The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

I. Queen’s Shaw-Favors Conditionalism; Rejects Eternal Torment

Another ringing Canadian voice was that of Dr. JOHN MACKINTOSH SHAW, ¹ professor of systematic theology at Queen’s Theological College, Ontario, in his outline of Christian belief, in Christian Doctrine. After dealing with the sinlessness of man, as created in the image of God, and then the Fall, and sin as an intrusion, ² Shaw comes to the question of death in its relation to life. On this he makes an important statement on “immortable“:
“It is not that man was created immortal and through sinning lost his immortality. It is rather that man was created capable of becoming immortal-‘tmmortable’ to use an expressive if somewhat less than euphonious adjective that has been suggested in this connexion-which capability or possibility he forfeited through disobedience to God’s purposes.” ³ CFF2 866.2

1. “EMBODIED EXISTENCE,” NOT “DISEMBODIED SPIRIT.”

Dr. Shaw opens chapter twenty-two, dealing with the question of “Continued Personal Existence After Death,” with the arresting statement: “No section of Christian doctrine more requires rethinking and restatement to-day than the doctrine of life after death.” ⁴ CFF2 867.1

Dr. Shaw rejects both the ancient Platonic philosophy and the claims of Modern Spiritualism as to a “personal survival of bodily death”—a “future discarnate life.” ⁵ And in chapter twenty-three (“The Future Life of Those in Christ at Death”) his first proposition is that CFF2 867.2

“this future life for those in Christ at death will be a life of embodied existence, and not one of merely disembodied spirit. This is the position usually spoken of as the Christian doctrine of a bodily resurrection.” ⁶ CFF2 867.3

In this connection Shaw calls “impossible and untenable” the popular concept of an “intermediate state,” with conscious “disembodied” souls “waiting for reunion with the body which has been laid in the grave,” to stand “before the judgment seat of Christ.” The Greeks held to such “a disembodied or purely spiritual immortality.” ⁷ CFF2 868.1

2. “ETERNAL FIRE” SUGGESTS “ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION.”

Coming to chapter twenty-five (“The Future Life of Those Not in Christ at Death”), Shaw deals with the three schools of thought. The first is the “traditional doctrine”—that at death all are separated into “the saved and the unsaved,” the former going immediately to glory, the others to “conscious torment” in everlasting punishment. This is traceable to noncanonical Inter-Testament Jewish writings and to certain New Testament parables, such as that of the judgment of Matthew 25:32-46. Shaw adds that the term “eternal fire” suggests “ultimate destruction or annihilation rather than the everlasting continuance of that which is evil or corrupt.” In any event, to build a doctrine “upon so slender a foundation” as a parable, like Matthew 25, and Dives and Lazarus is “precarious.” CFF2 868.2

Moreover, such “hopeless and unending torment” is “irreconcilable... with the character of God,” and irreconcilable with “the very principles of moral justice itself.” ⁸ a It is this that gave rise to the concept of a future probation, or a future chance. Shaw then observes: CFF2 868.3

“This theory or doctrine finds no place in any of the great (early Creeds of the Church. It has no place in the Apostles’ Creed or in the Nicene Creed, not indeed in any of the Creeds commonly reckoned as ecumenical, not appearing in any Creed until the Athanasian Creed in the sixth or seventh century.” ⁹ CFF2 868.4

Passing the medieval theologians and the Roman Catholic “modification” of the harshness of Hell by injecting Purgatory, Shaw pointedly observes that the Reformers “‘kept Rome’s hell and thrust out Rome’s purgatory.’” ¹⁰ CFF2 868.5

3. NOT IMMORTAL BY “NATURE” OR “CONSTITUTION.”

Taking up next Origen’s “Universal Restoration or Salvation” school—that “the destiny of the individual is not finally determined at death”—Shaw notes the inconsistency of interpretation on the part of its advocates. He then turns to the third school—that of “Conditional Immortality,” sometimes known as “Potential Immortality.” This, Shaw says, involves the “Ultimate Extinction or Annihilation of the finally unrepentant.” ¹¹ This school he introduces with this definitive statement: CFF2 869.1

“Man is not immortal by nature or inherent constitution. Immortality is not a natural endowment but a spiritual attainment or achievement; an achievement or attainment conditional on the possession of certain moral and spiritual qualities. What man has by nature is not immortality but, to use a somewhat cumbrous though expressive word that has been coined in this connexion, ‘immortability,’ the ability or power to become immortal. Only those who use their natural gifts or trust so as to realize moral and spiritual fellowship with God do really attain to immortality or eternal life. All others are destined ultimately to extinction or annihilation.... CFF2 869.2

“But if against all such future chances and ministries of grace, there be any who finally persist in the rejection of the Divine grace and love and become irremediably unrepentant or perverse, the destiny of such according to this theory is to suffer ultimate extinction or annihilation, ‘eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord.’” ¹² CFF2 869.3

4. HISTORICAL LINEAGE OF CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY

Shaw then traces the historical lineage of Conditionalismthrough Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, of the second century, in whose writings there are suggestions of this view, and Arnobius of the fourth century, who was the first to give “clear and emphatic expression to this view.” Then he cites sixteenth-century Faustus Socinus. But greater expansion of this doctrine came in the nineteenth century. Here he names, as typical, White and Dale in England; Bushnell, Beecher, and Abbott in America; Rothe, Ritschl, and Haering in Germany; and Petavel and Sabatier in Switzerland and France. He also notes S. D. McConnell and J. Y. Simpson, and quotes from Prof. A. S. Pringle-Pattison, that “immortality is not to be thought of as an inherent possession of every human being.” Then he adds immediately “that there is considerable ground in Scripture for such a view.” In the New Testament it is “the only kind of immortality with which the New Testament writers are concerned”—“that which is based on men’s relation to God in Christ.” ¹³ Further: CFF2 869.4

“It is an immortality set forth not as a natural inherent possession of humanity but as a prize to be won through fellowship with a risen, living Christ, ‘the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 3:14).” ¹⁴ CFF2 870.1

But for the wicked it is “perishing or destruction by fire” —“annihilation or ultimate extinction.” ¹⁵ CFF2 870.2

5. “ULTIMATE EXTINCTION” FOR INCORRIGIBLES

To Paul’s testimony involving resurrection as the prerequisite to immortality, Shaw adds our Lord’s own teaching on the “resurrection of those in fellowship with God through Him.” And as to Jesus’ pronouncement on the “ultimate fate” of the wicked, it is that of “perishing or destruction by fire.” ¹⁶ That, says Shaw, is CFF2 870.3

“language which, it may be contended, lends itself more naturally to the thought of annihilation or ultimate extinction than to that of unending existence in a condition of hopeless torment.” ¹⁷ CFF2 870.4

The apostle Paul’s “ultimate fate” of the wicked is likewise “destruction”—“language which more naturally suggests complete extinction or annihilation than unending continuance in existence.” ¹⁸ CFF2 870.5

Such, Shaw says, seem to be “in line with the general Scriptural view.” ¹⁹ CFF2 870.6