Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XXXII
GEHENNA
GEHENNA is twelve times rendered "hell" in the common
version, and is essentially* the only other word so rendered, beside "hades"
already looked at. The rendering has, it is well known, been the object of
special attack by Canon Farrar in his Westminster Abbey Sermons, as one of the
three words (the others being "damnation" and "everlasting ") which in his
opinion ought to be expunged out of our English Bibles.
*Once,
referring to a class of fallen angels, the word tartarosas is used (2 Pet. ii.
4), and translated " cast them down to hell," literally to Tartarus"
"Eternal Hope," Serm. 3.
Gehenna, says Dr. Farrar, "means
primarily the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, in which, after it had been
polluted by Moloch-worship, corpses were flung, and fires were lit; and is
used, secondarily, as a metaphor, not for fruitless and hopeless, but - for all
at any rate but a small and desperate minority - of that purifying and
corrective punishment, which, as all of us alike believe, does await
impenitents both here and beyond the grave.
"But, be it solemnly
observed (he continues) the Jews to whom and in whose metaphorical sense the
word was used by our blessed Lord, never did, either then or at any other
period, normally attach to the word Gehenna that meaning of endless torment
which we attach to hell. To them, and in their style of speech -
and therefore on the lips of our blessed Saviour who addressed it to them, and
spake in terms which they would understand - it meant not a material and
everlasting fire, but an intermediate, a remedial, a metaphorical, a terminable
retribution."
To this is appended a note in which the Jews as a church
are stated never to have held either (1) the finality of the doom passed, or
(2) the doctrine of torment, endless, if once incurred. For this he quotes
various authorities, among others as the most distinct utterance of the Talmud,
one in which it is said "that the just shall rise to bliss; ordinary sinners
shall be ultimately redeemed; the hopelessly bad shall be punished for a year,
and then annihilated." In another place, "Gehenna is nothing but a day in which
the ungodly shall be burned."
In his fifth excursus at the end of the
book he adds other testimonies, among which is another from the Talmud, to the
effect that "after the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer." His testimony
of the Rabbins concerns us very little. He does not notice the views of either
Pharisees or Essenes, who both held eternal punishment, as Josephus explicitly
affirms.
Mr. Hudson has made a similar appeal to the Talmud, naturally
laying the stress upon the annihilationism contained in it, that Dr. Farrar
lays upon the restorationism. Both allow that there are some passages which may
be pleaded against these, although they believe not really against them. I do
not lay any stress upon it, nor propose at all to take up this line of
argument. I leave it to those more competent to do so, and shall confine myself
entirely to Scripture.
It is of Gehenna that the Lord speaks when He
asserts Gods ability to "destroy both body and soul in hell." We have
seen how little the text can be made to mean annihilation. It would seem to be
no less decisive against Dr. Farrars view. Indeed he gives it up
explicitly, if to be taken as implying that God will put forth this power that
He claims. The passage, he says,* "merely attributes to God a power which we
know the Omnipotent must possess. He can destroy the soul, but it says not that
He will. If any think that this is implied, it seems to me that no logical
choice is open to them, but to embrace the theory of conditional immortality."
*"Eternal hope," Pref., p. xl.
But surely the Lord holds out no
vain warning here. In a parallel passage in the same way He says, "Fear Him who
after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell;" and we certainly know that
threat will be fulfilled. If He never wills to do this, men need no more fear
it than if He had not power. And how strange a thing for the Lord thus to claim
for Him a power no one can deny, and which notwithstanding He will never exert!
We do not at all on that account believe in the logical necessity of
annihilation, but we do believe that God will fulfil the awful warning, and
destroy both body and soul in hell.
Mr. Jukes indeed thinks even this
to be for eventual salvation: he asks,
"Is not the losing or
destruction of our fallen life the only way to a better one? Does
not our Lord Himself say more than once, that the way to save our
life or soul is to lose it, or have it
destroyed, in its fallen form, that it may be re-created? These last
words," he answers, "should of themselves settle the question, for in one place
they occur in immediate connection with those other well-known words as to
fearing Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.. .
And yet, in the very closest connection with those words, our Lord repeats this
selfsame word destroy to express that death and dissolution of the
soul, which, so far from bringing it to non-existence is the appointed way to
save it."
"Restitution," Appendix, p. 172
But Mr.
Jukes can scarcely make so much out of the texts he cites. The destruction in
them is not the destroying of the body of sin, or of the old man, with which
Mr. Jukes evidently confounds it. For he goes on to say, "Christ saves it, as
we have seen, by death; for being fallen into sin, what is needed is, that the
body of sin should be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve
sin." This is not, I say, the destruction spoken of in Matt. x. 39; but
the Lord is speaking of our taking up the cross - our cross - in face of the
opposition of the world. Is this the destruction of our old man, or what
really, in the spiritual sense, saves us? The Lord is not then here speaking of
"losing our life, or having it destroyed in its fallen form, that it may be
re-created." There is nothing about either destruction or re-creation, in that
sense; He does not speak of " that death or dissolution of the soul, which is
the appointed way to save it."
Nor does Scripture anywhere speak of
such a thing either. Dissolution of the soul is nowhere mentioned, nor its
death as a way to save it. Similarly as to destruction: can Mr. Jukes point out
one instance in which the destruction of the soul is the method of its
salvation? He cannot; and his words are mere delusion. "Christ saves the soul
by death," he tells us, "for the body of sin must be destroyed," but that is
not the soul. He says again, "The elect, that is the first-fruits, are the
living proof of this. A new man is created in them; and the
old man dies and is destroyed while yet he in whom all this is done
remains the same person." But if the new man is created in people, he is not
destroyed first, to be created; and if the "old man" dies and is destroyed, he
is not re-created at all; nor is the person destroyed in whom this takes place
either. Mr. Jukes adds: "it is only the riddle of the cross, that by
death God destroys him that has the power of death." But then is he that
has the power of death destroyed also in order to his salvation? Certainly
there is not such a thought in the passage.
It is in vain then for him
to seek to escape from the force of the words. What folly, indeed, to suppose
the Lord saying, "Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body, in order
to save them." No; it is impossible to read the thought of salvation into its
very opposite, the awful destruction hopeless of deliverance, just because it
is God who "destroys," and destroys not to save, but as the alternative of
salvation. Annihilationisrn and restorationism fail alike and fail utterly
here.
But then Gehenna is the place of this utter destruction, and though
the terms used may be more or less" metaphorical," a "remediable" and
"terminable" retribution they do not teach.
Nor does Dr. Farrar attempt
to produce Scripture to establish his position as to Gehenna. It is the Talmud
and the Jewish doctors that are to define for us what the Scripture means, and
Dr. F. even brings in the thought of "the pleasant valley of Hinnom,* as if to
bear its part in transmuting darkness into light, and making tolerable the
wrath of God itself
*Preface, xxxii.
"In the Old Testament it is
merely the pleasant valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom), subsequently desecrated by
idolatry, and specially by Moloch worship, and defiled by Josiah on this
account. Used, according to Jewish tradition, as the common sewer of the city,
the corpses of the worst criminals were flung into it unburied, and fires were
lit to purify the contaminated air. It then became a word which secondarily
implied (i) the severest judgment which a Jewish court could pass upon a
criminal - the casting forth of his unburied corpse amid the fires and worms of
this polluted valley; and (ii) a punishment which - to the Jews as a body -
never meant an endless punishment beyond the grave."
As to this we have
seen, however, what the Lord affirms of it, in a threat according to Dr. Farrar
never to be executed. The destruction of body and soul can hardly be this side
of the grave, and cannot consist with restoration. Dr. Farrars words,
too, are contradicted explicitly by Josephus, as is well known, both with
regard to the Pharisees and the Essenes: a testimony he never even alludes to,
and which as strangely Mr. Hudson sets aside as unreliable. But let us see now
whence the Jews drew (or might have drawn) their views of Gehenna. We have the
Old Testament as they had, and from it alone all right views, such as the Lord
Himself adopted, must surely be taken. Revelation alone could be a light beyond
the grave.
To one of these Old Testament passages (Isa. lxvi. 24) we
have already referred, in which we find both the fire and the worm attributed
to the valley of Hinnom, and which more certainly are the basis of the
well-known warning of our Lord which we must almost immediately consider now.
As millennial and not final, it may be concluded to have given risen to
thoughts of the temporary nature of Gehenna, which Dr. Farrars extracts
have so much of, as well as also to have furnished argument for the
annihilation doctrines of the day, in behalf of which also we find them quoting
Mal. iv. 1, quite as do the present annihilationists.
The main passage
beside is also in Isaiah, and here Tophet, the valley of Hinnom, is expressly
named as the place of judgment for the Assyrian, where the breath .of the Lord
like a stream of brimstone kindles the pile (xxx. 33). Here, while the literal
Tophet might furnish the terms of the prophecy, the language points to
something deeper, which the fuller revelation could alone perhaps make plain.
We must now look at the well-known passage in the Gospel of Mark (ix.
43-50), which I quote in full:
"And if thy hand offend thee, cut it
off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to
go into hell [Gehenna], into the fire that never shall be quenched [or rather,
the fire unquenchable], where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to
enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell [Gehenna], into
the unquenchable fire; where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into
life with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into the Gehenna of fire;
where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. For every one shall be
salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good,
but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt
in yourselves, and have peace with one another."
It was to be expected
that annihilationists should have stumbled over this passage as they have. The
admitted borrowing of phraseology from Isa. lxvi. 24, and the word Gehenna,
with the associations which we have just been looking at, are taken to show
that the terms used in these verses imply the "utter destruction" (in the new
sense) of the ungodly.
Mr. Constable, appealing to the passage in
Isaiah, says: "A moments glance shows us that both the worm and the fire
are alike external to and distinct from the subject on which they prey; and
also, that what both prey upon are not the living but the dead. . . These most
solemn words of the prophet, so solemnly endorsed by Christ, assert a state of
eternal death and destruction, not one of eternal life in hell, as the destiny
of transgressors in the world to come."*
*Eternal Punishment, p. 195.
Mr. Minton thinks it -
"difficult to conceive of any two images that our
Lord could have put together, more hopelessly irreconcilable with the idea of
never-ending misery, than the worm and the fire." And he adds, "It is contended
that the worm not dying and the fire not being quenched, implies the
continuance of being of that on which they prey . . . If the worm could die, or
the fire be quenched, before they had done their work upon the body, it might
possibly be rescued or left half consumed. But if neither the ravages of the
worm, nor the burning of the fire, can be checked, then nothing can save the
body which is exposed to them from complete extinction of being. If it be
asked, what becomes of the worm and the fire after the body is consumed? it is
enough to reply, that we have nothing whatever to do with that . . . And I will
venture to say, that no one would ever imagine the idea of an eternal worm to
be contained in this passage, if they did not bring to it the assumption that
it is an eternal being who is preyed upon by it. Without that assumption the
image is as plain and simple as possible. With it you have the monstrous
incongruity of an eternal worm, and of a human body which is being eternally
devoured by it, but yet remains forever as whole and entire as if the worm had
never touched it. . . It is no reply to say that the punishment represented is
not merely that of the body but of the soul also, or even, as some would
now say, of the soul only. For the figure used to represent it is the
consumption of a body by worm and by fire; and that figure does represent
destruction, but does not represent eternal existence."
He further
refers to Jer. xvii. 27: "I will kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it
shall devour the palaces of Jerusasalem, and it shall not be quenched," which,
he adds, "can hardly mean that Jerusalem will continue in flames to all
Eternity."*
*Way Everlasting, pp. 50, 51, 53.
Mr. Hudson again
says, "It is not the immortality of the individual soul, but the multitude of
those who finally perish, that challenges the unquenched fire and the unfailing
worm."
Debt and Grace p. 192.
Other writers speak very
similarly, but it is not necessary to repeat more of what they say just now.
The first thing to be noted in answer to Mr. Constable is that he makes no
difference between type and antitype; yet it is scarcely the literal valley of
Hinnom of which the Lord is speaking, and as for Isaiah," the carcases" which
he sees a prey to the worm and fire are surely not those of all the wicked, who
are only raised from the dead at the time the earth and the heavens flee away.
"Gehenna," as we have seen, was in point of fact used by the Jews in our
Lords day in this figurative way as the Talmud has at any rate shown us.
The typical character of millennial things also I have already pointed out.
Consequently the carcases, fire, and worm are all the figures of deeper things.
Does Mr. Constable even himself suppose that all the Lord threatens men with is
that fire and worm should consume their carcases? This would be infinitely less
than extinction itself, and instead of being the picture even of destruction,
would be a picture merely of what would happen after they had ceased to suffer,
and had been in fact destroyed!
But then, Mr. Minton argues, we must
take the words at any rate as a figure of destruction, not of eternal
existence. Surely nobody contends that it is a figure of the latter. The
question is, is it consistent with eternal existence? and that is a different
thing. Now material destruction, if a figure, should be a figure of something
else, and not of itself. The material should figure the spiritual: and
spiritual destruction may be, nay, is, entirely consistent with continued
existence of body and soul. If the fire were material fire, and mans body
the prey, according to its present constitution the body would come to an end.
If the fire be a figure of divine judgment, however, this will not be so
perfectly clear; and as a figure fire does surely speak of this. I have already
so fully shown that the destruction of the sinner is in fact not annihilation,
that I may be excused from going afresh into the proofs of this.
The
unquenchable fire may have been, as to the mere force of the phrase, unduly
pressed by those against whom Mr. Minton contends; and I concede fully that the
fire in the gates of Jerusalem could not be "everlasting." He must be aware,
however, that "everlasting fire" is spoken of by our Lord elsewhere: if (that
is) the New Testament has any word for everlasting. But if he will look even at
the passage in Isaiah once again, I think he will find reason to own that
unquenched fire does there imply at least perpetuity. If "from one new moon to
another, and from one Sabbath to another," all flesh, as they come up to
worship before Jehovah, "go forth and look upon the carcases of those that have
transgressed against Him", this implies a perpetuity of the awful spectacle
surely. And the words following give the reason for this: "for their worm shall
not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring
unto all flesh." The fire being unquenchable is not then given, as Mr. Minton
argues, as a reason for the utter consumption of what it preys upon, but on the
other hand for its abiding before the eyes of all flesh Sabbath after Sabbath
and month after month. In the scene which Isaiah pictures it would matter
little for the carcases themselves, whether the worm died or not, or the fire
were quenched or not. Their being" caresses" doomed them to destruction, apart
from all question of worm and lire; and these are surely added, not to bring
them to any more speedy or certain end, but to intensify the solemn picture of
judgment, and their being "an abhorring unto all flesh."
Thus even as
to the passage in Isaiah, Mr. Mintons arguments are only plausible when
the words he comments on are divorced from their context, and looked at as mere
isolated expressions. Take the whole passage, and they become worse than
unmeaning. For worm and fire make no more certain the destruction of a carcase
already secured by simple natural law; and instead of being given as hastening
the destruction, the undying worm, and unquenched fire give assurance of the
perpetuity of an awful spectacle, which abides indefinitely before the eyes of
men month after month.
Still more do the arguments fail when we compare
them with the passage in the gospel: for here the Lord is plainly not speaking
of a spectacle before the eyes of others, but warning those who might suffer
from it themselves. In Isaiah it is "they shall go forth and look," from one
new moon and one Sabbath to another, for the fire shall not be quenched. In the
other case it is in effect: Fear it,* for the fire shall not be quenched. And
as these words in Isaiah announce the perpetuity of the judgment, so must they
do when transferred to the passage in Mark.
*Mr. Tipple, quoted approvingly
by Mr. Cox, says, The flame of the valley of Hinnom cannot be made to
represent the awful suffering in store for sin it can only fitly represent the
certain consumption of sin to be effected by the sharpness of the fire" (Echoes
of the Spoken Words). They were to find the certain consumption of sin, without
suffering! And this because the fires of Gehenna were not lighted to inflict
pain and anguish! The same might be said of the burning up of chaff and all
other figures! Cannot a figure figure anything but just itself?
On the
other hand who could call that "severest judgment which a Jewish court (even)
could pass upon a criminal," - as Dr. Farrar puts it, - "the casting forth of
his unburied corpse amid the fires and worms of the polluted valley," a
"purifying and corrective," or "remedial" retribution? None, I think, who were
not under hopeless bias, with which reasoning becomes impossible. Nor, as far
as the Jewish court was concerned, was it "terminable" either. Of course it
could not hinder the resurrection of those whom it adjudged to this; and in
this way no human sentence could be eternal or irreversible; but it could
represent this notwithstanding: for a final sentence, irreversible and not
terminable by any after human one, would be the proper figure of irreversible
and eternal judgment if divine. And only of such divine judgment would it be
the proper figure. Dr. Farrars facts are hopelessly against his
inferences.
But the 49th verse in the passage of Mark adds something
more; and Mr. Jukes has made what use he could of it for his purpose: "Take the
ordinary interpretation," he says, "and there is no connection between
never-ending punishment and the law here quoted respecting salt in sacrifice.
But as spoken by our Lord the fact or law respecting the meat-offering is the
reason and explanation of what is said respecting hell-fire, - for every
one must be salted with fire, and every sacrifice must be salted with
salt."
Then after explaining the meat offering as shadowing the
fulfilment of mans duty towards his neighbour,* he goes on -
"The
passage which we are considering begins with this, mans duty to his
neighbour, and the peril of offending a little one. Then comes the exhortation
to sacrifice hand or foot or eye, lest we come into the worse judgment, which
must be known by those who will not judge themselves. For, says our
Lord, thus giving the reason for self-judgment, every man, whether
he likes it or not, if he is ever to change his present form and rise to God,
must be salted with fire. This may be done as a sweet savour to
God; though even here every sacrifice is salted with salt, - for
even in willing sacrifice and service there is something sharp and piercing as
salt, namely, the correction which truth brings with it to those who will
receive it. But if this be not accepted, the purgation must yet be
wrought, not as a sweet savour, but as a sin-offering, where the bodies
are burnt as unclean without the camp; where their worm dieth not, and
the fire is not quenched (the worm alluding to the
consumption of those parts which were not burnt with fire); for, in
some way, every one must be salted with fire, even if he be not a
sweet-savour sacrifice, which is salted with salt But
all this, so far from teaching never-ending punishment, only points us back to
the law of sacrifice, and the means which must be used to destroy sin in the
flesh, and to make us ascend in a new and more spiritual form as offerings to
Jehovah."
*The meat-offering applies (like all other offerings) in the
first place to Christ, the Bread of Life. Is this what it signifies as to Him?
This is decidedly a new interpretation. Mr. Jukes throws Gehenna and
the passage in Isaiah of course aside or else applies them as types parallel to
the "holy" sin-offering! But here he can find no "worm," so he invents one, to
consume what the fire ought wholly to have burnt! But we must look at this
further.
The Lord certainly says "Gehenna." Is this in any way
connected with such a type as the sin-offering, or are they not in every sense
contrasts?
The sin-offering was a thing "most holy." It was an offering for
sin, and therefore "without blemish," to be a fit type of such an one as alone
could make atonement. The fat upon the inwards was put upon the altar of
burnt-offering, and thus linked with those sweet-savour offerings of which Mr.
Jukes speaks. The blood on the day of atonement went into the holiest, and at
ordinary times was sprinkled before the veil, and anointed the horns of the
golden altar of incense. That blood made atonement for the soul.
Dare
Mr. Jukes apply all this to the abhorred Gehenna judgment of the unholy and
unclean? Dare he include under one figure the One who bare judgment suffering
for others only, and those upon whom, because of what they are personally,
Gods wrath abides? Dare he connect the "worm" of corruption with the type
of Gods Holy One, who therefore could (even as to His body) know none?
Will he say that the sin-offering figures a corrective judgment purifying the
victim offered? Will he make the blood of the sinner an atonement for his sins?
Carry his view of the matter out, and he must do all this. He may say (and I
trust would) he has no thought of carrying it so far. But then the whole is one
consistent type, and a type expressly of the putting away of sin: that is its
proper force - its use. If Mr. Jukes is but applying language used of the
sin-offering to something wholly different, let him say so, and then take
scrupulous care how he does apply it. But what he says is very different from
this. He says distinctly that if a man will not judge himself about sin, "the
purgation must yet be wrought as a sin-offering." Now this is what in the very
nature of it he could not be. A blemished beast could not be offered. And here,
if I take his words in their simple force, the sinner becomes his own offering,
his own Saviour! The worm and the fire point us back to "the law of sacrifice,
and the means which must be used to destroy sin in the flesh, and to make us
ascend in a new and more spiritual form as offerings to Jehovah!"
"Sin
in the flesh" is just what the sin-offering did not, and could not, typify, but
the very opposite, a Holy One bearing sin not His own. And therefore, while the
fire had its place, for the wrath of God Christ bore for us, the "worm," bred
of corruption, could not possibly enter into such a figure. In Gehenna there
are both: the torment of Gods wrath upon sin, but the torment also bred
of the corruption within. The two things are essentially and wholly distinct.
Even as to the body Gods Holy One could not see corruption: and these are
types, whose significance and power become more and more realized the more we
consider them. Gehenna judgment and the sin-offering are in their nature
opposed.
"Every one must be salted with fire,"* the Lord says.
*Morris and Goodwyn prefer another rendering: "But the word pas
in the Greek may mean every one person or every one thing, and the word for
fire is in the dative, puri; and the real force of the pas-sage is this:
For every one shall be salted TO or FOR the fire (that is, of the altar),
even every sacrifice shall be salted with salt "(What is Man? p. 93).
There is no ground for this: standing alone as here, can only mean
"every person," and the word "salt" is just as much in the dative (hali) as
"fire" is, so that there is as much ground for saying "salted TO or FOR the
salt." Put without article as here, puri and hali are both datives of
instrument, and exact parallels: "salted with fire" "salted with salt."
Mr. Jukes adds, "if he is ever to change his present form and rise to
God;" and thus assumes his whole ground. There is nothing of this expressed or
implied in the passage. "Every one must be salted with fire; and every
sacrifice must be salted with salt." Here salting with fire and with salt are
distinguished. Salting is the figure of preservation. "Salt" which, as the Lord
says, "is good," and always has a good meaning in Scripture, is the figure of
that energy of holiness which preserves for God by keeping out corruption. But
salting with fire is a widely different thing from salting with salt, fire
being as always the figure of divine judgment.
Now every one (it is
quite unlimited) shall be salted with fire - even the saint, for he needs the
discipline of it, and it is for his preservation as such, and salvation (comp.
1 Pet. iv. 17, 18). But the ungodly will have it after another sort. To them it
will be "unquenchable" fire, because of evil ever needing to be kept down:
repression by judgment, where judgment alone will avail. The Lord adds, "And
every sacrifice shall be salted with salt." There is the point of transition,
at which he begins to speak of the saint alone.
Mr. Roberts finally has
still another sense: he says: "The meaning of Christs words is made
perfectly plain by Paul when be says (1 Cor. iii. 13-15), The fire shall
try every mans work of what sort it is, and if any mans work be
burnt be shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by
fire. Through this fire of judgment every man and all his works will
pass, and this fact gives the strongest point to Christs exhortation; but
the action of the judgment-fire is only preservative on certain kinds of men
and work. The judgment justifies and makes such incorruptible; the others are
destroyed."
This is fatal false doctrine. Mr. Roberts does not yet see
that if a man comes into judgment, judgment can never justify him: "Enter not
into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no flesh living
be justified." How could a man, if judged according to his works, have his work
burnt up and yet himself be saved; as the text be quotes says? Plainly he could
not. The man is saved because building on the foundation, - on Christ, - and
not because of what he builds, which is burnt up; he is saved not "by fire,"
but "through the fire," and in spite of it. But this question of judgment we
have already sufficiently examined.
We must, pass on now to other testimony
of the word as to the final judgment.
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Thirty Three
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