The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VIl. Bishop Mann-Brilliant Midwest Champion of Conditionalism

Another forthright contender for the Conditionalist faith was Dr. CAMERON MANN (1851-1932), Protestant Episcopal bishop of North Dakota, and then of southern Florida. He graduated from Hobart College, received his S.T.D. from General Theological Seminary, and an LL.D. from Rollins College. Ordained in 1876 as a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, he was first curate of St. Peter’s, Albany, and then rector of St. James church, Watkins. He next served as rector of Grace church, Kansas City, from 1882 to 1901. Dr. Mann was consecrated bishop of North Dakota in 1901. In 1913 he was transferred to the bishopric of South Florida, which was raised to a full diocese in 1922 chiefly because of his effective labors. ⁴¹ CFF2 529.2

A man of striking personality, Mann was known for his executive ability and scholarly attainments. In the House of Deputies of the General Convention he was for many years, before his elevation to the House of Bishops, chairman of the Committee on Constitution and Canons. Mann was author of several volumes, including Five Discourses on Future Punishment (1888), published while he was still rector of Grace church, and thirteen years before his elevation to the bishopric. This is significant, as well as the fact that Mann continued for thirty years in the episcopate. His position on the nature and destiny of man did not hamper his promotion or leadership. He refused to be silent. (Photo on page 520.) CFF2 529.3

1. CONTINUOUS LINE OF DISSENTERS AGAINST ETERNAL TORMENT

After referring to “monstrous notions” that have “overlaid the Gospel doctrine of retribution,” with the “finespun arguments of Plato,” and the “pitiful gropings” of others, as well as gross distortions “by omission and additions” that twist the truth, ⁴² Dr. Mann lists the current “four theories” as to the fate of the wicked-Universal Restorationism, Endless Probation, Ceaseless Torture, and Annihilation, or Destruction, of the wicked. He is careful to state that neither the Anglican nor the American Episcopal Church has ever “officially pronounced upon them,” leaving the individual free to adopt whichever view he elects, without being charged with heresy. ⁴³ He then calls attention to the unchallenged fact that “from the very dawn of Christian history down to the present day, we find men, prominent in the Church’s hierarchy and foremost in her assemblies, who did not believe in everlasting torment.” ⁴⁴ CFF2 529.4

And he names a number, including “men who died for the faith, like Justin [Martyr].” ⁴⁵ CFF2 530.1

2. ANGLICAN ARTICLES CONTRASTED WITH OTHER CATECHISMS

Dr. Mann next alludes to the fact that “not one” of the “four great Ecumenical Councils” (of A.D. 325, 381, 431, and 451) “put out any dogma about the mode or duration of future punishment.” ⁴⁶ He told how Origen’s theory of Universal Restoration was condemned. Nevertheless, the Home Synod refused to adopt even Emperor Justinian’s recommendation of censure “for thinking that the woe of the damned might come to an end.” ⁴⁷ And the Articles of the Church of England, in their final form of Thirty-Nine, leave the matter open. ⁴⁹ This, he remarks, is in contrast with the “voluble” statements of the Augsburg Confession, the Wesleyan Catechism, and the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Assembly, each of which maintains that “the torments of hell will last for ever and ever. The Anglican Church does not so declare. CFF2 530.2

3. RESTORATION UNSUPPORTED BY SCRIPTURE

First taking up the “Final Restoration,” or Universalist theory, Dr. Mann says pointedly that “before we embrace Universalism we must demand its proofs.” Then he adds, nature gives no support, and Scripture does not bear it out. ⁵⁰ Next he goes on record explicitly: “I cannot find a single text in the Bible which, considered with due regard to its context, seems to me to plainly teach Universalism.” ⁵¹ CFF2 530.3

On the other hand, he adds, the Scriptures do teach that some will be destroyed, referring to such terms as “destruction” and the “second death,” and in the parables to such expressions as “gathered and burned,” “cast into outer darkness,” ⁵² and the like. And he similarly concludes: “That all men will be saved I do not find distinctly stated anywhere in the Bible.” ⁵³ CFF2 531.1

As to the “Eternal Probation” idea, Dr. Mann says that it is simply a modification of the other. “It comes to pretty much the same thing as Universalism,” and is therefore open to the same objection. ⁵⁴ Thus he disposes of the first two theories. CFF2 531.2

4. IF SOUL NOT IMMORTAL, ETERNAL TORMENT THEORY COLLAPSES

Turning next to the widely held “doctrine of everlasting torment,” ⁵⁵ Mann states that this inevitably involves the idea CFF2 531.3

“that this life will last forever, so that always in God’s universe there will be a tract of lurid gloom from whose miserable inhabitants He shall receive only the enforced homage of mutinous slaves.” ⁵⁶ CFF2 531.4

Referring to the lurid portrayals of the “exquisite agonies,” and the common reference to such symbols as “volcanic fire,” “engulfing slime,” and “piercing cold”—of which doctrine the “Romanists and Puritans have been its warmest defenders” ⁵⁷ —Mann says their argument is in essence this:
“Inasmuch as the soul of man is naturally immortal, and inasmuch as there is no prospect of redemption after the last judgment, the souls of the damned must continue in misery forever.” ⁵⁸ CFF2 531.5

And he adds, “There is no flaw in this reasoning if the premises are true.” But these he denies. CFF2 532.1

Dr. Mann then asks, and answers, the question as to whether every human being-irrespective of character CFF2 532.2

“must continue to exist in one and the same distinct personality forever and ever and ever, as long as Almighty God Himself. And to that question I reply in the negative.” ⁵⁹ CFF2 532.3

Then he adds, with devastating logic: “But if man be not naturally immortal, the arguments for endless misery based on the assumption of such an immortality at once disappear.” ⁶⁰ CFF2 532.4

As to whether Eternal Torment has Bible support, Bishop Mann responds with “a point-blank denial.” He repeats, for emphasis, that any supposed proof is built “only upon the supposition of the inherent immortality of man,” which “has no Scriptural authority.” On the contrary, the Bible declares that the sinner’s doom is “complete and irrevocable.” ⁶¹ CFF2 532.5

5. COGENT REASONS AGAINST ETERNAL TORMENT

Dealing with the original Greek term aionios, for everlasting, Mann maintains that “it is not a word of precise and limited significance” and that the New Testament never uses certain available Greek words that indicate unending eternity. Then he adds, with impressive logic:
“If you do take the word as applied to future punishment to mean that this punishment is endless, it does not follow that it is endless torment. It might be annihilation, for that would be an endless doom.” ⁶² CFF2 532.6

Again, he says, fire inflicts pain, “but only for a time.” In the end fire “dissolves what is cast into it.” ⁶³ “A little heap of ashes is all that remains.” Then in addition there is the grave “injustice of such a doom” of Endless Torment. “Men have but a brief life here, and for misuse of it are hurled into undying woe. This is shocking to our moral sense.” ⁶⁴ He adds emphatically: “It is wild to maintain that millions of ages of suffering cannot begin to be ample chastisement for the sinner, ample vindication of the divine law.” ⁶⁵ CFF2 532.7

The endless torture concept “contradicts the very [Bible] idea of God, who is Almighty Love. It is simply a form of Dualism, or Manichaeanism-in which there are “two gods, one good, the other evil,” with the evil ever “coeval with God.” ⁶⁶ This he labels as “utterly absurd and unchristian.” CFF2 533.1

6. DEFENDS POSITION OF ULTIMATE, ABSOLUTE “DESTRUCTION.”

Coming lastly, in Sermon V, to “The Theory of Final Destruction,” Mann maintains that it is suggested by the course of nature and revealed in Holy Scripture, and that in addition it conforms to “our moral sense.” ⁶⁷ This he is prepared to “explain and defend” as the “most reasonable and best supported.” ⁶⁸ And he then states that “the theory of the final destruction of the wicked” is otherwise known as, and is involved in the position called, “conditional immortality.” ⁶⁹ Conditionalism is simply CFF2 533.2

“that men are not created with inherent immortality, with a soul, or body, or both, such as cannot be destroyed, but that immortality is a superadded gift which man’s nature is capable of receiving and which God bestows in such cases as He wills, and that He does not so will in the case of impenitent sinners; hence, it of course follows, that at some time all such offenders will cease to exist.” ⁷⁰ CFF2 533.3

This is because the sinner CFF2 533.4

“failing to become partaker of the Divine nature and to escape the corruption of the flesh, the sinful mortal endures only for the allotted term, and then passes back into the impersonal elements from which his nature was first shaped.” ⁷¹ CFF2 533.5

And the meaning of “eternal death” is that CFF2 533.6

“his entire nature is broken up, dissolved, all individual characteristics vanishing, all personality lost. The component parts may still continue in the universe, but the man is no more.” ⁷² CFF2 533.7

7. PAGAN RELIGIONS DID NOT TEACH IMMORTALITY OF PERSONALITY

Mann recognizes that such a theory “is not the popular one,” because it is commonly believed that all men are “naturally immortal.” ⁷³ He then refers to the Buddhist idea of the soul lapsing “back into Nirvana, losing all distinct personality and consciousness.” ⁷⁴ And the same concept is essentially true of philosophical paganism, whether “Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indian.” All such are tinctured with “pantheism.” Mann then comments:
“And pantheism, making all forms of mind and matter mere transient bubbles upon the one great ocean of the divine, which glitter for a time, then break and are reabsorbed by the universal waters, utterly negatives all that we mean by the immortality of man.” ⁷⁵ CFF2 533.8

Theirs is not genuine “immortality,” the endless existence of a personality. Because of this fact Mann asserts: “It is idle to appeal to any general [ancient] belief in human immortality. There is no such belief covering the nations and lasting through the ages.” ⁷⁶ CFF2 534.1

8.ETERNAL EXISTENCE ONLY BY GODS PERMISSION

As to depreciating remarks about “annihilation,” and to the charge that it is “inconceivable,” he answers, effectively, that “annihilation is no more inconceivable than creation.” Then he reiterates that to argue for the “essential immortality of the soul” is “a defiance of established principles,” and is “mere guesswork.” ⁷⁷ In support, he quotes from Archer Butler:
“‘The notion is itself absurd of any created thing existing for a single instant by any title but the will of its Creator; all existence must be purely permissive but that of God; nothing can be essentially eternal for the future but that which has been eternal from the past.’” ⁷⁸ CFF2 534.2

9. IMMORTALITY OF SOUL NOT TAUGHT IN BIBLE

Declaring again that “neither in the Old Testament nor in the New, is there a single statement that men are naturally and inherently immortal,” Mann takes his stand by the side of British Conditionalist Edward White, and reaffirms that Christ is the sole basis for human immortality. ⁷⁹ The wicked perish, and are destroyed forever. This mortal must “put on immortality.” And CFF2 534.3

“nowhere does the New Testament say that Christ came to deliver man from an unending torment.” ⁸⁰ CFF2 535.1

“What would anyone naturally infer from... (John 3:16] except that without Christ’s aid the doom of all men would be absolute destruction, and that such as rejected His aid must undergo that doom.” ⁸¹ CFF2 535.2

Dr. Mann closes his series by referring to the line of Conditionalists stretching across the centuries-apostolic and Ante-Nicene Fathers, and then in medieval and modern times. Mann concludes with:
“God says, ‘If you will so live as to be fit for life you shall live with Me forever; if not, you shall pass to the unconscious dust from whence you came.’” ⁸² CFF2 535.3

Such were the high lights of Dr. Mann’s remarkable lectures in 188’7. Conditionalism was not lacking for effective champions. CFF2 535.4