The Doctrine of Endless Punishment

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 cecumenical councils and formulated statements, were the consequence of the trinitarian errors, but no cecumenical 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 (II., 737), speaking of the second period in his arrangement (812-590), 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, $ 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 amel- 1oration”’ (Gieseler. I. 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, instead 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, XXI., 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 hini 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 Medizval church was virtually a unit in ‘holding the doctrine of 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.