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The Destiny of the Soul
William Rounseville Alger
PART FOURTH
CHRISTIAN THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PATRISTIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
WITH reference to the present subject, we shall consider the period of the Church Fathers as including the nine centuries succeeding the close of the apostolic age. It extends from Clement, Barnabas, and Hermas to OEcumenius and Gerbert.
The principal components of the doctrine of the future life held during this period, though showing some diversities and changes, are in their prevailing features of one consistent type, constituting the belief which would in any of those centuries have been generally recognised by the Church as orthodox.
For reasons previously given, we believe that Jesus himself taught a purely moral doctrine concerning the future life, a doctrine free from arbitrary, mechanical, or sacerdotal peculiarities. With experimental knowledge, with inspired insight, with fullest authority, he set forth conclusions agreeing with the wisest philosophy and confirmatory of our noblest hopes, namely, that a conscious immortality awaits the soul in the many mansions of the Father's house, which it enters on leaving the body, and where its experience will depend upon ethical and spiritual conditions. To this simple and sublime doctrine announced by Jesus, so rational and satisfactory, we believe for reasons already explained that the apostles joined various additional and modifying notions, Judaic and Gentile, such as the local descent of Christ into the prison world of the dead, his mission there, his visible second coming, a bodily resurrection, a universal scenic judgment, and other kindred views. The sum of results thus reached the Fathers developed in greater detail, distinguishing and emphasizing them, and also still further corrupting them with some additional conceptions and fancies, Greek and Oriental, speculative and imaginative. The peculiar theological work of the apostles in regard to this subject was the organizing of the Persian Jewish doctrine of the Pharisees, with a Christian complement and modifications, around the person of Christ, and fixing so near in the immediate future the period when it was to be consummated that it might be looked for at any time. The peculiar theological work of the Fathers in regard to the doctrine thus formed by the apostles was twofold. First, being disappointed of the expected speedy second coming of Christ, they developed the intermediate state of the dead more fully, and made it more prominent. Secondly, in the course of the long and vehement controversies which sprang up, they were led to complete and systematize their theology, to define their terms, to explain and defend their doctrines, comparing them together and attempting to harmonize them with history, reason, and ethics, as well as with Scripture and tradition. In this way the patristic mind became familiar with many processes of thought, with many special details, and with some general principles, quite foreign to the apostolic mind. Meanwhile, defining and systematizing went on, loose notions hardened into rigid dogmas, free thought was hampered by authority, the scheme generally received assumed the title of orthodox, anathematizing all who dared to dissent, and the fundamental outlines of the patristic eschatology were firmly established.1
In seeking to understand and to give an exposition of this scheme of faith, we have, besides various collateral aids, three chief guidances. First, we possess the symbols or confessions of faith put forth by several of the leading theologians of those times, or by general councils, and openly adopted as authority in many of the churches, the creed falsely called the Apostles', extant as early as the close of the third century, the creed of Arius, that of Cyril, the Nicene creed, the creed falsely named the Athanasian, and others. Secondly, we have the valuable assistance afforded by the treatises of Irenaus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others still later, on the heresies that had arisen in the Church, treatises which make it easy to infer, by contrast and construction, what was considered orthodox from the statement of what was acknowledged heretical. And, thirdly, abundant resources are afforded us in the extant theological dissertations, and historical documents of the principal ecclesiastical authors of the time in review, a cycle of well known names, sweeping from Theophilus of Antioch to Photius of Byzantium, from Cyprian of Carthage to Maurus of Mentz. We think that any candid person, mastering these sources of information in the illustrating and discriminating light of a sufficient knowledge of the previous and the succeeding related opinions, will recognise in the following abstract a fair representation of the doctrine of a future life as it was held by the orthodox Fathers of the Christian Church in the period extending from the first to the tenth century.
Before proceeding to set forth the common patristic scheme, a few preliminary remarks are necessary in relation to some of the peculiar, prominent features of Origen's theology, and in relation to the rival systems of Augustine and Pelagius. Origen was a man of vast learning, passionately fond of philosophy; and he modifyingly mingled a great many Oriental and Platonic notions with his theology. He imagined that innumerable worlds like this had existed and perished before it, and that innumerable others will do so after it in endless succession.2 He held that all souls whether devils, men, angels, or of whatever rank were of the same nature; that all who exist in material bodies are imprisoned in them as a punishment for sins committed in a previous state; the fig leaves in which Adam and Eve were dressed after their sin were the fleshly bodies they were compelled to assume on being expelled from the Paradise of their previous existence; that in proportion to their sins they are confined in subtile or gross bodies of adjusted grades until by penance and wisdom they slowly win their deliverance, this gradual descent and ascent of souls being figuratively represented by Jacob's ladder; that all punishments and rewards are exactly fitted to the degree of sin or merit, without possibility of failure; that all suffering even that in the lowest hell is benevolent and remedial, so that even the worst spirits, including Satan himself, shall after a time be restored to heaven; that this alternation of fall and restoration shall be continued so often as the cloy and satiety of heavenly bliss, or the preponderant power of temptation, pervert free will into sin.3
1 Bretschneider, Was lehren die altesten Kirchenvater uber die Entstehung der Sude und des Todes, Adam's Vergehen und die Versohnung durch Christum. Oppositionsschrift, band viii. hft. 3, ss. 380-407.
2 De Principiis, lib. lit. cap. 5.
He declared that it was impossible to explain the phenomena and experience of human life, or to justify the ways of God, except by admitting that souls sinned in a pre existent state. He was ignorant of the modern doctrine of vicarious atonement, considered as placation or satisfaction, and regarded Christ's suffering not as a substitute for ours, but as having merely the same efficacy in kind as the death of any innocent person, only more eminent in degree. He represents the mission of Christ to be to show men that God can forgive and recall them from sin, banishment, and hell, and to furnish them, in various ways, helps and incitements to win salvation. The foregoing assertions, and other kindred points, are well established by Mosheim, in his exposition of the characteristic views of Origen.4
The famous controversy between Augustine and Pelagius shook Christendom for a century and a half, and has rolled its echoing results even to the theological shores of to day. Augustine was more Calvinistic in his doctrines than the Fathers before him, and even than most of those after him. In a few particulars perhaps a majority of the Fathers really agreed more nearly with Pelagius than with him. But his system prevailed, and was publicly adopted for all Christendom by the third general council at Ephesus in the year 431. Yet some of its principles, in their full force, were actually not accepted. For instance, his dogma of unconditional election that some were absolutely predestinated to eternal salvation, others to eternal damnation has never been taught by the Roman Catholic Church. When Gottschalk urged it in the ninth century, it was condemned as a heresy;5 and among the Protestants in the sixteenth century Calvin was obliged to fight for it against odds. Augustine's belief must therefore be taken as a representation of the general patristic belief only with caution and with qualifications. The distinctive views of Augustine as contrasted with those of Pelagius were as follow.6 Augustine held that, by Adam's fault, a burden of sin was entailed on all souls, dooming them, without exception, to an eternal banishment in the infernal world. Pelagius denied the doctrine of "original sin," and made each one responsible only for his own personal sins. Augustine taught that baptism was necessary to free its subject from the power which the devil had over the soul on account of original sin, and that all would infallibly be doomed to hell who were not baptized, except, first, the ancient saints, who foreknew the evangelic doctrines and believed, and, secondly, the martyrs, whose blood was their baptism.
3 Ibid. lib. ii. cap. 9, 10.
4 Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians in the First Three Centuries: Third Century sects. 27-29.
5 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 183.
6 Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, trans. from the German by R. Emerson, ch. xix.; also pp. 62, 68, 75, 79.
Pelagius claimed that Christian baptism was only necessary to secure anentrance into heaven: infants and good men, if unbaptized; would enjoy a happy immortality in Paradise, but they never could enter the kingdom of heaven. Augustine affirmed that Adam's sin destroyed the freedom of the will in the whole human race. Pelagius asserted the freedom of the individual will. Augustine declared that a few were arbitrarily elected to salvation from eternity, and that Christ died only for them. Pelagius taught that salvation or reprobation depended on personal deserts, and that the Divine election was merely through prescience of merits. Augustine said that saving grace was supernatural, irresistible, unattainable by human effort. Pelagius said it might be won or resisted by conformity to certain conditions in each person's power. Augustine believed that bodily death was inflicted as a punishment for sin;7 Pelagius, that it was the result of a natural law. The extensive, various learning, massive, penetrating mind, and remorseless logical consistency, of Augustine, enabled him to gather up the loose, floating theological elements and notions of the time, and generalize them into a complete system, in striking harmony, indeed, with the general character and drift of patristic thought, but carried out more fully in its details and applied more unflinchingly in its principles than had been done before, and therefore in some of its dogmas outstripping the current convictions of his contemporaries. His dogma of election was too revolting and immoral ever to win universal assent; and few could have the heart to unite with him in stigmatizing the whole human race in their natural state as "one damned batch and mass of perdition!" (conspersio damnata, massa perditionis.) With these hints, we are ready to advance to the general patristic scheme of eschatology. The exceptional variations and heresies will be referred to afterwards.
First, in regard to the natural state of men under the law, from the time of Adam's sin to the time of Christ's suffering, their moral condition and destination, no one can deny that the Fathers commonly supposed that the dissolution of the body and the descent of the soul to the under world were a penalty brought on all men through the sin of the first man. Wherever the lengthening line of human generations wandered, the trail of the serpent, stamp of depravity, was on them, sealing them as Death's and marking them for the Hadean prison. This was the indiscriminate and the inevitable doom. There is no need of citing proofs of this statement, as it is well known that the writings of the Fathers are thronged both with indirect implications and with explicit avowals of it.
Secondly, they thought that Christ came from heaven to redeem men from their lost state and subterranean bondage and to guide them to heaven. Augustine, and perhaps some others, maintained that he came merely to effectuate the salvation of a foreordained few; but undoubtedly the common belief was that he came to redeem all who would conform to certain conditions which he proposed and made feasible. The important question here is, What did the Fathers suppose the essence of Christ's redemptive work to be? and how, in their estimation, did he achieve that work?
7 In Gen. lib. ix. cap. 10, 11: "Parents would have yielded to children not by death, but by translation, and would have become as the angels."
Was it the renewal and sanctification of human character by the melting power of a proclamation of mercy and love from God, by the regenerating influences and motives of the truths and appeals spoken by his lips, illustratedin his life, and brought to a focus in his martyr death? Certainly this was too plainly and prominently a part of the mission of Christ ever to be wholly overlooked. And yet one acquainted with the writings of the Fathers can hardly mistake so widely as to think that they esteemed this the principal element in Christ's redemptive work. Was the essence of that work, then, the making of a vicarious atonement, according to the Calvinistic interpretation of that phrase, the offering of a substitutional anguish sufficient to satisfy the claims of inexorable justice, so that the guilty might be pardoned? No. The modern doctrine of the atonement the satisfaction theory, as it is called was unknown to the Fathers. It was developed, step by step, after many centuries.8 It did not receive its acknowledged form until it came from the mind of the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, as late as the twelfth century. No scholar will question this confessed fact. What, then, were the essence and method of Christ's redemptive mission according to the Fathers? In brief, they were these. He was, as they believed, a superangelic being, the only begotten Son of God, possessing a nature, powers, and credentials transcending those delegated to any other being below God himself. He became flesh, to seek and to save the lost. This saving work was done not by his mortal sufferings alone, but by the totality of labors extending through the whole period of his incarnation. The subjective or moral part of his redemptive mission was to regenerate the characters of men and fit them for heaven by his teachings and example; the objective or physical part was to deliver their souls from the fatal confinement of the under world and secure for them the gracious freedom of the sky, by descending himself as the suppressing conqueror of death and then ascending as the beckoning pioneer of his followers. The Fathers did not select the one point or act of Christ's death as the pivot of human redemption; but they regarded that redemption as wrought out by the whole of his humiliation, instruction, example, suffering, and triumph, as the resultant of all the combined acts of his incarnate drama. Run over the relevant writings of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Cyril, Ambrose, Augustine himself, Jerome, Chrysostom, and the rest of the prominent authors of the first ten centuries, and you cannot fail to be struck with the fact that they invariably speak of redemption, not in connection with Christ's death alone, but emphatically in connection with the group of ideas, his incarnation, death, descent, resurrection, and ascension! For the most part, they received it by tradition as a fact, without much philosophizing, that, in consequence of the sin of Adam, all men were doomed to die, that is, to leave their bodies and descend into the shadowy realm of death. They also accepted it as a fact, without much attempt at theoretical explanation, that when Christ, the sinless and resistless Son of God, died and went thither, before his immaculate Divinity the walls fell, the devils fled, the prisoners' chains snapped, and the power of Satan was broken. They received it as a fact that through the mediation of Christ the original boon forfeited by Adam was to be restored, and that men, instead of undergoing death and banishment to Hades, should be translated to heaven. So far as they had a theory about the cause, it turned on two simple points: first, the free grace and love of God; second, the self sacrifice and sufficient power ofChrist.
8 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 68.
In the progressive course of dogmatic controversy, metaphysical speculation, and desire for system, explanations have been devised in a hundred different forms, from that of Aquinas to that of Calvin; from that of Anselm to that of Grotius; from that of Socinus to that of Bushnell. Tertullian describes the profound abyss beneath the grave, in the bowels of the earth, where, he says, all the dead are detained unto the day of judgment, and where Christ in his descent made the patriarchs and prophets his companions.9 Augustine says that nearly the whole Church agreed in believing that Christ delivered Adam from the under world when he rose thence himself.10 One must be very ignorant on the subject to doubt that the Fathers attributed unrivalled importance to the literal descent of Christ into the abode of the departed.11
Thirdly, after the advent of Christ, what were the conditions proposed for the actual attainment of personal salvation? It was the orthodox belief that Christ led up into Paradise with him the ancient saints who were awaiting his appearance in the under world:12 but with this exception it was not supposed that he saved any outright: he only put it in their power to save themselves, removing the previously insuperable obstacles. In the faith of those who accepted the dogma of predestination, of course, the presupposed condition of actual personal salvation was that the given individual should become one of the elect number. But it seems to have been usually believed that baptism was indispensable to give final efficacy to the decree of election in each individual case.13 Augustine says, "All are born under the power of the devil, held in chains by him as a jailer: baptism alone, through the force of Christ's redemptive work, breaks these chains and secures heaven." In regard to this necessity of baptism Pelagius agreed with his great adversary, saving an unessential modification, as we have seen before. The same may be said of Cyprian, Tertullian, and many other leading Fathers. Again, the so called Athanasian Creed, which shows the prevalent opinion of the Church in the fifth and sixth centuries, asserts that whoso believes not in the Trinity and kindred dogmas as therein laid down "without doubt shall perish everlastingly." In other words, assent of mind to the established creed of the Church is a vital condition of salvation. Finally, in the writings of nearly all of the Fathers we find frequent declarations of the necessity of moral virtue, righteous conduct, and piety, as a condition of admission into the kingdom of heaven. For example, Augustine says, "Such as have been baptized, partaken of the sacraments, and remained always in the catholic faith, but have led wicked lives, can have no hope of escaping eternal damnation." 14 These points were not sharply defined, authoritatively established, and consistently adhered to; and yet there was a pretty general agreement among the body of the Fathers that for actual salvation there were three practical necessary conditions, baptism, a sound faith, a good life.
9 De Anima, sects. 7 et 55.
10 Epist. CLXIV.
11 Huidekoper, Belief of the First Three Centuries concerning Christ's Mission to the Under World.
12 Augustine, De Civ. Del. lib. xx. cap. xv. Wiedenfeld, De Exorcismi Origine, Mutatione, deque hujus Actus peragendi Ratione Neander, Church History, vol. i. p. 3
13 Torrey's trans.
14 De Civ. Dei., lib. xxi. cap. xxv.
Fourthly, the Fathers believed that none of the righteous dead could be admitted into heaven itself, the abode of God and his angels, until after the second coming of Christ and the holding of the general judgment; neither were any of the reprobate dead, according to their view, to be thrust into hell itself until after those events; but meanwhile all were detained in an intermediate state, the justified in a peaceful region of the under world enjoying some foretaste of their future blessedness, the condemned in a dismal region of the same under world suffering some foretaste of their future torment.15 After the numerous evidences given in previous chapters of the prevalence of this view among the Fathers, it would be superfluous to cite further authorities here. We will only reply to an objection which may be urged. It may be said, the Fathers believed that Enoch and Elijah were translated to heaven, also that the patriarchs, whom Christ rescued on his descent to Hades, were admitted thither, and, furthermore, that the martyrs by special privilege were granted entrance there. The point is an important one. The reply turns on the broad distinction made by the Fathers between heaven and Paradise. Some of the Fathers regarded Paradise as one division of the under world; some located it in a remote and blessed region of the earth; others thought it was high in the air, but below the dwelling place of God.16 Now, it was to "Paradise," not to heaven, that the dying thief, penitent on the cross, was promised admission. It was of "Paradise," not of heaven, that Tertullian said "the blood of the martyrs is the perfect key." So, too, when Jerome, Chrysostom, and others speak of a few favored ones delivered from the common fate before the day of judgment, it is "Paradise," and not heaven, that is represented as being thrown open to them. Irenaus says, "Those who were translated were translated to the Paradise whence disobedient Adam was driven into the world."17
A notable attempt has been repeatedly made for example, by the famous Dr. Coward, by Dodwell, and by some other more obscure writers to prove that the Fathers of the Greek Church, in opposition to the Latin Fathers, denied the consciousness of the soul during the interval from death to the resurrection, and maintained that the soul died with the body and would be restored with it at the last day. But this is an error arising from the misinterpretation of the figurative terms in which the Greek Fathers express themselves. Tatian, Justin, Theophilus, and Irenaus do not differ from the others in reality, but only in words. The opinion that the soul is literally mortal is erroneously attributed to those Greek Fathers, who in truth no more held it than Tertullian did. "The death" they mean is, to borrow their own language, "deprived of the rays of Divine light, to bear a deathly immortality," (in immortalitate mortem tolerantes,) an eternal existence in the ghostly under world.18
15 They feel, as Novatian says, (De Trinitate, 1,) a prajudicium futuri judicii. See also Ernesti, Excurs. de Veter. Patrum Opinione de Statu Medio Animor. a Corpore sejunctorum. In his Lect. Acad. in Ep. ad Hebr.
16 E. g., see Ambrose, De Paradiso.
17 Adv. Hares., lib. v. cap. v.
18 See this point ably argued in an academic dissertation published at Konigsberg, 1827, bearing the title "Antiquissimorum Ecclesia Grsecte Patrum de Immortalitate Anima Sententia Recensentur."
They held that the inner man was originally a spirit [non-ASCII characters omitted] and a soul [non-ASCII characters omitted] blended and immortal, that is, indestructibly united and blessed. But by sin the soul loses the spirit and becomes subject to death. that is, to ignorance of its Divine origin, alienation from God, darkness, and an abode in Hades. By the influences flowing from the mission of Christ, man is elevated again to conscious communion with God, and the spirit is restored to the soul. "Si restituitur, manet [non-ASCII characters omitted] fit autem [non-ASCII characters omitted]; si non restituitur, manet [non-ASCII characters omitted], fit autem [non-ASCII characters omitted], quod haud differt a morte." cordant doctrine of the Fathers as to the intermediate state of the dead was that, with the exception of a few admitted to Paradise, they were in the under world waiting the fulness of time, when the world should be judged and their final destination be assigned to them. As Tertullian says, "constituimus omnem animam apud inferos seguestrari in diem Domini."
Finally, the Fathers expected that Christ would return from heaven, hold a general day of judgment, and consummate all things. The earliest disciples seem to have looked anxiously, almost from hour to hour, for that awful crisis. But, as years rolled on and the last apostle died, and it came not, the date was fixed more remotely; and, as other years passed away, and still no clear signs of its arrival appeared, the date grew more and more indefinite. Some still looked for the solemn dawn speedily to break; others assigned it to the year 1000; others left the time utterly vague; but none gave up the doctrine. All agreed that sooner or later a time would come when the deep sky would open, and Christ, clothed in terrors and surrounded by pomp of angels, would alight on the globe, when:
"The angel of the trumpet Shall split the charnel earth With his blast so clear and brave, And quicken the charnel birth At the roots of the grave, Till the dead all stand erect."
Augustine, representing the catholic faith, says, "The coming of Elias, the conversion of the Jews, Antichrist's persecution, the setting up of Christ's tribunal, the raising of the dead, the severing of the good and the bad, the burning of the world, and its renovation, this is the destined order of events."19 The saved were to be transported bodily to the eternal bliss of heaven; the damned, in like manner, were to be banished forever to a fiery hell in the centre of the earth, there to endure uncomprehended agonies, both physical and spiritual, without any respite, without any end. There were important, and for a considerable period quite extensive, exceptions, to the belief in this last dogma: nevertheless, such was undeniably the prevailing view, the orthodox doctrine, of the patristic Church. The strict literality with which these doctrines were held is strikingly shown in Jerome's artless question: "If the dead be not raised with flesh and bones, how can the damned, after the judgment, gnash their teeth in hell?"
During the period now under consideration there were great fluctuations, growths, changes, of opinion on three subjects in regard to which the public creeds did not prevent all freedom of thought by laying down definite propositions. We refer to baptism, the millennium, and purgatory. Christian baptism was first simply a rite of initiation into the Christian religion. Then it became more distinctly a symbol of faith in Christ and in his gospel, and an emblem of a new birth. Next it was imagined to be literally efficacious to personal salvation, solving the chains of the devil, washing off original sin, and opening the door of heaven.20 To trace the doctrine through its historical variations and its logical windings would require a large volume, and is not requisite for our present purpose.
19 De Civ. Del, lib. xx. cap. 30, sect. 5.
Almost all the early Fathers believingly looked for a millennium, a reign of Christ on earth with his saints for a thousand years. Daille has shown that this belief was generally held, though with great diversities of conception as to the form and features of the doctrine.21 It was a Jewish notion which crept among the Christians of the first century and has been transmitted even to the present day. Some supposed the millennium would precede the destruction of the world, others that it would follow that terrible event, after a general renovation. None but the faithful would have part in it; and at its close they would pass up to heaven. Irenaus quotes a tradition, delivered by Papias, that "in the millennium each vine will bear ten thousand branches, each branch ten thousand twigs, each twig ten thousand clusters, each cluster ten thousand grapes, each grape yielding a hogshead of wine; and if any one plucks a grape its neighbors will cry, Take me: I am better!" This, of course, was a metaphor to show what the plenty and the joy of those times would be. According to the heretics Cerinthus and Marcion, the millennium was to consist in an abundance of all sorts of sensual riches and delights. Many of the orthodox Fathers held the same view, but less grossly; while others made its splendors and its pleasures mental and moral.22 Origen attacked the whole doctrine with vehemence and cogency. His admirers continued the warfare after him, and the belief in this celestial Cocaigne suffered much damage and sank into comparative neglect. The subject rose into importance again at the approaching close of the first chiliad of Christianity, but soon died away as the excitement of that ominous epoch passed with equal disappointment to the hopes and the fears of the believers. A galvanized controversy has been carried on about it again in the present century, chiefly excited by the modern sect of Second Adventists. Large volumes have recently appeared, principally aiming to decide whether the millennium is to precede or to follow the second coming of Christ! 23 The doctrine itself is a Jewish Christian figment supported only by a shadowy basis of fancy. The truth contained in it, though mutilated and disguised, is that when the religion of Christ is truly enthroned over the earth, when his real teachings and life are followed, the kingdom of God will indeed cover the world, and not for a thousand years only, but unimaginable glory and happiness shall fill the dwellings of the successive generations of men forever.24
20 Neander, Planting and Training, Eng. trans. p. 102.
21 De Usu Patrum, lib. ii. cap. 4.
22 Munscher, Entwickelung der Lehre vom Tausendjahrigen Reiche in den Drei Ersten Jahrhunderten. In Henke's Magaz. b. vi. ss. 233 254.
23 See e. g. The End, by Dr. Cumming. The Second Advent, by D. Brown.
24 Bush, On the Millennium. Bishop Russell, Discourses on the Millennium. Carroll, Geschichte des Chiliasmus.
The doctrine of a purgatory a place intermediate between Paradise and hell, where souls not too sinful were temporarily punished, and where their condition and stay were in the power of the Church on earth, a doctrine which in the Middle Age became practically the foremost instrument of ecclesiastical influence and income was through the age of the Fathers gradually assuming shape and firmness. It seems to have been first openly avowed as a Church dogma and effectively organized as a working power by Pope Gregory the Great, in the latter part of the sixth century.25 No more needs to be said here, as the subject more properly belongs to the next chapter.
It but remains in close to notice those opinions relating to the future life which were generally condemned as heresies by the Fathers. One of the earliest of these was the destruction of the intermediate state and the denial of the general judgment by the assertion, which Paul charges so early as in his day upon Hymeneus and Philetus, "that the resurrection has passed already;" that is, that the soul, when it leaves the body, passes immediately to its final destination. This opinion reappeared faintly at intervals, but obtained very little prevalence in the early ages of the Church. Hierax, an author who lived at Leontopolis in Egypt early in the fourth century, denied the resurrection of the body, and excluded from the kingdom of heaven all who were married and all who died before becoming moral agents.
Another heretical notion which attracted some attention was the opposite extreme from the foregoing, namely, that the soul totally dies with the body, and will be restored to life with it in the general resurrection at the end of the world; an opinion held by an Arabian sect of Christians, who were vanquished in debate upon it by Origen, and renounced it.26
Still another doctrine known among the Fathers was the belief that Christ, when he descended into the under world, saved and led away in triumph all who were there, Jews, pagans, good, bad, all, indiscriminately. This is number seventy nine in Augustine's list of the heresies. And there is now extant among the writings of Pope Boniface VI, of the ninth century, a letter furiously assailing a man who had recently maintained this "damnable doctrine."
The numerous Gnostic sects represented by Valentinus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, and other less prominent names, held a system of speculation copious, complex, and of intensely Oriental character. That portion of it directly connected with our subject may be stated in few words. They taught that all souls pre existed in a world of pure light, but, sinning through the instigation and craft of demons, they fell, were mixed with darkness and matter, and bound in bodies. Through sensual lusts and ignorance, they were doomed to suffer after death in hell for various periods, and then to be born again. Jehovah was the enemy of the true God, and was the builder of this world and of hell, wherein he contrives to keep his victims imprisoned by deceiving them to worship him and to live in errors and indulgences. Christ came, they said, to reveal the true God, unmask the infernal character and wiles of Jehovah, rescue those whom he had cruelly shut up in hell, and teach men the real way of salvation.
25 Flugge, Geschichte der Lehre vom Zustande des Menschen nach dem Tode in der Christlichen Kirche, absch. v. ss. 320-352.
26 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. lib. vi. cap. 37.
Accordingly, Marcion declared that when Christ descended into the under world he released and took into his own kingdom Cain, and the Sodomites, and all the Gentiles who had refused to obey the demon worshipped by the Jews, but left there, unsaved, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the other patriarchs, together with all the prophets.27 The Gnostics agreed in attributing evil to matter, and made the means of redemption to consist in fastings and scourgings of the flesh, with denial of all its cravings, and in lofty spiritual contemplations. Of course, with one accord they vehemently assailed the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh. Their views, too, were inconsistent with the strict eternity of future hell punishments. The fundamental basis of their system was the same as that of nearly all the Oriental philosophies and religions, requiring an ascetic war against the world of sense. The notion that the body is evil, and the cause of evil, was rife even among the orthodox Fathers; but they stopped guardedly far short of the extreme to which the Gnostics carried it, and indignantly rejected all the strange imaginations which those heretics had devised to explain the subject of evil in a systematic manner.28 Augustine said, "If we say all sin comes from the flesh, we make the fleshless devil sinless!" Hermogenes, some of whose views at least were tinged with Gnosticism, believed the abyss of hell was formed by the confluence of matter, and that the devil and all his demons would at last be utterly resolved into matter.29
The theological system of the Manichaan sect was in some of its cardinal principles almost identical with those of the Gnostics, but it was still more imaginative and elaborate.30 It started with the Persian doctrine of two antagonist deities, one dwelling with good spirits in a world of light and love, the other with demons in a realm of darkness and horror. Upon a time the latter, sallying forth, discovered, far away in the vastness of space, the world of light. They immediately assailed it. They were conquered after a terrible struggle and driven back; but they bore with them captive a multitude of the celestial souls, whom they instantly mixed with darkness and gross matter. The good God built this world of mingled light and darkness to afford these imprisoned souls an opportunity to purge themselves and be restored to him. In arranging the material substances to form the earth, a mass of evil fire, with no particle of good in it, was found. It had been left in their flight by the vanquished princes of darkness. This was cast out of the world and shut up somewhere in the dark air, and is the Manichaan hell, presided over by the king of the demons. If a soul, while in the body, mortify the flesh, observe a severe ascetic moral discipline, fix its thoughts, affections, and prayers on God and its native home, it will on leaving the body return to the celestial light. But if it neglect these duties and become more deeply entangled in the toils of depraved matter, it is cast into the awful fire of hell, where the cleansing flames of torture partially purify it; and then it is born again and put on a new trial. If after ten successive births twice in each of five different forms the soul be still unreclaimed, then it is permanently remanded to the furnace of hell.
27 Irenaus, Adv. Herres., lib. i. cap. 22.
28 Account of the Gnostic Sects, in Moshelm's Comm., II. Century, sect. 65.
29 Lardner, Hist. of Heretics, ch. xviii. sect. 9.
30 Baur, Das Manichaische Religionssystem.
At last, when all the celestial souls seized by the princes of darkness have returned to God, save those just mentioned, this world will be burned. Then the childrenof God will lead a life of everlasting blessedness with him in their native land of light; the prince of evil, with his fiends, will exist wretchedly in their original realm of darkness. Then all those souls whose salvation is hopeless shall be drawn out of hell and be placed as a cordon of watchmen and a phalanx of soldiers entirely around the world of darkness, to guard its frontiers forever and to see that its miserable inhabitants never again come forth to invade the kingdom of light.31
The Christian after Christ's own pattern, trusting that when the soul left the body it would find a home in some other realm of God's universe where its experience would be according to its deserts, capacity, and fittedness, sought to do the Father's will in the present, and for the future committed himself in faith and love to the Father's disposal. The apostolic Christian, conceiving that Christ would soon return to raise the dead and reward his own, eagerly looked for the arrival of that day, and strove that he might be among the saints who, delivered or exempt from the Hadean imprisonment, should reign with the triumphant Messiah on earth and accompany him back to heaven. The patristic Christian, looking forward to the divided under world where all the dead must spend the interval from their decease to the general resurrection, shuddered at the thought of Gehenna, and wrestled and prayed that his tarrying might be in Paradise until Christ should summon his chosen ones, justified from the great tribunal, to the Father's presence. The Manichaan Christian, believing the soul to be imprisoned in matter by demons who fought against God in a previous life, struggled, by fasting, thought, prayer, and penance, to rescue the spirit from its fleshly entanglements, from all worldly snares and illusions, that it might be freed from the necessity of any further abode in a material body, and, on the dissolution of its present tabernacle, might soar to its native light in the blissful pleroma of eternal being.
31 Mosheim, Comm., III. Century, sects. 44-52.
