The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Prominent Names Added to Conditionalist Roster

I. Time Due for Restudy and Settlement of Issues

As we have seen again and again, the seventies and eighties constituted a period of marked restlessness and concern in theological circles, both in the Old World and in the New. Even among those not personally participating in the discus-sion over the nature and destiny of man there was widespread conviction that a re-examination of the whole question was now called for. And unquestionably there was a far-flung re-volt against the traditional dogma of the Eternal Torment of the wicked, as multiplied scores of books on the issue testify. CFF2 540.1

And as we have noted, this thought was frequently voiced by leaders in the growing Conditionalist Movement, which awakening now embraced many of the finest scholars of the day. It was just at this time that internationally known Dr. Philip Schaff was moved to express his deep-seated conviction that it was time to take up the unfinished business of the Reformation and bring it to completion. And in this category Schaff definitely included the “middle state,” or state of man in death-upon which Luther’s lone voice had touched, as the Reformation broke-and of course, involving the true escha-tology of Scripture. Note Schaffs phrasing in its setting. CFF2 540.2

1. REFORMERS LEFT “MIDDLE STATE” FOR PRESENT CONSIDERATION

In 1883 Schaff, ¹ distinguished president of Union. Theological Seminary, theologian, historian, author, and editor, went on record with this Statement as to the Reformers’ having left the “Middle State” problem “for our days to recon-sider“:
“While they [the Reformers] rooted out the mediaeval doctrine of Purgatory, they failed to substitute a better theory of the middle state, and left it for our days to reconsider this whole question and to reach positive results. The Protestant creeds almost wholly ignore the middle state, and pass from death immediately to the final state after the general judgment, and the old Protestant theologians nearly identify the pre-resurrection state of the righteous and wicked with their post-resurrection state, except that the former is a disembodied state of perfect bliss or perfect misery. By this confusion the resurrection and the general judgment are reduced to an empty formality.” ² CFF2 540.3

This was precisely the case. This aspect of the larger question of the nature and destiny of man, his state during death, was largely untouched by the Protestant Reformer group as a whole. They rejected Purgatory. But aside from Luther and Tyndale and a few others, they left the basic problem, inherited from Catholicism, largely unresolved. And this was specifically what was now being challenged with increasing vigor on both sides of the Atlantic, m this second half of the nineteenth Century. This search, and often struggle, for a true solution unfolds before our eyes in the chapters of this section. CFF2 541.1

Similar views were echoed by other prominent non-participating theologians. One was Dr. Charles A. Briggs, ³ one of the managing editors of The Presbyterian Review at the time Schaff’s conviction was voiced in its pages. Briggs likewise recognized the crucial hour to which the Christian faith had come, and expressed the need of a restudy of eschatology, which is inseparably associated with the nature and particularly the destiny of man. His statement appeared in his book Whither? A Theological Question for the Times (1889). Hear it:
“All the faults of Traditionalism converge at this point [of eschatology]. Here we find extra-confessional errors, infra-confessional errors, and contra-confessional errors; and the entire Church is in a condition of great perplexity.” ⁴ CFF2 541.2

This problem, he believed, needed to be studied through. And we are witnessing in these chapters the momentous struggle of earnest men to reach sound conclusions on these basic issues. We now continue the testimony of scholarly American witnesses. Note especially the tie-in with Section V, by A. J. Gordon. CFF2 542.1