The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VI. Earlham’s Trueblood-Disavows an “Eternal Hell”

Dr. DAVID ELTON TRUEBLOOD, ⁴¹ Quaker professor of philosophy at Earlham, in discussing “Immortality” (chapter twenty, in his Philosophy of Religion, 1957), adds his voice in disavowal of an “eternal hell.” Discussing the nature of “ultimate reality,” the possibility of “extinction,” and the futility of “depersonalized immortality,” ⁴² he turns to the “Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body.” He holds that “the individuality, which the organic unity of the body represents, will be maintained.” ⁴³Then he states, concerning the “resurrection faith“: CFF2 922.4

“The resurrection faith is that we shall have concrete ways of knowing one another and that we are not to be dissolved into a general pool of spirituality. CFF2 923.1

“It need not be supposed that, in centering the attention on personal survival, it is necessary to adopt any particular scheme of life after death, such as that which became standardized in the medieval world picture. The rigid system of hell, of purgatory and of heaven is thoroughly intelligible, but it involves many difficulties, some of which appear to be insuperable, and in any case there is a manifest lack of evidence. CFF2 923.2

“The very idea of enduring torment, in which there is the absence not only of the hope of reformation but even of the intention of reformation, is inconsistent with the conception of God as One whose nature is that of the love which never ends. The Agape which bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things and which, furthermore, never ends is not compatible with vindictiveness, and it is really impossible to absolve from vindictiveness the author of endless torment.” ⁴⁴ CFF2 923.3

So to the “contemporary mind” “the medieval picture of the next world lost its sharpness.” “First we lost belief in purgatory, because it has no apparent New Testament basis; second we lost belief in [endless] hell, for reasons just indicated.” ⁴⁵ CFF2 923.4

1. SCIENTIFICO-PHILOSOPHIC EVIDENCE WORTHLESS

Declaring that science and philosophy give “no positive argument for immortality” and that “the Platonic and Kantian evidences for immortality have little persuasiveness,” ⁴⁶ Trueblood states: “The scientific evidence for immortality is practically worthless, the philosophical argument is inconclusive, but the religious argument is fruitful.” ⁴⁷ For the Christian, “the belief in immortality” is based on “faith in God.” ⁴⁸ CFF2 923.5