The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2
VII. Hartford’s Spinka-Rejects “Damned to Eternal Torments”
Dr. MATTHEW SPINKA, 38 church historian and editor, discusses the final disposition of the “unyielding” sinner-whether annihilated or what. He touches on the logic of the position “that once a human spirit that has shown itself incorrigibly opposed to God, it annihilates itself.” In 1950, discussing Nicholas Berdyaev’s position, Spinka wrote: CFF2 851.6
“Annihilation, under certain conditions, would be a blessing. The God of love, who desires not the death of a sinner, who inflicts no torture, would still remain a God of love even if he allowed evil to take its natural course-that of self-destruction. Berdyaev, to the best of my knowledge, does not specifically affirm such a conclusion. He definitely rejects any thought of metempsychosis on the earthly plane as well as Origen’s notion of the ultimate redemption of all men. CFF2 852.1
“Nevertheless, he passionately asserts as an article of his ‘larger faith’ that ‘the final victory of God over the forces of hell cannot be a division into two kingdoms-divine and diabolic, the saved and the damned to eternal torments-it must be only one kingdom. The juridical division of the world and humankind is a this-worldly, not otherworldly, concept. Christian eschatology was accommodated to the categories of this world, to the time and history of this world; it did not pass over into the other aeon. Such is my faith.’” 39 CFF2 852.2
Spinka does not therefore support the “eternal torments” theory. CFF2 852.3