The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Bristol’s Findlay-Conditionalism Both “Reasonable and Consistent”

We now turn to England. Professor JAMES ALEXANDER FINDLAY, ²⁸ noted educator, was for thirty years professor of New Testament at Didsbury College, at the University of Bristol. In The British Weekly, of May 4, 1933, in a column called “The Correspondence of Prof. J. Alexander Findlay,” he discusses the propounded question “Is Immortality an Inalienable Possession of Man?” and makes several valuable statements. CFF2 788.2

1. “CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY” AND “DESTRUCTIVE FIRE.”

Commenting on a “very remarkable book” by Dr. J. Y. Simpson, professor at New College, Edinburgh, titled Man and the Attainment of.Immortality, and answering several inquiries on the “fundamental” question of Conditional Immortality, Findlay declares man to be “capable of becoming sons of God” but not being such “by nature.” True life, he holds, depends upon entering into “fellowship with God.” It is brought about by the individual “response to the gift of grace.” If man fails to enter into that relationship lie will ultimately “become extinct.” Findlay stressed the destructive reality of the fire that will consume the wicked. The issue before man is, in a word, “immortality or extinction,” and man must make the “ultimate choice.” It is in this setting that Findlay says: CFF2 788.3

“The more closely I study my Bible, the more convinced I am that this is the substance of its teaching, and that the doctrine of conditional immortality thus understood is both entirely reasonable and consistent with the mercy as well as the justice of God. It gives a meaning to some of the sterner words of Jesus, which we are only too ready to explain away as merely figurative. Against all such sentimental dilutions of our Lord’s most solemn warnings I protest with all the force at my command: we must take them seriously. The ‘quenchless fire’ of which He so often speaks is not a tormenting, but a destructive, fire, and is a terrible reality.” ²⁹ CFF2 789.1

“Some men may so persistently refuse the call of God in Jesus on this side and the other that they may be incapable of response, and then the kindest thing is to let them become extinct.” ³⁰ CFF2 789.2

Thus, Findlay adds, they will have “actually perished.” ³¹ CFF2 789.3