The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VI. Laing—Effective Scottish Advocate of Conditionalism

In Scotland, WILLIAM LAING (1826-1900) was born in Edinburgh, and became a member of the Secession Church. Throughout his youth God was to him an object of terror, for he had been taught that Eternal Torment is to be the lot of the main portion of the human race. Nevertheless, he had a strong desire to become a preacher of the gospel. But he was puzzled over the differences between various Christian bodies, particularly their appeal to a Confession of Faith rather than the Bible. CFF2 422.5

Laing became especially troubled over chapter 3, section 3 of the Westminster Confession—that, irrespective of their conduct, God had, for His own glory, predestined some men and angels to everlasting misery. He felt that he could not subscribe to such a concept. He was then given a book to read on Predestination, but it only drove him further from Calvinism. CFF2 423.1

Laing became persuaded that God wants all men to be saved, and that Jesus died for all. Only personal rejection of God’s provisions and entreaties causes the loss of the soul. Just then, in Musselburgh, he saw an announcement of a sermon on the “Extent of the Atonement,” at Victoria Place Chapel, by Conditionalist William Glen Moncrieff. He attended, and was deeply impressed with what was to him a new and satisfying view of God and His salvation as relates to man. So in 1845 he left the Secession Church and joined Moncrieff’s congregation. CFF2 423.2

1. STEPS IN BECOMING A CONDITIONALIST

He soon felt a strong desire to become a preacher of that fuller salvation, and entered the Theological Academy at Kilmarnock. Being of a logical turn of mind and an omnivorous reader, he had the ability to penetrate to the heart of an issue. With an insatiable thirst for knowledge he read widely in the Church Fathers. As a result he became suspicious of their authority and reliability. Many of their minds, he was persuaded, had been steeped in heathen philosophy, and this had molded their later Christian theological concepts. The view of many of the Fathers on the immortality of the soul and its attendant notions had clearly been derived from Platonic philosophy. CFF2 423.3

He soon gave up completely all belief in the natural immortality of the soul, coming to hold that immortality begins at the resurrection—clearly the hope of the Early Church—when this mortal shall put on immortality and this corruption shall put on incorruption. This, he found, was likewise Moncrieff’s belief. CFF2 423.4

By 1850 he had given up the idea of consciousness in the intermediate state. But for a time he still retained the idea that man was a compound being, that his body was inhabited by an immaterial principle called the “soul.” And although it required an organism through which to manifest itself, he thought the soul was independent of that organism for existence, and preserved its identity through all the changes of life and death, and that it was this immaterial principle which produced thought and volition in man. CFF2 424.1

2. DOES NOT POSSESS SEPARATE IMMORTAL SOUL

In 1851, after carefully reviewing the whole question, which had agitated his mind for about six years, the matter became clear. He joined with John Milton in holding that CFF2 424.2

“‘man is a being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound or separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of soul and body, but the whole man is soul, and the soul man; that is to say, a body or substance, individual, animated, sensitive, rational.’” ⁶⁴ CFF2 424.3

In studying the Scripture account of the creation of man, he found no mention of the putting of a soul into the body of Adam in order for him to become a man. Rather, “God formed MAN,” he read, “of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul”—that is, he became alive, a living being. Throughout the Bible he found no statement that man possesses a separate, independent soul. The arguments from reason in support of the immateriality of the soul are, he held, to be noted for their ingenuity rather than their soundness. Some of such arguments would prove that all animals, even animalculae, are endowed with this immortal, independent, thinking principle. That goes too far. CFF2 424.4

Such was the origin and development of Laing’s Conditionalism, as he became one of its early advocates in Scotland. He was author of numerous articles and papers thereon, chiefly, “Life Only in Christ,” “Immortality the Gift of God,” “A History of the Corruption of the Scripture Doctrine of a Future Life,” “The Thief on the Cross,” “The Perverted Parable (the Rich Man and Lazarus),” and “Universalism Examined in the Light of Scripture.” ⁶⁵ CFF2 424.5