That the intermediate state is one of incompleteness, appears from the following passages: Mat. 8:29—“What have we to do with thee, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” 2 Cor. 5:3, 4—“if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life”; cf. Rom. 8:23—“And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body”; Phil. 3:11—“if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead”; 2 Pet. 2:9—“the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment unto the day of judgment”; Rev. 6:10—“and they [the souls underneath the altar] cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”
In opposition to Locke, Human Understanding, 2:1:10, who said that “the soul thinks not always”; and to Turner, Wish and Will, 48, who declares that “the soul need not always think, any more than the body always move; the essence of the soul is potentiality for activity”; Descartes, Kant, Jouffroy, Sir William Hamilton, all maintain that it belongs to mental existence continuously to think. Upon this view, the intermediate state would be necessarily a state of thought. As to the nature of that thought, Dorner remarks in his Eschatology that “in this relatively bodiless state, a still life begins, a sinking of the soul into itself and into the ground of its being,—what Steffens calls ‘involution,’ and Martensen ‘self-brooding.’ In this state, spiritual things are the only realities. In the unbelieving, their impurity, discord, alienation from God, are laid bare. If they still prefer sin, its form becomes more spiritual, more demoniacal, and so ripens for the judgment.”
Even here, Dorner deals in speculation rather than in Scripture. But he goes further, and regards the intermediate state as one, not only of moral progress, but of elimination of evil; and holds the end of probation to be, not at death, but at the judgment, at least in the case of all non-believers who are not incorrigible. We must regard this as a practical revival of the Romanist theory of purgatory, and as contradicted not only by all the considerations already urged, but also by the general tenor of Scriptural representation that the decisions of this life are final, and that character is fixed here for eternity. This is the solemnity of preaching, that the gospel is “a savor from life unto life,” or “a savor from death unto death” (2 Cor. 2:16).
Descartes: “As the light always shines and the heat always warms, so the soul always thinks.” James, Psychology, 1:164-175, argues against unconscious mental states. The states were conscious at the time we had them; but they have been forgotten. In the Unitarian Review, Sept. 1884, Prof. James denies that eternity is given at a stroke to omniscience. Lotze, in his Metaphysics, 268, in opposition to Kant, contends for the transcendental validity of time. Green, on the contrary, in Prolegomena [pg 1003]to Ethics, book 1, says that every act of knowledge in the case of man is a timeless act. In comparing the different aspects of the stream of successive phenomena, the mind must, he says, be itself out of time. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 306, denies this timeless consciousness even to God, and apparently agrees with Martineau in maintaining that God does not foreknow free human acts.
De Quincey called the human brain a palimpsest. Each new writing seems to blot out all that went before. Yet in reality not one letter has ever been effaced. Loeb, Physiology of the Brain, 213, tells us that associative memory is imitated by machines like the phonograph. Traces left by speech can be reproduced in speech. Loeb calls memory a matter of physical chemistry. Stout, Manual of Psychology, 8—“Consciousness includes not only awareness of our own states, but these states themselves whether we are aware of them or not. If a man is angry, that is a state of consciousness, even though he does not know that he is angry. If he does know that he is angry, that is another modification of consciousness, and not the same.” On unconscious mental action, see Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 378-382—“Cerebration cannot be identified with psychical processes. If it could be, materialism would triumph. If the brain can do these things, why not do all the phenomena of consciousness? Consciousness becomes a mere epiphenomenon. Unconscious cerebration = wooden iron or unconscious consciousness. What then becomes of the soul in its intervals of unconsciousness? Answer: Unconscious finite minds exist only in the World-ground in which all minds and things have their existence.”
On the whole subject, see Hovey, State of Man after Death; Savage, Souls of the Righteous; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:304-446; Neander, Planting and Training, 482-484; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 407-448; Bib. Sac., 13:153; Methodist Rev., 34:240; Christian Rev., 20:381; Herzog, Encyclop., art.: Hades; Stuart, Essays on Future Punishment; Whately, Future State; Hovey, Biblical Eschatology, 79-144.
III. The Second Coming of Christ.
While the Scriptures represent great events in the history of the individual Christian, like death, and great events in the history of the church, like the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and the destruction of Jerusalem, as comings of Christ for deliverance or judgment, they also declare that these partial and typical comings shall be concluded by a final, triumphant return of Christ, to punish the wicked and to complete the salvation of his people.
Temporal comings of Christ are indicated in: Mat. 24:23, 27, 34—“Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ, or, Here; believe it not.... For as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man.... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished”; 16:28—“Verily I say unto you, There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom”; John 14:3, 18—“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.... I will not leave you desolate: I come unto you”; Rev. 3:20—“Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”So the Protestant Reformation, the modern missionary enterprise, the battle against papacy in Europe and against slavery in this country, the great revivals under Whitefield in England and under Edwards in America, were all preliminary and typical comings of Christ. It was a sceptical spirit which indited the words: “God's new Messiah, some great Cause”; yet it is true that in every great movement of civilization we are to recognize a new coming of the one and only Messiah, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 1:840—“The coming began with his ascension to heaven (cf. Mat. 26:64—‘henceforth ἀπ᾽ ἄρτι [from now] ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven’).” Matheson, Spir. Devel. of St. Paul, 286—“To Paul, in his later letters, this world is already the scene of the second advent. The secular is not to vanish away, but to be permanent, transfigured, pervaded by the divine life. Paul began with the Christ of the resurrection; he ends with the Christ who already makes all things new.” See Metcalf, Parousia vs. Second Advent, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1907:61-65.