HKLL 



631 



So that St Augustine's fainotiH argument ( l)e Civ. 

 \xi. 23), liesides its un worthiness, in strictly a 

 linn xi'iftiitur that l>ecause aionioa zoe is assumed 

 t<> iin-iin 'endless life,' therefore aiunios kolaris 

 niii-t mean 'endless punishment.' As Haupt says, 

 'eternal life' is not to St .lolm a mere term for un- 

 broken continuance in being, as though it were 

 wimply >i|iiivalent to the indissoluble life (zni- akata- 

 I nt us) of II rli. v. 6 ; it does not define the form of 

 i In- life HO much as the nature and meaning of it ; 

 nftnios i, in other words, a description of 

 <Uvine life, of the life which is in God, and which 

 by God is communicated. At the same time the 

 plain exegesis of the greater numlier of relevant 

 passages in the New Testament points rather to 

 everlasting than to merely <vitninn rewards and 

 pimishmtMits, and indeed it is difficult to resist 

 the conviction that such phrases as the olethros 

 tiiunios ('destruction') of 1 Thess. v. 3, and 2 

 Thess. i. 9, and the telos of Philippians, iii. 19, refer 

 to endless, hopeless, irremediable doom. 



The same uncertainty is reproduced in the 

 Authorised Version in tlie words used to express 

 the fact of judgment passed upon the souls of men. 

 The words krino, krisiy, and krima occur in the 

 New Testament some 190 times ; the words kata- 

 krino, katakrisls, kataJcrinm, 24 times. In all but 

 fifteen places these words are properly enough 

 rendered by 'judge' and 'condemn,' and their 

 derivatives ; in the rest 'damn' and 'damnation' 

 have been employed, sometimes as incongruously 

 as in 1 Cor. xi. 29 ; 1 Tim. v. 12 ; and Rom. xiv. 23. 



Enough has been said to show the difficulties in 

 the exegesis of the passages on which the dogmas 

 of the church about the future punishment of the 

 impenitent are based, and it only remains to state 

 here the chief views of esclmtology now prevalent, 

 and to sketch briefly the development of these in 

 the history of dogma. It does not l>elon^ to us to 

 discuss the altstract theory of future retribution a 

 postulate of all religions whether rudimentary or 

 advanced nor to attempt to justify anew the ways 

 of G<xl to man by distinguishing ex cathedra what 

 is of faith and what is mere human speculation. 



I. The orthodox theory, both in the Eastern 

 and Western churches, is that at death there is 

 p:i-->ed upon every impenitent sinner an irreversible 

 sentence to torture of both his moral and physical 

 nature, endless in duration, and inconceivably 

 dreadful in intensity, yet proportioned in degree 

 to the depths of the iniquity of the individual, 

 whose sufferings include within them both the 

 ' pain of loss ' and the ' pain of sense.' The former 

 implies the remorseful consciousness of the loss of 

 all good ; the latter embraces all forms of physical 

 torment, as by material lire, utter abandonment 

 and alienation from God, and the perpetual 

 society of lost men and devils. The pains of 

 hell for ever without any mitigation or hope 

 of escape are the fate of all whose faith during 

 their life on earth has not come up to the minimum 

 required by the rigorous justice of God. Such has 

 been the orthodox belief of almost the entire 

 Christian church until now, and its fathers and 

 theologians, from St Augustine and St Thomas 

 Aquinas down to Jeremy Tavlor, Thomas Boston, 

 and Jonathan Edwards, have lavished all the wealth 

 of impassioned rhetoric upon tin- description of its 

 horrors. Medieval painters like ( >rcagna devoted 

 all the riches of a grotesque imagination to the 

 portrayal of its material torments infinite in variety 

 as well as awful in intensity, and the famous fresco 

 in the Campo Santo at Pisa shows what a really 

 great artist could make of such a theme. Indeed, 

 the words which Dante saw in his vision above 

 the gloomy portals of hell, 'All hope abandon 

 ye who enter here,' merely describe with literal 

 truth the traditional belief of the Christian church. 



St Augustine even found himself, in accordance 

 with his views of predestination, compelled to 

 postulate the eternal damnation of unliaptixed 

 infants. Although he in disposed to look muni 

 this condemnation as mitissiiiia and tolerabiliur, 

 he opposed the doctrine condemned ly the synod 

 of Carthage (419 A.I). ) of an intermediate Mat-- in 

 which nnliaptised infants were said to be (Lintlum 

 infant n in). Dante sees these hapless victims of 

 fate in the first circle of the Injerno, and indeed 

 this belief was held by the entire medieval church; 

 while the eternal damnation of non-elect infant- 

 still stands implied in the famous Confession of 

 Faith of the Westminster Divines. St Thomas 

 Aquinas supposes that the bliss of the saved Mill 

 l>e heightened by their witnessing the punishment 

 of the wicked ; and Jonathan Edwards thus ex- 

 presses the same monstrous notion, ' the view of 

 the misery of the damned will double the ardour 

 of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven.' 

 To the Catholic the horrors of hell are enormously 

 mitigated by the notion of an intermediate state 

 of punitive probation, in which the souls of such 

 as have not died in mortal sin are purged from the 

 guilt of earthly sin, and made fit for translation to 

 heaven to the companionship of God and his elect 

 saints. See PUKGATORY. 



II. The second belief in importance is that associ- 

 ated with the great name of Origen, and variously 

 termed Universalism, Restoration, or the Larger 

 Hope viz. that all men ultimately will be saved. 

 Origen believed that the punishment of hell itself 

 was but purgatorial in its character, that, its purify- 

 ing effect once attained, the punishment would cease 

 for all, most probably even for the devils them- 

 selves, and that the duration in each case would le 

 proportioned to the guilt of the individual. This 

 doctrine of the final restoration of all to the en- 

 joyment of happiness is the theory of the Ajioca- 

 tastasis to winch so many of the early Christian 

 writers allude. It was taught definitely by Gregory 

 of Nyssa, who foretells in glowing words a time when 

 ' there shall no longer be a sinner in the universe, 

 and the war between good and evil shall be ended, 

 and the nature of evil shall pass into nothingness, 

 and the divine and unmingled goodness shall 

 embrace all intelligent existence.' Theodore of 

 Mopsuestia teaches that in the world to come 

 'those who have done evil all their life long will 

 be made worthy of the sweetness of the divine 

 bounty. For never would Christ have said "until 

 thou liast paid the uttermost farthing" unless it 

 were possible for us to be cleansed when we have 

 paid the penalty. Nor would he have spoken of 

 the many stripes and few unless after men had 

 borne the punishment of their sins they might 

 afterwards hope for pardon.' Gregory of Nazian/us 

 seems to have held the same opinion ; and St Jerome, 

 who does not accept it, at least treats it with 

 respect, and adds ' human frailty cannot know the 

 judgment of God, nor venture to form an opinion 

 of the greatness and the measure of his punish- 

 ment.' The Reformers followed Augustine except 

 in so far as they rejected Purgatory, first taught 

 distinctly in his treatise De Doctnna Christiana. 

 Of theologians inclined to the wider hope it is 

 enough to name Bengel, Henry More, Rot he, 

 Neander, Tholuck, and Martensen ; and among 

 ourselves Maurice. Milman, Kingsley, Alford, 

 Erskine of Linlathen. Thirlwall, Plumptre, and 

 Farrar. The last has argued for the cause with 

 equal learning and eloquence. 



In close connection with the theory of univer- 

 sal ism, as suggesting inferences all tending to the 

 possibility of purification and educational disci- 

 pline being mingled with the penalty for sin l>eyond 

 the grave, is the much-debate! question of the 

 descent of Christ into hell to preach to the spirits 



