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

by William Rounseville Alger

A prominent feature in the belief of Paul, and one deserving distinct notice as necessarily involving a considerable part of the theory which we have attributed to him, is the supposition that Christ was the first person, clothed with humanity and experiencing death, admitted into heaven. Of all the hosts who had lived and died, every soul had gone down into the dusky under world. There they all were held in durance, waiting for the Great Deliverer. In the splendors of the realm over the sky, God and his angels dwelt alone. That we do not err in ascribing this belief to Paul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify in almost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St. Bernard. The Roman, Greek, and English Churches still maintain the same dogma. But the apostle's own plain words will be sufficient for our purpose. "That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from among the dead." "Now is Christ risen from among the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept." "He is the beginning, the first born from among the dead, that among all he might have the pre eminence." "God raised Christ from among the dead, and set him at his own right hand16 in the heavenly places, far above every principality, and power, and might, and dominion." The last words refer to different orders of spirits, supposed

16 Griesbach argues at length, and shows unanswerably, that this passage cannot bear a moral interpretation, but necessarily has a physical and local sense. Griesbachii Opuscula Academica, ed. Gabler, vol. ii. pp. 145-149.

by the Jews to people the aerial region below the heaven of God. "God hath" (already in our anticipating faith) "raised us up together with Christ and made us sit in heavenly places with him." These testimonies are enough to show that Paul believed Jesus to have been raised up to the abode of God, the first man ever exalted thither, and that this was done as a pledge and illustration of the same exaltation awaiting those who believe. "If we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall also live with him." And the apostle teaches that we are not only connected with Christ's resurrection by the outward order and sequence of events, but also by an inward gift of the spirit. He says that to every obedient believer is given an experimental "knowledge of the power of the resurrection of Christ," which is the seal of God within him, the pledge of his own celestial destination. "After that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession." The office of this gift of the spirit is to awaken in the believing Christian a vivid realization of the things in store for him, and a perfect conviction that he shall yet possess them in the unclouded presence of God, beyond the canopy of azure and the stars. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But he hath revealed them unto us; for we have received his spirit, that we might know them." "The spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are children and heirs of God, even joint heirs with Christ, that we may be glorified [i. e. advanced into heaven] with him."

We will leave this topic with a brief paraphrase of the celebrated passage in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. "Not only do the generality of mankind groan in pain in this decaying state, under the bondage of perishable elements, travailing for emancipation from the flesh into the liberty of the heavenly glory appointed for the sons and heirs of God, but even we, who have the first fruits of the spirit, [i. e. the assurance springing from the resurrection of Christ,] we too wait, painfully longing for the adoption, that is, our redemption from the body." By longing for the adoption, or filiation, is meant impatient desire to be received into heaven as children to the enjoyment of the privileges of their Father's house. "God predetermined that those called should be conformed to the image of his Son, [i. e. should pass through the same course with Christ and reach the heavenly goal,] that he might be the first born among many brethren." To the securing of this end, "whom he called, them he also justified, [i. e. ransomed from Hades;17] and whom he justified, them he also glorified," (i. e. advanced to the glory of heaven.) It is evident that Paul looked for the speedy second coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven, with angels and power and glory. He expected that at that time all enemies would be overthrown and punished, the dead would be raised, the living would be changed, and all that were Christ's would be translated to heaven.18 "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from

17 That "justify" often means, in Paul's usage, to absolve from Hades, we have concluded from a direct study of his doctrines and language. We find that Bretschneider gives it the same definition in his Lexicon of the New Testament. See [non ASCII characters]

18 "Every one shall rise in his own division" of the great army of the dead, "Christ, the first fruits; afterwards, they that are Christ's, at his coming."

heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of Christ." "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, at the last trump." "We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not anticipate those that are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God;19 and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Brethren, you need not that I should specify the time to you; for yourselves are perfectly aware that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." "The time is short." "I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." "At his appearing he shall judge the living and the dead." "The Lord is at hand." The author of these sentences undeniably looked for the great advent soon. Than Paul, indeed, no one more earnestly believed (or did more to strengthen in others that belief) in that speedy return of Christ, the anticipation of which thrilled all early Christendom with hope and dread, and kept the disciples day and night on the stretch and start of expectation to hear the awful blast of the judgment trump and to see the glorious vision of the Son of God descending amidst a convoy of angels. What sublime emotions must have rushed through the apostle's soul when he thought that he, as a survivor of death's reign on earth, might behold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a time when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it might be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as sackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell the sky, and,

"Lo! the nations of the dead, Which do outnumber all earth's races, rise, And high in sumless myriads overhead Sweep past him in a cloud, as 'twere the skirts Of the Eternal passing by."

The resurrection which Paul thought would attend the second coming of Christ was the rising of the summoned spirits of the deceased from their rest in the under world. Most certainly it was not the restoration of their decomposed bodies from their graves, although that incredible surmise has been generally entertained. He says, while answering the question, How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come? "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but naked grain: God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him." The comparison is, that so the naked soul is sown in the under world, and God, when he raiseth it, giveth it a fitting body. He does not hesitate to call the man "a fool" who expects the restoration of the same body that was buried. His whole argument is explicitly against that idea. "There are bodies celestial, as well as bodies terrestrial: the first man was

19 Rabbi Akiba says, in the Talmud, "God shall take and blow a trumpet a thousand godlike yards in length, whose echo shall sound from end to end of the world. At the first blast the earth shall tremble. At the second, the dust shall part. At the third, the bones shall come together. At the fourth, the members shall grow warm. At the fifth, they shall be crowned with the head. At the sixth, the soul shall re enter the body. And at the seventh, they shall stand erect." Corrodi, Geschichte des Chiliasmus, band i. s. 355.