The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VII. Rotherham—Immortality Is “Contingent and Dependent”

JOSEPH B. ROTHERHAM (1828-1910), Hebrew and Greek scholar, and for thirty-seven years a technical editor for publishers, was born of Wesleyan parents, his father being a local preacher. While still in his teens Joseph wanted to preach. At twenty-one he sought formal college training. In 1850 Rotherham entered the ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Association, which later merged with the United Methodist Free Churches. But in the attendant theological examination questions, one on baptism troubled him. This appeared so serious that he later left the Methodists to join the Baptists, and became pastor of the General Baptist Church at Market Harborough, then of the Particular Baptist Church at Wem, in Salop. (Photo on page 439.) CFF2 449.5

Driven on by further study, he was much impressed by the stand of the Disciples on the design and mode of baptism, and fraternized closely with them. The next fourteen years were spent in effective preaching, teaching, and evangelism in England, Wales, and Scotland. A master of both Hebrew and Greek, Rotherham, in the twenty-five years following, gave himself largely to study and research, and held literary posts in London that required a technical knowledge of Biblical languages. Rotherham’s translation of the New Testament (1872), to give the exact force of the originals, became widely recognized. In 1868 there appeared a review of this translation by William Maude, in the Conditionalist journal The Rainbow. In connection with this Rotherham leaves this record:
“Availing himself of the acquaintance thus formed, Mr. Maude, about this time enquired of me by letter, whether I could name a single passage which taught man’s natural and necessary immortality. My reply was the frank admission that I knew of no such passage, and that manifestly the only immortality in which Adam was created was contingent and dependent—contingent on his obedience, and dependent on his eating of the fruit of the tree of life. Probably I had never so expressed myself before; but I have never wavered from that reply since.” ⁹⁶ CFF2 450.1

Rotherham was himself editor of The Rainbow during the last two years of its publication, and was one of the speakers at the London Conference on Conditional Immortality in 1885. He was clearly a Conditionalist. CFF2 450.2