The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

by William Rounseville Alger

This rescue and reward of the faithful, this overthrow and punishment of the wicked, were to be effected by the agency of a unique and sublime personage, who was expected very soon to appear, with an army of angels from heaven, for this purpose. The conception of the nature, rank, and offices of Jesus Christ which existed in the mind of the writer of the Apocalypse is in some respects but obscurely hinted in the words he employs; yet the relationship of those words to other and fuller sources of information in the contemporaneous notions of his countrymen is such as to give us great help in arriving at his ideas. He represents Christ as distinct from and subordinate to God. He makes Christ say, "To him that overcometh I will give power over the nations, even as I received of my Father." He characterizes him as "the beginning of the creation of God," and describes him as "mounted on a white horse, leading the heavenly armies to war, and his name is called the Logos of God." These terms evidently correspond to the phrases in the introduction to the Gospel of John, and in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, where are unfolded some portions of that great doctrine, so prevalent among the early Fathers, which was borrowed and adapted by them from the Persian Honover, the Hebrew Wisdom, and the Platonic Logos.27 "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and all things were made by him;… and the Logos was made flesh and dwelt among us."28 "God of our fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things by thy Logos."29 "Thine almighty Logos leaped down from heaven from his royal throne, a fierce warrior, into the midst of a land of destruction."30 "Plainly enough, the Apocalyptic view of Christ is based on that profound Logos doctrine so copiously

26 See the excursus by Stuart in his Commentary on the Apoc. xiii. 18, which conclusively shows that the Beast could be no other than Nero.

27 Lucke, Einleitung in das Evang. Joh.

28 Evang. Joh. i. 1, 3, 14.

29 Wisdom of Solomon, ix. 1, 2.

30 Ibid. xviii. 15.

developed in the writings of Philo Judaus and so distinctly endorsed in numerous passages of the New Testament. First, there is the absolute God. Next, there is the Logos, the first begotten Son and representative image of God, the instrumental cause of the creation, the head of all created beings. This Logos, born into our world as a man, is Christ. Around him are clustered all the features and actions that compose the doctrine of the last things. The vast work of redemption and judgment laid upon him has in part been already executed, and in part remains yet to be done.

We are first to inquire, then, into the significance of what the writer of the Apocalypse supposes has already been effected by Christ in his official relations between God and men, so far as regards the general subject of a life beyond the grave. A few brief and vague but comprehensive expressions include all that he has written which furnishes us a guide to his thoughts on this particular. He describes Jesus, when advanced to his native supereminent dignity in heaven, as the "Logos, clothed in a vesture dipped in blood," and also as "the Lamb that was slain," to whom the celestial throng sing a new song, saying, "Thou hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood." Christ, he says, "loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood." He represents the risen Savior as declaring, "I am he that liveth, and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of the under world and of death." "Jesus Christ," again he writes, "is the faithful witness, the first begotten from the dead." What, now, is the real meaning of these pregnant phrases? What is the complete doctrine to which fragmentary references are here made? We are confident that it is this. Mankind, in consequence of sin, were alienated from God, and banished, after death, to Hades, the subterranean empire of shadows. Christ, leaving his exalted state in heaven, was born into the world as a messenger, or "faithful witness," of surprising grace to them from God, and died that he might fulfil his mission as the agent of their redemption, by descending into the great prison realm of the dead, and, exerting his irresistible power, return thence to light and life, and ascend into heaven as the forerunner and pledge of the deliverance and ascension of others. Moses Stuart, commenting on the clause "first begotten from the dead," says, "Christ was in fact the first who enjoyed the privilege of a resurrection to eternal glory and he was constituted the leader of all who should afterwards be thus raised from the dead."31 All who had died, with the sole exception of Christ, were yet in the under world. He, since his triumphant subdual of its power and return to heaven, possessed authority over it, and would ere long summon its hosts to resurrection, as he declares: "I was dead, and, behold, I am alive for ever more, and have the keys of the under world." The figure is that of a conqueror, who, returning from a captured and subdued city, bears the key of it with him, a trophy of his triumph and a pledge of its submission. The text "Thou hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood" is not received in an absolutely literal sense by any theological sect whatever. The severest Calvinist does not suppose that the physical blood shed on the cross is meant; but he explains it as denoting the atoning efficacy of the vicarious sufferings of Christ. But this interpretation is as forced and constructive an exposition as the one we have given, and is not

31 Stuart, Comm. in Apoc. i. 5.

warranted by the theological opinions of the apostolic age, which do, on the contrary, support and necessitate the other. The direct statement is, that men were redeemed unto God by the blood of Christ. All agree that in the word "blood" is wrapped up a figurative meaning. The Calvinistic dogma makes it denote the satisfaction of the law of retributive justice by a substitutional anguish. We maintain that a true historical exegesis, with far less violence to the use of language, and consistently with known contemporaneous ideas, makes it denote the death of Christ, and the events which were supposed to have followed his death, namely, his appearance among the dead, and his ascent to heaven, preparatory to their ascent, when they should no longer be exiled in Hades, but should dwell with God. Out of an abundance of illustrative authorities we will cite a few.