Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
PART 1. - MAN AS HE
IS
CHAPTER I - IS THE BODY ALL?
In the language of absolute materialism the body is the
whole man. It may need breath or "spirit (in the Thomasite sense) to make
it capable of fulfilling its functions, but in materialistic language, thought,
reason, mind, are properties pertaining to "brain in human form." Dr. Thomas
gravely adduces Rom. viii. 6, where he translates the "thinking of the flesh,"
as an irrefragable proof that the "flesh is the thinking substance," i. e., the
brain; which, in another place, he adds, the apostle "terms the fleshy tablet
of the heart."(!)* I only quote this now as evidencing how thoroughly with them
the body is all. The man, they say, was such before the breath of life
was breathed into him. "Dust thou art" expresses what be is in his whole being.
Says Mr. Constable, "God formed man of the dust of the ground. Here we have the
figure as it lay lifeless and thoughtless; and yet this figure was man. We
cannot dispute this, for God tells us so Himself. It was man, before he could
think; or feel, or Breathe." To this being of course the inspiration of
the breath of life gives life. "Soul" with Mr. Constable, as with most of
similar views, is "life"; with Dr. Thomas and his party it is sometimes that,
sometimes the breathing frame; ie., of course the body. Spirit is either the
breath of life itself, or a principle contained in it, a kind of vitalizing
energy. The man himself is the body - the dust that lies in the grave. Spirit
and soul "may again be disassociated from man; man may return to his old
condition ere he had them at all, and the dead body they have left is then the
man, the person, the self"§ "Where," is Mr. Blains emphatic
challenge, "where does the book of nature or the book of God tell what soul or
man is made of, except in the earth-wide and heaven-broad declaration,
Dust thou art?"#
(*"Elpis Israel," p. 80.
Roberts objects that it is not defined whether a living body is meant or
not. "If so," he says, "we admit the charge of holding that the living body is
the whole man, and are wondering what objection Mr. Grant himself can have to
this view; for, even with his immortal Soul theory, he cannot avoid regarding
the living body as the whole man, since the living body contains (!) that which
his theory teaches him to regard as the principal part of man."So that, if the
house contains the man, the man and the house are all one with Mr. Roberts!
Even this is not quite the full statement, as witness Mr. Constables
language further on. But Mr. R. may put in " living" if he please: a living
body is still not the spirit nor the soul. Hades, p. 2. §Ib., p. 5.
#Death not Life, 12th ed., p. 42. )
Confidence so assured ought to be
well founded. The answer is easy, that they are only quoting one side of
Scripture, with their eyes shut to all that is inconsistent with their theory.
Mr. Constable, for instance, thus represents and characterizes "the current
opinion of Christendom." "Man is with them a soul, which may or may not inhabit
the body, but which, whether inhabiting the body or not inhabiting it, is the
true and proper man. This opinion we believe to be the very foundation stone of
an amazing amount of false doctrine. This false philosophy regarding human
nature has tainted the theology of centuries."* (*Hades, p. 4.)
Now, how is it possible that Mr. Constable has never seen that this "current
opinion of Christendom," which he is opposing, is the statement of Scripture,
no less than is his own? that, if there are on the one side passages such as
those he quotes, which seem to make the body all, there are many on the other
side that would equally seem to make the body nothing? Thus we read: "The life
that I now live in the flesh" (Gal ii. 20); "If I live in the flesh "(Phil. i.
22); "Whilst we are at home in the body" (2 Cor. v. 6); "Willing rather to be
absent from the body" (ver. 8); "Whether in the body or out of the body, I
cannot tell" (xii. 3); "As being yourselves also in the body" (Heb. xiii. 3);
"In my flesh shall I see God" (Job xix. 26); "Knowing that I must put off this
my tabernacle" (2 Pet. i. 14).
Now I ask Mr. Constable, is not here the
very language he objects to, the foundation stone (as being Scripture) not of
error but of truth? I accept his view that such expressions are indeed the
fundamental opposite of his opinions. On the materialistic supposition the
language used in these passages never could have arisen. It is not a question
of the interpretation of any special text, but of the use of words .which
contradict at the outset the whole materialistic philosophy. Men have sought to
evade it by interpreting phrase "in the body" to mean "in this body," as if it
were in contrast with the glorious body of the resurrection. But the fact that
they have to change the expression, in order make it suit them, is a clear
evidence that it does not suit them as it is. For in the resurrection man will
still be "in the body," though it be raised glorious as it will: and in point
of fact, it is to the resurrection body that in the passage just quoted Job
refers: "In my flesh shall I see God." They may perhaps quote against this,
that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;" but it will not avail
them; for the Lords own expression as to His own body in resurrection is,
that He had "flesh and bones,"* though not "flesh and blood," and it is the
combination of the two of which the text cited speaks. And the Lord was
raised from the dead, the "first fruits" and pattern of our resurrection from
the beginning, not raised and changed afterwards, even as they that sleep in
Him are "raised in glory." There is no escape from the plain speaking of
the passage in Job, that to that which is "raised in glory" he refers. And this
alone is positive proof that "in the flesh" or "in the body" does not, as a
phrase, speak of a present corruptible body in contrast with an incorruptible
one.(*Luke xxiv. 39. 1 Cor. xv. 50. 1 Cor. xv. 43.)
And there are other texts which would still stand in the way of their
establishment of this position, if the passage in Job were gone. For when the
apostle says of his vision of the third heaven, that he could not tell whether
he was "in the body or out of the body," no words are needed to assure us that
here there was no question of the resurrection body. For it was not when he was
up in the third heaven, that he did not know if he were "out of the body;" had
it been so, there might have been some kind of doubt as to whether he might not
have fancied, in the entrancement of the vision, that the resurrection had
already come. But his words are precise and prohibit absolutely such a
supposition. He could not, at the time he wrote, question whether he had been
clothed with the resurrection body, and again lost it on his return to earth.
Yet here "in the body" and "out of the body" are just as much in contrast as
"at home in the body" and "absent from the body" in 2 Cor. v. 6-8. And as "out
of the body" cannot in this case mean "in the resurrection state," so "in the
body" cannot mean, as they would make it, "in this corruptible state."*
( *To all this Mr. Roberts demurs upon the warrant, as he represents it,
of Rom. vii. 1, 2 Cor. 1. 8, and a list of passages of the class already
adduced by Messrs. Constable and Blain. He takes "my flesh" in the first
passage to mean "my body," and argues thereupon that Paul calls his "flesh"
himself, and moreover attributes sin to it, and not to his soul! He does not
see that in ver. 25 the apostle opposes the mind" to the" flesh," and
identifies himself with the former in opposition to the latter. If, as with Mr.
Roberts, the" mind " is only the working of the flesh, no such distinction is
possible. The apostles words are thus conclusively against him. )
Hopeless indeed would be mans condition if the flesh and the body were
but one, and "they that are in the body could not please God" (see Rom. viii.
8); and strange enough what the apostle affirms of Christians, that they are
"not in the flesh." The whole use of the language here is foreign to
materialistic speech. As to the Scripture doctrine of the flesh we shall have
to speak of it hereafter.
As to 2 Cor. i. 8, we may easily admit that Paul
identifies himself with the body there, without in the least invalidating the
testimony of the texts which use an opposite style. Nor does Paul " look here
to resurrection for hope," but to the God of resurrection, and gets present
deliverance. On the other hand, the belief in the immortality of the mind does
not in the least set aside the hope of resurrection. As we may by and by see,
it secures it.
As to Mr. R.s list of texts, no Christian has any
difficulty with them At all. But think of quoting "my DECEASE" (2 Pet. i. 15),
literally, my exodus" or "departure," to support a materialistic purpose! Think
of supposing "I was unknown by face," or "whatever a man soweth, that shall us
reap," or "avenged the blood of His SERVANTS," with all the emphasis that
italics and small capitals can give, will connect immortal soulists by their
bare citation!
He then comes to the passages which he has to meet. In Gal.
ii. 20, he takes the apostle as expressing present existence in contrast with
the life that "is to come." But that is not the question. Why such an
expression as "in the flesh" at all, if he were nought but flesh?
"Absence
from the body," again, cannot be resurrection by any possibility whatever. So
as to Job, how else could Job see God, in Mr. R.s way of thinking, except
indeed, as he says in another case, he dreamed of Him? And that will scarce do
here.
How decisive these passages really are against him Mr. R. shows by
styling them "the inevitable FICTIONS of mortal speech." But why
inevitable? Could not materialism indeed dispense with them? And why
"fictions," after all they convey his meaning?
Roberts suggests that
"without the body" means that the things were seen as in a dream." But how is
even a dream "without the body," as he phrases it? The apostle puts it still
more forcibly, "out of the body." Nor has he any doubt of being actually caught
away to Paradise, a place that for Mr. Roberts has no present existence; it is
the renewed earth, in his belief. Did Mr. Roberts ever (with his theory of
thinking flesh, moreover) even dream without the body, and then awake, and be
ignorant ever after, whether or not he had been carried bodily to a place which
he knew had no existence?
The terms then abide in all their simplicity,
full of the meaning which from their simplicity they possess. Nay, if the
comments of Annihilationists were just, their force would be little affected.
For, be it in contrast with a resurrection body or not (as certainly in these
last places it is not), still the man himself is looked at as "IN the body;"
not the soul is in it, or the spirit is in it merely, but the MAN. That which
lies in the body (and that is the force of the expression in 2 Cor. v. 6)* is
the man. So much so that the body is looked at as the "tabernacle" (2 Pet. i.
14), which the man "puts off."
( *The word used means "to live at
or in a place" (Liddell and Scott). Mr. Roberts comment is: "All that
constitutes our individuality" [what is this according to him?] "dwells
in the body of our humiliation; but the destiny of the saint is to have this
corruptible clothed upon with a subduing energy, that will change it from flesh
and blood nature into spirit nature." In no place is it said that we are
clothed with an "energy"; but Mr. R. wanted something to clothe, and he could
hardly clothe one body with another body. )
We have not yet inquired
who or what the inhabitant of the body is. Be it spirit or soul, or both
together, the phraseology of Scripture in these texts asserts that the body has
such an inhabitant. And this language it is that Mr. Constable accuses (under
another name, no doubt) as being "the very foundation stone" of the doctrine he
opposes. Scripture, then, he is witness to himself; lays thus the foundation of
the immortality of the soul. Paul sees visions, and has so little thought that
the body is all, that he does not know whether he was in it or not, at the time
he saw them. Plainly, therefore, he supposes he might be a conscious,
intelligent witness of unutterable things while "out of the body."
We are
prepared, then, to answer Mr. Blains confident inquiry, if at least we
may take for granted that that which Paul thought might be "out of the body" is
not "dust." If it be, it is at any rate dust which is not the body, and which
can exist consciously in separation from it.
The question is thus a long
way toward settlement. If it be still asked, What about the texts which, on
their side, Annihilationists lay stress upon? Is not "dust thou art" Scripture?
And is it not equally written that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground"? and that "devout men carried Stephen" - not his body merely - "to his
burial"?
I answer, it is just as plain that in these texts man is
identified with his body, as he is in the former ones with his spirit or his
soul. It would be wrong to argue exclusively from either class of passages: as
wrong to say man is all soul, upon the authority of one, as to say he is all
body, upon the authority of the other. This last is the vitiating error of Mr.
Constables whole argument. Neither body, nor soul, nor spirit is the man
exclusively, but "spirit and soul and body" (1 Thess. v. 23) make up the man;
insomuch that he may be, and is, identified with either, according to the line
of thought which is in the mind of the speaker; his identification with the
body, which man sees and touches, being in general the language of sense, while
faith identifies him with the unseen "spirit."* Our poor Annihilationists see
and confess what sense recognizes, and are blind to the other. It is a sad
evidence of their condition.
(*Mr. Roberts attempts to answer
this are strange enough, and need a very long examination. He asserts that
faith is nothing but "belief of promise," and has to do only with the future!
So that one could not "by faith understand that the worlds were made," or
"believe that God is"! )
That he will have it that the spirit is
recognized by sense, as much as the body, because "spirit" is sometimes used
for "anger" in Scripture, and it does not require faith to note that a man is
angry! As the spirit with Mr. R. is electricity, it is rather a wonder he did
not propose to insulate a person, and demonstrate his "spirit" still more
satisfactorily.
Then he thinks that "faith cometh by [the sense of]
hearing" helps his case; but how, he does not make clear, as it is no question
of how it comes at all. Mr. R. surely must allow that the human spirit (in our
view of it at least) is a thing unseen, and faith is the "evidence of things
unseen." This is the ground of the statement he objects to.
Of the Lord
Jesus Himself; I read in the account of His burial, "there laid they Jesus,"
and that Joseph "took Him down, and wrapped Him in the linen, and laid Him in
the sepulchre" (John xix. 42; Mark xv. 46). Is this, therefore, conclusive that
the Lord was "all body," as similar words about Stephen would seem to be to
some, that he was? Take some of Mr. Constables emphatic statements, which
he does not hesitate to apply* to the Lord Himself. He contends that the common
opinion leads to "the absurdity of supposing that death has converted one
person into two. In life there was but one Abraham, in death there are two! . .
. . In life there was but one Christ; during the three days of His death there
were two!. . . One Christ was in Josephs tomb; another Christ was
preaching to spirits in prison, or otherwise busily occupied"! Which of these
Christs is the true one for him he does not leave doubtful. The "Bible persists
in calling the body when dead the man. It says that Abraham and Jacob and David
. . . are in the grave, and it never says that they are in heaven, or anywhere
else but in the grave." Of necessity, then, this must be the conclusion: If
spirit is but the impersonal breath of life, and soul but the life resultant,
then, when these had departed, there was nothing of Christ but what was laid in
the grave. It may be said, of course, that the words apply only to the humanity
of the Lord, and not to His divinity. This argument for Mr. Constable will not
hold. The Lord, Divine and human, was in life but one person. Death could not
divide the one Person into two! The Person, Mr. Constable says, is the body
that lay in the tomb: Deity, soul and spirit go for nothing. The Lord was in
the grave and nowhere else! Dare Mr. Constable abide by his own
conclusions?
( *Hades, p.7. )
All have not formulated the
doctrine as completely. His logical consistency has carried him where, we may
hope, many will hesitate to follow. But as to the consistency there can be no
question. Just as simply and as surely as "David" or "Stephen" is said to
denote the whole personality of David or of Stephen, so (after the same mode of
interpretation) must "Christ" and "the Lord" denote the whole personality of
Christ. Now, let me ask, was there a true and personal Christ who survived
death, or not? If so, "the Lord," in the whole force of that expression, did
not lie in Josephs tomb; the words are only an example of the language of
sense which applies to the material part we see and touch, and we are
manifestly precluded from carrying them further. Now, if the Lord lay in the
grave, and yet the higher part did not lie there, so (plainly) might David, or
Stephen, or Moses, lie in the grave, and yet have another and higher part of
them which did not lie there.
Thomasism, with its fearless
self-consistency in error, and shameless denial of the glory of His Person,
does not shrink from the extreme result. The One who, walking on earth, could
yet say, "The Son of man who is in heaven," they are strangers to. But I would
ask even them, if their horrible thoughts were true, how He who had "power to
lay down his life," had (after having laid it down) "power to take it again."
If the dead are nothing, and know nothing, as they teach, how could a dead body
have power to take its life back? (John x. 18).* How could He say "Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up ? He spake of the temple of His
body." Here it is scarcely possible even to equivocate. For it was one
who spake of His own body, who said He would raise it up. They cannot say it
was the Father speaking of "His own body," and therefore their constant
manuvre fails them here. If Jesus, then, raised up His own body, there
must have been One not buried in that tomb of Joseph, One surviving death, to
raise it up. Death is not, then, extinction, for Jesus truly "died." That "the
Lord lay" in Josephs tomb is truth, but not the whole truth. Insisted on
as such, it becomes fatal and soul-destroying error.
( *Roberts contends
that here "the word translated power carries with it not so much
the idea of physical power as power in the sense of authority." It is true the
word is "power delegated, authority." It adds to the thought of power, that of
right. It is the word used in Matt. x. 1; Mark ii 10; iii. 15; vi. 7; Luke iv.
32; x. 19; xii. 5; John xix. 10, etc., in all which it is quite impossible to
exclude the idea of competency to perform whatever there was authority for. You
could not clothe a mere corpse with "authority." It would be mockery. And,
therefore, the word must be "take" and not "receive."
John ii.
19-22. )
The language of Scripture, then (as Mr. Constable is witness),
lays the foundation stone of the souls immortality in its assertion that
the man dwells in the body, and this is not denied by its speaking elsewhere as
if the body were the man. From its own point of view, each of these things is
true.
Go to Chapter Two
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