The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Professor Bacon-Immortality “Conditional Upon the Act of God”

LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON (1830-1907), Congregationalist minister and physician, was known for his numerous theological writings. He was trained in theology at Andover and at Yale, and was also a graduate in medicine from Yale. He served as pastor in Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. And for five years he was pastor of the American Church at Geneva, Switzerland. Brilliant and versatile, with a bent for historical investigation, he was both a forceful speaker and a vigorous writer. A born controversialist, he sought diligently for facts and exposed error. The decade from 1892 to 1902 was devoted to intensive study and writing. CFF2 520.1

Dr. Bacon was a skilled debater. He never feared to do his own thinking, and was loyal to his convictions. He was likewise well known in Europe, where as stated he resided for a time. While there he became a personal friend of Dr. Emmanuel Petavel, of Lausanne, who held pronounced Conditionalist views-“optional immortality.” Bacon shared these views on the nature and destiny of man. ¹⁰ He set forth his views in print on numerous occasions, as for example in his Simplicity That There Is in Christ volume of sermons. CFF2 520.2

1. IMMORTALITY IS CONFERRED, NOT INHERENT

In the widely circulated Symposium, The Life Everlasting, Dr. Bacon maintained that future existence is conditional upon “the act of God.” Unending life will be had only as “conferred by the act of God who raises from the dead, and not by the soul’s intrinsic tenacity [Innate Immortality] of life.” ¹¹ CFF2 521.1

This thesis, Bacon held, would withstand “attack from any quarter”—“Orthodoxy,” Universal Restoration, or Materialism. And he noted with satisfaction the definite shifting of many away from these older positions, and admission of the fallacy of many of the traditional arguments. He said, “May the truest reason and the clearest Scripture win.” ¹² CFF2 521.2

2. REJECTS ETERNAL TORMENT AND INNATE IMMORTALITY

In a later contribution to another Symposium, That Unknown Country (1890), Bacon openly rejects the dogma of Eternal Torment, declaring it to be “flatly contradicted by the authority of Jesus Christ, who teaches the opposite doctrine.” He likewise rejects “the notion that the human soul, or life, is essentially indestructible, in its own nature immortal.” ¹³ CFF2 521.3

3. INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF SOUL FROM PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY

As to the origin of Immortal-Soulism, Bacon cites its source as “the Platonic doctrine of the essential indestructibility of the soul,” which had been “imported into Christian theology.” In support he cites Conditionalist Edward White’s Life in Christ. Bacon declares that this “argument of the eternal conscious existence of the soul in flames and anguish” is a baseless “philosophical assumption.” ¹⁴ CFF2 521.4

4. IMMORTALITY A GIFT, AND CONDITIONAL

And after discussing the fallacies of hypothetical Universalism, he closes with the declaration: “No created spirit has immortality in and of itself. It lives forever only as it ‘lays hold of the eternal life’ of God. The sons of God alone are heirs of their Father’s immortality.” ¹⁵ CFF2 521.5

This is from a respected professor at Yale. CFF2 522.1