THE DOCTRINE OF
ENDLESS PUNISHMENT
by William G. T. Shedd
THE DOCTRINE
OF
ENDLESS PUNISHMENT
BY
G. T. SHEDD, D.D.
Roosevelt Professor Of Systematic Theology
In Union Theological Seminary, New York
PREFACE
AT the request of the editor of the North American Review, the author of
this book prepared an argument in defense of the doctrine of Endless
Punishment, which was published in the number of that periodical for
February, 1885. It was agreed that the writer should have the right to
republish at a future time. Only the rational argument was presented in the
article. The author now reproduces it, adding the Biblical argument, and a
brief historical sketch.
Every doctrine has its day to be attacked, and defended. Just now, that of
Eternal Retribution is strenuously combated, not only outside of the
church, but to some extent within it. Whoever preaches it is said, by some,
not “to preach to the times “ — as if the sin of this time were privileged,
and stood in a different relation to the law and judgment of God, from that
of other times.
The argument from Scripture here given turns principally upon the
meaning of Sheol and Hades, and of the adjective aijw>niov. In determining
the signification of the former, the author has relied mainly upon the logic
and aim of the inspired writers. The reasoning of a writer is a clue to his
technical terms. When his object unquestionably is to alarm and deter, it is
rational to infer that his phraseology has a meaning in his own mind that is
adapted to this. When, therefore, the wicked are threatened with a Sheol
and a Hades, it must be an erroneous interpretation that empties them of
all the force of a threat. And such is the interpretation which denies that
either term denotes the place of retributive suffering.
It is freely acknowledged, that if the meaning of Sheol, or Hades, is to be
derived from the usage of a majority of the fathers, and the schoolmen
generally, it has no special and exclusive reference to the wicked, and is not
of the nature of an evil for them alone. If Sheol, or Hades, is nothing but an
underworld for all souls, then it is morally nondescriptive, and whatever of
danger there may be in an underworld pertains alike to the righteous and
the wicked. But if the Scriptures themselves, and their interpretation by a
portion of the fathers, and the reformers generally, are consulted, it is
claimed that the position taken in this book, that Sheol, or Hades, is the equivalent of the modern Hell, will hold. It is with eschatology as it is with
ecclesiastical polity. If the authority of the Post Nicene fathers and the
schoolmen is conceded to be the chief determinant of the questions at
issue, the prelatist will carry the day. But if the Bible and the
interpretation of the Apostolic and Reformation churches are appealed to,
he will lose it. The simplicity of the faith was departed from, when under
hellenizing influences in the church the Heathen Orcus was substituted for
the Biblical Hades. A superstitious and materializing eschatology came in
along with the corruption of the Christian system, and held sway for a
thousand years, until the return to the Scriptures themselves by the leaders
of the Reformation, restored the older and purer type of doctrine.
Although the author, in the prosecution of the argument., does not turn
aside to enlarge upon the awfulness of the doctrine of Endless Punishment,
it must not be supposed that he is unimpressed by it. It is a doctrine
which throws in its solemn shadows upon even the most careless human
life. No man is utterly indifferent to the possible issues of the great
Hereafter. The fall and eternal ruin of an immortal spirit is the most
dreadful event conceivable. That some of God’s rational and self-
determined creatures will forever be in deadly enmity to him, cannot be
thought of without sorrow and awe. But from the nature of finite free will,
it is a possibility; and it is revealed to us as a fact, as clearly as the facts of
incarnation and redemption. Neither the Christian ministry, nor the
Christian church, are responsible for the doctrine of Eternal Perdition. It is
given in charge to the ministry, and to the church, by the Lord Christ
himself, in his last commission, as a truth to be preached to every creature.
If they are false to this trust, his message to the church of Ephesus is for
them:
“Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first
works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy
candlestick out of this place, except thou repent”
Revelation 2:5).
The question, How many are to be saved? the Son of God refused to
answer — thereby implying that his mercy is unobligated and sovereign. “I
will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (<450915>Romans 9:15). It becomes
man the sinner, not to murmur at this. That incarnate God who has vicariously suffered more for man’s sin, than any man has or will
personally, surely has the right to determine the method and extent of his
own self-immolating compassion. To the transgressor who says, “Lord, if
thou wilt, thou canst make me clean,” he answers, “I will, be thou clean”
Mark 1:40). But to the transgressor who looks upon redemption as
something to which he is entitled, he replies, as in the parable,
“Is it not lawful for me, to do what I will with mine own?”
Matthew 20:15).
The kindest way, therefore, for both the preacher and the hearer is, to
follow the revealed word of God, and teach the plain and exact truth.
Eternal perdition is like any other danger. In order to escape danger, one
must believe in it. Disbelief of it is sure destruction. To be forewarned, is
to be forearmed. They who foresee an evil, prepare for it and avoid it; but
“the simple pass on and are punished.” Speaking generally, those who
believe that there is a hell, and intelligently fear it, as they are commanded
to do by Christ himself, will escape it, and those who deny that there is a
hell, and ridicule it, will fall into it. Hence the minister of Christ must be as
plain as Christ, as solemn as Christ, and as tender as Christ, in the
announcement of this fearful truth.
“When he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it,
saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the
things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from
thine eyes” (<421941>Luke 19:41, 4:2).
The dogmatic bearings of Universalism are not to be overlooked. The
rejection of the doctrine of Endless Punishment cuts the ground from under
the gospel. Salvation supposes a prior damnation. He who denies that he
deserves eternal death cannot be saved from it so long as he persists in his
denial. If his denial is the truth, he needs no salvation. If his denial is an
error, the error prevents penitence for sin, and this prevents pardon. No
error, consequently, is more fatal than that of Universalism. It blots out
the attribute of retributive justice; transmutes sin into misfortune, instead
of guilt; turns all suffering into chastisement; converts the peculiar work of
Christ into moral influence; and makes it a debt due to man, instead of an
unmerited boon from God. No tenet is more radical and revolutionizing, in its influence upon the Christian system. The attempt to retain the
evangelical theology in connection with it is futile.
The destructive nature of the error is still more apparent in practical
theology. Could it be proved that the Christian church have been deceived
in finding, the doctrine of Endless Punishment in the Christian Scriptures,
and that there is no such thing, havoc would be made of all the liturgies of
the Church, as well as of its literature. Consider the following petition
from the “Morning Prayer for Families,” in the book of Common Prayer
used in the Episcopal church: “Keep in our minds a lively remembrance of
that great day in which we must give a strict account of our thoughts,
words, and actions, and according to the works done in the body be
eternally rewarded or punished by him whom thou hast appointed the
Judge of quick and dead, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Suppose, after
uttering this petition, the person to say to himself — “There is no eternal
punishment.” Consider, again, that searching and anguished cry from the
Litany: “From thy wrath, and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord,
deliver us,” and imagine a bystander to say to the soul that has just
agonized this prayer: “Thou fool, there is no everlasting damnation.” And
the effect of this denial is equally destructive in devotional literature. Take
the doctrine of eternal perdition, and the antithetic doctrine of eternal
salvation, out of the Confessions of Augustine; out of the Sermons of
Chrysostom; out of the Imitation of a Kempis; out of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress; out of Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying; out of Baxter’s
Saints’ Everlasting Rest; and what is left?
Union Theological Seminary,
New York, November 18, 1885.
CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE
The common opinion in the Ancient church was, that the future
punishment of the impenitent wicked is endless. This was the catholic
faith; as much so as belief in the trinity. But as there were some church
fathers who deviated from the creed of the church respecting the doctrine
of the trinity, so there were some who dissented from it in respect to that
of eternal retribution. The deviation in eschatology, however, was far less
extensive than in trinitarianism. The Semi-Arian and Arian heresies
involved and troubled the Ancient church much more seriously, than did
the Universalism of that period. Long controversies, ending in (ecumenical
councils and formulated statements, were the consequence of the trinitarian
errors, but no ecumenical council, and no authoritative counter-statement
was required to prevent the spread of the tenet of Restoration. Having so
little even seeming support in scripture and reason, it gradually died out of
the Ancient church by its own intrinsic mortality. Neander (2:737),
speaking of the second period in his arrangement (312-590), when there
was more Restorationism than in the first, says: “The doctrine of eternal
punishment continued, as in the preceding period, to be dominant in the
creed of the church. Yet, in the Oriental church, in which, with the
exception of those subjects immediately connected with the doctrinal
controversies, there was greater freedom and latitude of development,
many respectable church teachers still stood forth, without injuring their
reputation for orthodoxy, as advocates of the opposite doctrine, until the
time when the Origenistic disputes caused the agreement with Origen in
respect to this point also [viz., Restorationism] to be considered as
something decidedly heretical. “Hagenbach (History of Doctrine, Section
78) says of the period down to A.D. 250: “Notions more or less gross
prevailed concerning the punishment of the wicked, which most of the
fathers regarded as eternal.”
The principal deviation from the catholic doctrine of endless retribution
was in the Alexandrine school, founded by Clement and Origen The position taken by them was, that “the punishments of the condemned are
not eternal, but only remedial; the devil himself being capable of
amelioration” (Gieseler. 1-214). Thus early was the question raised,
whether the suffering to which Christ sentences the wicked is for the
purpose of correcting and educating the transgressor, or of vindicating and
satisfying the law he has broken-a question which is the key to the whole
controversy. For, if the individual criminal is of greater consequence than
the universal law, then the suffering must refer principally to him and his
interests. But if the law is of more importance than any individual, then
the suffering must refer principally to it.
Origen’s Restorationism grew naturally out of his view of human liberty.
He held that the liberty of indifference and the power of contrary choice,
in. stead of simple self. determination, are the substance of freedom. These
belong inalienably and forever to the nature of the finite will. They cannot
be destroyed, even by apostasy and sin. Consequently, there is forever a
possibility of a self. conversion of the will in either direction. Free will
may fall into sin at any time; and free will may turn to God at any time.
This led to Origen’s theory of an endless alternation of falls and recoveries,
of hells and heavens; so that practically he taught nothing but a hell. For,
as Augustine (City of God, 21-17) remarks, in his refutation of Origen,
“heaven with the prospect of losing it is misery.” “Origen’s theory,” says
Neander (1-656), “concerning the necessary mutability of will in created
beings, led him to infer that evil, ever germinating afresh, would still
continue to render necessary new processes of purification, and new
worlds destined for the restoration of fallen beings, until all should again be
brought back from manifoldness to unity, so that there was to be a
constant interchange between fall and redemption, between unity and
manifoldness.”
Traces, more or less distinct, of a belief in the future restoration of the
wicked are found in Didymus of Alexandria, the two Gregories, and also in
Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia — the leaders of the
Antiochian school. All of these were more or less under the influence of
Origen Origen’s opinions, however, both in trinitarianism and eschatology,
were strongly combated in his own time by the great body of
contemporary fathers, and subsequently by the church under the lead of
Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustine.
The Medieval church was virtually a unit in holding the doctrine Endless
Punishment. The Reformation churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic,
adopted the historical and catholic opinion.
Since the Reformation, Universalism, Restorationism, and Annihilation,
have been asserted by some sects and many individuals. But these tenets
have never been adopted by those ecclesiastical denominations which hold,
in their integrity, the cardinal doctrines of the trinity and incarnation, the
apostasy and redemption, although they have exerted some influence
within these denominations. None of the evangelical churches have
introduced the doctrine of Universalism, in any form of it, into their
symbolical books. The denial of endless punishment is usually associated
with the denial of those tenets which are logically and closely connected
with it-such as original sin, vicarious atonement, and regeneration. Of
these, vicarious atonement is the most incompatible of any with universal
salvation; because the latter doctrine, as has been observed, implies that
suffering for sin is remedial only, while the former implies that it is
retributive. Suffering that is merely educational does not require a vicarious
atonement in order to release from it. But suffering that is judicial and
punitive can be released from the transgressor, only by being inflicted
upon a substitute. He, therefore, who denies personal penalty must,
logically, deny vicarious penalty. If the sinner himself is not obliged by
justice to suffer in order to satisfy the law he has violated, then, certainly,
no one needs suffer for him for this purpose.
Within the present century, Universalism has obtained a stronger hold
upon German theology than upon any other, and has considerably vitiated
it. It grew up in connection with the rationalism and pantheism which have
been more powerful in Germany than elsewhere. Rationalism has many of
the characteristics of deism, and is vehemently polemic toward evangelical
truth. That it should combat the doctrines of sin and atonement is natural.
Pantheism, on the other hand, has to some extent been mingled with
evangelical elements. A class of anti-rationalistic theologians, in Germany,
whose opinions are influenced more or less by Spinoza and Schelling,
accept the doctrines of the trinity, incarnation, apostasy, and redemption,
and assert the ultimate recovery from sin of all mankind. Schleiermacher,
the founder of this school, whose system is a remarkable blending of the
gospel and pantheism, has done much toward the spread of
Restorationism. The following are the objections which this theologian
(Glaubenslehre, Section 168, Arthang) makes to eternal damnation:
“1. Christ’s words in <402546>Matthew 25:46; <410944>Mark 9:44; <430529>John 5:29, are
figurative.
2. The passage <461525>1 Corinthians 15:25-26, teaches that all evil shall be
overcome.
3. Misery cannot increase, but must decrease.
If it is bodily misery, custom habituates to endurance, and there is less and
less suffering instead of more and more. If, on the other hand, it is mental
suffering, this is remorse. The damned suffer more remorse in hell than
they do upon earth. This proves that they are better men in hell than upon
earth. They cannot, therefore, grow more wretched in hell, but grow less so
as they grow more remorseful.
4. The sympathy which the saved have with their former companions,
who are in hell, will prevent the happiness of the saved.
The world of mankind, and also the whole universe, is so connected that
the endless misery of a part will destroy the happiness of the remainder.”
These objections appeal mainly to reason. But the two assumptions, that
hell is abolished by becoming used to it, and that remorse is of the nature
of virtue, do not commend themselves to the intuitive convictions.
Besides the disciples of Schleiermacher, there are trinitarian theologians
standing upon the position of theism, who adopt some form of
Universalism. Nitzsch (Dogmatics, Section 219) teaches Restorationism.
He cites in support of it only two passages out of the entire scriptures-
namely, <600319>1 Peter 3:19, which speaks of the “preaching to the spirits in
prison;” and <581139>Hebrews 11:39-40: “These received not the promises.”
These two passages Nitzsch explains, as teaching that “there are traces of
a capacity in another state of existence for comprehending salvation, and
for a change and purification of mind;” and upon them solely he founds the
sweeping assertion, that “it is the apostolical view, that for those who
were unable in this world to know Christ in his truth and grace, there is a
knowledge of the Redeemer in the other state of existence which is never
inoperative, but is either judicial or quickening.”
Rothe (Dogmatics, Th. 2, Abth., 2 Sections 46-49, 124-131) contends for
the annihilation of the impenitent wicked, in the sense of the extinction of
self-consciousness. Yet he asserts that the aim. of penalty is requital, and
the satisfaction of justice-an aim that would be defeated by the extinction
of remorse. Julius Muller (Sin, 2:191-418-425) affirms that the sin against
the Holy Ghost is never forgiven, because it implies such a hardness in sin
as is incapable of penitence. But he holds that the offer of forgiveness
through Christ will be made to every human being, here or hereafter.
“Those who have never in this life had an opportunity of knowing the
way of salvation will certainly be placed in a position to accept and enter
upon this way of return, if they will, after their life on earth is ended. We
may venture to hope that in the interval between death and the judgment
many serious misconceptions, which have hindered men from
appropriating truth in this life, will be removed. “The use of the term
“misconception” would seem to imply that some who had the offer of
salvation in this life, but had rejected it, will have the opportunity in the
next life to correct their error in this. Dorner (Christian Doctrine, 4:416428),
after giving the arguments for and against endless punishment,
concludes with the remark, that “we must be content with saying that the
ultimate fate of individuals, namely, whether all will attain the blessed goal
or not, remains veiled in mystery.” His further remark, that “there may be
those eternally damned, so far as the abuse of freedom continues eternally,
but, in this case, man has passed into another class of beings,” looks in the
direction of annihilation-suggesting that sin will finally destroy the
humanity of man, and leave him a mere brute. Respecting the future offer
of mercy, Dorner asserts that “the final judgment can take place for none
before the gospel has been so addressed to him that free appropriation of
the same was possible” (Christian Doctrine, 3, 77)
Universalism has a slender exegetical basis. The Biblical data are found to
be unmanageable, and resort is had to human feeling and sympathy. Its
advocates quote sparingly from scripture. In particular, the words of
Christ relating to eschatology are left with little citation or interpretation.
Actual attempts by the Restorationist, to explain what the words, “Depart
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels,” really mean, are rare. The most common device is to dismiss them,
as Schleiermacher does, with the remark that they are figurative. Some words of St. Paul, on the other hand, whose views upon sin, election, and
predestination, however, are not especially attractive to this class, are
made to do yeoman’s service. Texts like <450518>Romans 5:18,
“As judgment came upon all men unto condemnation, so the free
gift came upon all men unto justification;” and 1 Corinthians 15:22,
“As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive;” are explained wholly apart from their context, and by vocalizing the word
“all.” When St. Paul asserts that “the free gift came upon all men unto
justification,” this is severed from the preceding verse, in which the “all”
are described as “those which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of
righteousness.” And when the same apostle affirms that “in Christ shall all
be made alive,” no notice is taken of the fact mentioned in the succeeding
verse, that not all men are “in Christ “ — the clause, “they that are
Christ’s, at his coming,” implying that there are some who are not
“Christ’s at his coming.”
The paucity of the texts of scripture that can with any plausibility be
made to teach Universalism sometimes leads to an ingenuity that is
unfavorable to candid exegesis. The endeavor to escape the force of plain
revelation introduces unnatural explanations. A curious example of caprice
in interpretation is found in Ruetschi’s Kritik vom Sandenfall (p. 281). To
prove his assertion, that sin by its very nature finally ceases to be, he quotes
Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” This means, according
to him, that sin ultimately consumes and abolishes itself (muss sieh
sehliesslich selbst verzehren und aufheben), and this is its “wages” or
punishment. This Essay actually obtained the prize offered by the Hague
Association for the defense of the Christian Religion. This specimen of
Biblical interpretation is matched by that of a recent advocate of
“Conditional Immortality,” who contends that Satan taught the natural
immortality of the human soul when he said to Eve: “Ye shall not surely
die;” and that God taught its natural mortality in the words: “Thou shalt
surely die.”
