An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality

by James Challis

Commencing now, after the foregoing preliminaries, the general argument, I remark, in the first place, that since, as matter of fact, all men die, they cannot partake of immortality unless they are restored to life after death. We have, therefore, to inquire both as to what the Scriptures say concerning death, and what they reveal concerning resurrection. Again, it may be taken for granted that as in the natural world, so in the spiritual world, the Creator of all things effects His purposes by operating according to laws. On this principle St. Paul in Rom. viii. 2 speaks of "the law of sin and death," meaning that sin and death are invariably related to each other as antecedent and consequent. By an irrevocable law {9} death is ordained to be "the wages of sin" (Rom. vi. 23). Of ourselves we can judge that it does not consist with the power and wisdom of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator that the sinful should live for ever. But if this be so, it must evidently be true also that immortality, being exemption from death, is the consequence of freedom from sin, that is, of perfect righteousness. This is as necessary a law as the other.

Hence the inquiry respecting the means by which man is made immortal resolves itself into inquiring by what means he is made righteous; and, as the first step in this inquiry, we have to consider what Scripture says concerning the entrance of sin and death into the world. If sin be defined to be doing what is contrary to the will of God, as expressed by a command, righteousness, being its opposite, will consist in acting according to His will. Hence sin and righteousness both imply that a revelation of the will of God has been antecedently made, either directly by a command or law, or by the voice of conscience. It is on this principle that St. Paul says, "apart from law sin is dead" (Rom. vii. 8), and in another place speaks of "the righteousness of the law" being fulfilled (Rom. viii. 4). Accordingly, when Adam was placed in the garden of Eden, a command was expressly given him for trial of his obedience.

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The narrative in Scripture of the circumstances under which sin was first committed is deserving of special consideration on account of the instruction it conveys. It states that Eve, knowing that God had commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, yet, being deceived by the serpent and enticed by her own desires, "took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat" (Gen. iii. 6). Thus, as St. Paul writes, "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. ii. 14). But both partook of the forbidden fruit, and by so doing both sinned alike against their Maker, the deed being sinful, not as considered by itself, but by reason of the antecedent command, which made it an act of disobedience.

If we assume that the account of Eve's temptation is to be taken as literally true, so that the tempter had actually the form of a serpent and addressed to her spoken words, these facts will have to be regarded as altogether miraculous. There are good reasons for admitting this view, when it is considered, first, that the information which this portion of Scripture gives equally concerns all of every age, and in order that it might be intelligible to all, it was necessary that in the infancy of the world it should be conveyed by objective representation; and, again, that various instances are met with in the Bible of analogous {11} teaching of essential doctrine by means of miracles. The translation of Enoch, the Deluge, the destruction of Sodom, the plagues of Egypt and deliverance of Israel, the giving of the law from Sinai, the passage of Jordan, the ascension of Elijah, and the resurrection of Christ, are all symbolic miracles, the interpretations of which have intimate relation to the doctrine of man's immortality. This being understood, I shall proceed to discuss particularly the meaning of the Scriptural account of the beginning of sin through temptation by the serpent, and on the supposition that the facts as recorded are real but symbolic, I shall endeavour to deduce from them their doctrinal signification.

The first question to consider is, Why is the tempting spirit called a serpent? The Scripture affirms that "the serpent was more subtil (phronimôatos) than any beast of the field" (Gen. iii. 1); and our Lord, addressing his apostles, said, "Lo, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye, therefore, wise (phronimoi) as serpents, and harmless as doves." Yet, as we know, the serpent is not endowed in any special manner with sagacity or reason. The fact is, the epithet "subtil" is applied to the serpent with reference to its form and movements, which convey the abstract idea of subtlety on the same principle that the words "tortuous" and "twisting" have an abstract meaning when we speak of "tortuous policy," {12} or "twisting the meaning of a sentence." Now this subtle entity—this serpent—although presented to Eve in bodily form, was not the less that spirit of evil, the personal existence of which, on the hypothesis that the Scriptures are true, as well as its influence on human minds, must be admitted. Accordingly our first parents were tempted by what St. Paul calls "the wiles (tas methodeias) of the devil" (Eph. vi. 11).

Again, the statement in Gen. iii. 6, that "when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat," is in accordance with what St. John teaches as to "the lust of the flesh," "the lust of the eyes," and "the pride of life," being opposed to "doing the will of God" (1 John ii. 16, 17). Also, as we have seen, Adam was associated with a partner, who, having been overcome, in consequence of such desires, by the wiles of Satan, committed sin, and then induced her husband to do the same. Thus, since the world at that time consisted of these two individuals, it is an obvious inference, as well as one of great significance, that Adam was tempted just as all his offspring are—that is, by the world, the flesh, and the devil—and, as all his offspring do, yielded to the temptation.

Although Adam was created in the image of his Maker in respect to being endowed with powers of {13} understanding and reasoning, and although he was made capable of learning and doing righteousness, he was not originally made righteous, forasmuch as he sinned: but those whom God makes righteous sin no more, because all the works of God are perfect. "The first man Adam was made a living soul," the breath of life being breathed into his nostrils (Gen. ii. 7). He thus partook of natural life, but not of spiritual life. He was, as St. Paul says, "of the earth, earthy," and all we who are descended from him "bear the image of the earthy" (1 Cor. xv. 47, 49). The mind (to phronêma) of this natural man is at "enmity with God," and "neither is, nor can be, subject to the law of God" (Rom. viii. 7). This accounts for our perceiving in children from their very infancy a spirit of disobedience, this spirit being derived through natural descent from that which our first parents exhibited in the infancy of the world. The author of the Apocryphal Book, 2 Esdras, writes: "The first man Adam, bearing a wicked heart, transgressed, and was overcome; and so be all they that are born of him" (iii. 21). In the Wisdom of Solomon this passage occurs: "Wisdom preserved the first formed father of the world, that was created alone, and brought him out of his fall" (x. 1). But it is to be remarked that the word here translated "fall" is paraptôma, the same word that St. Paul uses in Rom. iv. 25 and v. 16, to designate "our transgressions." {14} Cruden in his Concordance gives under the word "fall" an elaborate statement of received views respecting "the fall of man," although that word, as the Concordance shows, does not once occur in the Canonical Scriptures in any relation to the sin of Adam.

It is very noteworthy that after the account of Adam's sin in Genesis, no express mention is made of it in subsequent Canonical Books, till we come to the fifth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, where the introduction of sin into the world by one man is prominently adduced in an argumentative passage which appears to me to have been much misunderstood.[1] The reason that a fact which is so essential an element in theological systems is so little adverted to in the Scriptures, I consider to be, that these systems have hitherto not recognized an analogy which may be presumed to exist between God's natural creation and His spiritual creation. From what is stated in Genesis i. and ii. there is reason to say that the natural creation was at its beginning without form, and dark, and unfurnished, and that by the power of the Creator, operating, we may presume, according to laws, it was brought into the state of order, light, and adornment (kosmos) which we now behold. Hence, arguing from analogy, we {15} might infer that the spiritual creation has its beginning in the reign of sin and death, and that by the power of the Spirit of God, operating according to law on our spirits, it has its consummation in the establishment of righteousness and life.

This analogical inference suffices, I think, to explain why, after the brief initial account of the entrance of sin and death into the world, the purport of the whole of Scripture is to record the subsequent prevalence of sin, and to reveal by what means grace abounded in the gift of righteousness, and how it abounded all the more because the law of sin and death "passed" from one man "upon all men" (Rom. v. 12). The apostle Paul argues that whereas "death reigned through one, much rather shall they who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through one Jesus Christ" (Rom. v. 17); and in accordance with this doctrine he adds (v. 20), "The law entered by the way (pareisêlen) in order that the offence might abound, but where sin abounded grace did much more abound." It seems impossible to draw from such sentences as these any other inference than that, according to the scheme of the spiritual creation, the reign of sin and death is the necessary antecedent of the evolution of life from righteousness.