Facts and
Theories as to a Future StateAPPENDIX
APPENDIX 2.
J. H. PETTINGELL: THE THEOLOGICAL
TRILEMMA.
Mr. Pettingells book appeared about the time my own
was published. It professes to be largely independent of kindred influences,
"written under such circumstances of isolation as prevented all access to the
volumes of his own or of any other library." "He has attempted simply to
express his own sentiments, not those of other men." Yet both methods and
results differ little from other writers of his school. We have but space for
the review of the Scripture arguments, and indeed of those only that are in
some measure fresh, at least in the way of putting them.
A false
psychology, here as elsewhere, profoundly influences his conclusions: -
"Soul denotes the mind as connected with the vital principle of Adam. It is
what man has in common with other animals. It is cosmical in its relations. It
looks downward to the earth. It is natural and transitory, like all earthly
things. But Spirit denotes the mind or superior and supernatural vital
principle of Jesus Christ. It is from above. It tends heavenward, and is
indestructible. It is the spirit (Neshamah) of life, the breath of God Himself,
so to speak, which He only can communicate to man. The soul he receives by
ordinary generation, but the Spirit only by a new birth (Jno. iii. 3). The
possession of body and soul constitutes a natural man, but it needs the spirit
to constitute him a spiritual man, and an heir of eternal life" (p.26).
This is not new essentially, but the statement of it has some
originality. We shall scarcely understand it aright without connecting it with
the after-statements of chaps. vii. and viii.
Here he tells us, looking at
creation in its gradation from the lowest to the highest, we have, first,
chaotic matter; next, "aggregated into masses, having the property of cohesion,
which, for the want of a more general and comprehensive term, we call its life,
or, the life-power in its lowest manifestation"! Then, possessing chemical
properties. Then crystallizing, by "a certain formative life-force within."
Then organic life, as in die plant, with "a certain blind instinct."
"After this, comes matter possessing all the foregoing properties or various
degrees of the life-power, with a sensitive nature superadded, which is yet a
higher kind of life, with the power of thought, volition, and action. This kind
of life is called in Hebrew Nephesh, which means, living soul, or creature that
lives by breathing" "Last of all comes man, carrying with him all the
Properties, functions, and faculties of the orders beneath him, and yet endowed
with something more which links him with the invisible world above. This
peculiar property in man is called in the Hebrew Neshamah, a word never applied
to the brutes: the Greek equivalent is Pneuma; in Latin it is Spiritus, hence
our word Spirit; and the world above is called the spiritual world; and this
higher kind of life in man is called his spiritual life (pneumatikos life), to
distinguish it from his animal (or psuchikos) life."
In the fall, Mr.
Pettingells doctrine is that the spiritual part was lost, -
"The
soul of man, when it becomes entirely an animal soul by the loss of its
spiritual nature, becomes perishable like the soul of all other animals. But
when it is, or becomes, a spiritual soul, which can only be by union with God,
it may live forever. It is here that we see the real difference between the
real children of Adam by a natural birth and the children of God by a spiritual
birth, and why it is that while the former must perish, the latter are
immortal."
Let us examine this, then, with Scripture, so far as we can
take Scripture, for our author goes far beyond. Scripture says nothing of the
life-power manifested in cohesion, or in chemical combination, or even in the
crystal. Nor does it speak of the instinct of the plant This we may well pass
over. We must, however, deny that nephesh (or even nephesh chayah) means "a
creature that lives by breathing." We must also deny that neshamah represents
the spirit of man proper, or that it is represented by the Greek pneuma. Ruach
is the true word for spirit in the Hebrew, as pneuma is in the Greek, and that
whether it be the Spirit or God, the angel-spirits, or the spirit of man; and
this without any possibility of question. Both of these words have the lower
sense of breath, and neshamah is the ruach in action, most commonly signifies
"breathing" (in Greek not pneuma, but pnoe) although applied in the higher
sense in Prov. xx. 27.
Neshamah, moreover (necessarily in the lower
sense), is applied to the beast in Gen. vii. 22, while ruach in the sense of
spirit is not, save vaguely in Eccles. iii 21, - a passage elsewhere fully
examined.
Neither ruach nor pneuma speak necessarily of any product of new
birth. That is indeed "spirit" in nature, as if in the Lords words to
Nicodemus, but not the spirit of man, which is in every man still, and the
means of all human intelligence: "What man knoweth the things of a man, save
the spirit of man which is in him?" (I Cor. ii. 11.) Hence, if deprived of this
by the fall, every unrenewed man would be an idiot. If he had lost it, the
moral faculty also would be lost, and man could no more be a sinner than a
beast could be one; the gospel and the day of judgment would alike have no
possible significance for him.
But there are other incongruities. "The
word Neshamah, translated the breath of life, " says Mr.
Pettingell, "means the Spirit of God, and does not belong to man even, except
as it is breathed into him by God Himself." But when so breathed, as into Adam,
it becomes "the true normal life of the soul of man" (p. 112) and "the spirit
is the breath of God; it is an immortal principle, it cannot die."
It
is the Spirit of God, then, that becomes the life of man; yet, as it would
appear, it never belongs really to him. Indeed, if it did, the doctrine would
be dangerously near to incarnation. Nevertheless, the whole spiritual faculty
inheres in what does not properly belong to him: that is, if I understand it
aright, is no real constituent part of the man himself.
Whether I am
interpreting Mr. Pettingell rightly here, I can hardly say. The absurdity every
way is so great that it is only a question of choosing the least. For one
cannot suppose him to mean the Spirit of God became or becomes an integral part
of man - that he means this. Yet it is clear all the spiritual faculties reside
for him in this spirit of man which is the spirit or breath of God within him.
And then the necessary consequence follows as I have put it: either there is no
responsibility (for you cannot attribute it to the Spirit of God) or it is the
animal soul - which the beast has just as much as man - that is responsible.
Whichever horn of the dilemma our author please to choose, it is but a choice
of what is evidently and equally inconceivable on every side.
His
language seems to show a sense of perplexity, which he may not indeed have
faced so as to realize it. For with him both soul and spirit seem to attenuate
often into life of a higher or lower kind. The soul indeed he allows to be more
than life - an entity that lives; but of spirit, he says that "it denotes the
divine principle of life, dwelling primarily in God, and by Him communicated to
the soul of man as its peculiar divine life." Now, if we take his whole
doctrine, it would certainly seem as if this life were but an effect of the
Spirit of God inbreathed. It is a life communicated to the soul. The soul is
after all the real man: yet the soul is bestial, or (if you will), "animal."
How a spiritual life can be communicated to an animal soul is a question
difficult enough. But we are not called to answer it. Scripture is plain, and
contradicts the whole system which is here presented to us.
When we
come to consider the penalty, the same confusion follows us: -
"Against
whom or what is this threatening [of death] denounced? We reply, to the sinning
man himself most surely. Not to his hand, nor to his feet nor to his body but
to the whole man. What man holds of matter does not make up his
personality. They are his, not he. The words of threatening are,
Thou shalt surely die. It is not the body alone, nor the soul
alone, nor any two of them together - much less the body on the one hand and
the spirit on the other, while the soul, in which the personality of man
especially resides, is to live on forever. But the whole man, in the totality
of his being, is to die."
Then there seems to be a spirit to die. But
if it were merely a life communicated, the man would die, being dispossessed of
it, but not the life. You can no more truly speak of a life dying than of a
life living. The life does not possess life, but the man, or the soul, does.
Dying is losing life. If the spirit lose life, it must have had it. It must be
a distinct living entity.
But no, says Mr. Pettingell, the spirit is
the Spirit of God, "it is the breath of God; it is an immortal principle: it
cannot die" (p. 112). Certainly, if it be the Spirit of God, it cannot. But how
are we to reconcile these flat contradictories? We must once more leave this to
the author.
Really, there is no difficulty as to the threatening, if we
will only learn from Scripture what death is. It is the quiet assumption of
foundations which allows so many arguments to be built up apparently so
impregnably. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return" is the divine
judgment as announced to man when fallen, the divine interpretation of the doom
threatened before. But the soul is not dust; nor the spirit. These, then, are
not to return to dust. And when, at the end of ages of mortal existence, the
dead - the wicked dead - are called up before the "great white throne," "death
and hell" (or "hades") deliver up the dead which are "in them." Why "in them,"
if death in the same way applies to all? No; though the man dies, yet the blow
falls directly upon the body only. Death gives up the body; hades, the soul.
We have long since discussed this first sentence, which is not the
final one at all. The common mistake of reading into it the final one has
favoured the cause our author advocates. He goes on to insist, as all his party
do, upon life and death being used in application to soul or spirit in the same
material sense as when they apply to the body. "The words life and
death are as applicable to them, not as figures of speech in some
shadowy, tropical, unmeaning sense, but as actual verities, as to things
altogether material and sensible." Here the basis of the whole doctrine and its
materialism become apparent.
New birth, according to this teaching, is
the reconstitution of the man by the restoration to him of the spirit which he
has lost. Thus we are told clearly that the spirit in man is the spirit of life
(Neshamah), the breath of God Himself, so to speak," which "he receives only by
new birth" (p. 27). And this is "indestructible and eternal."
But this
is just what Adam is said to have had at the beginning: "The word Neshamah,
translated the breath of life, means the Spirit of God." "The
spirit is the breath of God; it is an immortal principle; it cannot die."
According to this, it would certainly seem that, as born again, we are brought
back again simply to the condition of Adam while yet unfallen, - guarded and
guaranteed to us, no doubt, through the work of Him in whom we receive it.
Still, in this case it seems strange to ask "by what means were they" - our
first parents, if unfallen, - "to rise to the higher celestial life - that
life and immortality that are brought to light in the gospel?" (p.
122.)
I can find nothing more in Mr. Pettingells book that needs
examination. His discussion of the special texts for eternal punishment is
especially weak and inadequate.
Go To App.3
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