The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Oliphant-Publicly Professes Conditionalism at Installation

CHARLES HENRY OLIPHANT 18552-1926), after his earlier schooling, served for a while as a newspaper reporter, taught high school for a time, and studied law. Believing himself called to the ministry, Oliphant then attended and graduated from Yale Divinity School. In 1876 he was ordained to the Congregational ministry. After serving briefly as pastor of churches in New Jersey and Connecticut he became pastor of the First Congregational church in Methuen, Massachusetts, remaining there continuously for thirty-three years-from 1884 until his retirement in 1917. From then until his death he was pastor emeritus. CFF2 567.1

At the time of his induction in Methuen, Oliphant presented a unique and well-rounded Statement of Theological Opinion before the Council of Installation, at which time he publicly declared, at the very outset of his ministry there, his Conditional Immortality views on the nature and destiny of man. Indeed, these lay at the heart of his doctrinal belief and molded his entire ministry. From this initial platform he never swerved. CFF2 567.2

In 1889 he translated from the French three of Dr. Emmanuel Petavel’s important theological essays-La Fin du Mal. He wrote an introductory twenty-five-page chapter before Freer had translated Petavel’s Problem of Immortality, in 1892. This valuable volume bore the English title The Extinction of Evil. Here Oliphant’s views are further presented in his chapter. It is to be particularly noted that these openly declared convictions did not jeopardize his relationships either with his congregation or with his denomination. CFF2 567.3

In 1887 Oliphant formed the Christian League of Methuen, said to be the first federation of interdenominational churches in America. He was an active member of school and town committees, lecturer on Christian Theism at Abbot Academy, of which he was a trustee, and a contributor to various religious and philosophical publications, as well as compiler and editor of several hymnbooks. He was likewise a member of the American Board of Foreign Missions and president of Yale Divinity School Alumni Association of Eastern Massachusetts, 1903-1904 and 1913-1914. ¹ CFF2 567.4

On “The Christian Revelation,” in his Statement of Theological Opinion at the time of his installation, Oliphant set forth Christ as God incarnate, the center and circumference of his faith; and God in Christ, as mediator, reconciling the world unto Himself. “All other doctrines,” he held, “find their harmony and true proportion in the doctrine of Christ.” The Scriptures are the record of God’s revelation, centering in Christ, the Old Testament constituting the “dawning” and the New Testament the “afterglow” of His light. Thus the Bible both brings God to man and lifts man to God, with “the promise and the power of an endless life.” CFF2 568.1

1. POTENTIALLY, NOT INNATELY, IMMORTAL

At the very outset, answering the question, “What [is] that eternal purpose which is purposed toward us in Christ Jesus?” Oliphant declared:
“I believe that man is a spiritual organism of whom life and death are predicable. I do not believe in the natural and necessary immortality of man but in his potential immortality;—to coin a word—in his immortalibility. ‘This is the record: that God hath given to us everlasting life, and this life is in his Son. Whoso hath the Son hath the life; and whoso hath not the Son hath not the life.’ They who have not the Son have a life, but that life is probationary and perishable. ‘The life which is life indeed’ is a life ‘hid with Christ in God.’ I believe the indispensable condition of eternal life to be conscious communion with, and obedience to God. All our springs are in him. In him we live,—if we live,—and move and have our being.” ² CFF2 568.2

2. DEATH MEANS DISSOLUTION AND DESTRUCTION

Challenging the popular misconception concerning death, he declares, as he continues: CFF2 568.3

“Disobedience to the laws of organic life involves the penalty, first, of disease, and then of dissolution. So I think that ‘sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death.’” ³ CFF2 569.1

After “years of perplexity” regarding the destiny of the wicked, the simple yet profound conclusion here set forth brought to him clarity and understanding of the issue:
“Retribution is the inevitable portion of those who sin, and of this retribution, always painful, the event sooner or later will be everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” ⁴ CFF2 569.2

Although he recognized that no one knows the length of retributive suffering to any individual sinner, yet he believed that the end will come when “the last enemy shall be destroyed.” But Oliphant carefully avoided the term “annihilation” as inaccurate. He then referred with regret to the fact that the “entirely irrefutable teaching of Immortality through Christ only has been sadly retarded and obscured.” ⁵ CFF2 569.3

3. PROBATION CONFINED TO THIS LIFE

Declining to deal with theories, but only with the fact of the atonement, he held that mercy was thus brought to bear and made “operative for human salvation.” Then he observes:
“The eternal purpose purposed toward us in Christ Jesus is that we be clothed upon with the Life of God; a life happy, holy, everlasting; and the record is that whoso hath the Son hath the Life, and whoso hath not the Son hath not the Life.” ⁶ CFF2 569.4

The condition of appropriating God’s “Unspeakable Gift” is belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the office work of the Holy Spirit is to bring this to pass, and all within this life. Thus:
“There can be but one probation. A second is unthinkable; for, by definition, probation, once ended, can never recommence. If it recommence it either was not probation or it did not end.... CFF2 569.5

“In my belief, probation begins at the moment when the Christlife is presented to a soul and continues until that soul is finally determined for or against it.” ⁷ CFF2 569.6

Then he concludes, “There is no warrant in Scripture that probation will be accorded the hearers of the gospel beyond the grave.” CFF2 570.1

4. CHRIST’S RESURRECTION IS SEAL OF IMMORTALITY

Now the “supreme sign and seal” of this assurance to all is the “Resurrection of Jesus”—the “sign of the prophet Jonas.” It is this great fact that explains the “stability and zeal of the apostles.” Otherwise “immortality” would “have remained to this day only a dogma, or a promise, or a hope.” The resurrection of Christ was therefore CFF2 570.2

“the proof of his divinity and the establishment of assurance among the disciples that because he lived they should live also. Death’s dominion once so palpably destroyed, its sceptre was broken for ever.” ⁸ CFF2 570.3

Such was the “Installation” declaration of Charles Oliphant when he was first inducted as Congregationalist pastor of Methuen in 1885. CFF2 570.4

5. REJECTS “INNATE IMMORTALITY” AND “ETERNAL TORMENT.”

Later, in his Introduction to his translation of Petavel’s The Extinction of Evil, Oliphant begins by stating his mature conviction that CFF2 570.5

“human life can acquire endless duration only through conformity to the Law of Eternal Life declared in the Christian revelation. We believe that immortality must be sought at the feet of Him ‘who only hath’ it. The traditional dogma that endless life is the inherent and necessary attribute of every human soul, is repudiated; and with it the two mischievous corollaries to which it lends support,—the doctrines of Eternal Torment and of Universal Salvation.” ⁹ CFF2 570.6

6. DENIES “INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF THE SOUL.”

Oliphant maintains that a created being “can have only that term of duration which its creator affixes to it; if it began, it may also end.” Discussing the Platonic origin of the Innate Immortality postulate, Oliphant states that “we detect the pagan lineage” of the “Platonic argument for immortality,“ and the “philosophic doctrine of the soul’s indestructibility” ¹⁰ in popular Christian positions. CFF2 570.7

7. HONORS “JUSTICE OF GOD” AND “FREEDOM OF MAN.”

Oliphant reached his conclusions through intensive personal study:
“It was through such study, provoked, of course, by a degree of mental unrest, but preceding the perusal of any controversial work, that the writer reached a conclusion upon the main question which has been confirmed by all subsequent investigation, and which satisfies at once the demands of Scripture, of reason, and of the moral consciousness,—a conclusion which honors both the justice of God and the freedom of men; the conclusion that he only can live forever who will live unto God.” ¹¹ CFF2 571.1

8. CONCLUSION INVOLVES REJECTION OF ETERNAL TORMENT

As a result CFF2 571.2

“this conclusion involves the rejection of the terrific dogma of eternal torment, which drives half the church to morbid despair and the other half to a maudlin hope.” ¹² CFF2 571.3

9. SOUL TO SUFFER, THEN TO CEASE

The distinction and contrast between his own view and that of traditional theology is succinctly stated: “Traditional theology says, the soul that sinneth shall suffer; Conditionalism, affirming as much, goes further and declares that it shall also cease.” ¹³ CFF2 571.4

He then declares “the immortality of all souls” to be “an unverified hypothesis, not taught by Scripture, not proved by Plato, not held by all, either in ancient or in modern times.” ¹⁴ As such, he affirms, it is wholly untenable and untrue for Christian acceptance. CFF2 571.5

10. PROTESTS TERM “ANNIHILATION” AS MISLEADING

Oliphant also registers his protest against the employment of the term “annihilation,” for the destruction of the wicked and the consequent “odium attached to a misleading word.” He insists, “Another designation is preferred.” The wicked will “return in the course of nature to nonentity, as conscious personalities.” He defends the term “Conditional Immortality” as being “upon the whole the one most descriptive of the doctrine here set forth.” ¹⁵ And he pleads for “a return to the simplicity which is in Christ, and to the purity of apostolic doctrine” ¹⁶ concerning the nature of man. CFF2 571.6

11. AFTER “DISORGANIZATION” MAN CEASES

Concerning “eternal punishment,” he adds that, “If it is punishment, it is surely eternal.” But he makes this clarifying distinction: “Its suffering is protracted; its loss is eternal.” ¹⁷ “Man is an organism,” he states. If, because of “incorrigible sin” he is “disorganized,” then “in that process of disorganization HE ceases.” Such was his concept. In closing, Oliphant listed a score of outstanding early Christian and modern writers in Britain, the Continent, and America who likewise hold to Conditional Immortality. He knew full well that he did not stand alone. CFF2 572.1