The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

V. Catholic Professor-Editor Davis—Innatism “Alien to Christianity”

As previously noted, the current agitation regarding the immortality question has likewise appeared within Roman Catholic circles. We have already taken note of scholarly Cardinal Billot at Rome and the two French clerics, Tresmontant and Trémel, ³³ in France, each giving expression to similar sentiments. We will now listen to an English priest, CHARLES DAVIS, ³⁴ professor of dogmatic theology at St. Edmund’s College in Ware (Hertfordshire), England, and since 1960 editor of Clergy Review, as well. CFF2 1004.5

In Easter week of 1957 Davis presented a paper at the Conference of Ecclesiastical Studies. This subsequently appeared in printed form in the March and April issues of his Clergy Review for 1958, and in 1960 was reprinted in Theology Digest. In this paper, and subsequent article, Davis declared that the immortality of the soul concept is not “Biblical,” but is actually “alien to Christianity.” Like many Protestant scholars, he likewise sets the Innate Immortality and resurrection positions over against each other as irreconcilables that “cannot be harmonized.” Here is his key paragraph: CFF2 1005.1

“It is possible for the clear grasp we now have of the spirituality and natural immortality of the soul to lead us unwittingly to adopt a worldview that is not Christian-that is in fact incompatible with the Biblical and Christian world-view. The idea that death is the liberation of the soul from the body, and that immortality or the after-life is the blossoming into full flower of the natural life of the soul, now no longer impeded by matter, is alien to Christianity. In this sense one can say that immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body represent two outlooks on the meaning of life and two accounts of man’s destiny that cannot be harmonised.” ³⁵ CFF2 1005.2

The similarity of these views, occasional Catholic as well as Protestant, is more than coincidental. CFF2 1005.3