Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST SENTENCE
As I have said, I do not refuse to consider the moral
aspects of the present question. But just now we are occupied with what must
necessarily precede all such considerations. The facts must be before us before
there can be any proper appreciation of them. We are searching for the facts of
the case, and any preliminary moral reasoning would be out of place would
hinder and not help our investigation.
The question of penalty stirs
all the feelings of our heart, and there are two things, often forgotten, which
should lead us to question how far we can safely allow their influence. The
first is, that we are judging in our own cause. The second, that the sin which
has entailed the penalty has enfeebled necessarily the power of true judgment.
The heart of man is not only "desperately wicked": it is deceitful too. Will it
be any more likely to judge righteous judgment because the cause it pronounces
upon is its own? Is the sinners estimate of sin and its desert so likely
to be right? Is there no self-interest in the way, no pride that would forbid
to stoop so low as to the truth? Ah, the heart of man! that question of the
All-seeing is the judgment of its trustworthiness: "Who can know it?"
Yet there is One who knows. Can I trust Him and has He spoken in such a
way that I can assuredly know what He has said? He has. I can. You might stir
my poor human feelings, no doubt, and make me murmur at the judgment He has
given: - I am quite capable of that. But I look at the Cross, where for man His
own Son hung, and I cannot persuade myself I have a more tender heart than He.
No: His judgment is not an enemys, nor the impassive estimate of One
indifferent. He has given His Son. And though His judgments may be a great
deep, and I may be little able to follow out His governmental ways, I have what
is better, for I know Himself.
Thus you and I, reader, are to listen to
His words; not with hearts callous to human suffering, but subject to Him. The
deep, dark shadow of the Cross, whereon for us the Son of God hung and died,
prepares us for a view of sin and its results deep and dark enough in shadow.
But we know the heart we cling to through the gloom; and the sheep, here as
ever, know the Shepherds voice.
We are now to look at the solemn
question of penalty. Mr. Constable does but follow in the track of others, when
he takes us back to the sentence upon Adam to find in it the key to the whole
matter. We shall examine what he says attentively.
"Death," he remarks
"was the penalty which God originally pronounced against human sin. All that
God purposed to inflict upon Adam and his posterity in case of transgression is
included in that word death. In the day* that thou eatest.
thou shalt die. It is of the utmost consequence then that we should
understand what God meant by death; nor is there the smallest difficulty in
doing if we will only attend to what reason and justice require, and what
Scripture expressly declares. Its meaning then we contend to be, when it is
thus attached to sin as its penalty, the loss of life or existence. One of the
first principles of justice requires that parties threatened with a penalty for
transgression should have the fullest opportunity of understanding what the
penalty is. God accordingly speaks to Adam of death as a thing whose nature
Adam knew. Now Adam knew very well what death was in one sense, and in one
sense only. He knew it to be the law of the lower creatures, and to consist in
the loss of their being and existence. He knew nothing of any other senses of
death, such as death in sin or death to sin, for in his
innocence he did not know what sin was at all. Still less did he understand by
death an eternal existence in agony. He had one clear, well understood sense
for death, the loss of life and being."
*Edw. White maintains (Life in
Christ, p. 118) that the execution of this was not carried out, but the
sentence was delayed by mercy. This is a mistake "In the day "does not require
so rigid a construction. Comp. 2 Sam. xxii. 1, Psa. xcv. 8, Eccl. xii. 3, Isa.
xiv. 3, xxx, 26, Jer. vii. 22, Ezek. xx. 5, and especially Ezek. xxxiii. 12.
Again he says
"As soon as Adam transgressed God came to him, and
repeated to him in other words the penalty he had just incurred. It was
dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. Gods
definition of the death inflicted for the first transgression is frequently
repeated in the later Scriptures. Paul tells us that it is the death which all
men actually undergo, whether they are among the saved or the lost; and
therefore an eternal existence in pain can be no part of its meaning (Rom. v.
12, 14, 17; 1 Cor. xv. 22). Such too was the death which Christ endured - the
very same penalty to its full extent to which man was exposed ; and therefore
spiritual death or an eternal life in misery, can form no part whatsoever of
its meaning. . . . God said nothing in the first instance of transgression as
to whether this death would be temporal or eternal, but what the death was He
fully explained both by word and by example. He gave life to the race of man,
and He would withdraw that life if man sinned."
I have thus quoted Mr.
Constable in full in order to bring the subject properly before us. If it had
only been for the sake of answering him much less would have sufficed. But we
are seeking to bring out the Scripture doctrine and not merely to refute
certain errors; and this is an important point to be clear upon in order to a
full and satisfactory view of the great subject before us. Yet in aiming to be
thus clear we must enter into a field of many controversies, not yet by any
means extinct, and are almost sure to awaken feelings, which may prejudice the
point of main concern, for many minds. Still we must not shrink from what seems
needful, and Scripture is no more uncertain here than elsewhere.
As to
Mr. Constables main point, it is not hard to see that he makes immense
assumptions, and that upon these his argument in its entirety rests. Let us
grant for the meanwhile, at any rate, that it is of ordinary death the
prohibition speaks. How can he prove what Adam knew about it? Suppose it true
he must have known what the penalty was, how can he show that Adam learned it
from seeing death around; how can he show that there had been any death to see
in Eden? If death had been there, how can he harmonize this with the "creature
being made subject to vanity," as Rom. viii. 19-28 shows, through mans
sin, and waiting mans deliverance as its own?
Supposing it true
that Eden before the fall had been profaned by death and corruption, how does
he know that Adam would have argued that death would be to him as absolute
nonentity? Everywhere through the world we find that man has nursed an instinct
of a contrary sort in the face of such death ever before his eyes. Why should
he think that he who had had wisdom given him to name all the beasts and
distinguish them from himself should have been less wise? Or haply does he
think this a mark of degradation; or what else?
Again, if man were to
have instruction about death, why should not God instruct him? If we must needs
assume, what other assumption has more probability?
In the face of all
this, Mr. Constables argument. for extinction loses all probability. When
contrasted with the reality of what death is, according to the Scriptures we
have examined, it is manifestly entirely inadmissible.
But it will be
profitable to inquire more fully just what was the punishment of death
denounced on Adam, and how far it has affected his posterity. And the simplest
method we can take in doing so seems to be, without any doubtful argument as to
the words of the prohibition, to ask ourselves, what Scripture elsewhere states
as to the consequences of the first sin.
Now evidently the fullest
statement we have as to its effect on Adams posterity is that which is
given us by the apostle Paul in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the saints
at Rome (vers. 12-21). And here there are three things of which he speaks
First, "sin entered into the world," and "many became sinners ":
this is the depravation of nature, which is the sad heirloom of succeeding
generations.
Secondly, "death by sin, and so death passed upon all":
this is corporeal death, the death he could point to as undeniably "reigning
from Adam to Moses" even, the time before the law.
Thirdly,
"judgment was by one to condemnation," - "upon all men to condemnation." This
is what death, following upon sin, proclaimed. It was the sign that nature was
tainted in her whole course, that the God who had made man, and could not
otherwise repent, now "turned him to destruction."
Of these three
things the first clearly is the cause of the judgment pronounced, and not the
judgment itself. Of the two latter, the first is the infliction, and the second
is involved in it, and shows its character. Death is the infliction, but not as
an arbitrary thing proceeding from the mere will of the Creator, but the mark
of changed relationship to Him which the fall had produced. Death then (what we
ordinarily call that) was the sentence, and that alone; but it involved
necessarily a change in moral relationship between the Creator and the
creature, distance between man and God, which His love and pity might yet find
means of bridging over, - which was not yet final therefore, but which was
there.
Now, I apprehend, the difficulty found in reading aright the
sentence, "Thou shalt surely die," proceeds from the seeking a final sentence
in what was not intended, yet as final. God had of course His plan of mercy
already in His mind, and was not yet giving an eternal sentence. Had He left
man to himself indeed, no self-recovery on mans part being possible, it
would have been, no doubt, practically eternal. But He had no design of leaving
him to himself. As we know, this sentence, under which the whole race lies, is
not the close, but the beginning of our history; and we shall keep, I believe,
most closely within the limits of revelation, by interpreting the sentence
following the sin of Adam as in no way involving the eternal issues, but as
strictly provisional with a view to the intended mercy. This relieves at once
from the difficulty as to the penalty involved. It makes all clear and
consistent; and is in the highest degree important in reading aright the
eternal penalty itself.
This in no way interferes with the first death
being the type and shadow of the second, while it harmonizes with the fact that
when the second death comes the first death will entirely pass away. It
harmonizes also with the statement of Scripture everywhere, that that second
death will be consequent upon a future judgment, in which men will be judged,
not at all for Adams sin, but "according to their works" It harmonizes
also with what we shall find to be the fact hereafter, that the Old Testament
revelation has no direct announcement of the second death at all. In a word, it
will be found to clear the way for the after-question in many and most
important respects, while it is a view of the matter, which from Scripture
itself it seems impossible to contravene.
It must be admitted, however,
to lie athwart two of Mr. Constables assumptions very directly. The first
of these is that ALL that God purposed to inflict upon Adam and posterity in
case of transgression is included in that word death " in the
original sentence. The original sentence may be a shadow of the final one, as I
have said, but that is all, and not enough for his argument. His statement
itself is a mere assumption, which it is sufficient therefore to deny.
The second is. "that parties threatened with a penalty for
transgression should have the fullest opportunity of understanding what the
penalty is." Now the penalty here is for eating of the tree. Did that define to
Adams posterity, who never sinned this way at all, nor could do so, what
the penalty of their sin would be? Plainly, as to legal enactment, "from Adam
to Moses" there was none. And thus not one of them could be punished; certainly
not raised up to endure the agony of the lake of fire, of which no experience,
no instinct, no revelation, could give them the merest hint!
But Mr.
Constables assumption will not endure the moral test, any more than it
will the test of Scripture. Is sin a thing in itself worthy of punishment, or
only when committed in full view of its consequences? We must of course grant
that that full view involves heavier responsibility. But do I only sin when I
know exactly what I shall lose by it? That is an immoral argument, which infers
so.
Nor is it consistent with what even nature itself teaches. For he
who sins against the laws of nature so-called (which are after all divine
laws), as a general thing knows little of the consequences of what he does; yet
disease and death follow none the less surely.
Thus easily are Mr.
Constables theories refuted. And while we do not force into the first
sentence anything that the words will not without strain admit, while we do
not, we trust, add one iota to the "whole libraries of confused jargon and
hopeless nonsense," which he tells us have been written upon this subject, -
while we deny as much as he that the death spoken of is death in sin, or death
to sin, or even eternal torment, - we maintain none the less, that while
certainly death is death, it is not extinction.
It would be the most
attractive course, perhaps, from this point to follow out the Old Testament
revelation as to the future state; but before we can do this, we must look
still further at the lexicography of the subject that we may understand the
meaning of the terms which are used with reference to it, before we look at it
as a whole.
Go To Chapter Nineteen
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