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Justice is never
satisfied until full restitution has been paid to all the victims of
injustice. It is bad enough that our civil courts seldom recompense
the victims. But the civil courts ultimately reflect the will of the
people. If the Church had not abandoned God's true judicial system
long ago, the civil courts would not have done so either. The laws
and government of a nation simply reflect the religious view of its
citizens, except in cases where one nation is occupying
another.
In the case of the judicial system itself, how can
we expect our judges to establish justice in the courts, prescribing
judgments that are neither too lenient nor too harsh, when the
Church itself prescribes an infinite and horrible punishment upon
all sinners alike, regardless of the nature of their crime?
The courts are merely reflecting the values of the
people.
Which is worse,
to sentence a man to five years in prison for theft, or to sentence
him to a torture chamber for all eternity? Civil judges today know
that the punishment should vary, depending on the severity of the
crime. Yet much of the Church is still influenced by the Roman logic
that the purpose of punishment is to deter crime, rather than to
restore justice. With this mindset, it is logical that if
punishments are severe enough, law and order will be maintained, and
the people will be obedient.
If they had been
students of the divine law, they would have understood that the
purpose of judgment is to restore the lawful order by restoring the
lost property to the victim, while restoring the sinner to grace and
forgiveness.
In Revelation
20:11-15 we are given a description of the great White Throne
Judgment. John says,
11 And I saw a great white throne and
Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away,
and no place was found for them.
12 And I saw the dead,
the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were
opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were
written in the books, according to their deeds.
Take note that these men are all judged on the
basis of their deeds. We are saved by grace apart from our
works, but when it comes to the judgment, those not justified by the
blood of Jesus Christ are judged according to their works. God does
not just lump everyone together and give them all the same judgment,
as is commonly taught. We will prove this as we proceed. John
continues:
14 And death and Hades were thrown
into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
15 And if anyone's name was not
found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of
fire.
At first glance, this seems to imply that everyone receives
the same judgment. But if this were so, then how could they be
judged according to their deeds? The lake of fire is a general
picture of the process of judgment-NOT a specific judgment in and of
itself. The lake of fire is the fiery law itself, and the law
consists of many different types of judgment, which fit the specific
crime committed.
This is made
apparent by Daniel's description of this same White Throne Judgment
in Daniel 7:9 and 10.
9 I kept looking
until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His
seat; His vesture was like white snow, and the hair of
His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames,
its wheels were a burning fire. 10 A river of fire was flowing and
coming out from before Him; thousands upon thousands were
attending Him, and myriads upon myriads were standing before Him;
the court sat, and the books were
opened.
What John called "the lake of fire" in the book of
Revelation, Daniel describes as "a river of fire." God's Throne itself is
pictured as a fire, which then flows like a river out upon the
people standing before Him. Very few today would describe the lake
of fire as Daniel did!
The meaning is
quite clear. The river, or lake of fire is God's justice being
administered to the sinners. What is the nature of that
justice? As always, it is defined by God's Law, for all sin is
judged by the Law.
A throne is a universal symbol of the law by
which a king rules, or judges. Thus, the "fiery Law" of Deut. 33:2
is pictured in vision form as a fiery throne
in Daniel 7:9. They are one and the same.
Most people would
agree that the lake of fire is indeed God's judgment upon sinners.
The real disagreement comes in defining the nature of that judgment,
that is, the specifics of how it works out in practice. Is it a
"literal" fire? Is it a "spiritual" fire? We believe it
is not literal, but it is certainly of a spiritual nature, because
the Law is spiritual (Romans 7:14).
All of our misunderstandings of the lake of fire
would easily be solved by a study of God's Law. After all, this is
the most relevant factor in this matter of judgment. Paul says in
Romans 6:23, "for the wages of sin is death." Ezekiel 18:20
confirms this: "The person ["soul"] who sins will
die." Anyone who studies the divine law will see that
death is the worst possible punishment that can be meted out.
Even when a man was guilty of multiple murder, the maximum penalty
was death. There is no sin worthy of being burned at the stake, much less being burned
in a torture chamber for an eternity.
There were some instances where the dead
body of the offender was to be cremated rather than buried
(Joshua 7:25; Lev. 21:9). This was the most dishonorable way to die
in Scripture. In the New Testament times, the bodies of such
criminals were thrown into the valley of Hinnom, which was
Jerusalem's city dump. It constantly burned, as even modern dumps
do. In the Greek, this valley was called "Gehenna," and Jesus
used it as a warning in Mark 9:42-50.
47 And if your eye causes you to
stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of
God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell
[gehenna], 48 where their worm
does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Take note that the worms here are not immortal or
fireproof. The city dump constantly burned, and in the places where
no flame had yet reached, there were countless worms, or maggots, to
consume the garbage. But there is no record that anyone was ever
cast into gehenna as a means of torture, except in
ancient times, when the Canaanites caused their children to die by
fire to the god, Molech. Jeremiah speaks of this in
32:35.
35 And they built the
high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause
their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it
entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause
Judah to sin.
This ungodly practice, performed in the valley of
Ben-hinnom (i.e., "the son of Hinnom," or gehenna in Greek) was a
direct result of their religious doctrine of the fiery underworld, a
teaching that was well developed in Egypt, Babylon, and Canaan. The
Hebrew Bible's description of the state of the dead stands in stark
contrast, and the few times it does speak of fire are quite
obviously symbolic.
When Jesus spoke of gehenna, he was simply
quoting Isaiah 66:24, where the prophet speaks of the final battle
at the end of the age. He closes with this description, which Jesus
ascribes to gehenna: 24 Then they shall go forth and
look on THE CORPSES of the men who have transgressed against Me.
For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be
quenched; and they shall be an abhorrence to all
mankind.
This is hardly a description of eternal punishment
in some spiritual torture chamber. It is very much an earthly scene,
the kind we might expect to "go forth" and look upon after a
disastrous war. On the other hand, it certainly is representative of
the lake of fire, as we shall see. Yet there is no indication from
this verse or from Jesus' quotation of it that men will be eternally
tortured in gehenna. Torture was not a lawful biblical
judgment.
Although some parallel does exist between
gehenna (the city dump) and the lake of fire, the valley of
Ben-hinnom, or "gehenna," was nothing like a lake. Jesus used the parallel in order to
describe two things about the lake of fire: (1) the people would be
outside the New Jerusalem; and (2) it would be a place of shame.
Beyond this, the theme ends and only resurfaces under a different
name and another kind of symbolism.
John did not call it gehenna, because the
purpose of the literal gehenna did not adequately describe
the fire flowing from God's throne, nor was gehenna a part of the temple symbolism which
was John's primary theme throughout the book of
Revelation.
One must always
keep in mind that the book of Revelation was written by a Hebrew. He
did not interpret the Old Testament from a Greek or Egyptian
perspective. His focus was upon heavenly things, particularly the
True Temple in heaven. The religious symbolism of the earthly temple
referred only to the heavenly reality and must be viewed in that
light. John views all of history as a fulfillment of prophecy
displayed in the ceremonies and vessels of the temple.
In view of our
present topic, we must study the laver, the place of cleansing and
purification for the priests as they washed themselves (baptism),
the vessels, and the sacrifices. This "water baptism" set up in the
days of Moses, was itself only an earthly manifestation of the
heavenly baptism, the baptism of fire.
And so, John points to the temple laver and calls
it the lake of fire. In essence, as we shall see, the picture is
meant to portray the Refiner's Fire, complete with the
cauldron of alloyed mineral and its impurities, as the Refiner
begins His work.
The book of
Revelation is written from the perspective of a priest who is
familiar with all the rites and ceremonies that had been performed
in the Temple of Jerusalem before its destruction in 70 A.D. John
was apparently a former priest in Jerusalem. Of this we have
evidence from a letter of Polycrates (later bishop of Ephesus, where
John also ministered). His letter is preserved by Eusebius, bishop
of Caesarea in the fourth century.
"For great luminaries sleep in Asia, and they will rise
again at the last day of the advent of the Lord . . . And there is
also John, who leaned on the Lord's breast, who was a priest
wearing the mitre, and martyr and teacher, and he sleeps at
Ephesus." (Eccl. Hist., III, xxxi)
A footnote explains that the word "mitre" here is
petalon, which is used in the Septuagint of
the high priest's diadem, but what it means here has never been
discovered. For some strange reason, Eusebius again quotes
Polycrates in Vol. V, ch.13, where he uses the term "breastplate,"
rather than mitre. Whatever the case, it is clear that John wrote
from the perspective of a priest and may have been revered as a sort
of "high priest" of the Church in Ephesus.
Both the
Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon used water in their
lavers, rather than molten gold. Yet the water was meant to portray
molten gold. Gold is the divine nature, and so the laver itself
would portray God's refining process. In our fleshly state, we could
not survive a baptism of fiery gold, and so water baptism became the
substitute and type of the true baptism of fire.
In the days of Solomon's Temple, the laver was
called "the molten sea" (1 Kings 7:23). When gold has been refined
to its absolutely pure state, molten gold is as clear as crystal. If
Solomon would have filled the Temple's laver with pure gold and
melted it, it would have looked like "a sea of glass like
crystal" (Rev. 4:6). In Revelation 15:2 John described it as
"a sea of glass mixed with fire." What John saw in heaven was the laver, the lake
of fire,
as pictured in the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon. The laver
was used to wash (baptize) in order to be cleansed, or purified
ceremonially. The purpose of the law was to teach righteousness to
the inhabitants of the world. The purpose of fire is to purify. So
it does not strain our imagination in the least to consider both the
laver and the lake of fire to be for the purpose of divine
purification, rather than a place where men are tortured
forever.
The lake of fire
is portrayed in Scripture as the final place where the great Refiner
sits to purify the hearts of men and prepare them to dwell in the
divine presence in fellowship with God. This is the true purpose of
the laver. At present only the true priests of God and of Christ
(Rev. 20:6), that is, Christians in this present age, have access to
that great laver. Even as the Levitical priests of the Old Testament
purified themselves daily at the laver, so also are we baptized to
signify that God has purified our hearts. In that final Age, the
Lake of Fire shall be applied universally to those in need of
purification.
There are some
who argue that the fire must be a literal place of burning and
torture, because it is often associated with "brimstone." Revelation
21:8 says,
8 But for the
cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral
persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part
will be in the lake that burns with fire
and brimstone, which is the second
death.
Does the "brimstone" prove that this is a literal
fire that tortures men? Actually, the very opposite is true.
Brimstone is sulphur, as any concordance will show. The original
Greek word for sulphur, or "brimstone," is theion. Its root
is theo, which is the same word usually translated "God."
(Note: Theology
is the study of God.) Sulphur, or theion, was considered to be
sacred to the ancient Greeks. It was used to consecrate for divine
service, to PURIFY, and to cleanse. They used it in religious rites
to purify their temples. They would even rub it on their bodies to
signify consecration to God. In its verb form the word theou means "to hallow, make divine, or to
dedicate to God."
And so, to a Greek reader, a lake of fire and
brimstone (sulphur) would signify a lake of divine purification
or consecration to God. Consequently, in Virgil's classic Greek
epic, The Aeneid, 741-742, 745-747) we
read: "Therefore we souls are trained with
punishment
And pay with
suffering for old felonies-- Some are hung up
helpless to the winds; The stain of sin is cleansed for others of us
In the trough of a huge whirlpool, or with
fire Burned out of
us-each one of us we suffer The afterworld we
deserve."
This "fire and
sulphur," taken symbolically by the more educated or by the higher
degrees of religion, was only literalized by the uneducated. The
priests generally allowed them to be deceived, of course, because
they also believed that fear of fire was a good religious
motivator.
The early
Christian Church of the first few centuries after Christ knew this.
This is shown by their writings. Unfortunately, some also believed
in "the doctrine of Reserve." That is, they would withhold some
teachings from the novices until they were mature Christians. They
did this specifically with the teaching on the lake of fire,
allowing novices to take their words literally, rather than
spiritually, so that they would be better motivated to turn to
Christ.
Exactly how much
this contributed to the rise of hellfire teaching is hard to say,
but it certainly was a factor. They may have justified such a
practice in their minds, but with our modern 20/20 hindsight we can
see where it led the Church in later years.
The essential
view that we will present here was held by most of the early
Christian Church as well. In support of this statement, we shall
endeavor to present to the reader a few samples from the most
influential of the Christian leaders in the first few centuries. Our
purpose is to show that our view is not strange or out of step with
at least most of the early Church fathers.
1. Clement of Alexandria (150-213
A.D.)
Clement's full Latin name was Titus Flavius Clemens
and was related in some way to the Roman Emperors, though it is not
known just how. He was born in Athens and later moved to Alexandria,
the hub of Greek culture and religion. Being very well educated, he
started a Christian school there, with the aim of explaining Christ
to the Greek world. He also wrote a book called Miscellanies,
in which "the task Clement had set himself was to make a summary
of Christian knowledge up to his time" (Donald Attwater,
Saints of the East, p.
37).
As we saw in
Chapter Two, Clement believed the fire to be an instrument of God
leading to conversion. He considered the Greek idea of fire to be
far more scriptural than the Egyptian view, which one writer
described as follows:
"The Egyptian Hell was particularly impressive and highly
refined . . . Confinement and imprisonment played an important role.
The tortures were bloody, and punishment by fire was frequent and
terrifying. . . . When it came to the topography of Hell, the
Egyptian imagination knew no limits. . . Intermediate states or
phases in the other-worldly process of purification did not
exist." (Jacques de Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, pp. 19,
20)
On the other
hand, the Platonic Greek view had some remarkable likenesses to the
Hebrew view. The above author attributes Clement's view on
purification to Plato, who in turn got it from Virgil and other
early Greek poets. However, the view of fire as a lawful cleanser
from sin, rather than a means of torture, is well established in the
Old Testament as well as the New. Jacques de Goff continues by
writing on page 53,
"From the Old Testament, Clement
and Origen took the notion that fire is a divine instrument, and
from the New Testament the idea of baptism by fire (from the
Gospels) and the idea of a purificatory trial after death (from
Paul)."
In Clement's own
words, he says plainly:
"God does not wreak
vengeance, for vengeance is to return evil for evil, and God
punishes only with an eye to the good." (Stromata, 7, 26)
Clement headed
the Christian school of thought in Alexandria from 190-203 A.D. He
had to flee for his life during the persecution of Serverus in 203,
and he spent his remaining years teaching in Antioch and Palestine.
And so his most brilliant student in Alexandria took his place as
head of the school. His name was Origen.
2. Origen of Alexandria (180-253
A.D.)
Like his
predecessor, Origen was not the bishop of the city, and yet he was
by far the most influential Christian for the next century. He was
the first to write a systematic theological commentary on the whole
Bible. He took great pains to learn Hebrew, not only that he might
better argue the case for Christianity among the Judeans, but also
that he might correct some of the mistranslations of the Septuagint
Greek version.
Around 230 A.D.
he visited Antioch, Caesarea, and Jerusalem, and though he was only
a presbyter (not even a priest), he was asked to speak from the
pulpit. He accepted. When Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria back
home, heard of it, he was filled with envy and rage, demanding that
he cease immediately and return to Alexandria. Origen meekly
returned, and the incident was forgotten.
A few years
later, Origen again went on the same trip and was this time
prevailed upon to be ordained a priest, so he could teach from the
pulpit. He accepted. When Demetrius heard of it, he was again filled
with rage and envy. Origen was excommunicated from Alexandria on the
grounds that he had emasculated himself in his youth and was
therefore not allowed to preach from the pulpit. (Origen had taken
Jesus' words in Matt. 19:12 a bit too literally in his youthful
zeal, but had repented of it afterward.) Demetrius quoted
Deut. 23:1 to support his case, although he had never raised the
issue in the 20 years prior to that time. Yet the bishop of Rome at
the time agreed with the verdict, though none of the other
Palestinian or Greek churches did. Soon the issue died down and was
forgotten for another 150 years.
And so Origen spent the last twenty years of his
life in Palestine, where a wealthy patron hired six secretaries to
help him write his books. His writings were the most influential in
the whole Greek world, though he was relatively unknown in the Latin
West. In his book, Against Celsus IV, 13 Origen continues the
teaching of Clement by writing:
"The
Sacred Scripture does, indeed, call our God "a consuming fire" (Heb.
12:29), and says that "rivers of fire go before His face: (Dan.
7:10), and that "He shall come as a refiner's fire and purify the
people" (Mal. 3:2,3). As therefore, God is a consuming fire, what
is it that is to be consumed by Him? We say it is wickedness, and whatever proceeds from
it, such as is figuratively called "wood, hay, and stubble" (1 Cor.
3:12-15) which denote the evil works of man. Our God is a consuming
fire in this sense; and He shall come as a refiner's fire to purify
rational nature from the alloy of wickedness and other impure matter
which has adulterated the intellectual gold and silver; consuming
whatever evil is admixed in all the soul."
We dealt with the topic of the Great White Throne
Judgment earlier. In his book On Prayer XXIX, 15 Origen further
writes:
"They are
purged with the "wise fire" or made to pay in prison every debt up
to the last farthing . . . to cleanse them from the evils committed
in their error . . . Thus they are delivered from all the filth and
blood with which they had been so filthied and defiled that they
could not even think about being saved from their own perdition . .
."
The teachings of
Clement and Origen were NOT unusual. The basic view of the divine
Fire restoring sinners was the majority opinion for many centuries
in the Greek-speaking Christian Church. Unfortunately, many in the
Latin Church of the West did not read the Scriptures in their Greek
original, but only had a very inferior Old Latin version which
Jerome eventually re-translated as the Latin Vulgate. And so the
Latin West did not set the theological tone for the Church until
Augustine in 400 A.D.
3. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389
A.D.)
St. Gregory was well educated in Alexandria and
Athens. Having a call to the ministry, he went to Pontus with St.
Basil, where the two compiled a collection of the writings of
Origen, called Philokalia, or "Love of the Beautiful."
Gregory was a quiet man, a perpetual student, the kind of person who
spent his whole life studying, having no desire to make a name for
himself. However, the people would not allow this. In 361 Gregory
was forcibly seized by the people and compelled to become ordained
as a priest. So much for the quiet life.
He then pastored
the church at Sasima, a village in Cappadocia. For a few months
Gregory was also bishop of Constantinople, where it is said he
accomplished more in a few months there than in twenty years in
Caesarea. Gregory was one of the four Eastern Doctors of the Church.
In addition to that, according to Robert Payne:
"Of all the Fathers of the Church, he was the only one to
be granted after his death the title "Theologian," which until
this time was reserved for an apostle -- John of Patmos." (The
Fathers of the Eastern Church, p. 179)
I include these
credentials to show that this was no insignificant, back-woods,
self-styled pastor. Nor was he an ambitious, self-aggrandizing
leader as many were in his day. Gregory of Nazianzus was one of the
most prominent Christian leaders of his day and well loved for the
fruit of the Spirit, which he manifested daily and consistently. In
fact, this red-haired Cappodocian had quite a sense of humor and was
the only one who was known to have ever dared to laugh at his friend
Basil, who was very stern and austere, the father of Eastern
monasticism. At any rate, Gregory wrote this about the lake of
fire:
"These (apostates), if they will, may go our way, which
indeed is Christ's; but if not, let them go their own way. In
another place perhaps they shall be baptized with fire, that
last baptism, which is not only very painful, but enduring
also; which eats up, as if it were hay, all defiled matter, and
consumes all vanity and vice." (Orat. XXXIX,
19)
Thus, he calls
the lake of fire a "baptism" whose purpose is to "consume all vanity
and vice." He does say it is "very painful," but then, I often find
that laver baptism very painful myself. Yet I submit to it, because
I know it is God's method of purification.
4. Gregory of Nyassa (335-394
A.D.)
St. Basil, the
dear friend of Gregory of Nazianzus, had a younger brother also
named Gregory. He was a bishop of Nyassa in Cappadocia. Robert Payne
writes of him:
"The Emperor Theodosius had recognized him as the supreme
authority in all matters of theological orthodoxy, and . . . he
was treated with extraordinary respect." (Robert Payne, The
Fathers of the Eastern Church, p. 164)
Again, the same
historian says:
"Of the three
Cappadocian Fathers Gregory of Nyassa is the one closest to us,
the least proud, the most subtle, the one most committed to the
magnificence of man. That strange, simple, happy, unhappy,
intelligent, and God-tormented
man was possessed by
angels . . . He employed all those resources of Greek philosophy
to help him in his task . . . In Eastern Christianity his Great
Catechism follows immediately after Origen's On First
Principles. These were the two seminal works, close-woven,
astonishingly lucid, final . . . Athanasius was the hammer, Basil
the stern commander, Gregory of Nazianzus the tormented singer,
and it was left to Gregory of Nyassa to be the man enchanted with
Christ . . . Four hundred years after his death, at the Seventh
General Council held in A.D. 787, the assembled princes of the
Church granted him a title which exceeded in their eyes all the
other titles granted to men: he was called "Father of Fathers."
(Ibid.,
pp. 168, 169)
This was an
ironic twist of history, for that same council also pronounced a
curse upon all who taught that the fire of God would cleanse, rather
than torture men for eternity! One might think that perhaps
Gregory was out of step with mainstream Christian thought for
believing and teaching the restoration of all mankind, but Funk
& Wagnall's New Encyclopedia says of him,
"Gregory's religious position was
strictly orthodox" (i.e., mainstream Christianity in his
day).
In fact, he was called "the bulwark of the
church against heresy," taking part in the Council of Nicea and
other later Church Councils. In his book De Anima et
Resurrectione, he wrote about the nature of the second
death:
"They who live in the flesh ought, by virtuous
conversation, to free themselves from fleshly lusts, lest after
death, they should again need another death to cleanse away the
remains of fleshly vice that cling to them."
In another book, Orat. In 1 Cor. 15:28, he
wrote:
"When all the alloy of evil that has been mixed up in the
things that are, having been separated by the refining action
of the cleansing fire, everything that was created by God
shall have become such as it was at the beginning, when as yet it
had not admitted evil . . . this is the end of our hope, that
nothing shall be left contrary to the good, but that the Divine
Life, penetrating all things shall absolutely destroy Death from
among the things that are; sin having been destroyed before
him, by means of which, as has been said
death held his dominion over men."
These are just a
few of the writings of the early Church leaders. It is well known by
those who have studied early Church writings, this was the majority
view. In fact, it was practically the ONLY VIEW for the first few
centuries after Christ and the apostles. The early Church had quite
a number of doctrinal disputes, but this issue was NOT EVEN
DISPUTED. In fact, it was taught by all the major theologians of the
day in the churches that the Apostle Paul founded.
There were six
Christian theological schools of thought known to have existed in
the first few centuries. The first and earliest was in Alexandria,
where Clement, Origen, and others clearly taught that sinners are
purged by the lake of fire. The theological school at Caesaria in
Palestine was next. The writings of both Origen and Clement were
highly esteemed there, and Origen actually lived there during his
most productive years.
The school of
Antioch, which had its feet more firmly planted on the ground,
disputed with Origen over his allegorical method of interpretation,
but they agreed wholeheartedly with his view on the "lake of fire."
The same with the school founded at Edessa in the fifth
century.
It was only the
Latin school (based in Carthage, but which included Rome) that
taught the doctrine of endless punishment. Augustine, the "champion"
of endless torments, wrote that there were:
". . . indeed VERY MANY (who) . . . do not believe that
such things will be. Not that they would go counter to divine
Scripture." (Enchiridion, 112)
Augustine was the
most influential of the Latin Church fathers. He was a teacher of
Rhetoric first in Carthage and later in Milan, Italy, where he was
converted. He then retired from teaching and moved back to North
Africa, where he was soon ordained as a priest and later as the
bishop of the town of Hippo.
Before his
conversion in 386 A.D. Augustine had been of the sect of the
Manichees for nine years. This was to be both an asset and a
liability to him in later years. It was an asset in that the
Manichees had been fond of quoting Paul's views on predestination,
which happened to agree with their eastern philosophy. Augustine was
to become virtually the first Christian bishop (that we know of)
since the Apostle Paul to teach the doctrine of
predestination.
On the other
hand, the Manichees had also instilled in Augustine the idea that
the end of all things, the goal of history, was a final separation
of the kingdom of Light from the kingdom of Darkness. He
incorporated this teaching more fully than any before him in his
idea that eventually all sinners would be separated from all the
righteous, and that they would eternally exist in that sinful state.
Most of the Church before him, particularly in the East, had taught
that one day evil and darkness would cease to exist, that God may be
"all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). We shall explain this more fully in our
next chapters.
Augustine's
rigorous views stated that God had predestined a few for salvation
but for most to be tormented eternally. His view of predestination
was later toned down by the Roman Church, in order to accommodate
fully the view of eternal torment without portraying God to be
overly unjust. These are topics that we will deal with fully in a
later chapter as well.
The Manichean
sect was founded around 240 A.D. by a Persian named Mani. It was a
cross between Persian, Dualism, Buddhism and Christianity. From
Persia they adopted the idea that good and evil were both eternal
forces, or kingdoms. They were said to be of equal strength,
although each would ebb and flow at various times. At present the
light and darkness were mixed, and the goal of history was to
separate them by a wall. Yet evil would always exist, they said,
because it was eternal and therefore just as powerful as
good.
Bishop Archelaus in 277 A.D. wrote a book against
the Manicheans called The Acts of the Disputation with Mani the
Heretic. He argued against Manicheanism (and thus also
against Augustine) by proving that one day all evil-including death
itself-would cease to exist (1 Cor. 15:25,26).
Titus, bishop of Bostra, also wrote a book around
364 A.D. entitled, Against Manicheans, where he
said,
"The punishments of God are Holy, as they are remedial and
salutary in their effect upon transgressors; for they are
inflicted, not to preserve them in their wickedness, but to
make them cease from their sins. The abyss . . . is indeed the
place of punishment, but it is not endless. The
anguish of their sufferings compels them to break off from their
sins."
Augustine's theological opponents all argued
against his views on the grounds that he had gotten his theology
from the Manicheans. Some of these charges are true, others are not.
It is clear, however, that the nine years he spent as a Manichee
oriented him to think more deeply in areas that the Church had not
thought of before that time. It depends upon one's point of view as
to whether Augustine was justified in his various views. From our
perspective, we note only that his City of God ends with the final
separation of good and evil, light and darkness, and that both are
eternally preserved in their respective places. Augustine would
certainly not have come to this conclusion on his own; he really did
get it from the Manichees.
One other very influential theologian was Theodore
of Mopsuestia (d. 428). He asked, "Who is so great a fool" as to
believe that God would resurrect men merely to destroy them forever
with torments? (Fragment IV)
During the Dark
Ages, when the doctrine of eternal torment was "orthodox" in Europe,
its judicial shadow came with it-burning people at the stake. It was
argued that God was going to throw them into an endless torment of
fire anyway, so the Church was only initiating it a few
insignificant years early. Besides, such "justice" served to instill
fear into the hearts of people of going against the Church in any
way-not only to avoid the stake, but to avoid the burning
hell.
This tactic was
certainly effective; no one can argue that point. But if one has
opportunity to study the divine justice of Bible Law, it soon
becomes apparent that such punishment is of heathen origin, rather
that of the Bible. In every nation, the popular belief about divine
justice has always served as a model for the justice of man. In the
Dark Ages, they thought they were imitating God; in reality,
however, they were imitating the heathen who burned their children
to Molech in the valley of Ben-hinnom.
In Chapter Four
we will show biblically that the Greek and Hebrew words for
"eternal" and "everlasting" are mistranslations brought in through
the Latin Vulgate around 400 A.D. Then we will deal with the more
positive subject of God's great
Restoration.
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