13 Lessing, Ueber Leibnitz von den Ewigen Strafen.
employed by the Saviour and the evangelists in conformity with the prevailing thought and customary phraseology of their time, as to conclude that they were derived from an unerring inspiration. The former is a natural and reasonable inference; the latter is a gratuitous hypothesis for which we have never heard of any evidence. If its advocates will honestly attempt really to prove it, we are convinced they will be forced to renounce it. The only way they continue to hold it is by taking it for granted. If, therefore, the strict eternity of future woe be declared in the New Testament, we regard it not as a part of the inspired utterance of Jesus, but as an error which crept in among others from the surrounding notions of a benighted pagan age.
But, in the next place, we do not admit by any means that the literal eternity of future damnation is taught in the Scriptures. On the contrary, we deny such an assertion, for several reasons. First, we argue from the usage of language before the New Testament was written. The Egyptians, Hindus, Greeks, often make most emphatic use of phrases declaring the eternal sufferings of the wicked in hell; but they must have meant by "eternal" only a very long time, because a fundamental portion of the great system of thought on which their religions rested was the idea of recurring epochs, sundered by immense periods statedly arriving, when all things were restored, the hells and heavens vanished away, and God was all in all. If the representations of the eternal punishment of the wicked, made before the New Testament was written, were not significant, with metaphysical severity, of an eternity of duration, but only, with popular looseness, of an extremely long period, the same may be true of the similar expressions found in that record.
Secondly, we argue from the usage of language in and after the New Testament age. The critics have collected, as any one desirous may easily find, and as every theological scholar well knows, scores of instances from the writings of authors contemporary with Christ and his apostles, and succeeding them, where the Greek word for "eternal" is used popularly, not strictly, in a rhetorical, not in a philosophical, sense, not denoting a duration literally endless, but one very prolonged. In all Greek literature the word is undoubtedly used in a careless and qualified sense at least a hundred times where it is used once with its close etymological force. And the same is true of the corresponding Hebrew term. The writer of the "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs," at the close of every chapter, describing the respective patriarch's death, says, "he slept the eternal sleep," though by "eternal" he can only mean a duration reaching to the time of the resurrection, as plainly appears from the context. Iamblichus speaks of "an eternal eternity of eternities."14 Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, and others, the fact of whose belief in final universal salvation no one pretends to deny, do not hesitate with earnestness and frequency to affirm the "eternal" punishment of the wicked in hell. Now, if the contemporaries of the evangelists, and their successors, often used the word "eternal" popularly, in a figurative, limited sense, then it may be so employed when it occurs in the New Testament in connection with the future pains of the bad.
Thirdly, we argue from the phraseology and other peculiarities of the representation of the future woe of the condemned, given in the New Testament itself, that its authors
14 De Mysteriis Egyptiorum, cap. viii. sect. 10.
did not consciously intend to proclaim the rigid endlessness of that woe.15 "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." Since the word "everlasting" was often used simply to denote a long period, what right has any one to declare that here it must mean an absolutely unending duration? How does any one know that the mind of Jesus dialectically grasped the metaphysical notion of eternity and deliberately intended to express it? Certainly the intrinsic probabilities are all the other way. Such a conclusion is hardly compatible with the highly tropical style of speech employed throughout the discourse. Besides, had he wished to convey the overwhelming idea that the doom of the guilty would be strictly irremediable, their anguish literally infinite, would he not have taken pains to say so in definite, guarded, explained, unmistakable terms? He might easily, by a precise prosaic utterance, by explanatory circumlocutions, have placed that thought beyond possibility of mistake.
Fourthly, we have an intense conviction not only that the leaving of such a doctrine by the Savior in impenetrable obscurity and uncertainty is irreconcilable with the supposition of his deliberately holding it in his belief, but also that a belief in the doctrine itself is utterly irreconcilable with the very essentials of his teachings and spirit, his inmost convictions and life. He taught the infinite and unchangeable goodness of God: confront the doctrine of endless misery with the parable of the prodigal son. He taught the doctrine of unconquerable forgiveness, without apparent qualification: bring together the doctrine of never relenting punishment and his petition on the cross, "Father, forgive them." He taught that at the great judgment heaven or hell would be allotted to men according to their lives; and the notion of endless torment does not rest on the demerit of sinful deeds, which is the standard of judgment that he holds up, but on conceptions concerning a totally depraved nature, a God inflamed with wrath, a vicarious atonement rejected, or some other ethnic tradition or ritual consideration equally foreign to his mind and hostile to his heart.
Fifthly, if we reason on the popular belief that the letter of Scripture teaches only unerring truth, we have the strongest argument of all against the eternal hopelessness of future punishment. The doctrine of Christ's descent to hell underlies the New Testament. We are told that after his death "he went and preached to the spirits in prison." And again we read that "the gospel was preached also to them that are dead." This New Testament idea was unquestionably a vital and important feature in the apostolic and in the early Christian belief. It necessarily implies that there is probation, and that there may be salvation, after death. It is fatal to the horrid dogma which commands all who enter hell to abandon every gleam of hope, utterly and forever. The symbolic force of the doctrine of Christ's descent and preaching in hell is this, as Guder says in his "Appearance of Christ among the Dead," that the deepest and most horrible depth of damnation is not too deep and horrible for the pitying love which wishes to save the lost: even into the veriest depth of hell reaches down the love of God, and his beatific call sounds to the most distant distances. There is no outermost darkness to which his heavenly and all conquering light cannot shine. The book which teaches that Christ went even into hell itself, to seek and to save that which was lost,
15 Corrodi, Ueber die Ewigkeit der Hollenetrafen. In den Beitragen zur Beforderung des Vernunft. Denk. n. s. w. heft vii. ss. 41-72.