The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IX. Secréatan—Rejects Both Eternal Torment and Universalism

CHARLES SECRÈTAN (1815-1895), eminent professor of philosophy at the University of Lausanne, and member of the Institute of France, wrote a prefatory statement for Dr. Emmanuel Petavel’s new Le Problème de l’Immortalité (“The Problem of Immortality”). In this he placed on record a series of statements that reveal his major agreement with Petavel’s militantly Conditionalist position. Secrétan likewise logically agrees that “life must mean life and that death must mean death.” (Pictured on page 597.) And he warns against Innate Immortality’s kinship to pantheism. Thus: CFF2 598.3

“The idea of an immortality essential to spirit substance, making it impossible to assign to the existence of the creature either beginning or end, is a very near approach to pantheism, or else to polytheism.” ⁴⁵ CFF2 598.4

1. NO INFINITE PUNISHMENT FOR A FINITE FAULT

Secrétan then gave his reason for rejecting eternal punishing: CFF2 598.5

“We need to believe in the end of evil, in the death of death, in the absolute triumph of God. The sentiment of justice implanted in our hearts by God himself does not allow us to accept an infinite punishment as the penalty of a finite fault.” ⁴⁶ CFF2 598.6

2. NO IMPASSABLE BARRIER FOR DIVINE POWER

Turning to the question of eternal torment, Secrétan declares:
“Under the influence of tradition, I endeavoured in my youth to explain the possibility of eternal torments by the possible persistence of rebellion; but that infinite persistence in the bad use of a free-will always maintained is only an unrealizable abstraction. Besides, this conception, itself a considerable deviation from orthodoxy, had the serious disadvantage, from the properly religious point of view, of imposing upon the divine power an impassable barrier, since it might happen that after all the world would never be that which the divine goodness wishes it to be. No; contingent evil may be explained by the positive value of liberty, but the religious consciousness cannot be reconciled to the presence of evil, unless it is affirmed that it has had a beginning and that it will come to an end.” ⁴⁷ CFF2 599.1

3. FATAL WEAKNESS OF UNIVERSAL RESTORATION

Professor Secrétan disposes of the claims of Universalism in this logical way:
“At one time I inclined towards this [Universalist] hope, certainly not imagining that God could ever allow a rebel to enter paradise, nor that for the sake of reaching an end he would convert the rebel against his will, but thinking that at last, by means of chastisement and patience, he would be able to lead all souls to conversion, thus subordinating the hour of the glorious consummation of the obstinacy of a single soul. It was not long before I perceived the moral weakness and the logical fault of this point of view, which at the same time asserts and denies the moral liberty of the creature.” ⁴⁸ CFF2 599.2

4. PREDESTINED CANDIDATE FOR CONDITIONALISM

The foregoing considerations led him to this declaration:
“I was, in fact, a predestined candidate for your [Petavel’s Conditionalist] doctrine, since I had always seen in evil not merely an insufficiency, a defect of being, like the logicians to whom we owe infernal metaphysics, but a direction of the will-that is to say, of the very being-towards annihilation. I reproach myself for having failed to carry out my principle to its logical consequence.” ⁴⁹ CFF2 599.3

“It seems to me that you effectually extinguish the eternal fires, which are no longer believed in, since, as you say, they are no longer preached, and to dissimulate while believing in them would be to incur a most fearful responsibility.” ⁵⁰ CFF2 599.4

5. ANNIHILATION IS LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF FALL

Elsewhere, Secrétan reiterates the position that annihilation is the logical consequence of the Fall. And he adds: “The possibility of a fall is inherent in the best possible creation.” Furthermore, “the fall is a determination of the creature’s will in a direction contrary to God’s will.” In such a collision of wills, he maintains that the inevitable result is the annihilation of the creature. But we can use the will to side with God. ⁵¹ CFF2 600.1

Dr. Petavel elsewhere includes Charles Babut, César Malan, D. H. Meyer, and Ad. Schaeffer as among defenders of Conditionalism. ⁵² CFF2 600.2