"An antinomy is a pair of contradictory propositions, each of them susceptible separately of the highest proof which the nature of the subject-matter admits, but which are incapable of conciliation to our present capacity of reason."-Note from my "Oxford Analysis of Logic," 1847. FOURTH PRIMARY CONVICTION "I believe... that He shall come to judge the quick and the dead." "Guilty of an eternal sin.”—Mark iii. 29.* THE view which truth forces us to take of this subject will, doubtless, seem to conflict with what has been said of the sunshine of the two Creeds. But the darkness is only indicated by a solemn lifted finger. The voice trembles and dies away into silence. The Creed exercises its deepest re serve. At all events it is only here that the Primary Conviction of God's Justice in the dark Hereafter of unrepented sin can find its place. There is, generally speaking, no safer guide to the theological student than the "excellent Bishop Pearson, the very dust of whose writings is gold." The most serious error of his "Exposition of the Creed" is his mode of dealing with the twelfth article-"the life everlasting"-in which he applies it to the state of man after the resurrection, to the condemnation of the lost, with a ghastly and passionless lucidity of statement. * ἔνοχος αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος. This would be better rendered -"guilty of eternal sin." This mode of dealing with the last article of the Creed entirely destroys one of the most beautiful conceptions in Scripture, and places us outside the lovely atmosphere of the Apostles' symbol.* There are two words in the New Testament which, from the exigencies of our language, are alike rendered "life." One of these words + means the principle of animal life, the means by which that life is preserved or gladdened, ‡ and especially the span of time through which it is preserved or prolonged. It is the animal, sentient, chronological *I add with regret that the name of one to whom I am under still greater obligations than to Pearson must be added to the Anglican expositors of the Creed who have taken this view, though with greater hesitation. Isaac Barrow writes: "The immediate consequence of the resurrection common to just and unjust is (as set down by the Apostle to the Hebrews) κρίμα αἰώνιον, that judgment or doom by which the eternal state of every person is determined. Now this state, generally taken (as respecting both the righteous and blessed, the wicked and miserable), as it doth suppose a perpetual duration in being and sense, so it may be called 'everlasting life'; although life... is used to denote peculiarly the blessed state. The reason of the case requires that here we understand it generally, so as to comprehend both states-always enduring pangs of death, always in sense and in desire dying, we shall never be able to die." [A strange sub-section of the bright chapter of Life Everlasting!]-Works of Isaac Barrow, D.D., “ An Exposition on the Creed,” vol. ii. p. 549. Hamilton's edition. + βίος. † Ος δ ̓ ἂν ἔχῃ τὸν βίον τοῦ κόσμου, 1 John iii. 17. (“Whoso hath the living of this world." The R. V. renders "the world's goods.") existence here below. The other word in New Testament usage belongs to a higher sphere. It is the new life whose germ is given by God, which may be strengthened or stunted as it is used or abused, and which after the resurrection is to be clothed upon with a fitting framework. Thus the first of these terms gives us man's natural existence as one of the animal creation for threescore years and ten, more or less; the second, man's supernatural existence as a child of God. The end of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ was to impart this. The old book tells us that "the first man Adam became a living soul." Over against this stands the splendid dogma, "The last Adam became a lifecreating spirit." So He tells us Himself, “I am come that ye might have life." The first term is of the earth, earthy; of time and its finite conception. The second term is transcendent and infinite; untranslatable into the language of temporal notation. To render "the life everlasting" of the Creed into "the never-failing endurance by the reprobates of the torments due to their sins" is a terrible misuse of Scripture language. It is turning everlasting life into everlasting death. But it is also, further, entirely inconsistent with the spirit of the two Creeds. Rapidly they move from point to point, from creation to the world to come, from glory to glory, from sunshine to sunshine, from life to life, from the natural life of creation to the supernatural life of redemption. * ὁ ἔσχατος ̓Αδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν, 1 Cor. xv. 45. |