The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VIII. Atkinson of Cambridge-Man Not Immortal; Punishing Not Eternal

Special note should be taken of the excellent “Genesis” number in the Pocket Commentary of the Bible (1954) series by Dr. BASIL F. C. ATKINSON,” ⁶⁷ Protestant Evangelical scholar of Cambridge University. In Part I (Genesis 1-9), starting with “the beginning of time and of all things,” Atkinson deals briefly but adequately with the creation of the world and the origin of human life. Then comes the recital of the “making of man.” CFF2 881.4

Mention is made of the fact that “material already in existence” was used in the formation of man-the “dust of the ground.” But the use of the paralleling term “create,” implies that “man had no physical relationship with any creature that preceded him.” ⁶⁸ Man was made in “God’s image,” and “after His likeness”; God spoke him into being, and man had a “corresponding gift of language.” He was capable of thought, including “abstract thought.” He was “self-conscious,” as well as God-conscious. He had the power of choice, and knew the difference between what is “morally good” and “morally evil.” Man is “therefore as different from the lower animals which preceded him, as they are from the plants.” ⁶⁹ CFF2 882.1

But the original image was “marred.” And if man was not to be lost he must be renewed through redemption-“renewed in the image of Christ, the God-man, his Creator and Redeemer.” ⁷⁰ Moreover, man was “made in two sexes,” with “power of reproduction.” This unity of the race, in Adam, made it possible for “the one act of redemption performed by Christ to become effective towards the whole human race,” just as the whole race was affected by the “one act of disobedience on Adam’s part.” Furthermore, the “power of reproduction” made possible the “incarnation of Christ, which was essentially preparatory to the act of redemption.” He assumed human nature as “the true child of Mary, through whom He took human nature from Adam.” ⁷¹ The portrayal to this point lays the foundation. Now comes the crucial section. CFF2 882.2

1. MAN NOT “IMMORTAL SOUL” IMPRISONED IN A “BODY.”

Man was “formed,” or “moulded,” of the “dust of the ground.” He did not develop through a long line of “lower animals,” and “behind them from primitive life forms.” Man is essentially a “creature of this earth.” But “the image of God does not lie in the physical.” “When the First-begotten came into the world, He said, ‘A body hast Thou prepared for me’ (Hebrews 10:5). It was not in the womb of the virgin that this body was prepared. It was down the generations from Adam to Mary.” Evidently Adam’s body was “formed with a view to the incarnation.” ⁷² Then God “breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life”—the “principle of natural life.” And now comes this key thought by Atkinson—man was not made immortal. Such an impression was a concept introduced by Greek philosophy in direct conflict with the Inspired Record. Here is Atkinson’s incisive statement and his cogent reasoning: CFF2 883.1

“It has sometimes been thought that the impartation of the life principle, as it is brought before us in this verse, entailed immortality of the spirit or soul. It has been said that to be made in the image of God involves immortality. The Bible never says so. If it involves immortality, why does it not also involve omniscience, or omnipresence, or any other quality or attribute of the Infinite? Why should one alone be singled out? The breath of life was not breathed into man’s heart, but into man’s nostrils. It involved physical life. Throughout the Bible man, apart from Christ, is conceived of as made of dust and ashes, a physical creature, to whom is lent by God a principle of life. The Greek thinkers tended to think of man as an immortal soul imprisoned in a body. This emphasis is the opposite to that of the Bible, but has found a wide place in Christian thought.” ⁷³ CFF2 883.2

Man is not “an immortal soul imprisoned in a body.” CFF2 883.3

2. OLD EDEN AND NEW PARADISE ON NEW EARTH

The “combination of the clay with the life principle made the man a living soul”—denoting “man’s natural life.” ⁷⁴ Later, in the New Testament the “last Adam” is contrasted with the “first man,” Adam—a “living soul”—while the “last Adam” is “a quickening spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:44-46): CFF2 883.4

“Thus man is made unlike the animals a moral and spiritual being, but like the animals a creature of the earth. His creation was a preparation for the incarnation and may in itself have been a step towards the ultimate redemption of the universe.” ⁷⁵ CFF2 884.1

Again:
“The garden of Eden is a type and picture of the garden, or paradise of God, which will be on the new earth created by God for the redeemed in the world to come” (Revelation 2:7). CFF2 884.2

“The old Eden was planted in a corner of the earth. The new paradise will cover the whole earth.” ⁷⁶ CFF2 884.3

“The eternal paradise will be a creation and gift of God.” ⁷⁷ CFF2 884.4

That is the plan and provision of God. CFF2 884.5

3. GOD GAVE THE V LTIMATE CRITERION OF RIGHT AND WRONG

Man was tested by the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” It was a “negative” moral test-man was not to do a certain thing. Yet God “made” the tree. He is the “source of right and wrong and the sole arbiter of creation.” Notice: “A thing is right if God commands it, and wrong if He forbids it, and there is no other ultimate criterion.” ⁷⁸ CFF2 884.6

So “God set up a test of relationship with Himself.” This is the test that faces every responsible human being. It is the “ultimate test of the Gospel.” ⁷⁹ Moreover CFF2 884.7

“God gave him [Adam] a clear warning of the consequences of disobedience, and here we have the first expression of the great scriptural principle that death is inseparable from sin. It is expressed in Ezekiel 18:4, 20: ‘the soul that sinneth, it shall die,’ or again in Romans 6:23: ‘the wages of sin is death.’ It means that God and sin are incompatible, that where God is, there ultimately sin cannot be.” ⁸⁰ CFF2 884.8

4. SINNER SUBJECT TO IRREMEDIABLE SECOND DEATH

Moreover, “in the day” that he ate, man would come under the death decree:
“We shall see in the words thou shalt surely die the equivalent of ‘become subject to death.’ To us has been revealed the truth that physical death is not the end, but that one day ‘all that are in the graves’ shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth (John 5:28, 29), and that the dead will stand before Christ’s throne (Revelation 20:12). After this there remains for the unrepentant sinner the second, final, irremediable eternal death (Revelation 20:14, 15).” ⁸¹ CFF2 884.9

5. NOT “ETERNAL... TORMENT” BUT “EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION.”

As to the nature of that “second death,” Dr. Atkinson says:
“It is well to notice that it was not said to Adam, ‘In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt suffer eternal conscious torment.’ If this is what the Lord God meant, surely here of all places He would say it clearly. On the contrary if we think for a moment of the analogy on which Adam would understand the word ‘death’ (as.explained above), we shall see more clearly the nature and meaning of the second death, which is ‘everlasting destruction’ (2 Thessalonians 1:9).” ⁸² CFF2 885.1

This point is likewise vital. CFF2 885.2

6. TEMPTING “SERPENT” WAS SATAN HIMSELF

Discussing the “temptation and fall” of chapter 3, he says the serpent was no ordinary snake, but is identified in Revelation 12:9; Revelation 20:2 as the “devil” and “Satan”—the “original serpent.” ⁸³ Of him Atkinson writes: CFF2 885.3

“The devil was a creature of God, whose creation fell in the period referred to in Genesis 1:1. He was a moral being of exalted nature, and the first in whom moral evil manifested itself. We read of his creation and life before his fall, his fall itself and his final annihilation in Ezekiel 28:11-19. His name Satan means that he is the adversary and accuser of the people of God, and his Greek name of ‘devil’ emphasizes his part in separating God and man.... CFF2 885.4

“It seems impossible to assemble all that the Bible says about him [Satan] without coming to the conclusion that he is a super-human personal being of high order, created perfect like all God’s creatures, but the author of evil through the conception of an evil thought and the formation of an evil choice in his will. Indeed it is impossible to conceive of the entrance of moral evil into God’s creation apart from the existence of such a personality.” ⁸⁴ CFF2 885.5

7. SCOPE OF THE SERPENT’S TEMPTATION

Suggesting that the serpent may have appeared to Eve as a “shining angel,” and conversed in that form, Atkinson remarks concerning the tempter’s question, and Adam and Eve’s “wrong moral choice” CFF2 885.6

“Yea, hath God said? This was not a genuine question, but a suggestive sneer, ‘So God has said you are not to eat, has He?’ This was the first shot in a campaign of lies. The question threw doubt on God’s goodness. The devil has taken this line ever since.” ⁸⁵ CFF2 886.1

As to Satan’s lie, “Ye shall not surely die,” and the doubt implanted in Eve’s mind, Atkinson adds:
“This lie of the devil’s is widely believed among sinners today, and has been so believed in every generation. Apart from the convicting power of the Holy Ghost acting upon his heart no one can believe that he is perishing.” ⁸⁶ CFF2 886.2

And as to the sweeping involvements of that temptation, Atkinson says of Eve:
“She saw that the tree was good for food. This was the ‘lust of the flesh’ (1 John 2:16). She saw that it was pleasant to the eyes. This is ‘the lust of the eyes’ (Ibid). She saw that it was a tree to be desired to make one wise. This is ‘the pride of life’ (Ibid). So that by one sinful, perhaps hesitant, look Eve brought into being the whole corrupt wicked world and enthroned the devil as the prince of it.... CFF2 886.3

“Eve’s look at the tree of knowledge, fraught with such catastrophic consequences, is in contrast to the look of faith that the sinner may take at the tree of Calvary, a look that by virtue of the Saviour’s propitiatory death and in conformity with God’s promise by the Gospel repeals and reverses the harm done by Eve and procures everlasting life.” ⁸⁷ CFF2 886.4

8. DEATH NOT CONTINUING DISCARNATE LIVING

Concerning “death,” and “returning to the ground,” Atkinson says:
“Till thou return unto the ground. Here is the fourth, the saddest, indeed the supreme witness to the fall of man. No one can avoid hearing its voice. Its incidence is universal. ‘The wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23). The description of death in this verse is in harmony with the whole general outlook of the Bible upon the nature of man and the meaning of death. Here is God’s original explanation to man of the fact of death. CFF2 886.5

“No word is said about any separation of man’s person from his body to go on living discarnate in a state of suffering, or on repentance of [sic] blessedness. If that is what death means it is difficult to understand why it was not mentioned and clearly explained here. Man was taken from the ground. He is dust and returns to dust. The book of Ecclesiastes, describing the same event with obvious reference to the present passage, adds, ‘And the spirit shall return unto God who gave it’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7). At death the life principle, breathed into man at the first (Genesis 2:7), returns to the Giver, and man is left a lifeless corpse to disintegrate and mingle once more with the ground.” ⁸⁸ CFF2 886.6

But that is not the end for man:
“Of course provision is made for the final resurrection of all the dead on the day of judgment, whether buried or not (Revelation 20:13). Lack of burial does not affect resurrection.” ⁸⁹ CFF2 887.1

9. DIVINE PROVISION FOR REDEMPTION

But man was not left without hope:
“Adam and Eve made a wrong moral choice. They sold themselves to do evil, became guilty before God and separate from His fellowship, and justly deserving of eternal death. But having said that, we must further say that, whether or not they could have resisted, in actual fact they did not, and God knew from eternity that they would not. Without, therefore, for one moment abandoning a full belief in the volition and guilt of Adam and Eve, it is possible to see in the fall of Adam a further step in the hidden eternal purpose of the God Who ‘works all things together for good to them that love’ Him (Romans 8:28).” ⁹⁰ CFF2 887.2

And in the “coats of skins” of the sacrificial animals is the symbolism of the “robe of Christ’s righteousness and the garment of salvation.” Thus:
“Coats of skins. Here is the second essential. The provision of skins had necessitated the death of an animal, so that we have a complete illustration in practice of the fundamental biblical principle that ‘without shedding of blood is no remission’ (Hebrews 9:22). The death of this animal was the first picture of the death of Christ, in virtue of which alone the believer is justified, clothed, set in his right mind and given access to God. The coats provided by God to clothe the guilty pair are the picture of the robe of Christ’s righteousness and the garment of salvation, won for the people of God by Christ on the cross, applied through the Gospel, and appropriated by faith.” ⁹¹ CFF2 887.3

10. NO ETERNAL LIFE IN SIN AND TORMENT

As death closes life, so resurrection renews the life of the believer. Man will not live forever in sin. Atkinson says:
“Live for ever. Had man been able to eat of the tree of life, the sentence of death, pronounced in verse 19, would presumably have been nullified. An eternal life in sin would be an offence to God and a misery to any who lived it. Death mercifully closes the corrupt life of fallen man. But though man in flesh and blood is debarred from the tree of life (1 Corinthians 15:50), the believer may eat of it now in his heart by faith (John 6:54), and one day in a glorified body will enjoy its fruit for ever.” ⁹² CFF2 887.4

One further quotation must suffice in the Atkinson testimony. The final fires of judgment—the “eternal fire,” as with Sodom and Gomorrah-completely destroy the sinner at last:
“This [the illustration of Sodom and Gomorrah] is the Scriptural picture of eternal fire, and ought to make quite plain to us that eternal fire consumes once for all with an irrevocable result, and does not continue burning for ever. Not only does our Lord select the destruction of these cities as an illustration of the final judgment (Luke 17:28-80), but the language of this passage is taken up in the Apocalypse to describe the same thing (Revelation 14:10; Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10; Revelation 21:8).” ⁹³ CFF2 888.1

That is Dr. Atkinson’s simple but adequate recital of the origin, nature, and destiny of man, in contradistinction to the popular notion of an indefeasibly immortal soul and endless torment for the incorrigible sinner. CFF2 888.2