22 Lib. iii. cap. 18.
all is commenced afresh. The clock of creation runs down and has to be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenth avatar of Vishnu. The Pa.r.s.ees look for Sosiosch to come, to consummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon a renewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, who is tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until the time of his advent upon earth. The Jews are praying for the appearance of the Messiah. And many Christians affirm that the second advent of Jesus draws nigh.
One more fact, even in a hasty survey of some of the most peculiar opinions current in bygone times as to a future life, can scarcely fail to attract notice. It is the so constant linking of the soul"s fate with the skyey s.p.a.ces and the stars, in fond explorings and astrologic dreams. Nowhere are the kingly greatness and the immortal aspiring of man more finely shown. The loadstone of his destiny and the prophetic gravitation of his thoughts are upward, into the eternal bosom of heaven"s infinite hospitality.
"Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires, "tis to be forgiven, That, in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o"erleap their mortal state And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."
What an immeasurable contrast between the dying Cherokee, who would leap into heaven with a war whoop on his tongue and a string of scalps in his hand, and the dying Christian, who sublimely murmurs, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" What a sweep of thought, from the poor woman whose pious notion of heaven was that it was a place where she could sit all day in a clean white ap.r.o.n and sing psalms, to the far seeing and sympathetic natural philosopher whose loving faith embraces all ranks of creatures and who conceives of paradise as a spiritual concert of the combined worlds with all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator!
Yet from the explanatory considerations which have been set forth we can understand the derivation of the multifarious swarm of notions afloat in the world, as the fifteen hundred varieties of apple now known have all been derived from the solitary white crab. Differences of fancy and opinion among men are as natural as fancies and opinions are. The mind of a people grows from the earth of its deposited history, but breathes in the air of its living literature.23 By his philosophic learning and poetic sympathy the cosmopolitan scholar wins the last victory of mind over matter, frees himself from local conditions and temporal tinges, and, under the light of universal truth, traces, through the causal influences of soil and clime and history, and the colored threads of great individualities, the formation of peculiar national creeds. Through sense the barbarian mind feeds on the raw pabulum furnished by the immediate phenomena of the world and of its own life. Through culture the civilized mind feeds on the elaborated substance of literature,
23 Schouw, Earth, Plants, and Man, ch. x.x.x.
science, and art. Plants eat inorganic, animals eat organized, material. The ignorant man lives on sensations obtained directly from nature; the educated man lives also on sensations obtained from the symbols of other people"s sensations. The illiterate savage hunts for his mental living in the wild forest of consciousness; the erudite philosopher lives also on the psychical stores of foregone men.
NOTE. To the ten instances, stated on pages 210, 211, of remarkable men who after their death were popularly imagined to be still alive, and destined to appear again, an eleventh may be added. The Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, anxiously expect the return of Montezuma. In San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel every morning ascends to the roof of the highest house at sunrise and looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief. See the Abbe Domenech"s "Seven Years" Residence in the Great Deserts of North America," vol. ii. ch. viii.
PART THIRD.
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS CONCERNING AFUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PETER"S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN entering upon an investigation of the thoughts of the New Testament writers concerning the fate of man after his bodily dissolution, we may commence by glancing at the various allusions contained in the record to opinions on this subject prevalent at the time of the Savior or immediately afterwards, but which formed no part of his religion, or were mixed with mistakes.
There are several incidents recorded in the Gospels which show that a belief in the transmigration of the soul was received among the Jews. As Jesus was pa.s.sing near Siloam with his disciples, he saw a man who had been blind from his birth; and the disciples said to him, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The drift of this question is, Did the parents of this man commit some great crime, for which they were punished by having their child born blind, or did he come into the world under this calamity in expiation of the iniquities of a previous life? Jesus denies the doctrine involved in this interrogation, at least, as far as his reply touches it at all; for he rarely enters into any discussion or refutation of incidental errors. He says, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents as the cause of his blindness; but the regular workings of the laws of G.o.d are made manifest in him: moreover, it is a providential occasion offered me that I should show the divinity of my mission by giving him sight.
When Herod heard of the miracles and the fame of Jesus, he said, This is John the Baptist, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works are wrought by him. This brief statement plainly shows that the belief in the reappearance of a departed spirit, in bodily form, to run another career, was extant in Judea at that period. The Evangelists relate another circ.u.mstance to the same effect. Jesus asked his disciples who the people thought he was. And they replied, Some think that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and some Jeremiah or some other of the old prophets, a forerunner of the Messiah. Then Jesus asked, But who think ye that I am? And Simon Peter said, Thou art the promised Messiah himself. There was a prophetic tradition among the Jews, drawn from the words of Malachi, that before the Messiah was revealed Elias would appear and proclaim his coming.
Therefore, when the disciples of Christ recognised him as the great Anointed, they were troubled about this prophecy, and said to their Master, Why do the Scribes say that Elias must first come? He replies to them, in substance, It is even so: the prophet"s words shall not fail: they are already fulfilled. But you must interpret the prophecy aright. It does not mean that the ancient prophet himself, in physical form, shall come upon earth, but that one with his office, in his spirit and power, shall go before me. If ye are able to understand the true import of the promise, it has been realized. John the Baptist is the Elias which was to come. The New Testament, therefore, has allusions to the doctrine of transmigration, but gives it no warrant.
The Jewish expectations in regard to the Messiah, the nature of his kingdom, and the events which they supposed would attend his coming or transpire during his reign, were the source and foundation of the phraseology of a great many pa.s.sages in the Christian Scriptures and of the sense of not a few. The national ideas and hopes of the Jews at that time were singularly intense and extensive. Their influence over the immediate disciples of Jesus and the authors of the New Testament is often very evident in the interpretations they put upon his teachings, and in their own words. Still, their intellectual and spiritual obtuseness to the true drift of their Master"s thoughts was not so great, their mistakes are neither so numerous nor so gross, as it is frequently supposed they were. This is proved by the fact that when they use the language of the Messianic expectations of the Jews in their writings they often do it, not in the material, but in a spiritual sense. When they first came under the instruction of Jesus, they were fully imbued with the common notions of their nation and age.
By his influence their ideas were slowly and with great difficulty spiritualized and made to approach his own in some degree. But it is unquestionably true that they never not even after his death arrived at a clear appreciation of the full sublimity, the pure spirituality, the ultimate significance, of his mission and his words. Still, they did cast off and rise above the grossly carnal expectations of their countrymen. Partially instructed in the spiritual nature of Christ"s kingdom, and partially bia.s.sed by their Jewish prepossessions, they interpreted a part of his language figuratively, according to his real meaning, and a part of it literally, according to their own notions. The result of this was several doctrines neither taught by Christ nor held by the Jews, but formed by conjoining and elaborating a portion of the conceptions of both. These doctrines are to be found in the New Testament; but it should be distinctly understood that the religion of Christ is not responsible for them, is to be separated from them.
The fundamental and pervading aim of that epistle of Peter the genuineness of which is unquestioned and the same is true in a great degree of his speeches recorded in the Acts of the Apostles is to exhort the Christians to whom it is written to purify themselves by faith, love, and good works; to stand firmly amidst all their tribulations, supported by the expectations and prepared to meet the conditions of a glorious life in heaven at the close of this life. Eschatology, the doctrine of the Last Things, with its practical inferences, all inseparably interwoven with the mission of Christ, forms the basis and scope of the whole doc.u.ment.
Peter believed that when Christ had been put to death his spirit, surviving, descended into the separate state of departed souls.
Having cited from the sixteenth Psalm the declaration, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in the under world," he says it was a prophecy concerning Christ, which was fulfilled in his resurrection. "The soul of this Jesus was not left in the under world, but G.o.d hath raised him up, whereof we all are witnesses." When it is written that his soul was not left in the subterranean abode of disembodied spirits, of course the inference cannot be avoided that it was supposed to have been there for a time.
In the next place, we are warranted by several considerations in a.s.serting that Peter believed that down there, in the gloomy realm of shades, were gathered and detained the souls of all the dead generations. We attribute this view to Peter from the combined force of the following reasons: because such was, notoriously, the belief of his ancestral and contemporary countrymen; because he speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as if it were a wonderful prophecy or unparalleled miracle, a signal and most significant exception to the universal law; because he says expressly of David that "he is not yet ascended into the heavens," and if David was still retained below, undoubtedly all were; because the same doctrine is plainly inculcated by other of the New Testament writers; and, finally, because Peter himself, in another part of this epistle, declares, in unequivocal terms, that the soul of Christ went and preached to the souls confined in the under world, for such is the perspicuous meaning of the famous text, "being put to death in the body, but kept alive in the soul, in which also he went and preached [went as a herald] to the spirits in prison." The meaning we have attributed to this celebrated pa.s.sage is the simple and consistent explanation of the words and the context, and is what must have been conveyed to those familiar with the received opinions of that time. Accordingly, we find that, with the exception of Augustine, it was so understood and interpreted by the whole body of the Fathers.1 It is likewise so held now by an immense majority of the most authoritative modern commentators. Rosenmuller says, in his commentary on this text, "That by the spirits in prison is meant souls of men separated from their bodies and detained as in custody in the under world, which the Greeks call Hades, the Hebrews Sheol, can hardly be doubted," (vix dubitari posse videtur.) Such has ever been and still is the common conclusion of nearly all the best critical theologians, as volumes of citations might easily be made to show.
The reasons which led Augustine to give a different exposition of the text before us are such as should make, in this case, even his great name have little or no weight. He firmly held, as revealed and unquestionable truth,2 the whole doctrine which we maintain is implied in the present pa.s.sage; but he was so perplexed by certain difficult queries3 as to locality and method and circ.u.mstance, addressed to him with reference to this text, that he, waveringly, and at last, gave it an allegorical interpretation. His exegesis is not only arbitrary and opposed to the catholic doctrine of the Church; it is also so far fetched and forced as to be dest.i.tute of
1 See, for example, Clem. Alex. Stromata, lib. vi.; Cyprian, Test.
adv. Judaos, lib. ii. cap. 27, Lactantius, Divin. Inst.i.t. lib.
vii. cap. 20.
2 Epist. XCIX.
3 Ibid.
plausibility. He says the spirits in prison may be the souls of men confined in their bodies here in this life, to preach to whom Christ came from heaven. But the careful reader will observe that Peter speaks as if the spirits were collected and kept in one common custody, refers to the spirits of a generation long ago departed to the dead, and represents the preaching as taking place in the interval between Christ"s death and his resurrection. A glance from the eighteenth to the twenty second verse inclusive shows indisputably that the order of events narrated by the apostle is this: First, Christ was put to death in the flesh, suffering for sins, the just for the unjust; secondly, he was quickened in the spirit; thirdly, he went and preached to the spirits in prison; fourthly, he rose from the dead; fifthly, he ascended into heaven. How is it possible for any one to doubt that the text under consideration teaches his subterranean mission during the period of his bodily burial?
In the exposition of the Apostles" Creed put forth by the Church of England under Edward VI., this text in Peter was referred to as an authoritative proof of the article on Christ"s descent into the under world; and when, some years later, thatreference was stricken out, notoriously it was not because the Episcopal rulers were convinced of a mistake, but because they had become afraid of the a.s.sociated Romish doctrine of purgatory.
If Peter believed as he undoubtedly did that Christ after his crucifixion descended to the place of departed spirits, what did he suppose was the object of that descent? Calvin"s theory was that he went into h.e.l.l in order that he might there suffer vicariously the acc.u.mulated agonies due to the LOST, thus placating the just wrath of the Father and purchasing the release of the elect. A sufficient refutation of that dogma, as to its philosophical basis, is found in its immorality, its forensic technicality. As a mode of explaining the Scriptures, it is refuted by the fact that it is nowhere plainly stated in the New Testament, but is arbitrarily constructed by forced and indirect inferences from various obscure texts, which texts can be perfectly explained without involving it at all. For what purpose, then, was it thought that Jesus went to the imprisoned souls of the under world? The most natural supposition the conception most in harmony with the character and details of the rest of the scheme and with the prevailing thought of the time would be that he went there to rescue the captives from their sepulchral bondage, to conquer death and the devil in their own domain, open the doors, break the chains, proclaim good tidings of coming redemption to the spirits in prison, and, rising thence, to ascend to heaven, preparing the way for them to follow with him at his expected return. This, indeed, is the doctrine of the Judaizing apostles, the unbroken catholic doctrine of the Church. Paul writes to the Colossians, and to the Ephesians, that, when Christ "had spoiled the princ.i.p.alities and powers" of the world of the dead, "he ascended up on high, leading a mult.i.tude of captives."
Peter himself declares, a little farther on in his epistle, "that the glad tidings were preached to the dead, that, though they had been persecuted and condemned in the flesh by the will of men, they might be blessed in the spirit by the will of G.o.d."4 Christ fulfilled the law of
4 See Rosenmuller"s explanation in hoc loco.
death,5 descending to the place of separate spirits, that he might declare deliverance to the quick and the dead by coming triumphantly back and going into heaven, an evident token of the removal of the penalty of sin which hitherto had fatally doomed all men to the under world.6
Let us see if this will not enable us to explain Peter"s language satisfactorily. Death, with the lower residence succeeding it, let it be remembered, was, according to the Jewish and apostolic belief, the fruit of sin, the judgment p.r.o.nounced on sin. But Christ, Peter says, was sinless. "He was a lamb without blemish and without spot." "He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth." Therefore he was not exposed to death and the under world on his own account. Consequently, when it is written that "he bore our sins in his own body on the tree," that "he suffered for sins, the just for the unjust," in order to give the words their clear, full meaning it is not necessary to attribute to them the sense of a vicarious sacrifice offered to quench the anger of G.o.d or to furnish compensation for a broken commandment; but this sense, namely, that although in his sinlessness he was exempt from death, yet he "suffered for us," he voluntarily died, thus undergoing for our sakes that which was to others the penalty of their sin. The object of his dying was not to conciliate the alienated Father or to adjust the unbalanced law: it was to descend into the realm of the dead, heralding G.o.d"s pardon to the captives, and to return and rise into heaven, opening and showing to his disciples the way thither. For, owing to his moral sinlessness, or to his delegated omnipotence, if he were once in the abode of the dead, he must return: nothing could keep him there. Epiphanius describes the devil complaining, after Christ had burst through his nets and dungeons, "Miserable me! what shall I do? I did not know G.o.d was concealed in that body. The son of Mary has deceived me. I imagined he was a mere man."7 In an apocryphal writing of very early date, which shows some of the opinions abroad at that time, one of the chief devils, after Christ had appeared in h.e.l.l, cleaving its grisly prisons from top to bottom and releasing the captives, is represented upbraiding Satan in these terms: "O prince of all evil, author of death, why didst thou crucify and bring down to our regions a person righteous and sinless? Thereby thou hast lost all the sinners of the world."8 Again, in an ancient treatise on the Apostles" Creed, we read as follows: "In the bait of Christ"s flesh was secretly inserted the hook of his divinity. This the devil knew not, but, supposing he must stay when he was
5 See King"s History of the Apostles" Creed, 3d ed., pp. 234-239.
"The purpose of Christ"s descent was to undergo the laws of death, pa.s.s through the whole experience of man, conquer the devil, break the fetters of the captives, and fix a time for their resurrection." To the same effect, old Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, in his commentary on Psalm cx.x.xviii., says, "It is a law of human necessity that, the body being buried, the soul should descend ad interos."
6 Ambrose, De Fide, etc., lib. iv. cap. 1, declares that "no one ascended to heaven until Christ, by the pledge of his resurrection, solved the chains of the under world and translated the souls of the pious." Also Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his fourth catechetical lecture, sect. 11, affirms "that Christ descended into the under world to deliver those who, from Adam downwards, had been imprisoned there."
7 In a.s.sumptionem Christi.
8 Evan. Nicodemi, cap. xviii.
devoured, greedily swallowed the corpse, and the bolts of the nether world were wrenched asunder, and the ensnared dragon himself dragged from the abyss."9 Peter himself explicitly declares, "It was not possible that he should be held by death."
Theodoret says, "Whoever denies the resurrection of Christ rejects his death."10 If he died, he must needs rise again. And his resurrection would demonstrate the forgiveness of sins, the opening of heaven to men, showing that the bond which had bound in despair the captives in the regions of death for so many voiceless ages was at last broken. Accordingly, "G.o.d, having loosed the chains of the under world, raised him up and set him at his own right hand."11
And now the question, narrowed down to the smallest compa.s.s, is this: What is the precise, real signification of the sacrificial and other connected terms employed by Peter, those phrases which now, by the intense a.s.sociations of a long time, convey so strong a Calvinistic sense to most readers? Peter says, "Ye know that ye were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ." If there were not so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinking reception of traditional, confused impressions of Scripture texts, it would be superfluous to observe that by the word blood here, and in all parallel pa.s.sages, is meant simply and literally death: the mere blood, the mere shedding of the blood, of Christ, of course, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. When the infuriated Jews cried, "His blood be on us, and on our children!" they meant, Let the responsibility of his death rest on us. When the English historian says, "Sidney gave his blood for the cause of civil liberty," the meaning is, he died for it. So, no one will deny, whenever the New Testament speaks in any way of redemption by the blood of the crucified Son of Man, the unquestionable meaning is, redemption by his death. What, then, does the phrase "redemption by the death of Christ" mean? Let it be noted here let it be particularly noticed that the New Testament nowhere in explicit terms explains the meaning of this and the kindred phrases: it simply uses the phrases without interpreting them. They are rhetorical figures of speech, necessarily, upon whatever theological system we regard them. No sinner is literally washed from his transgressions and guilt in the blood of the slaughtered Lamb. These expressions, then, are poetic images, meant to convey a truth in the language of a.s.sociation and feeling, the traditionary language of imagination.
The determination of their precise significance is wholly a matter of fallible human construction and inference, and not a matter of inspired statement or divine revelation. This is so, beyond a question, because, we repeat, they are figures of speech, having no direct explanation in the records where they occur. The Calvinistic view of the atonement was a theory devised to explain this scriptural language. It was devised without sufficient consideration of the peculiar notions and spirit, the peculiar grade of culture, and the time, from which that language sprang.
We freely admit the inadequacy of the Unitarian
9 Ruffinus, Expos. in Symb. Apost.
10 Comm. in 2 Tim. ii. 19.
11 By a mistake and a false reading, the common version has "the pains of death," instead of "the chains of the under world." The sense requires the latter. Besides, numerous ma.n.u.scripts read [non ASCII characters]. See, furthermore, Rosenmuller"s thorough criticism in loc. Likewise see Robinson"s New Testament Greek Lexicon, in [NAC].
doctrine of the atonement to explain the figures of speech in which the apostles declare their doctrine. But, since the Calvinistic scheme was devised by human thought to explain the New Testament language, any scheme which explains that language as well has equal Scripture claims to credence; any which better explains it, with sharper, broader meaning and fewer difficulties, has superior claims to be received.
We are now prepared to state what we believe was the meaning originally a.s.sociated with, and meant to be conveyed by, the phrases equivalent to "redemption by the death of Christ." In consequence of sin, the souls of all mankind, after leaving the body, were shut up in the oblivious gloom of the under world.