The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Life Everlasting Appends “Symposium” With Twenty-one Participants

Pettingell’s first major work, The Life Everlasting, is an eight-hundred-page volume, which concludes with a significant two-hundred-page “Symposium” in which twenty-one representative men of various Evangelical Churches, from Europe as well as America, participate, each with a section or chapter. ⁶⁹ This was a distinctive contribution, augmenting the value of the work and broadening its scope and effectiveness. Inasmuch as Pettingell’s later volume is more comprehensive as to his own coverage, we will virtually restrict this sketch to a resume of his “Conclusion,” appearing in chapter five.’ ⁷⁰ CFF2 505.4

1. PLATONISM PENETRATES CHRISTIANITY; BOTH ARE MODIFIED

The prevailing doctrine in the church on the “individual, personal immortality for all men” ⁷¹ was, Pettingell affirmed, the result of the fatal penetration of Platonic principles into the Christian faith. No such teaching is found in divine revelation itself. However, Platonism has undergone such changes at the hands of Christian theologians that Plato would scarcely recognize the result as his own, for it has become a compromise composite-a blend of the pagan formula in a Christian framework. Pettingell takes issue with Platonism’s contention that “the souls of all men” have “an eternal existence independent of their bodies,” and will “never go out of being.” He insists that, according to the Word, souls “having had a beginning, they may have an end; having been created, they may be destroyed, and that sin when finished will work the destruction of any soul.” ⁷² CFF2 506.1

2. CONTRAST BETWEEN PLATONISM AND REVELATION

Plato founded his system of the future life on the independent nature of the soul; whereas revelation makes future life dependent upon the work of Christ in redemption, consummating in the resurrection of the body. Plato based his philosophy on the “intellectual nature” of man, good and bad alike being considered equally “immortal.” Revelation, on the contrary, “bases its promise of immortality on man’s moral fitness to enjoy it”—being “made fit” by “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5). Again, modern philosophical Christianity holds that “immortality is an attribute of nature and not the gift of God through redemption in Christ.” ⁷³ Those are irreconcilable positions. But Pettingell maintains that the Word teaches— CFF2 506.2

“that there is, indeed, a life for all men beyond the present, by a resurrection from the dead, for the purpose of judgment and retribution; but it is a resurrection to the Life Everlasting for those only who shall be fitted for such a boon; and those who shall not be found worthy, after being judged and condemned, will perish in the second death, from which there is no recall.” ⁷⁴ CFF2 507.1

Those are the fundamental contrasts. CFF2 507.2

3. PAUL’S WARNING UNHEEDED, RESULTANT APOSTASY SUBVERTS

The apostle Paul expressly warned of coming apostasy in the church. He admonished, “Lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty” (2 Corinthians 11:3). ⁷⁵ This text leads us back to the original challenge over the nature of man in Eden. And Paul further warns against the peril of a subverting “philosophy” and the deviating “tradition of men” (Colossians 2:8), which would pervert the teaching of Christ and the apostles. Pettingell has this to say of the tragic outcome:
“But before many centuries had elapsed, all open opposition had been silenced, by authority, if not by argument; and the Christian doctrine of Immortality through Christ only, had become completely subverted, and the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of all men by nature, had taken its place, and had been declared, by the Lateran Council, to be the true doctrine of the Christian Church. It was declared to be Heresy to deny it.” ⁷⁶ CFF2 507.3

4. REFORMATION FAILED TO REPUDIATE IMMORTAL-SOULISM

The Reformation went only part way. The Reformers did a noble work but not a complete one. The problem was this:
“This philosophical error had so entrenched itself at the very foundation of the Christian system, and so insinuated itself into all its essential doctrines; entering by education into all their forms of religious thought and expression, that they could not be expected to see it as clearly, and extirpate it as easily, as they could see and lop off the superficial branches of error [such as salvation by works, and purgatory, that had sprung from the same source. Yet Luther, and others of his time, did see it [the error of consciousness in death, and protest against it; and so have many since his time.” ⁷⁷ CFF2 507.4

This perversion over the nature and destiny of man, Pettingell calls the “most popular and widely-prevalent [error] of any that has ever opposed itself to the Gospel of Christ.” ⁷⁸ It has entered into all the ramifications of the nominal Christian faith. CFF2 508.1