§ 6. Attempts to modify and soften the Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment.
The reasons for the late efforts to support this terrific doctrine are probably to be found in a widespread and increasing disbelief concerning it, pervading the churches nominally Orthodox. This has come from the growing intelligence and progressive movements of thought in the Christian Church. The evidences of this belief are numerous and increasing. Those who reject the Orthodox view are a numerous body, but divided into several parties. There are the old-fashioned Universalists, a valiant race,—men of war from their youth,—who, under the lead of such men as Hosea Ballou and Thomas Whittemore, have spent their lives in fighting the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Very naturally, perhaps, they went to the opposite extreme of opinion, and denied all future suffering. But this view has, we think, ceased to be the prevailing one among the Universalists. The doctrine of ultimate restoration has very generally taken its place. This doctrine also prevails widely in other denominations; not only among the liberal bodies, like the Unitarians, but also among Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. It has widely spread, as is well known, in Germany. It was held by Schleiermacher, [pg 372] the father of modern German theology. It tinges the writings of such Orthodox men as Tholuck, Hahn, and Olshausen. Others profess to believe in everlasting punishment, but make it a merely negative consequence of lost time and opportunity: one will be always worse off hereafter in consequence of the neglect of duty. Others follow Swedenborg, and make the sufferings of hell rather agreeable than otherwise to those who bear them.
Various ineffectual attempts have indeed been made, in all ages of the Church, to soften the austerity of this doctrine. From the days of Origen, these merciful doctors[50] have always been trying to soften this austere dogma, but ineffectually; for the dread of an eternal hell has been one of the chief motives which the Church has used in converting men from sin to holiness. Any suggestion of the possibility of future restoration would, it is feared, cut the sinews of effective preaching. For the baptized who are not fit for heaven the Roman Catholic Church has established, indeed, a temporary hell, with torments of an inferior sort; for bad Catholics there is purgatory, with the hope of ultimate escape from it; but for the unbaptized heathen, for heretics, and for excommunicated persons, there is nothing but eternal punishment.
Many, in all ages, have made the everlasting continuance of punishment not absolute, but hypothetical—depending on the question, “Will the sinner continue forever to sin?”[51] Others have made future punishment relatively everlasting; that is, because even the repentant sinner will be always just so far behind the position he would have had if he had not sinned. This, however, is taking a material view of [pg 373] progress, as though it was limited, like the going of a horse, to so many miles a day.
Many of the early fathers, and some of the mediæval doctors, took milder views of the future sufferings of the impenitent or unconverted. Proceeding from the idea of freedom, as indestructible in the human soul, Origen declared that, no matter how low any moral being has fallen, a way to return is always open to him. Even the devil may, in time, regain the highest position in the angelic hierarchy.[52] No doubt Origen admitted the need of external conditions for this restoration; but he said, God is able to heal the damage done to any part of his works.[53] He will restore all things to their origin, uniting the end and the beginning, and so becoming indeed the Alpha and Omega. This may require long processes, through many ages.[54] Since Jesus speaks of a sin which cannot be forgiven in this age (ἀιὼν) nor the next, it follows, says Origen, that there is a series of ages, or worlds, through which we pass, and many of these ages of ages (sæcula sæculorum) must pass away before all bad men and angels shall have returned to their original state. Quoting the passage, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed,” he says that he shall not be destroyed as to his substance, but as to his enmity. His being was made by God, and cannot perish; his hostile will proceeded from himself, and shall be destroyed.
Mr. Brownson (or rather a writer in Brownson's “Quarterly Review,” July, 1863) takes another way of softening the terrors of hell. With him too, hell is an everlasting [pg 374] state; but he maintains that the Roman Church has not made it an article of faith to believe that there is any positive suffering therein. If you believe in an eternal hell, that is enough; you are not precluded from softening its horrors to any extent you can. Thus he maintains that the great Augustine allows hell to be only a negative state—only the absence of the exquisite beatitude of heaven. This writer (who is said by the editor to be a learned Catholic priest) asserts that there is a growing repugnance to the popular doctrine upon eternal punishment among the most intelligent of the Catholic laity, and this reluctance is the chief obstacle to the reception of the faith by a large class of non-Catholics. He attempts to meet this state of mind by showing that neither the doctrine of St. Augustine nor that of the Catholic Church supports this popular view, but allows a much milder one. He proceeds to make these points:—
1. St. Augustine nowhere teaches that human nature is intrinsically evil, but he invariably teaches that it is substantially good. (“Omnis natura in quantum natura est bona est.” “Omnis substantia aut Deus est aut ex Deo.” De Lib. Arbit.) Therefore it follows that the very notion of total depravity is impossible. St. Augustine distinctly says that “the very unclean spirit himself is good, inasmuch as he is a spirit, but evil inasmuch as he is unclean.” Hence, not even the nature of the devil himself is evil. So St. Thomas (“Diabolus, in quantum habet esse, est bonus”), “the devil, so far as he is, is good.”
2. St. Augustine teaches in explicit terms that existence is a good even to angels and men who are eternally bound by the consequences of evil.
3. Eternal death, according to St. Augustine, is a subsidence into a lower form of life, a privation of the highest vital influx from God in order to everlasting life, or supreme beatitude, but not of all vital influx in order to an endless existence, which is a partial and incomplete participation in [pg 375] good. These sinful souls, therefore, fulfil in a measure the end of their creation, and have a place and a function in harmony with the general order of the cosmos. There is no trace, in this view of Augustine, that God hates a portion of his creatures with an absolute, infinite, and eternal hatred, and is hated by them in return. The original act of creative love is an enduring and eternal act, in which even Satan is included. “Their nature still remains essentially good, and far superior in excellence and beauty to material light, which is the highest corporeal substance.”
4. Hell, therefore (Infernus), is simply a lower state of inchoate and imperfect being, “of saints nipped in the bud.” Infant damnation is only a gentle sadness—“levis tristitia.” All positive suffering in hell is probably temporal, and therefore must at last cease. The lost souls will enjoy there quite as much as they can do here, minus the temporal sufferings of this life. They continue natural beings, and therefore can enjoy all natural joy; and that which they lose, being the “beatific vision,” of which they have no conception, is a loss of which they are wholly unconscious.