The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

V. Thorough Investigation Leads to Strong Personal Convictions

Strang likewise gives us an insight into the habit of thorough investigation, and the resultant strong convictions of these Conditionalist spokesmen. Going back to the apostolic warning to “beware of the leaven of false teaching” seeking to corrupt the young church, and especially Paul’s warning that the time would come when they would “not endure sound doctrine,” but be turned to “fables” and the “tradition of men,” he speaks of those germs of error that came to fullness in the Dark Ages, when gospel truth was buried “under the accumulative corruptions of the Greek and Roman Churches.” ⁵⁴ CFF2 420.3

1. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL THE PARENT ERROR

Then he declares:
“We believe, indeed, that one gross parent error, which serves as a foundation for nearly all the abominations of the Papal teaching, requires still to be banished, with all its progeny, from the creeds of Protestantism, where it holds a place of almost equal honor as the accredited basis of all true religion. CFF2 420.4

“This error is the belief in the IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL arid the inalienable destiny of every man to live forever in some condition or other. This doctrine we solemnly declare to be no part of the doctrine of Christ, but, on the contrary, to be opposed thereto, and to be derived directly from that very ‘philosophy’ against whose encroachments Paul raised a voice of warning.” ⁵⁵ CFF2 421.1

2. PLATONISM ADOPTED BECAUSE OF IMMORTAL-SOULISM

Invoking historians like Dr. Mosheim, he quotes:
“‘Towards the close of this [third] century a new sect of philosophers arose of a sudden, spread with amazing rapidity throughout the greatest part of the Roman Empire, swallowed up almost all the other sects, and was extremely detrimental to the cause of Christianity. Alexandria, in Egypt .... gave birth to this new philosophy. Its votaries chose to be called Platonics,’ because ‘though attached to no particular sect, yet they preferred the sublime Plato to all other sages, and approved of the most of his opinions concerning the Deity, the universe, and the human soul.’” ⁵⁶ CFF2 421.2

He calls attention to the fact that the Christian eclectics—Athenagoras, Clement, Alexander, et cetera—preferred Platonism to the other schools of Greek philosophy—Epicurean, Academic, Aristotelian, Stoic—which either openly scorned or flatly denied the notion of the immortality of the soul, whereas Plato made it the basis of his teaching. And from Plato it was incorporated into Christianity. ⁵⁷ CFF2 421.3

3. PHILOSOPHY TRIUMPHS OVER PURE DOCTRINE

This was the origin of the teaching that began in the third century concerning “the state of the soul after the dissolution of the body.” ⁵⁸ Thus philosophy triumphed over the pure original Christian teachings. And then Origen, with his Neo-Platonism, added to the departures, releasing a “torrent of allegory” which overwhelmed the church, ⁵⁹ and then depreciated the laterality of Scripture. And by the fourth century other embellishments began to be added, such as prayers to dead saints, worship of relics, and other papal dogmas and practices. CFF2 421.4

Plato taught that death was only apparent—that there really was no death, only a transition, and “that immortality was inherent in the deathless indivisible soul.” Then mysticism was added to extenuate the “sluggish body” which “restrains the liberty of the immortal spirit.” ⁶⁰ CFF2 422.1

4. DEVELOPMENT OF CONFLICTING BUT PARALLELING SCHOOLS

Then came the division of the Immortal-Soulists into two schools—the Eternal-Tormentists, holding that “sinners are destined to be preserved forever in hopeless misery,” and the Restorationists, or followers of Origen, holding that all purified sinners will ultimately be saved and find an eternal “dwelling-place among the ransomed.” ⁶¹ CFF2 422.2

The church was “engulfed and borne away in that torrent of allegory which philosophy let loose upon the Church.” Thus it was, Strang declared, that the church was “deprived” of the “pole star of the Church’s destiny,” and left “adrift without due guide,” headed toward the “rocks and quicksands of the perilous latter days.” ⁶² Then he admonishes:
“Restore the true doctrine of immortality, and you have the most potent weapon ever forged for the defeat of that Rationalism and its twin Agnosticism which are eating the vitals out of our modern Christianity.” ⁶³ CFF2 422.3

And he closes by appealing for “liberation from the chains of centuries.” CFF2 422.4