLESS TORMENT

Then Farrar speaks of Conditionalists Archbishop Whately, Bishop Law, Dr. Watts, Isaac Taylor, and others.” ¹⁸ And in a technical point in his Notes, at the close he declares that “alciw, ai6vto5 [aion, aionios], and their Hebrew equivalents in all combinations, are repeatedly used of things which have come and shall come to an end.” ¹⁹ CFF2 409.1

4. CONDEMNS MISUSE OF TEXTS OUT OF CONTEXT

Farrar views with “sorrow” and “almost of indignation” the “constant perversion by the attempt to build up infinite systems out of the metaphorical expressions and isolated texts,” and by “texts torn from their context,” rather than by the “whole scope and tenor of revelation.” Texts have been “perverted” for “unworthy purposes.” Such, he says, was the method used against Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo, and against Wyclif and Luther.’ ²⁰ Then Farrar observes:
“If the doctrine of endless torment, with all its Calvinistic and popular accretions, be true, it is incredible that there should be no trace of it in the entire Old Testament, except by putting nn the Hebrew phrase ‘for ever’ a sense which it cannot and does not bear. Those who insist on doing this put themselves at once out of court as incompetent and biassed (sic) critics.” ²¹ CFF2 409.2

5. OLD TESTAMENT JEWS NEVER TAUGHT “ENDLESS TORMENT.”

The dean asserts that the Old Testament Jews “never held or taught the doctrine of endless torment as any part of their religion.” ²² And he cites such leading rabbis as Adler, Deutsch (“There is not a word in the Talmud that lends any support to that damnable dogma of endless torment”), Marks, Weill (“Nothing, therefore, seems more incompatible with the tree Biblical tradition than an eternity of suffering and chastisement”). ²³ That, Farrar adds, is generally admitted. CFF2 409.3

6. CONDITIONALIST CONTENTIONS CONFIRM PERSONAL VIEWS

In his larger (485-page) work Mercy and Judgment, Farrar amplifies and traces “Past and Present Opinions.” He cites Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Isaac Watts (“There is not one place of Scripture where the word ‘death,’ as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, necessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul”). ²⁴ And with this agree contemporaries Prebendary Henry Constable, Dr. R. W. Dale, and Dr. Edward White. ²⁵ Farrar enlarges on the views of champions of Conditional Immortality and annihilationism, who hold that “the soul is not immortal,” and that the “agonies of retribution will end for all, because extinction of being will be the fate of the finally impenitent.” ²⁷ Though not himself a Conditionalist, Farrar nevertheless says:
“Believing that much of the popular eschatology is founded on misinterpretation, I feel confirmed in that opinion by seeing how many devout, able, and earnest men [Conditionalists] have come to the same conclusion, and are unable to accept as Scriptural the ‘hell’ of the Revivalist.” CFF2 410.1

7. INVOKES WITNESS OF GERMAN SCHOLARS

After citing the view of Isaac Watts (d. 1748)—“utter destruction of the ... life of the soul, as well as that of the body” ²⁸—Farrar turns to modern German scholars. He cites such authorities as Olshausen (“The Bible knows nothing of the modern dogma of the immortality of the soul”); Nitzsch (“The soul, being dependent on the Creator, does not possess immortality. As sin increases the soul faces destruction in hell and its death”); and Rothe (“The sufferings endured in hell by the reprobate will in reality end, but that the end will consist in the destruction of the guilty. This idea is very ancient in the Church .... This opinion alone seems capable of satisfying all the conditions”) ²⁹—and gives references. CFF2 410.2

8. ALEXANDRIAN FATHERS MOLDED BY PLATO AND PHILO

Covering again the Jewish evidence in the Apocryphal books, Josephus, and the Targums, Farrar states that for the Jews Gehenna was “terminable; terminable, indeed, by annihilation.” ³⁰ This is the “very antithesis of endless torment.” ³¹ Then Farrar comes to the “uncertainty,” the “fallibility,” and “variance” of the Fathers. Chapter after chapter is devoted to a painstaking rehearsal of what the various Fathers thought and taught on the nature and destiny of man—many believing in “annihilation,” others in Eternal Torment, or in restoration. CFF2 411.1

Farrar stresses the influence of the “Alexandrians” and their “accommodation ism,” and how “the doctrine came to them from Plato, who allows the use of falsehood as a kind of moral medicine. Philo borrowed from Plato the same notion.” Again, “From Plato and Philo this unwholesome tendency ... was inherited by the great Alexandrian Fathers.” ³² And then Farrar delves definitively into the intent of the Greek terms involved—such as that aionios “by itself” “never means endless.” ³³ CFF2 411.2

9. LITERAL INTERPRETATION LEADS TO EXTINCTIONIST VIEW

Finally, in commenting on the positions of the Conditionalists, such as White and Minton, Farrar says:
“The devout believers in conditional immortality are perfectly right in insisting that if we bind ourselves by the literal meaning of the greatest number of Biblical expressions there is ten times more in the Bible which points to extinction as the final doom of the wicked than there is which points to their future existence in everlasting agonies.” ³⁴ CFF2 411.3

And he adds concerning the twenty-six texts in which it is alleged that “eternal torments” are “indisputably taught,” that CFF2 411.4

“they are not indisputably taught in so much as one. So far as I can see I say, with Dr. Isaac Watts, that I cannot find one single ‘text’ in all Scripture which, when fairly interpreted, teaches, as a matter of faith, or in a way even approaching to distinctness and decisiveness, the common views about ‘endless torments.’” ³⁵ CFF2 411.5

Then comes this parting word:
“I believe that among the punishments of the world to come there are ‘few stripes’ as well as ‘many stripes,’ and I do not see how any fair interpretation of the metaphor, ‘few stripes,’ can be made to involve the conception of endlessness for all who incur future retribution.” ³⁶ CFF2 412.1

Farrar himself held to some sort of future probation. That was his “larger hope.” But he was adamant against the dogma of Eternal Torment—and his voice carried far and wide. In his conclusion he admits that “the ultimate extinction of the being of sinners appears to be taught by the literal meaning of many passages of Scripture.” But he again disavows the Universalist idea “that all men will attain to everlasting felicity.” ³⁷ CFF2 412.2