The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IX. Examines Biblical Evidence for Conditionalism

1. INCREASING STRENGTH OF CONDITIONALIST ADHERENTS

Smith alludes in his Preface to “a daily-increasing agitation in the theological world” over the involvements of Conditional-ism, in “England and Germany” as well as in North America, alleging that the viewpoints of many are in a “state of transition.” He states that the “array of adherents” is now “so strong in numbers, so cultivated in intellect, and so correct at heart” that a new recognition is being accorded it. ⁸⁵ In chapter one (“Primary Questions”) Smith says “nature is silent” and science and logic helpless as to proof of immortality. In support he cites Baptist Conditionalist H. H. Dobney, ⁸⁶ of England: “Reason cannot prove man to be immortal.” ⁸⁷ Smith wisely adds: CFF2 690.1

“To the Bible alone we look for correct views on the important subj’ects of the character of God, the nature of life and death, the resurrection, heaven, and hell.” ⁸⁸ CFF2 690.2

2. BIBLE SILENT ON POSSESSION OF “UNDYING NATURE.”

Turning then to the Bible, in chapter two (“Immortal and Immortality”), Smith stresses two facts: (1) “The terms ‘immortal’ and ‘immortality’ are not found in the Old Testament.” On the contrary, it is actually from the devil’s declaration, “Thou shalt not surely die,” that support is found for the popular view of “natural immortality.” And (2) “The term ‘immortal’ is used but once in the New Testament, in the English version, and is then applied to God” (1 Timothy 1:17). ⁸⁹ Smith next launches into a discussion of the Greek terms aphthartos, athanasia, and aphtharsia, as establishing the fact that “the Bible contains no proof that man is in possession of an undying nature.” ⁹⁰ CFF2 690.3

3. “IMAGE OF GOD” DOES NOT INVOLVE IMMORTAL SOUL

In chapter three (“The Image of God”) Smith goes on to show that being made in God’s “image” does not involve man’s immortality any more than it would his omnipotence, omnipresence, or omniscience-a standard argument. The image, destroyed by sin and restored in Christ, is “righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). ⁹¹ The “image of God does not, therefore, confer immortality.” ⁹² And in chapter four (“The Breath of Life”) he takes up the Genesis record, dealing with the “constituent elements” involved in the creation of man. ⁹⁴ Instead of an immortal soul being “immediately breathed [into man] from God himself,” as Innatists contend, it is rather a frail “principle of life,” “easily extinguished.” More than that, if the “breath of life” involves immortality, then all creatures must have the same, according to the Old Testament record, but this line of argument, of course, goes altogether too far. CFF2 690.4

4. “SOUL” NOT IMMORTAL; “SPIRIT” NOT DEATHLESS

Chapter five (“The Living Soul”) deals with the claim of the “superadded soul.” However, that which was formed of the dust was “the man himself” ⁹⁷—lifeless before, and living afterward, set in motion by the “vitalizing principle of the breath of life.” ⁹⁸ Then man “became a living soul.” ¹⁰⁰ A “living soul” is an “animated being.” CFF2 691.1

In chapter six (“What Is Soul? What Is Spirit?”) Smith deals with the Hebrew terms nephesh, ruach, and n’shah-mah, showing that “nephesh is mortal,” ¹⁰¹ and giving their definitions as found in Gesenius, Parkhurst, Taylor, Greenfield, and Robinson. Next he reiterates the “stupendous fact” that the Hebrew and Greek words translated “spirit” and “soul” occur “seventeen hundred times,” but “not once” is the soul said to be “immortal” or the “spirit deathless.” ¹⁰² He then issues the challenge: CFF2 691.2

“Let now the advocates of the soul’s natural immortality produce one text where it is said to have immortality, as God is said to have it (1 Timothy 6:16), or where it is said to be immortal, as God is said to be (1 Timothy 1:17), and the question is settled. But this cannot be done.” ¹⁰³ CFF2 691.3

No one took up the challenge. CFF2 692.1

5. “SPIRIT” NOT A SEPARATE CONSCIOUS ENTITY

In chapter seven (“The Spirit Returns to God”) Smith examined “every text in which the word ‘spirit’ is used in a way which is supposed to indicate its separate, conscious existence.” Taking Ecclesiastes 12:7, Smith probes the contention that in man is a “constituent element” which is “an independent entity,” and which continues on in “uninterrupted consciousness,” with an even higher degree of “intelligence and activity” after the death of the body, and is destined to “live so long as God Himself exists.” ¹⁰⁴ Undeniably the “spirit leaves the body,” and it “returns to God.” But “spirit” and “breath” are identical, according to fob 34:14, 15. And Solomon is explaining the “dissolution of man by tracing back the steps taken in his [man’s] formation.” ¹⁰⁵ This surely shows that man became inanimate when deprived of the “vitalizing principle.” ¹⁰⁷ And Smith adds: “In the same sense in which God gave it the “breath” or “spirit”] to man, in that sense it returns to him.” CFF2 692.2

Smith disposes of the problem by asking, “Was it [the spirit an independent, conscious, and intelligent being before it was put into man, as it is claimed that it is after man gets through with it, and it returns to God?” ¹⁰⁸ He presses the query, Was there a “conscious pre-existence?” ¹⁰⁹ One other feature is noted-that Solomon’s declaration is “spoken promiscuously of all mankind,” “alike to the righteous and the wicked.” Then, “Do the spirits of the wicked go to God also?” According to popular theology their immediate destination is the “lake of fire.” But the Bible declares that the determining “judgment” is “in the future,” not at death. Do the wicked therefore go to heaven for a time, and to “hell afterward”? ¹¹⁰ CFF2 692.3

6. “SPIRIT” IS THE “PRINCIPLE OF LIFE.”

Chapter nine (“Who Knoweth?”) shows that at death Christ commended His spirit to the Father (Luke 23:46). And Stephen the martyr said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). It was the life, not a separate, distinct, “conscious entity,” that was committed to God for “safe keeping.” ¹¹¹ Nowhere in Holy Writ is this described as a “separate entity,” “conscious in death.” Rather, it is “the principle of life residing in the breath, breathed into man from God, and again returning to God.” Thus it is “hid with Christ in God.” And “when Christ, who is our Life, shall appear,” at His second advent, then “Stephen will receive from his Lord that which, while dying, he besought him to receive.” ¹¹² And similarly, all who die in Christ will receive again this “principle of life.” CFF2 693.1

7. EXTENSIVE DRAFT ON CONDITIONALIST AUTHORITIES

Chapters eleven to twenty-four deal with problem texts covered over and over again by other Conditionalists. Smith’s replies were essentially the standard Conditionalist ones, set forth upon a solid Biblical basis and supported by lexicographers and authorities on technical terms and semanticsParkhurst, Greenfield, and so on. In some cases he had recourse to such recognized Conditionalists as Bishop Law, Bishop Kendrick, John Crellius, and Joseph Priestley. Close reasoning and careful expositon mark his handling of such problems as “The Spirits in Prison,” the “Departure and Return of the Soul,” “Can the Soul be Killed?” “The Souls under the Altar,” “Gathered to His People,” “Samuel and the Woman of Endor,” “The Transfiguration,” “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” “With Me in Paradise,” “Absent from the Body,” and “Departing and Being with Christ.” No vital problem was side-stepped. And all were shown to be in demonstrable harmony with the principles of Conditionalism. His were not new arguments, but the tried and trusted. CFF2 693.2

In his citation of prior and contemporary Conditionalists, Smith drafted upon Constable (3 times), Dobney (4), Hudson (2), Law (3), Locke (4), Olshausen (3), Priestley (3), Tillotson (2), Warburton (2), Whately (2), and White (2). However, most citations were single references-with a remarkable total of 186 authorities quoted in his 427 pages of text! He well knew the leading Conditionalist predecessors. CFF2 693.3

8. DEATH: CESSATION OF LIFE OF WHOLE MAN

In chapter twenty-five Smith goes back to “The Death of Adam” to consider to “what condition death was designed to reduce the human family.” ¹¹³ First, he notes how the body of man was formed “wholly of the dust of the ground,” with the body “quickened into life by the breath which the Lord breathed into its nostrils.” Thus there resulted “physical life and mental action.” ¹¹⁴ Man was then placed on “probation to test his loyalty to his Maker.” The Lord commented: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shaft surely die.” Smith observes: CFF2 694.1

“Before Satan could cause his temptation to make any impression on the mind of Eve, he had to contradict this [divine] threatening, assuring her that they should not surely die. A question of veracity was thus raised between God and Satan: ¹¹⁵ CFF2 694.2

He then remarks that a majority in the theological world have “virtually... sided with Satan.” Adam’s was a death from which he could be released only by Christ. Yet Satan had said that man would “not surely die,” but “shall be as gods.” So CFF2 694.3

“the heathen have all along deified their dead men, and worshiped their departed heroes; while modern poets have sung, ‘There is no death; what seems so is ‘transition.” ¹¹⁶ CFF2 694.4

Smith insists that “nothing will meet the demands of the sentence but the cessation of the life of the whole man,” ¹¹⁷ and “in the dissolution of death,” man’s soul “goes back to dust again.” ¹¹⁸ He then asserts: “Christ died the same death for us which was introduced into the world by Adam’s sin.” ¹¹⁹ CFF2 694.5

And in support of his contention, Smith quotes John Locke, Isaac Watts, and Dr. Jeremy Taylor. CFF2 695.1

9. PARAMOUNT PLACE OF THE RESURRECTION

Turning next, in chapter twenty-six, to “The Resurrection,” Smith cites William Tyndale’s defense of Luther, and his pungent inquiry: “‘If the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? and then what cause is there of the resurrection?’ ¹²⁰ CFF2 695.2

This, Smith follows with a quote from Andrew Carmichael’s Theology of Scripture (vol. 2, p. 315), ¹²¹ as follows: “‘It cannot be too often repeated: If there be an immortal soul, there is no resurrection; and if there be any resurrection, there is no immortal soul.’” ¹²² CFF2 695.3

The resurrection, says Smith, is a necessity. “Death is compared to sleep”—“unconscious” sleep (numerous texts are cited). ¹²³ The dead are, for a time, “in a condition as though they had not been.” ¹²⁴ They have “no knowledge,” no “thoughts,” and would remain so without a resurrection (texts are given). ¹²⁶ They have “no remembrance,” and cannot praise God during the death period. They have “not ascended to the heavens” (Acts 2:29, 34, 35). Those who have fallen asleep in Christ “are perished” (1 Corinthians 15:16-18)—if there is no resurrection. Human existence is not “perpetuated by means of an immortal soul.” There is “no future life” without a resurrection from the dead. In support Smith cites Conditionalist Bishop Edmund Law, his views thereon coinciding, in turn, with great Conditionalist scholars. CFF2 695.4

10. RELATION OF JUDGMENT AND RESURRECTION

Turning to the “Bible Testimony.” ¹²⁹ Smith shows the resurrection to be the “great object of their hope” both for Old and New Testament saints (with texts). ¹³⁰ It is the “day of their reward” to which prophets and apostles looked. ¹³² It is the basis of the “promises of Scripture.” Several authorities are cited.” Smith castigates as a “delusion” the idea that the wicked will not be resurrected. They will all come forth “irrespective of character.” They are to be “brought by Christ out from this condition of Adamic death, into which they fell through no fault of their own, once more to the plane of life.” CFF2 695.5

And the purpose is that they may CFF2 696.1

“answer for their own course of conduct, and receive such destiny as shall be determined thereby,—if guilty, through, their own sins to suffer the same penalty for their sin that Adam suffered for his, which is death, and which to them is the second death, and will be eternal.” ¹³⁴ CFF2 696.2

11. JUDGMENT PRECLUDES IMMEDIATE REWARD AT DEATH

Coming next (chapter seventeen) to “The Judgment,” Smith asserts that the judgment and the “theory of the conscious state of the dead, cannot exist together.” “There is,” he asserts, “an antagonism between them, irreconcilable, and irrepressible.” ¹³⁵ He states: CFF2 696.3

“If every man is judged at death, as he indeed must be if an immortal soul survives the dissolution of the body, and enters at once into the happiness or misery of the eternal state, accordingly as its character has been good or bad, there is no occasion and no room for a general judgment in the future; and if, on the other hand, there is to be such a future judgment, it is proof positive that the other doctrine is not true.” ¹³⁶ CFF2 696.4

The general judgment was future in Paul’s day (Hebrews 9:27; Acts 24:25). Peter and Jude assert the same (2 Peter 2:4, 9; Jude 6). CFF2 696.5

“The judgment also stands,... not as taking place as each member of the human family passes from the stage of mortal existence, but as the great event with which the probation of the human race is to end.” ¹³⁷ CFF2 696.6

Then Smith asks:
“If every human being at death passes at once into a state of reward or punishment, what occasion is there for a future general judgment, that a second decision may be rendered in their cases? Is it possible that a mistake was made in the former decision? possible that some are now writhing in the flames of hell, who should be basking in the bliss of heaven? possible that some are taking their fill of happiness in the bowers of paradise, whose corrupt hearts and criminal life demand that they should have their place with friends in the lowest hell? And if mistakes have once been made in the sentence rendered, may they not be made again?” ¹³⁸ CFF2 697.1

Such a contingency would challenge “God’s omniscience.” It would accuse God of “imperfection,” and His government of grave “mistakes.” ¹³⁹ In support Smith subjoins a strong statement from Baptist H. H. Dobney (Future Punishment, pp. 139, 140), of England. ¹⁴⁰ CFF2 697.2

12. SPECIAL WORD “ZOE” DESIGNATES ETERNAL LIFE

In chapter twenty-eight Smith makes a strong positive presentation of “The Life Everlasting,” showing that CFF2 697.3

“life everlasting is the great theme of the gospel; and the careful student will notice that inspiration has chosen a special word [zoe] to designate it.... One particular term seems to be consecrated to be the vehicle of expression whenever this higher and more lasting life is referred to.” ¹⁴¹ CFF2 697.4

Zoe occurs 130 times, and is rarely used to “designate anything else but the everlasting life to be conferred by the Son of God upon his people.” ¹⁴² This is the “hope of the gospel.” It is different from psuche, which designates “physical, animal, transitory life common to all living creatures.” And psuche is “never coupled with the adjectives ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting.’” ¹⁴³ Smith repeats: “The psuche-life is never said to be eternal or everlasting; the zoe-life is always everlasting.” ¹⁴⁴ CFF2 697.5

The zoe-life is “the life of God, through which alone we become partakers of the divine nature.” Zoe is the “true antithesis” of thanatos (death), according to Archbishop Trench, whom Smith cites. ¹⁴⁵ Smith closes the chapter with these words: CFF2 697.6

“Christ becomes the second Adam, sustaining the same relation to the multitudes endowed with eternal life that the first Adam sustains to the inhabitants of this world, possessed of their temporary, physical, and mortal life. He is the great Life-giver, the author of eternal salvation to all them that believe.” ¹⁴⁶ CFF2 698.1

13. ORIGIN OF CONFLICTING SCHOOLS ON DESTINY

Coming to chapter twenty-nine, Smith deals with “The Wages of Sin.” Here he discusses the second life versus the second death, and states: CFF2 698.2

“A resurrection to a second life is decreed for all the race; and now the more momentous question, what the issue of that existence is to be, presents itself for solution.” ¹⁴⁷ CFF2 698.3

The “natural, or temporal, death we die in Adam” is visited upon CFF2 698.4

“all alike, irrespective of character. The sincerest saint falls under its power as inevitably as the most reckless sinner. This cannot be our final end; for it would not be in accordance with justice that our ultimate fate should hinge on a transaction, like the sin of Adam, for which we are not responsible. Every person must be the arbiter of his own destiny.” ¹⁴⁸ CFF2 698.5

Blinded by the universal Innate Immortality postulate, two conflicting schools developed-Augustine’s “terrible conclusion” of Eternal Torment for the immortally wicked, and Origen’s Universal Restoration, based on the Scripture declaration “that a time comes when every intelligence in the universe... is heard ascribing honor, and blessing, and praise to God.” ¹⁴⁹ Starting with a denial of indefeasible immortality, Smith maintains that the “future punishment threatened to the wicked is to be eternal in its duration. The establishment of this proposition of course overthrows” both Origenism and Augustinianism. ¹⁵⁰ It is the “results,” Smith holds, “not the continuance of the process,” that are eternal. ¹⁵² It is the “everlasting fire,” of Matthew 25:41, that is eternal-not the “victims cast therein” which will be “consumed.” “Once having plunged into its fiery vortex, there is no life beyond.” CFF2 698.6

14. PUNISHMENT IS “CUTTING OFF” FROM LIFE

Chapter thirty (“Everlasting Punishment”) asks, “Is death punishment?” If so, when a death is “inflicted from which there is to be no release, that punishment is eternal or everlasting.” ¹⁵³ The original for “punishment” (kolasis) means “a curtailing, a pruning,” from eternal life, of course. It therefore follows that “the loss of it, inflicted as a punishment, is eternal or everlasting punishment.” ¹⁵⁴ Again, “the Bible plainly teaches degrees of punishment”—“not only degrees in pain, but in duration also,” ¹⁵⁶ “accurately adjusted to the magnitude of his [sinner’s] guilt.” On this point Smith cites a supporting statement from Professor Hudson’s Debt and Grace (p. 424), the last sentence of which reads: “‘The agony ends, not in a happy consciousness that all is past, but in eternal night—in the blackness of darkness forever!’” CFF2 699.1

15. FIRE CONSUMES; DOES NOT INFINITELY PROLONG

Chapter thirty-one (“The Undying Worm and Quenchless Fire”) maintains that the “expressive imagery” means that the fire “invariably consumes that upon which it preys.” ¹⁵⁸ The fires feed “not upon the living, but the dead.” It is the “carcasses” always that are consumed. It is ever “in connection with death”—the “very opposite of the idea of eternal life in misery.” ¹⁵⁹ “The language... designed to convey, to their minds,... complete extinction of being, an utter consumption by external elements of destruction.” ¹⁶⁰ CFF2 699.2

Chapter thirty-two (“Tormented Forever and Ever”) shows that aion and aionios may denote a “limited period.” Smith cites Greenfield, Schrevelius, Liddell and Scott, Parkhurst, Robinson, Schleusner, Wahl, Cruden, and Clarke in support. ¹⁶¹ These say that “it takes in the whole extent of the duration of the thing to which it is applied. The forever of Gehazi was till his posterity became extinct.” ¹⁶² It is not arbitrarily endless. “The existence of the wicked is at last to cease in the second death.” ¹⁶³ “The suffering of the wicked... is to come to an end... by the extinction of that life which has in it no immortality, and because they have refused to accept of the (zoe) life freely offered to them.” ¹⁶⁴ CFF2 699.3

16. FINAL DOOM IS OBLIVION OF SINNERS

Finally, in chapter thirty-three (“The End of Them That Obey Not the Gospel”) Smith counters the “horrid picture of perverted imagination” portrayed by the Eternal Tormentists. He invokes a strong quotation from Canon Henry Constable (The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, p. 12), ¹⁶⁵ which presents the summarized evidence of Scripture with supporting texts, that the wicked are to be “destroyed,” to “perish,” to “go to perdition,” to “come to an end,” to become “as though they had not been,” to be “consumed and devoured by fire.” ¹⁶⁶ Smith closes with the statement that they will be CFF2 700.1

“remanded back to the original elements from which they sprung; and strict justice will write upon their unhonored and unlamented graves that the judge of all the earth dealt impartially and mercifully with them, and that they themselves were the arbiters of their own fate, the authors of their own hapless doom.” ¹⁶⁷ CFF2 700.2

On the justice of “God’s Dealing With His Creatures” (chapter thirty-four), Smith cites Bishop Newton, Isaac Taylor, and Professor Olshausen, with whom he is in accord. ¹⁶⁸ And on “The Claims of Philosophy” (chapter thirty-five), he drafts upon Conditionalists W. G. Moncrieff, John Locke, H. H. Dobney, J. Panton Ham, Archbishops Whately and Tillotson. ¹⁶⁹ He closes by commenting on the contention of the “impossibility of annihilation,” that “we simply affirm that they will be annihilated as living beings, the matter of which they’ are composed passing into other forms.” ¹⁷⁰ CFF2 700.3

17. SMITH A PERPETUATOR, NOT A PIONEER

Smith’s noteworthy chapter thirty-six (“Historical View”) is expressly declared to be “mostly condensed from an admirable and comprehensive little work entitled, ‘A History of the Doctrine of the Soul’... published at REVIEW AND HERALD Office,” with which conclusions he declared himself to be in “fullest sympathy.” ¹⁷¹ This was, of course, Canright’s historical tracement. In fact, Smith’s chapter is largely a paraphrase of Canright, with six pages in direct quotes from a historical address by Edward White in 1880, cited by Canright. Smith’s chapter constitutes an admirable summation. CFF2 700.4

So there was obvious oneness of view between the two treatises. It is to be particularly noted that in this single chapter Smith cites 109 antecedent and contemporary Conditionalists by name, and evidences a remarkable grasp of the historical background. We repeat: Smith in no sense regarded himself as a pioneer but rather as a coordinator and perpetuator of the established Conditionalist positions of the centuries. He here proclaims both his acquaintance and his oneness with those views. And he here writes as a spokesman for Seventh-day Adventists. That was their view. CFF2 701.1