Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XI
CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER DEATH . . . 1
THE question of consciousness may now be taken up. Of
course every proof of it is proof also of existence. But many who allow that
the soul exists after death, will not allow that it is conscious. Thus Mr.
Hudson regards "the soul as an entity not destroyed by the death of the body,
however dependent it may be upon embodiment for the purposes of active
existence." So with others, whom I need not here quote. The thing contended for
is what is unknown to (while professedly based on) Scripture - "the sleep of
the soul."
But you never find in Scripture the soul sleeping. The man
sleeps, but always as identified with the body. It is a mode of speech found in
later Greek, outside the New Testament. It is never the soul that is in
question. So Matt. xxvii. 52, "many bodies of the saints which slept arose."
Again John xi. 11, "our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him
out of sleep," - i.e. by raising the dead. So Stephen fell asleep, and devout
men carried him to burial - i.e. his body. So "David fell asleep and was laid
unto his fathers, and saw corruption." Again in 1 Cor. vii. 39, "if her husband
be dead (asleep) she is at liberty to be married to whom she will." There it is
no question of soul or spirit. Again, ch. xi. 30, "many sleep": he is thinking
of it as chastening, not the joy of presence with the Lord, which the soul had.
Again, ch. xv. 6, "some are fallen asleep," - fallen out of the rank of
witnesses. Ch. xv. 18, "then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ
are perished." Ver. 20: "Christ is risen from the dead and become the
first-fruits of them that slept." There again the resurrection of the body is
in question.
So always, if death be looked at as chastening, sorrowed
over as we do over the breathless corpse, if it be simple history of the
outward fact, or if resurrection be in question, it is here that we find the
phrase which people have blundered over, perfectly simple, intelligible and
beautiful, as we gaze upon the inanimate form, and brush away our tears at the
thought, "our brother shall rise again".
Mr. Constable, as usual with
him, contends for the identification of man with his body, and absolutely
ignores the Scriptures which identify man with his soul or spirit. He can
therefore from his point of view say: "If people will say, it is only the body
that sleeps, then they must allow that the body by itself, is man. If they say
that man has both body and soul, and that these united constitute man, then
they must allow that both body and soul sleep." On the same principle we must
affirm that when Paul was caught up to the third heavens, inasmuch as it was
the man, Paul, who was caught up, and man is body, soul and spirit, therefore
that about which he was ignorant was whether he, body, soul and spirit, had
been "out of the body" or not: Mr. Constable chooses to ignore, it seems, this
whole class of texts. No wonder, then, if he lose his balance and fall into
error. It is not only his, it is common to materialists of every class. We have
before considered this, however, and need not repeat again what has been said
in our very first chapter.
Mr. Constables argument as to 1 Thess.
iv. 13 goes beyond the question of the application of the figure. He argues
that the apostle here virtually denies the commonly held doctrine of the
intermediate state.
"If those he wrote to mourned for separation, if Paul
comforted them with the prospect of reunion, if he pointed to the resurrection
as the consoling prospect when their longed-for reunion would be accomplished,
then by every fair inference he did not believe or teach that there would be
any reunion before the resurrection."
If the premises were true the
inference might be a fair one. But the grief of the Thessalonians was not the
mere personal grief of separation, amid the apostles comfort for them is
not the mere prospect of reunion. It is, that "we which are alive and remain to
the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (or precede) them which are asleep;
for . . . the dead in Christ shall rise first." The thought of the Thessalonian
saints was this, that if Christ were to come, as they believed He soon might,
the dead in Christ would be shut out of the joy of welcoming and being with Him
then by the fact of their death. The apostle assures them the living would have
no precedence over the dead in this respect: the dead in Christ would be raised
even before the change of the living, and together they would be caught up to
meet the Lord and be with Him. Thus the intermediate state was not at all in
question. How could it be for those ALIVE till the coming of the Lord? How
could living people be united with dead ones in an intermediate state?
Abundance of inspired testimony there is that death is not for the
soul, a state of unconsciousness. The passages are well known, and need only to
be cleared from the objections which have been raised to their apparently very
simple meaning.
The conceptions of the Pharisees upon this point are
acknowledged on all hands, and the familiar story of Lazarus and the rich man
in the 16th of Luke is confessedly in full accordance with them; yet they would
forbid us to believe this to be anything more than accommodation to the
superstitions of those whom the Lord addressed. Mr. Roberts indeed very
naturally suggests that "it may be asked, Why did Christ parabolically employ a
belief that was fictitious, and thus give it His apparent sanction?" To which
he answers, that He "was not using it with any reference to itself (!) but for
the purpose of introducing a dead mans testimony. . . . This did not
involve his sanction of the theory, any more than he approved of slavery by
introducing it into his parable of the ungrateful debtor. . . It may be urged
that it was unlike Christ to perpetuate delusion, and withhold the truth on
such an important question as that involved in the parable used. To this the
reply will be found in the following (Matt. xiii. 10, 11)." That is, that "to
them it was not given to know the mysteries of kingdom of heaven," and that
therefore He spoke in parables, because "seeing they saw not, and hearing they
did not understand."
But Mr. Roberts will permit me to say, that he has
entirely failed to justify the thing he pleads for. For the reason last given
is a reason for the Lord speaking in parables indeed, but not for His making
parables (as he admits) "perpetuate delusion." The introducing slavery into a
parable was only introducing what, under certain restrictions, the Mosaic law
permitted; and if it had not been so, the bare introduction of a custom that
obtained as not sanctioning it, while the introduction of what had no
existence, save as superstition, would tend, as he owns, to "perpetuate" it.
This is a difference which upsets all his conclusions. But then, he asks," Are
we to make a parable paramount, and throw away plain testimony? Are we to twist
and violate what is clear to make it agree with what we think is meant by what
is admittedly obscure?"
Indeed this is the common refuge of writers of
this class. Mr. Dobney, it is true, seems to admit all we claim about it. He
cannot really, since he contends that "Scripture recognizes no perfectly
disembodied state." He probably applies it therefore to the final state. But
his words are: "Our Lord shows an ungodly man in a state of wretchedness after
death. How long it would last is not intimated. It is true there was no hope
for him. He could not buoy himself up with the prospect of restoration to
enjoyment. But whether that torment should endure forever, or would ultimately
destroy him, the parable does not intimate. It teaches a terrible and hopeless
state for the wicked after death, and that is all."
Edwin Burnham also
seems to admit the doctrine of conscious existence after death. Speaking of
eternal punishment he says, "So far as this question is concerned, man may be
conscious or unconscious in death until the final judgment. Therefore the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus proves nothing to the point of eternal
torment, for that parable refers to some transaction BEFORE the judgment." But
then he adds, "The same may be said of all those scriptures which to some SEEM
to teach that the dead are in a conscious state."
For the rest, all
seem to agree with Mr. Hastings: "Of course the parable of the rich man and
Lazarus is not reckoned as teaching the doctrine; for all laws of criticism
forbid that parables be made use of to teach doctrines."
Unfortunately for
those, however, who speak thus, they themselves are forced to admit that,
parable or not, it is founded upon" what Mr. Roberts calls "a theoretic fact,"
i. e., the belief of the Pharisees. That the object of it, moreover, is really
to lift the veil from the other world will be plain if we consider the
connection with the rest of the chapter. For the Lord had been speaking in the
first part of it of man as an unfaithful steward under sentence of dismissal,
but with the goods of his Divine Master yet in his hand. He had thereupon
exhorted them: "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."
Thereupon the Pharisees, who were covetous, derided Him, and to them He
preaches this (parable, if you please) to show how what was highly esteemed
among men was abomination in the sight of God. The point is here: "Thou in thy
lifetime receivedst thy good things," and now "thou art tormented." No crime is
charged but this, his failure as to the unrighteous mammon. He could not serve
God and mammon. He had served mammon and not God. And, while the beggar he had
neglected was borne from his gate into Abrahams bosom, he was tormented.
How this addressed itself to covetous Pharisees is easily seen. And the state
described is of a man immediately after death, in torment, before the
resurrection and the judgment, with brethren still on earth to be preached to.
You may call it parable, if you will. The state of the dead is the very
thing it is designed to enforce; and this representation of it is acknowledged
to be based on Pharisaic sentiments.
It is singular, however, how the terms
used by our Lord are quarrelled with. If literally construed, Mr. Roberts
urges,* "it upsets the belief it is quoted to prove, and substitutes the
tradition of the Pharisees, which Jesus was parabolically using. If a literal
narrative, it clashes with the popular theory of the death state in the
following particulars. We read, ver. 21, that the beggar died; and WAS CARRIED
- not his immaterial soul, but he, his bodily self - by the angels into
Abrahams bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell,
where he had been buried (hell, hades and grave being synonymous) he lifted up
his eyes," etc. He also tells us that "immaterial souls" could easily have got
over the great gulf fixed; and that if the popular view were correct, a spirit
might have been sent to the live brethren without one needing to rise from the
dead.
*Twelve Lectures
.
This is, no doubt, said in serious
earnest, although it may not seem so. But it is a specimen of the blinding
delusion under which these men lie. Think of a man telling us, that it was the
tradition of the Pharisees, that men were carried bodily after death into
Abrahams bosom; that hades or hell and the grave were synonymous! and
that men were tormented in the grave! If this parable teaches literally the
traditions of the Pharisees, this is what he says it teaches.
But I
pursue this no further than to ask where the parable states that the
beggars "bodily self" was carried into Abrahams bosom? Of course,
if there is no other self than a bodily one, all is plain. But that is as
little the doctrine of the Bible as it was of the Pharisees. As to hades, and
what it is, we may see shortly: But would it not be rather foolish, even in a
parable, to put it that "in the grave he lifted up his eyes, being in torment"?
To such straits are men reduced who refuse the Scripture doctrine of the
souls consciousness after death. We may well thank God for making it so
plain.
Figurative, no doubt, the language is. "Abrahams bosom"
is not literal, any more than the gulf over which souls cannot pass. Nor do we
contend for souls absent from the body having eyes or tongues or fingers. Mr.
Roberts asks in view of this; how, if we "feel at liberty to admit the
non-actuality of these things spoken of as apparently real," can we be "so sure
about the reality of the other parts that apparently favour (our) theory of the
death state?"
I answer: first, because it is addressed to
Pharisees and founded (as Mr. R. himself acknowledges) on their belief, which
the Lord thus takes up and adopts without a word of protest, without one hint
of its being the gross and heathenish delusion Mr. R. would have it.
Secondly, because figures, as it would seem, must necessarily be
used in speaking of a state so far removed from anything of which we have
experience That is, words, phrases, and ideas, borrowed from things around us
must be taken and adapted to these unseen things.
Thirdly, if the
object were only to represent a final award in resurrection no reason can be
given for not picturing that award directly, as is done elsewhere instead of
representing it under the figure of a fabulous death state. The perfectness of
the representation would surely suffer so unnatural a proceeding.
The
figures are not difficult at least to read intelligently, for one who is as to
this point of doctrine a Pharisee, as we shall see Paul the apostle was, and as
we may confess ourselves without shame to be. And thus are conveyed to us
thoughts that it seems in no other way could we have so vividly presented. The
meaning is only so clear, that those who oppose it are driven to the wildest
expedients to escape from its plain speaking.
Thus Dr. Leask transcends
even Mr. Roberts in grotesque effrontery. He says* as to Lazarus being
carried into Abrahams bosom: "Fact it cannot be. Otherwise you have the
extraordinary thought of angels carrying a dead man, a loathsome corpse, to the
bosom of Abraham"!! Shall we add the still more extraordinary thought of this
"loathsome corpse" being "comforted" in this strange resting place! and of the
rich man wanting to send it to his five brethren, etc. But, says Dr. L., "this
parable is unequalled for the vividness of its imagery"! And he adds, after the
usual fashion: "The word translated hell here is hades, the Greek
equivalent of the Hebrew sheol and of the English grave," etc. Vivid imagery
indeed!
*The Rich Man and Lazarus.
Again, "Surely sober and
serious thought must convince any one, that the conversation between the rich
man and Abraham must be parabolic, for Abraham himself was dead. (!) If
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are consciously alive, our Lords argument to
convince the Sadducees of resurrection loses its point. God is not the God of
the dead but of the living: therefore these honoured saints shall rise from the
dead some day; that is the argument, and it is irresistible."
Dr. Leask
has scarcely read the passage attentively enough, or he would have seen that if
God said at the bush, "I AM the God of Abraham," and He is not the God of the
dead, Abraham must have been in some sense living then; or it would have been
"I was Abrahams God, while he lived, and I will be, when he lives again."
There is one other argument the doctor gives, which has somewhat more
in it: that "neither rewards nor punishments are given till after judgment,"
which Mr. Constable has enlarged somewhat more upon, and therefore I leave it
to look at it with him. These then are Dr. Leasks reasons for turning
aside the application of this parable from the death state altogether, and
applying it to the setting aside of Israel and the bringing in of the Gentiles
by the gospel. This, to convict "covetous" Pharisees of their liability to be
excluded from " everlasting habitations"!
General Goodwyn* attempts to
show that the Lord in his parabolic teachings did "adopt some of the prevalent
[false] conceptions, and proved by the unerring wisdom of His mode of
treatment, their fictitious origin and constitution. He adduces the first four
parables of the kingdom of heaven in Matt. xiii. in proof of this position. But
he neither does, nor can, show that the Lord incorporated any prevalent errors
with His teaching there or anywhere else. The Lord gives us on the contrary
what is simple and recognizable truth as to the form the kingdom should assume
in the period of His absence. For the kingdom exists now, and the condition of
it of which He speaks exists also. The "popular ideas" Gen. Goodwyn seems to
refer to are but misapprehensions of these very parables, and not errors He
adopts in anywise. Let him put his finger if he can upon one error the Lord
teaches there or elsewhere.
*Truth and Tradition.
Now here, if
the consciousness of the dead is error, the Lord does teach it, and without the
least warning of its being such. The two inconsistencies the General thinks to
be in the parable are not there: viz., either the "final condition of
punishment " being "before the day of judgment," or people being "in the body."
Very strangely does he add: "Thus were these traditional and palpably erroneous
views woven into the Divine discourse, serving the purpose of exposing the
conceit of mere human theology"! Were these things "traditional"? Certainly
not, at least, the thought of being in the body after death; or can he produce
the tradition? Granting they were "traditional" and also "palpably erroneous,"
if their error were not palpable in the tradition themselves, how could the
Lords adopting them make them become so? Surely the reasoning is as
pitiable as much of what we have elsewhere had upon the same side.
But
he still goes on:
"This parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a
supplement to that at the beginning of the chapter, of the rich man and his
steward, both being designed to enforce the piercing truth, that that
which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God,
ver. 15, the connecting link between the two. In regard to the first parable,
human craft had instituted the idea that a welcome to the everlasting
habitations was to be secured by means of the friendship of
unrighteous mammon, or worldly riches; palpably in opposition to
the principle of ver. 15; but by mentioning the incident of the unjust steward,
the Lord showed that, though man might commend his act, it is divinely deemed
unrighteous still."
And this is exposition of Scripture! "He placed the
rich man in the flame, and the beggar in Abrahams bosom, thereby proving
that a position in the kingdom of heaven could not be purchased by
unrighteous mammon. " Doubtless it could not; but was it not just
his not having made himself friends of the unrighteous mammon that placed the
rich man in the flame? Who can deny or doubt it? And who can suppose that
solemn exhortation, "I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness," with the questions following: "If, therefore, ye have not
been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true
riches," etc., to be the adoption of error? If General Goodwyn cannot reconcile
this with the gospel, he is ignorant of the blessed fact, that the gospel in no
wise sets aside the eternal principles of right and wrong, but reaffirms them
all. True, riches will not purchase heaven, nor could aught save the
Redeemers blessed work. True, eternal life is Gods gift, not
mans purchase or his work. Yet shall "they that have done good come forth
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the
resurrection of damnation" That "we are His workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works," is the connecting truth that puts all in its place and
explains all.
I need not then repeat what I have said already as to the
scope of these parables, nor follow the argument further with General Goodwyn.
We shall only finally examine Mr. Constables treatment of this subject in
his volume on Hades, already so largely quoted.
He, too, asserts that
"in the words of Christ, hades is identified with the grave, and the dead in
hades are represented as alive and speaking." This we reserve for future
consideration He begins the argument with a significant statement that, if this
parable "could be truly shown to teach their [the non-extinction] views, the
only effect would be that of establishing a contradiction between one part of
Scripture and an other, or of affording reason to think that this parable of
Lazarus despite the authority of manuscripts, formed no part of the original
Gospel of St. Luke." (1)
He begins by asserting, what I shall not
question at all, that this story is a parable. He contends that on this account
"the entire tale may be fictitious." But, while talking as usual freely of
Platonism he ignores the fact so fully allowed by others, and so impossible to
be denied, that it adopts (and, the argument is, sanctions) the belief of the
Pharisees. This plainly puts it on ground different altogether from those Mr.
C. appeals to, wherein "the trees engage in political discourse," etc. Even
this sort of representation we never find the Lord using in His parables, that
I am aware But certainly He never adopted the superstitions He condemned, nor
made the traditions of men the basis of His own authoritative teaching. This
plain distinction Mr. Constable seems never to have thought of, and of course
has not noticed it. In reality it takes the ground from underneath his feet.
Not only is the argument quite unanswerable, that the Lord could not have
employed falsehood as the vehicle of truth (and without even a hint as to its
being false), but that also the very moral of the tale is this, "And I say unto
you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that when ye
fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." This is the rich
mans condemnation: his riches were his accusers now, and not his friends.
He had received his good things, taken his portion in a world that passeth
away. Now he was tormented. And observe how precisely the language accords with
this: it is "when ye fail" - that is, of course, die; not when you are raised
as Mr. Constable must read it; no, but that "WHEN YE FAIL, they may receive you
into everlasting habitations." The precise doctrine is there, given in plain
words and not parable at all, and illustrating and confirming the parable.
We might leave Mr. Constables argument here, but there is one
other point, insisted on already both by Leask and Goodwyn., to which we must
reply before we close. Mr. Constable supposes -
"that Christ, for the
purpose of his parable, antedates it. What will really happen to such men as
Dives and Lazarus when they are raised up at the resurrection, he supposes to
happen to them in Hades before the resurrection; and he consequently supposes
them to be alive in this Hades state, and capable of feeling, speech, etc. . .
In His explanation of parable upon parable He has Himself explained that it is
not until the time of the harvest, until the end of the
world or age, that His people are gathered into His barn and shine as the
sun, while the wicked are sent as tares to the burning. Over and over He has
told us that Gehenna, and not Hades, is the place of torment. . . . We are
therefore not merely justified, but absolutely required by Scripture to hold
that our Lord in this parable antedates it in time, a liberty which the nature
and character of parabolical discourse fully entitled Him to do."
Now
the passage we have just quoted from the chapter before us, and manifestly
connected with the parable in question, affirms the opposite of this: "that
when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations." This shows
that at death we are received, and that there is no antedating. Doubtless it is
after the judgment of works, and therefore after resurrection, that the exact
recompense is given, the exact measure of punishment is meted out. But in the
meanwhile the spirits of the lost are "spirits in prison" (1 Pet.. iii. 19),
with no uncertainty as to their being lost, any more than he who, "absent from
the body," is "present with the Lord," is uncertain of his own salvation. Even
now are we privileged to know the latter if really ours (1 John v. 13). And "
the angels who sinned" referred to by the apostle Peter; though "reserved unto
judgment" are yet "delivered into chains of darkness," while waiting for it (2
Peter ii. 4). Similarly the "host of the high ones" and "the kings of the
earth" "shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and
shall be shut up in the prison," after a whole millennium "to be visited" and
judged. (See Isa. xxiv. 21-23, and compare Rev. xix. 19-xx. 3, etc.)
Then it is a false application Mr. Constable makes of the parables of
the tares and wheat. For these "tares" are men alive, "in the field," the
world, when the Lord comes, and not dead men at all, So exactly with the
"wheat." The Lord is speaking of the clearing of the field in the day of
harvest, and not at all of resurrection even. Nay more, the very parable itself
is decisive against his whole argument. For the tares gathered and cast in the
fire are so dealt with when the Lord appears, before the millennium, and
therefore a thousand years before the resurrection and judgment of the wicked
at the great white throne. Let any one compare Rev. xix., xx., and see if it be
not so.
Again the Lord does say that there is torment in Gehenna; but
he does not say, that in Hades there is none. The Scripture Mr. Constable
refers to conclusively against him. The plain and simple impression which any
one would receive from the first bearing of the parable, becomes only the more
indisputably correct, the more we examine it. There is the harmony and
consistency of truth in it, and this the arguments of its opposers only the
more bring out.
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