The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2
III. Milton Answers Nine Stock “Objection” Passages
In chapter three of A Treatise of Christian Doctrine, “Objections Considered and Explained,” Milton answers the common contention that “when divested of the body,” the immortal soul immediately “wings its way, or is conducted by the angels, directly to its appointed place of reward or punishment, where it remains in a separate state of existence to the end of the world.” 21 The proponents of such a view “found their belief principally” in nine scriptures with which he proceeds to deal. These are the gist of his reasoned replies: CFF2 157.1
1. SOUL REDEEMED FROM POWER OF GRAVE
“Psalm 49:15, ‘God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,”’ is cited by some as evidence for Immortal-Soulism. This, on the contrary, “proves rather that the soul enters the grave with the body,” whence it “needs to be redeemed, namely, at the resurrection.” As for those who are not redeemed, “their redemption ceaseth for ever” (verse 8). 22 CFF2 157.2
2. SPIRIT RETURNS TO GOD, BODY TO GRAVE
“Ecclesiastes 12:7, ‘The spirit [Heb., ruach] shall return unto God that gave it.”’ But “the wicked do not return to God at death,” rather they “depart far from him.” “The Preacher had moreover said before, Ecclesiastes 3:20, ‘all go unto one place.”’ For God has “given” and will “gather to himself the spirit of every living thing, whilst the body returns to dust.” “Every constituent part returns at dissolution to its elementary principle”—the spirit or breath to God, and the body to dust. The dead, during death, are “devoid of all vital existence.” 23 CFF2 157.3
3. BODY, TEMPORAL LIFE; SOUL, SPIRITUAL LIFE
“Matthew 10:28, ‘Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.”’ The “body” here “must be taken for the whole human compound,” or the “temporal life,” and the soul for the “spiritual life” with which it “shall be clothed after the end of the world.” 24 CFF2 157.4
4. INTERVENING TIME “ANNIHILATED” FOR THOSE WHO SLEEP
“Philippians 1:23, ‘having a desire to depart ... and to be with Christ,”’ that is, to “attaining” the “ultimate object of his being,” but not being received immediately into Heaven. Rather, it is to be with Christ at His appearing. “One who is going on a voyage desires to set sail and to arrive at the destined port, ... omitting all notice of the intermediate passage.” In like manner the “intervening time” for those who have fallen asleep is “annihilated to the departed, so that to them to die and be with Christ will seem to take place at the same moment.” The “time at which we shall be with him [Christ]” is when “I [Christ] will come again, and receive you unto myself” (John 14:3). 25 CFF2 158.1
5. GRAVE “COMMON GUARDIAN OF ALL” TILL JUDGMENT DAY
“1 Peter 3:19, ‘by which also he [Christ] went and preached to the spirits that are in prison,” literally, “in guard,” or as in the Syriac, “in the grave,” meaning the same—“for the grave is the common guardian of all till the day of judgment.” What the apostle states plainly in 1 Peter 4:5, 6—that the gospel was “preached also to them that are dead”—he now “expresses ... in this place by a metaphor, ‘the spirits that are in guard’; it follows, therefore that the spirits are dead.” 26 CFF2 158.2
6. SOULS UNDER ALTAR NOT SEPARATED FROM BODY
“Revelation 6:9, ‘I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain.”’ In “Scripture idiom” the soul “is generally often put for the whole animate body.” Here it is “used for the souls of those who were not yet born”—for the fifth seal was not yet opened “in the time of John.” Similarly, in the “parable of Dives and Lazarus” (Luke 16), the narrative “speaks of that as present which was not to take place till after the day of judgment, and describes the dead as placed in two distinct states,” but “he by no means intimates any separation of the soul from the body.” 27 CFF2 158.3
7. OBSCURE MUST NOT OVERRIDE MANY CLEAR PASSAGES
“Luke 23:43, ‘Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”’ Some would “alter the punctuation” of the passage, placing the comma after “to-day”—the day when Christ seemed the “most despised and miserable of all men.” Yet He declared and assured the thief, “Thou shalt hereafter be with me in paradise.” One is reminded that “paradise” is not “heaven,” neither did the thief “ask to go to heaven when he died,” nor did Christ “ascend to heaven that day.” Milton then lays down the principle that “so much clear evidence should not be rejected on account of a single passage, of which it is not easy to give a satisfactory interpretation.” 28 CFF2 159.1
8. CHRIST COMMITTED BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT TO GOD
“Luke 23:46, ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ But the spirit is not therefore separated from the body, or incapable of death,” for in Psalm 31:5 David, who was not about to die, uses the same language—“into thine hand I commit my spirit while it was yet abiding in, and with the body.” And Stephen, in Acts 7:59, said the same and “fell asleep.” “It was not the bare spirit divested of the body that he commended to Christ, but the ‘whole spirit and soul and body’ as it is expressed, 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Thus the spirit of Christ was to be raised again with the body on the third day, while that of Stephen was to be reserved unto the appearing of the Lord.” 29 CFF2 159.2
9. NOT SEPARATION OF SOUL FROM BODY
“The ninth passage is 2 Corinthians 5:1-20.... The object of this passage is not to inculcate the separation of the soul from the body, but to contrast” the “terrestrial life of the whole man with the spiritual and heavenly.” The ‘house of this tabernacle’ is opposed not to the soul, but to ‘a building of God, an house not made with hands,’ that is, to the final renewal of the whole man,” being “clothed upon”—not for the “separating of the soul from the body, but for the perfecting of both.” So the expression “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord” is to be “understood of the consummation of our happiness,” and the “body” is to be “taken for this frail life,” and the “absence,” spoken of, for our “eternal departure to an heavenly world.” In verse 9, to be “present” and “absent” “both refer to this life.” And 2 Peter 1:13-15, “as long as I am in this tabernacle,” means “in this life.” 30 CFF2 159.3
Thus Milton resolved to his own satisfaction the stock objections. And that was the open witness of the gifted Milton—trained for the cloth, peerless classicist, master poet, effective writer of prose, and conscientious Conditionalist Christian. CFF2 160.1