The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IV. Catholic Tresmontant-Not Part but “Whole Man” Saved

Rather exceptional is the voice of the French Roman Catholic scholar CLAUDE TRESMONTANT, ²⁷ O.P. (b. 1925). The idea has obviously gained ground even among certain Roman Catholic scholars that the traditional concept of natural immortality is not grounded in Holy Scripture. ²⁸ Rehearsing the “familiar” Innate Immortality postulate, found in the “mystery” religions —with its “soul set free from the body” corollary—Tresmontant presents the contrasting Biblical “resurrection” teaching of Scripture, the salvation of “the whole of man,” and the error of aspects of the traditional view. His statements are meaningful. Tresmontant is “renowned on the Continent for studies which probe the indebtedness of contemporary science and philosophy to Biblical rather than to Greek thought.” ²⁹ CFF2 918.3

1. PAUL’S FRONTAL ATTACK ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Tresmontant’s unique life of Saint Paul (1957) comes, in sequence, to the episode of Mars’ Hill (“The Word of God and the Philosophers”). Of this he says, “Paul’s meeting with the philosophers at Athens has a significance beyond that of the simple historical fact.” ³⁰ This he explains as— CFF2 919.1

“the confrontation of Jerusalem and Athens, of the wisdom of God expressed by the nabhis of Israel and the wisdom of men, of the theology of the living God which was made known to his beloved people and the theologies of paganism, idolatries, mystery religions, gnosticisms, of the metaphysic of the Bible and the metaphysic of the Gentiles.” ³¹ CFF2 919.2

Tresmontant then explains:
“Greek mythology was well peopled with divinities, but all the same this profusion of gods and goddesses does not seem to have satisfied the Greek soul: need was sometimes felt to dedicate altars to ‘unknown gods.’ ³² CFF2 919.3

But it left an unsatisfied “gap.” Paul then proceeded to declare the fact of the “Creation“: CFF2 919.4

By declaring, in the very heart of Athens, that God created the cosmos, St. Paul made a frontal attack on the fundamental principle of all the philosophy of antiquity. According to that philosophy, the cosmos is God, uncreated, existing from eternity; it has no need of a creator, it is all-sufficient, necessary, it is consistency itself.” ³³ CFF2 919.5

2. THE OFFENSE OF “CREATION” TO THE HELLENIC MIND

He then refers to the Greek concept that “the stars are gods, ‘distinct substances,’ eternal, outside any ‘becoming’”— “untreated stars” that can never “perish.” To them life is “cyclic, recurring,” with “endless returning” of the “cosmogonies and mythologies of pagan antiquity.” Tresmontant then comes to the heart of the conflict: CFF2 919.6

“When it affirms that the world was created, the Bible is contradicting all ‘star-worship’: the stars are not divinities but things that have been created; they are not eternal, but came into being at a given moment; and at a given moment God is able to bring them to an end; the world had a beginning, and it will have an end. All these propositions were scandalously offensive to the Hellenic mind.” ³⁴ CFF2 920.1

3. MYSTERY RELIGION “IMMORTALITY” V. JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN “RESURRECTION.”

Turning next to the resurrectionraising up from the dead-Tresmontant says, contrasting Innate Immortality with the resurrection: CFF2 920.2

“The Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was still more incomprehensible (if that were possible) to a Greek philosopher than the idea of creation. The inystery religions had done something in those days to make the idea of an immortality of the soul familiar: the soul set free from the body to which it had had the misfortune to be bound.” ³⁵ CFF2 920.3

Tresmontant contrasts the salvation of the “whole of man,” rather than merely the soul: CFF2 920.4

“But the Judaeo-Christian teaching on the resurrection is quite a different matter. It does not mean that a part of man-his soul-will be freed by discarding the other part-his material body; biblical teaching implies that the whole of man will be saved.” ³⁶ CFF2 920.5

4. ORPHIC CONCEPT OF SOULS V. BIBLICAL RESURRECTION

There is total conflict between the Orphic theory and the Bible fact: CFF2 920.6

“It [the Bible] is particularly opposed to the Orphic theory of a fall of souls into evil bodies, to that of the existence of souls anterior to their bodily life, and to metensomatosis, transmigration or re-embodiment of souls. Immortality of the soul is nothing but the soul’s return to its previous state, its primitive condition before it had fallen into evil matter. The Bible does not regard matter as evil, and the resurrection of men is parallel to the prophetical idea of a renewal of the whole universe: See where ‘I create new heavens and a new earth’ (Isaiah 65:17).” ³⁷ CFF2 920.7

5. IRREVERSIBILITY OF GOD AND ETERNAL RETURNING OF PAGANISM

That is why Greek anthropology “could not understand or accept the doctrine of the resurrection of man.” Such was the “incompatibility” between “pagan thought and that of the Bible.” Tresmontant mentions one other point-“the irreversibility of God’s creative deed which tends towards an end, as against the ‘eternal returning’ of paganism.” ³⁸ So the antagonisms were recognized. CFF2 920.8