8. § 54. The Intermediate State.

8. § 54. The Intermediate State.

§ 54. The Intermediate State.

. Just as origin and essence, so also the end of things is unknown to us.

To the question: whither, science gives an answer no more satisfying than to that, whence all things are. And yet religion has an urgent need to know something of the destiny of the individual human being, of humanity and world. All peoples have therefore some thought or other about it and all religions contain a kind of eschatology. There are indeed still those who assert that belief in the immortality of the soul originally is absolutely not proper to all men and even today, e.g. among the Weddas in Ceylon, among the Indian Seelongs and others, is lacking, Büchner, Kraft und Stoff16 423.

Häckel, Die Welträthsel, Bonn 1899 S. 223. From the standpoint of evolution, belief in God, in the independent existence of the soul and in its immortality also cannot have constituted an original component of human nature, but must have arisen and developed gradually and accidentally through all kinds of circumstances. Ancestor-veneration, love for deceased blood-relatives, zest for life and the wish for prolongation of life, hope for better conditions of life on the other side of the grave, fear of punishment

and hope of reward etc. have then been the causes which have gradually caused the belief in immortality to arise. But over against that, most and the best practitioners of the history of religions testify that belief in immortality occurs among all peoples and is a [354] component also of the lowest and roughest religions. We encounter it everywhere and at every stage of development, where no philosophical doubts have undermined it or other causes have pushed it into the background, and everywhere it is also connected with religion, Tiele, Inl. tot de godsdienstwetenschap, tweede reeks Amst. 1899 bl. 97. Peschel, Volkerkunde5 257. One can even say that this belief originally was something very natural. Just like the author of the paradise narrative in Genesis, says Tiele, t. a. p. bl. 197, the peoples all proceed from the conviction that man by nature is immortal and that not immortality must be proved, but death must be explained. Death seems something unnatural. Something must have happened, by which something so illogical came into the world. The legends of all kinds of peoples, different in origin and development, express that idea. There was a time when there was neither sickness nor death on earth. The "simple man of nature" cannot even yet believe in death, when he sees it before his eyes. It is a sleep, he says, a state of unconsciousness; the spirit has left the body but can still return. Therefore he waits still a few days, to see whether this will not happen. And if the spirit of the dead does not return, one holds it for certain that he has only disappeared, to enter somewhere, wherever it may be, into another body or to associate with the supernatural spirits. The forms in which this life of the soul after death was represented were very different and were often also connected and mixed with one another. Now one thought that the souls after death continued to live in the vicinity of the grave and for their existence needed the continual care of blood-relatives, or

also in the underworld, in the hades, far removed from gods and men, led a sad, shadowy life. Then again one believed that the souls of the deceased, just as they sometimes already before their dwelling in the human body had undergone all kinds of transformations, so also after leaving it still for a time had to sojourn in other bodies of animals and men, in order to purify themselves, to attain perfection and to be absorbed into the Godhead or into an unconscious Nirvana. Or also it was taught that the souls immediately after death came into the Divine judgment, and if they had done the good, crossed over the dangerous [355] bridge of the dead into the land of the blessed, where they lived in communion of the gods, or also, if they had done the evil, plunged down into a place of eternal darkness and torment.

Cf. the second part of C. W. Flügge, Gesch. des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, Auferstehung, Gericht und Vergeltung, Leipzig 1795.

Spiess, Entwicklungsgesch. der Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode auf Grund vergl. Religionsforschung 1877. Knabenhauer, Das

Zeugniss des Menschengeschlechts über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Freib. 1878. Merschmann, Die Idee der Unsterblichkeit in ihrer gesch.

Entw., Berlin 1870. Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos. 1896 S. 625 f. Runze, art.

Unsterblichkeit in Herzog2 16, 189 vooral 198 f. Id. Die Psychologie des Unsterblichkeitsglaubens und der Unsterblichkeitsleugnung, Berlin 1894.

The doctrine of personal immortality passed over from religion into philosophy. After Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles had already preceded, Plato in particular attempted in the Phaedo to support his religious belief in immortality with philosophical reasonings. His proofs amount to this, that the soul, which draws the knowledge of the ideas from remembrance, already existed before its dwelling in the body and thus will also continue to exist after leaving that body; that by its thinking

contemplation of the eternal ideas it is akin to the divine being and by its mastery of the body and its desires, as something independent and simple, is exalted far above the body; and especially, that as principle of life and identical with life, it cannot be conceived as non-living and perishable. With this doctrine concerning the immortality of the soul he then connects all manner of representations concerning pre-existence, fall, union with the body, judgment, transmigration of souls, which for a principal part bear a mythical character and also by Plato himself certainly are not all intended in a scientific sense. Although other philosophers, such as Democritus,

Epicurus, Lucretius, contested the immortality of the soul or, like Aristotle, did not pronounce themselves decisively about it, the doctrine of Plato had an astonishingly great influence on theology and philosophy. The mythical components of praeëxistentie, metempsychose etc. often found entrance with sectarian directions. And theology, under Plato's influence, devoted to the immortality of the soul much greater [356] attention than Holy

Scripture. The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul became an articulus mixtus, whose truth was demonstrated still more from reason than from revelation, Tert., de an. 22. Orig., de princ. VI 36. Iren., adv. haer. II 34 etc., among the Reformed, Heppe, Dogm. 166. Yet there always remained some difference. The awareness never died out wholly and entirely, that Holy Scripture attaches to life and death, besides a physical, also always a religious-ethical significance. Life with it is never only continued existence and death is never equal to annihilation, but life includes communion with God and death is lack of his grace and favor.

Hence the church fathers repeatedly say that Christ has come to bestow upon us the ἀθανασια and it can sometimes have the appearance as if they denied the natural immortality of the soul. And there was added to that still,

that one had to combat Plato's doctrine of the praeëxistentie, that is, of the uncreatedness of the soul, and for that reason sometimes made objection to calling the soul immortal by nature, since God alone was immortal of himself and the soul could only be immortal by his will, Just. Dial. 5.

Theophylus, ad Autol. II 27. This one must keep in view in the investigation whether among the church fathers there were also proponents of conditional immortality. For even if a single one, such as Arnobius, taught an annihilation of the evil souls and even if Tatian assumed that the soul at death died with the body, in order at the end of days to rise again, the belief was nevertheless general that the soul by virtue of the nature bestowed upon it by God was immortal, Münscherv. Coelln, D. G. I 333 f. Harnack, D. G.

I 449. Dr. Jonker, Theol. Studiën I 167v. Atzberger, Gesch. d. christl.

Eschat. 118 f. 187 f. 222 f. 338 f. 577 f. Also in philosophy Plato's doctrine of immortality retained an important place. Descartes conceived spirit and matter, soul and body, as two separated substances, which each had its own attribute, viz. thinking and extension, could each exist for itself and therefore could not be united otherwise than mechanically. Spinoza assumed these same two attributes but regarded them as forms of appearance of the one, eternal, infinite substance, as two sides of the same thing, which cannot fall apart from one another but are always with each other as subject and object, as image and counter-image, as idea and res.

For immortality there was in [357] his system no place, and he also had no need of it, for quamvis nesciremus, mentem nostram aeternam esse, pietatem et religionem et absolute omnia, quae ad animositatem et generositatem referri ostendimus in quarta parte, prima haberemus, Eth. V 41. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, however, was not inclined toward Spinoza; it bore a deistic character, contented itself with the trilogy

of God, virtue, and immortality and esteemed of these three the last still the most. Following the lead of Leibniz, Wolf, Mendelssohn and others, its truth was demonstrated with all manner of metaphysical, theological, cosmic, moral, and historical proofs and was urged with sentimental reflections on a blessed recognition and reunion on the other side of the grave, litt. with Bretschneider, Syst. Entw. 824. The utterance of the poet in Ps. 73:25 was, according to the word of Strauss, transformed into this other: wenn ich nur mein Ich in Sicherkeit habe, so frage ich nichts nach Gott und

Welt. To that certainty, however, Kant put an end, in that he showed the insufficiency of all proofs adduced for the immortality of the soul, and deemed this only probable as postulate of practical reason. Schleiermacher set over against the egoistic wishes of rationalism his word: wer nicht gelernt hat, mehr zu sein als er selbst, der verliert wenig, wenn er sich selbst verliert, and acknowledged no other and higher immortality than to be om mitten in der Endlichkeit eins zu werden mit dem Unendlichen und ewig zu sein in jedem Augenblick, Reden über die Religion II, cf. Chr. Gl. § 158, 1.

And the idealistic philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, left for the immortality of the soul no place at all, even though it hesitated to express openly its intimate thought on this point. The book of Fr. Richter, Die Lehre

Von Den Letzten Dingen 1833, however, brought to light the consequence of Hegel's system and, in spite of many people's contradiction, paved the way to materialism, which was already loudly preached by Feuerbach and later supported by Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner, Häckel and others with socalled natural-scientific arguments. Upon philosophy these reasonings have made so much impression that it gives up the immortality of the soul entirely, Strauss, Chr. Gl. II 738. Id. Der alte und der neue Glaube2 123 f.

Schopenhauer, Die Welt u. s. w. I 330. Hartmann, Religionsphilos. II 232,

or [358] at most argues its possibility and speaks only of a hope of immortality, Hoekstra, De hoop der onsterfelijkheid 1867. Rauwenhoff,

Wijsbeg. v. d. godsd. 811. Also theologians often attach to the proofs for the immortality of the soul only slight or no value at all, Vilmar, Dogm. II 295.

Runze in Herzog2 16, 211 f. Frank, Chr. Wahrheit II 437 f. But over against them there still stand many men of name, who deem all or some or at least a single one of the proofs strong enough to build upon it a firm faith in the immortality of the soul, Weisse, Philos. Dogm. § 952-972. Fichte, Die Idee der Persönl. u. d. indiv. Fortdauer 1834. Id. Die Seelenfortdauer u. die

Weltstellung des Menschen 1867. Göschel, Von den Beweisen für die Unsterbl. der menschl. Seele 1835. Art. Unsterblichkeit in Herzog1 and 2.

Kahnis, Dogm. II 485 f. Dorner, Gl. II 916 f. Luthardt, Komp. d. Dogm. § 75. W. Schmidt, Christl. Dogm. 492 f. Doedes, Leer v. God 248. Oosterzee,

Dogm. § 68 etc.

2. The proofs for the immortality of the soul, derived from history and reason, give no conclusive certainty, but they are nevertheless not devoid of importance. In the first place it is already of significance that belief in immortality occurs among all peoples, at every stage of development. The consensus gentium is here as strong as in the belief in God, Cic. Tusc. I 3.

The various considerations from which one has derived belief in immortality, such as e.g. from fear of death and thirst for life, the experiences of dream and ecstasy, the riddle of death and the impossibility of imagining an absolute annihilation of the thinking being of man, fear of punishment and hope of reward, cf. Herzog2 16, 206-211, can indeed support and confirm belief in immortality a posteriori, but they give no satisfactory explanation of its origin. Even where such considerations are lacking or are regarded as worthless, belief in immortality nevertheless

occurs. The wish to continue to exist is often in many people weaker than that that with death existence might come to an end. The hope of reward does not explain the belief in those who have died to all selfishness and in communion with God have found the highest blessedness [359]. The thought of retribution is foreign to the representations of continued existence as a shadowy life of shades. The riddle of death leads only, in very high exception, to the immortality of animals and plants. And the experiences of dream and ecstasy do not extinguish the awareness of the essential distinction that exists between these phenomena and dying.

Rather, with this belief in the immortality of the soul, just as with that in the existence of God, we have to do with a conviction that has not been obtained from reflection and reasoning but precedes all reflection and arises spontaneously from human nature. It is self-evident and natural and is found everywhere where no philosophical doubts have undermined it. With the consciousness of one's own, independent, individual existence there also awakens that of personal continuance. Self-consciousness, not the abstract self-consciousness of which psychology treats, but the selfconsciousness of man as a personal, independent, rational, moral, religious being, everywhere and always includes belief in immortality, which therefore is also no mere wish or desire, no conclusion from praemisses, but a powerful, ineradicable testimony of human nature itself, maintaining itself against all reasoning and opposition. And the so-called proofs for immortality are nothing other than various attempts which this belief employs in the way of reasoning, in order, thinking, to give itself to some extent an account of itself, without ever in reality depending on that or making itself dependent on it. Therein lies their strength and at the same

time their weakness; they are testimonies of, not grounds for, the faith; knowing remains far behind believing.

The ontological proof, which concludes from the idea of immortality to its truth, no more bridges, than the ontological proof for the existence of God, part II 53, the gulf which separates thinking from being. It only formulates the consciousness that belief in immortality in man is no arbitrariness or chance, but is given with his nature and is for him necessary in a moral sense. Man does not derive the idea of immortality from the world around him, for this preaches to him nothing but perishableness and death; but it is imposed upon him by his own nature. Just as God does not leave himself without witness [360] but speaks to us out of all the works of his hands, so there presses itself upon man out of his own being the conviction that he does not perish like the beasts of the field. And that is what the ontological proof aims to show; it does not overstep the boundary from thinking to being, but it gives expression to the universality, the necessity, and the apriority of the belief in immortality. One step further goes the metaphysical proof, which concludes from the nature of the soul to its immortality. It can do this, however, and does it in different ways. One can point out that the soul, as principle of life and identical with life, is invulnerable to death; or that it, as appears from the unity of selfconsciousness, forms an indivisible, simple unity, lacks all composition and therefore is susceptible to no dissolution; or that it, under all changes of matter and all changes of the body, again as appears from selfconsciousness, always remains identical with itself and thus enjoys an existence and life independent of the body, self-subsistent; and along these different paths one can then try to arrive at the conclusion that the soul is immortal. But very serious objections have been raised against this

argument. Even if the soul is an active, living principle, it is nevertheless never identical with life itself. God alone is life itself; He alone is immortal,

1 Tim. 6:16. If the soul continues to exist, that can happen only through God's omnipresent and almighty power. The soul is a creature, and thus limited, finite, relative, never completely free from all passivity and composition, from all change and variation. Besides, we see it before our eyes, that it changes, increases or decreases in knowledge and power, is dependent on the body and undergoes all kinds of influences. And the subjective unity and identity of the I proves absolutely nothing of the objective unity and simplicity of the soul, or would, if it proved these, also prove the immortality of plants or at least of animals, as this then also was consistently assumed by Leibniz, Bonnet, Bilderdijk e. a. But over against these objections stands the incontrovertible fact, that life is not to be explained from mechanical metabolism and points back to a principle of its own. Omne vivum ex vivo is still today the last word of science. And what holds for life in general, holds in an even stronger measure [361] for conscious life; the most primitive sensation is already separated by an unbridgeable gulf from every nerve vibration. With that we enter an entirely new, higher world, which essentially differs from that of sensible, tangible, weighable and measurable things. That life and thus also conscious life is bound to the sensible world and most closely united with it, was already long known and truly is not to be called a discovery of more recent science.

But that it has its cause in the sensible world, has indeed often been asserted but thus far by no one proven. The metaphysical proof retains its value, insofar as it concludes from the peculiar psychic phenomena to a selfsubsistent, spiritual principle distinct from matter. Yet then the objection still always remains, that in the same way one can reason and conclude in

the case of plants or at least in the case of animals, and that their immortality nevertheless is not plausible. Therefore to the metaphysical there must subsequently be added the anthropological proof, which concludes from the peculiar character of the psychic life of man to a spiritual existence distinct from that of animals and plants. The soul of the animal, although also simple and self-subsistent over against the change of matter, is directed to the sensible; it is limited within the finite; it lives in the present; it is so bound to the body, that it cannot exist outside it. But man has not only sensation and perception, but also understanding and reason; through thinking he goes beyond the sensible, material, finite world; he raises himself to the ideal, the logical, to the true, good and beautiful, which cannot be seen with the eyes and cannot be touched with the hands; he seeks a lasting, eternal happiness, a highest good, which this world cannot bestow on him, and by all this is citizen and inhabitant of another, higher realm than that of nature. The rational, moral, religious consciousness of man points to a psychic existence that goes beyond the visible world; what by virtue of its nature seeks the eternal, must be destined for eternity. To that there is added still the moral and the retributive proof, which shows the disharmony that in this life exists between ethos and physis, and from that concludes to another life, in which both are reconciled. Let one not object against this, that this proof rests on egoism and that virtue bears its reward and sin its [362] punishment in itself,

Spinoza, Eth. V 41. 42. Strauss, Gl. II 706 f. For this the pious of all ages well knew, that God had to be served for his own sake and not for any reward, cf. also Calvin, Inst. III 2, 26. 16, 2. But nevertheless they maintained that they, if they were hoping in Christ only in this life, would be the most miserable of all men, 1 Cor. 15:17, 19, 30, 32. For here

absolutely not the satisfaction of a selfish desire is at play, but there is hereby involved nothing less than the dominion and the triumph of justice.

The question which lies at the foundation of the moral proof is this: will at the end the good or the evil, God or Satan, Christ or Antichrist win? History gives no conclusive answer to that. From the standpoint of the Diesseits there is no satisfactory explanation of the world possible; then there is only all too much ground for pessimistic despair. And therefore the sense of justice, which the righteous God himself has planted deep in man's heart, demands that there come restoration of justice at the end of days, that there be harmony between virtue and happiness, between sin and punishment, that truth win eternally over the lie and light over darkness. Even if it is rightly said, that le néant fut toujours l'horizon des mauvaises consciences, even they who have nothing good to hope for from a life after this life, are convinced by their sense of justice of the necessity of this restoration of justice. If justice does not prevail at the end, then there is no justice. And if God in the end does not appear to be the conqueror of Satan, life is not worth the trouble of living. Not an egoistic wish, but a deep sense of justice, the thirst for harmony, desire for the complete glorification of God, in whom holiness and blessedness are one, comes to expression in the moral proof. Even art prophesies of such a future, when it presents the ideal to us in visible form. All these proofs, and still more those which are derived from man's capacity for perfection, from his moral personality, from the many uninhabited stars, from the spiritistic appearances etc., are not proofs in that sense that they silence all contradiction, but they are nevertheless testimonies and indications, that belief in immortality arises wholly naturally and spontaneously out of human nature itself. Whoever denies and combats it, does violence to his own nature [363] . Der Gedanke an die

Unsterblichkeit ist schon der erste Akt der Unsterblichkeit, Von Baer bij Splittgerber, Tod, Fortleben und Auferstehung3 1879 S. 93.

3. However much value these indications may have, which nature and history offer us for faith in the immortality of the soul, Scripture, with respect to this doctrine, adopts a standpoint which at first acquaintance cannot but astonish. The immortality of the soul seems to be of the greatest significance for religion and life; and Scripture never mentions it in so many words; it never proclaims it as a Divine revelation and nowhere places it in the foreground; and still less does it ever set to work any attempt to demonstrate its truth or to maintain it over against its opponents. It is therefore explicable that earlier and later many have asserted that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul did not occur at all in the Old

Testament, or at least in its oldest books, and was only introduced into Israel from outside, cf. Oehler, Unsterblichkeit in Herzog1 21, 409 f.

Himpel, Die Unsterblichkeitslehre der A. T. 1857. Atzberger, Die christl.

Eschatologie, Freib. 1890 S. 17. But gradually one has nevertheless returned from this, and nowadays one generally acknowledges that Israel, like all peoples, did indeed believe in a continued existence after death.

Indeed, Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel I 387-427 and Ueber die altt.

Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode 1877, further Oort, De doodenvereering bij de Israelieten, Theol. Tijdschr. 1881 bl. 358-363 and especially Fr. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel u. s. w. Giessen 1892 have tried to demonstrate that in ancient times among Israel, as among the other peoples, the dead were venerated, and thus were undoubtedly thought to exist. The proofs for that they derived from the ritual customary in the case of a death, such as the tearing of garments and wearing of mourning dress, the covering of face

and head, the laying aside of ornaments, special hair arrangement and selfmutilation, the throwing with dust and ash, the not washing and anointing, the fasting and holding of a meal, the raising of lamentations and the bringing of sacrifices, all of which usages would be explicable only from earlier veneration of the dead [364]. But Schwally t. a. p. 75 must himself acknowledge, dass in der Zeit, als Israel in die Geschichte eintritt, die animistische Naturreligion im Princip bereits überwunden ist. And against his derivation of the mourning usages from an original animism, Joh. Frey,

Tod, Seelenglaube und Seelenkult im alten Israel, Leipzig 1898, has raised such serious objections that the hypothesis of an original cult of the dead in Israel can first be made plausible by other and new proofs. Yet it is clear that in Israel there was a great difference between the popular religion, which contained all kinds of superstitious and idolatrous components, and the service of Ihvh, which was advocated by Moses and his followers.

Jahvism has on the one hand opposed, forbidden, and eradicated that popular religion, but on the other hand has also quietly allowed to continue, or taken over and sanctioned, various religious conceptions and usages which in themselves were not wrong, cf. Wildeboer, Jahvedienst en volksreligie in Israel 1898. In his revelation to Israel God attached himself to the historical circumstances under which it lived; grace did not abolish nature but has renewed and sanctified it. Thus it also went with the popular belief in continued existence after death. Already the custom of burying and the great significance that was attached to it is a proof of that belief.

Burning of the corpses was not indigenous in Israel; it took place only after an executed death penalty, Gen. 38:24, Lev. 20:14, 21:9, Jos. 7:15, 25; from 1 Sam. 31:12 and Am. 6:10 nothing can be inferred, because the text is perhaps corrupted or otherwise reports only of cases standing by

themselves; and 2 Chr. 16:14, 21:19, Jer. 34:5 deal only with the burning of fragrant spices at the burial. Burial, however, was held in high esteem and is therefore repeatedly mentioned separately in the O. Test.; to remain unburied was a great disgrace, 1 Sam. 17:44, 46, 1 Kon. 14:11, 13, 16:4, 2

Kon. 9:10, Ps. 79:3, Pred. 6:3, Jes. 14:19, 20, Jer. 7:33, 8:1, 9:22, 16:6, 25:33, Ezech. 29:5. A deceased person no longer belongs in the land of the living; his unburied corpse arouses abhorrence; the shed blood cries out for vengeance, Gen. 4:10, 37:26, Job 16:18, Jes. 26:21, Ezech. 24:7, because the blood is the seat of the soul, Lev. 17:11; and therefore the deceased must be covered, hidden, withdrawn from sight. Through death all souls come into the realm of the dead, into the Sheol, ׁשאול, a word that is of uncertain derivation and according to some comes from ׁשאל, to ask, to demand, or also to claim, to bring to decision, according to others from ‏ׁשעל‎, ‎‏ׁשול, to be slack, to hang down, to sink, Delitzsch, Neuer Comm. über die Genesis

444. Atzberger, Christl. Eschat. 24. This Sheol is located in the depth of the earth, so that one descends into it, Num. 16:30, Ps. 30:4, 10, 55:16, Jes.

38:18, belongs to the lowest places of the earth, Ps. 63:10, Ezech. 26:20, 31:14, 32:18, lies still below the waters and the foundations of the mountains, Deut. 32:22, Job 26:5, Jes. 14:15, and is therefore more than once strengthened by the attribute ַּת ְח ִּתית, lowest, Deut. 32:22, Ps. 86:13,

88:7. Therefore Sheol also stands in close connection with the grave or the pit, ֶקֶבר or ּבֹור; the two are not identical, for deceased persons who are not buried are nevertheless in Sheol, Gen. 37:33, 35, Num. 16:32; but just as body and soul form the one human being and even after death are still thought in some mutual relation, so grave and Sheol are not to be thought apart from one another. Both belong to the lowest places of the earth, are represented as the dwelling of the dead, and alternate with one another

repeatedly; Sheol is the one great grave that comprises all the graves of the deceased; the realm of the dead, the underworld, and therefore wrongly often rendered in our Statenvertaling by hell. Sheol, for its part, is the place where all deceased persons without exception come together, 1 Kon. 2:2,

Job 3:13v., 30:23, Ps. 89:49, Jes. 14:9v., Ezech. 32:18, Hab. 2:5, and from which return is possible only by a miracle, 1 Kon. 17:22, 2 Kon. 4:34,

13:21; the realm of the dead is as it were a city that is provided with barred gates, Ps. 9:14, 107:18, Job 17:16 (to the bars of the underworld my hope descends), 38:17, Jes. 38:10, Mt. 16:18, and by its power, Ps. 49:16, 89:49,

Hos. 13:14, holds all human beings captive as in a prison, Jes. 24:22. Sheol is an eternal house, Pred. 12:5; the enemies of Israel, who have been hurled down into it, cannot rise again, Jes. 26:14; he who descends into the grave does not come up again, Job 7:9, 10, 14:7-12, 16:22. In a straight line this realm of the dead therefore stands over against the land of the living, Job

28:13, Spr. 15:24, Ezech. 26:20, 32:23v. [366] To be sure, the deceased are thought of as existing and living; they are often so represented and described as they appeared here on earth, and are therefore also recognized by one another, and moved at the meeting, 1 Sam. 18:14, Jes. 14:9v., Ezech.

32:18v. Also there is mention of innermost, deep inward-lying chambers in Sheol, Spr. 7:27, Ezech. 32:23, and there exists in so far among the deceased a distinction, in that each is gathered to his fathers, Gen. 15:15,

Richt. 2:10, or to his people, Gen. 25:8, 17, 35:29, 49:29, and the uncircumcised are laid together, Ezech. 32:19. But otherwise Sheol is always described from its negative side, in contrast with the earth as the land of the living. It is the domain of darkness and of the shadow of death,

Job 10:21, 22, Ps. 88:13, 143:3, the place of destruction, indeed destruction itself, ֲאַבּדֹון, Job 26:6, 28:22, 31:12, Ps. 88:12, Spr. 27:20, without

ordinances, i.e. without fixed contours and clear distinctions, Job 10:22, a land of rest, of silence, of forgetfulness, Job 3:13, 17, 18, Ps. 115:17, where

God and human beings are no longer to be seen, Jes. 38:11, God no longer praised and thanked, Ps. 6:6, 115:17, his virtues no longer proclaimed, Ps.

88:6, 12, 13, Jes. 38:18, 19, and his wonders no longer beheld, Ps. 88:11, 13, where the dead no longer know anything at all, do no more work, make no more calculation, possess no more wisdom and knowledge and have absolutely no share any more in all that happens under the sun, Pred. 9:5, 6,

10. They are ְרָפִאים, from the adjective ָרֶפה, slack, Job 26:5, Spr. 2:18, 9:18,

21:6, Ps. 88:11, Jes. 14:9, weakened, Jes. 14:10, without strength, Ps. 88:5.

This entire representation of Sheol is formed from the standpoint of this earthly existence, and is valid only in contrast with the richness of life which man enjoys here on earth. Then dying is indeed a breaking of all earthly bonds, a being-dead for the rich life on earth, a resting, a sleeping, a being-silent, a not-being in relation to the things on this side of the grave.

The condition in Sheol is not a destruction of existence, but yet a dreadful diminution of life, a deprivation of all that in this life constitutes the joy of life. For a view which lets only the body die and consoles itself with the immortality of the [367] soul, there is no place in the O. Test. The whole man dies, when at death the spirit, Ps. 146:4, Pred. 12:7, or the soul, Gen.

35:18, 2 Sam. 1:9, 1 Kon. 17:21, Jon. 4:3, goes out from the man. Not only his body but also his soul is in the state of death and belongs to the underworld; therefore one can also speak of a dying of the soul, Gen. 37:21,

Num. 23:10, Deut. 22:20, Richt. 16:30, Job 36:14, Ps. 78:50, and of defilement by touching the soul of a dead person, i.e. of a corpse, Lev.

19:28, 21:11, 22:4, Num. 5:2, 6:6, 9:6, 7, 10, Deut. 14:1, Hagg. 2:13. Just as the whole man was destined for life in the way of obedience, so through his

transgression he also wholly, according to soul and body both, falls to death, Gen. 2:17. This thought had to be deeply impressed in the consciousness of humanity; and it was also in antiquity perceived by all peoples, that death is a punishment, that it is something unnatural, in conflict with the being and the destination of man. The revelation which God gave to Israel also connects with this; it lets it exist and takes it over, just as it takes over so many customs and ceremonies (offering, priesthood, circumcision etc.); only it purifies it of the unclean elements which among the peoples had gradually become connected with it, such as selfmutilation, Lev. 19:28, 21:5, Deut. 14:1 and consulting the dead, Lev.

19:31, 20:6, 27, Deut. 18:10, 11. But the revelation does still something else and more. It not only maintains and strengthens the contrast which exists between life and death, but it introduces in this life itself an even sharper contrast. This life, indeed, is not the true life, because it is a sinful, unclean life tormented by suffering and destined for death. It first becomes life in the true sense and first receives an essential content of life through the service of Ihvh and in communion with God. Entirely in accordance with the then dispensation of the covenant of grace and with the election of Israel as people of God, the O. T. thinks the connection between piety and life thus, that the former receives its fruit and its reward in a long life on earth,

Ex. 20:12, Deut. 5:16, 29, 6:2, 11:9, 22:7, 30:16, 32:47 etc. Into the generally known, natural contrast of life and death there is woven another, moral, spiritual contrast, namely that between a life [368] in the service of sin and a life in the fear of the Lord. To evil death is bound, to good life is bound. Deut. 30:15. Those who with force have wanted to find the philosophical doctrine of the immortality of the soul in the Old Testament have not understood the revelation of God to Israel and have inserted

Western, rationalistic ideas into the religion of the Eastern people. Much more truly Pfleiderer says, Religionsphilos. 626: was man oft für eine

Schwäche der prophetischen Jahvereligion Israels gehalten hat (n.l. dat het Jenseits er zoo geringe plaats in bekleedt), ist in Wahrheit ihre auszeichnende Stärke gewesen; der lebendige Gott, der in geschichtlichen

Thaten sich offenbart, hat nichts gemein mit den Schatten des Scheol. The God of Israel is not a God of the dead but of the living. Therefore the expectation of pious Israel was directed almost exclusively to the earthly future of the people, to the realization of the kingdom of God. The question concerning the future of the individual persons in Sheol thereby receded entirely into the background. God, people, and land were inseparably bound together, and the individuals were included in that covenant and were reckoned accordingly. Only when Israel after the exile becomes a religious community and religion becomes individualized, then the question concerning each one's future lot presses itself into the foreground; the spiritual contrast which the revelation had woven into the natural one worked through; the distinction of righteous and ungodly replaced more and more that of Israel and the peoples, and continued also on the other side of the grave. The data for that were, moreover, already present in the revelation of earlier time. The man who serves God remains alive, Gen.

2:17; to the keeping of his commandments life is bound, Lev. 18:5, Deut.

30:20; his word is life, Deut. 8:3, 32:47. In Proverbs, by life there is indeed often understood length of days, 2:18, 3:16, 10:30; but noteworthy is nevertheless that it usually brings death and Sheol into connection only with the ungodly, 2:18, 5:5, 7:27, 9:18, and over against that assigns life almost exclusively to the righteous. Wisdom, righteousness, the fear of the Lord is the way to life, 8:35, 36, 11:19, 12:28, 13:14, 14:27, 19:23; the ungodly is

overthrown when misfortune strikes him, but the righteous preserves even in [369] his death still confidence and comfort, 14:32. Blessed is he who has Ihvh as his God, Deut. 33:29, Ps. 1:1, 2:12, 32:1, 2, 33:12, 34:9 etc., also in the heaviest adversities, Ps. 73:25-28, Hab. 3:17-19; on the other hand the ungodly perish and come to an end, even though they temporarily still enjoy so much prosperity, Ps. 73:18-20. From this standpoint the pious not only expect deliverance from oppression and adversity in time, but with the eye of faith they also many times press through to the other side of the grave and expect a blessed life in communion with God. The passages which are usually adduced for this, Gen. 49:18, Job 14:13-15, 16:16-21,

19:25-27, Ps. 16:9-11, 17:15, 49:16, 73:23-26, 139:18 are of uncertain interpretation, and according to many refer only to temporal rescue from death. But even if this should also be the case, the whole Old Testament teaches that God is Creator of heaven and earth, that his power knows no limits and that He also possesses absolute dominion over life and death. It is

God the Lord who has bestowed life on man, Gen. 1:26, 2:7, and still creates and sustains every man, just as all that exists, Job 32:8, 33:4, 34:14,

Ps. 104:29, Pred. 12:7. He sovereignly binds life to his law and determines death upon its transgression, Gen. 2:17, Lev. 18:5, Deut. 30:20, 32:47. He dwells in heaven but is also present with his Spirit in Sheol, Ps. 139:7, 8.

Sheol and abaddon lie naked and open spread out before the Lord, just as the hearts of the children of men, Job 26:6, 38:17, Spr. 15:11. The Lord kills, preserves in life and makes alive, causes to descend into Sheol and from it to come up again, Deut. 32:39, 1 Sam. 2:6, 2 Kon. 5:7. He has ways out for death, can deliver when death already threatens, Ps. 68:21, Jes. 38:5,

Jer. 15:20, Dan. 3:26, etc., can take Enoch and Elijah to himself without death, Gen. 5:24, 2 Kon. 2:11, and can cause the dead to return to life, 1

Kon. 17:22, 2 Kon. 4:34, 13:21. He can abolish death and by raising of the dead triumph completely over its power, Job 14:13-15, 19:25-27, Hos. 6:2,

13:14, Jes. 25:8, 26:19, Ezech. 37:11, 12, Dan. 12:2. Cf. concerning immortality in the Old Test., besides Oort, Schwally, Frey, Stade also

Oehler, Theol. des A. T. § 78. 245 f. and art. Unsterbl. in Herzog1. Schultz, Alttest. [370] Theol.4 697 f. Schmend, Altt. Rel. 112 f. 497 f. 504 f.

Atzberger, Die christl. Eschat. 1890 S. 15 f. Bertholet, Die israel.

Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode, Freiburg 1899. Matthes, Mourning and veneration of the dead among the Israel. Theol. Tijdschrift

1900.

4. This doctrine of the Old Testament did not indeed wholly disappear in the later Jewish literature, but it was nevertheless modified and expanded by all kinds of foreign elements. In general the writings of this category agree in this, that they conceive religion more individualistically, under the influence of the idea of retribution allow already immediately at death a provisional separation to take place between righteous and godless, and give a more elaborated description of the different places where these abide.

Yet they are clearly to be divided into two groups, a Palestinian and an Alexandrian. The former, to which especially the apocryphal writings of the Maccabees, Baruch, 4 Ezra, Enoch, the Testament of the twelve patriarchs etc. belong, ascribe to the intermediate state only a provisional character. To be sure, they too already take up foreign constituent elements and teach a certain separation between righteous and godless immediately at death. The Apocalypse of Enoch places Sheol in the West, describes it as intersected and surrounded by streams, and distinguishes in it four divisions, two for the good and two for the evil, 17:5, 6, 22:2v.; moreover it also assumes a paradise, which is situated high above and at the ends of the earth and

immediately at their dying became the dwelling-place of Enoch and Elijah, 12:1, 87:3, 89:52 and it also will become for all who walk in their ways,

71:16, 17. But the centre of gravity nevertheless lies with all the writers of this group in the universal eschatology, in the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of the Kingdom of God at the end of the days. Until then the souls of the deceased are preserved in the hades, be it also in different divisions and in provisionally distinct lot, as in ταμιεια, promptuaria animarum, Apoc. Baruch 21:23, 4 Ezr. 4:35, 5:37; resting and sleeping they await the last judgment, 4 Ezr. 7:32-35. Apoc. Baruch 21:24, 23:4, 30:2. But the writings of the second [371] group, such as the Proverbs of Jesus Sirach, the book of Wisdom, Philo, Flavius Josephus etc., lay precisely emphasis on the individual eschatology and thereby allow the coming of the Messiah, the resurrection, the final judgment and the Kingdom of God on earth to recede wholly into the shadow or even do not speak of them with a single word. The chief dogma is the immortality of the soul, which according to Philo was praeëxistent, on account of its fall was temporarily shut up in the prison of the body and according to its conduct after death migrates into other bodies, or in any case immediately after dying receives the definitive decision of its lot, Sir. 1:12, 7:17, 18:24, 41:12, Wijsh. 1:8, 9, 3:1-10, and goes to the holy heaven or to the dark hades, Josephus, Bell. Jud. III 8, 5. At the time of Christ, therefore, all kinds of eschatological ideas crossed one another among the people of Israel. The Pharisees believed in a continued existence and a provisional retribution after death, but in doing so held fast the expectation of the Messiah, of the resurrection of the dead, if not of all men then at least of the righteous, and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. The Sadducees denied the resurrection, Mt. 22:23, Mk. 12:18,

Luk. 20:27, Hd. 23:8, and according to Josephus, Bell. Jud. II 8, 14. Ant.

XVIII 1, 4 also retribution after death and immortality. The Essenes assumed, according to Josephus, Bell. Jud. II 8, 11, that the body was mortal but the soul immortal. The souls originally dwelt in the finest ether, but were seized by sensual lust and placed in bodies, from which they are then again freed by death. The good souls receive a blessed life on the other side of the ocean in a place that is plagued by no rain, snow, or heat, but the bad must suffer everlasting pains in a dark, cold place. Cf. Gröbler, Die

Ansichten über Unsterbl. u. Auferst. in der jüd. Lit. der beiden letzten Jahrh. v. Chr., Stud. u. Krit. 1879 S. 651-700. Wünsche, Die Vorst. v. Zustande nach dem Tode nach Apokr., Talmud u. Kirchenvätern, Jahrb. f. prot. Theol.

1880 S. 355-383. 435-523. Weber, Syst. der altsyn. pal. Theol. 322 f. Oehler in Herzog1 21, 424 f. Runze in Herzog2 16, 193. Atzberger, Christl.

Eschatol. 96-156. Schwally, Das Leben nach d. Tode 131-192.

In the footsteps of law and prophets, the N. Test. devotes much [372] more attention to general than to special eschatology. Yet it is incorrect, both to assert with Episcopius, Op. II 2 p. 455, Limborch, Theol. Christ. VI 10, 4, Oertel, Hades S. 4-6, Schleiermacher, Chr. Gl. § 159, 2, Hofmann,

Schriftbeweis III 462, that Scripture says virtually nothing about the intermediate state or at least contains no doctrine valid for us, and to maintain with Kliefoth, Eschatologie 37, that the N. T. probably says everything about it that can be said. For there is no lack of statements which shed as much light on the intermediate state as we need in and for this life.

Even more strongly than the Old, the N. T. brings out that death is a consequence and punishment of sin, Rom. 5:12, 6:23, 8:10, 1 Cor. 15:21; and that death extends to all human beings, 1 Cor. 15:22, Heb. 9:27; only a single one, such as Enoch, has been taken away, so that he should not see death, Heb. 11:5; and also those who experience the parousia of Christ are

changed at once without the intervention of death, 1 Cor. 15:51, 1 Thess.

4:14-17, cf. John 21:22, 23, so that Christ will judge not only the dead but also the living, Acts 10:42, 2 Tim. 4:1, 1 Pet. 4:5. But that death is not the end of the human being; the soul cannot be killed, Mt. 10:28, the body is once raised again, John 5:28, 29, Acts 23:6, Rev. 20:12, 13 and believers even partake of an eternal life that cannot die, John 3:36, 11:25. All the dead, up to the resurrection, are also according to the N. T. in Hades, which is the realm of the dead. In Mt. 11:23 the καταβασις ἑως ᾁδου indicates that proud Capernaum will be humbled to the deepest point. In Mt. 16:18 Jesus promises his church that the πυλαι ᾁδου will have no power over it, that death will not triumph over it. According to Luke 16:23 the poor Lazarus is carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom and the rich man comes immediately through death and burial into Hades; in which case it cannot be proved that Hades is already the same as a place of torment, since this is first indicated by the further addition: ὑπαρχων ἐν βασανοις. Jesus too, as long as he was in the state of death, was in Hades, even though he was not held by it, Acts 2:27, 31; for he descended εἰς τα κατωτερα της γης, Eph.

4:9. And thus all [373] the dead are καταχθονιοι, Phil. 2:10; not only the ungodly but also believers are after death in Hades, they are νεκροι ἐν

Χριστῳ, 1 Thess. 4:16, cf. 1 Cor. 15:18, 23; at the resurrection the sea, death, and Hades give back all the dead who were in them, so that they are judged according to their works, Rev. 20:13; Hades follows with and after death, so that death always brings about a transposition into Hades, Rev.

6:8. This conception, that believers too according to Scripture are from death until the resurrection in Hades, is strengthened by the expression ἀναστασις ἐκ νεκρων, Mt. 17:9, Mk. 6:14, Luke 16:30, John 20:9 etc., ἐκ των νεκρων, Eph. 5:14, that is, not out of death, but out of the dead, out of

the realm of the departed. This common being in the state of death, however, does not exclude that the lot of believers and unbelievers there is already very different. The O. T. already expressed this thought, but much more clearly it confronts us in the N. T. According to the parable in Luke 16 the poor Lazarus is carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, by which it is indicated that Lazarus in heaven, where indeed the angels dwell, enjoys salvation in the proximity of and in fellowship with Abraham, cf. Mt. 8:11.

To one of his fellow-crucified Jesus promises that he will be with him today in paradise, Luke 23:43. The word paradise is of Persian origin and in general denotes a garden, a pleasure-garden, Neh. 2:8, Eccl. 2:5, Song 4:13; the LXX used it as a translation of the garden in Gen. 2:8-15; the Jews used it to indicate the place where God grants his fellowship to the righteous after their death, Weber, Syst. der alts. pal. Theol. 330. Undoubtedly also according to the N. T. paradise, like Abraham's bosom, is to be thought of in heaven; shortly after Jesus had promised the murderer that he would be with him today in paradise, he commended his spirit into the hands of his

Father, Luke 23:46; in 2 Cor. 12:2, 4 paradise alternates with the third heaven; in Rev. 2:7, 12:2 it denotes the place where in the future God will dwell among his people. In agreement with that, the Gospel of John teaches that believers, who here on earth already have the principle of eternal life and have escaped the judgment of God, 3:15-21, 5:24, partake of a fellowship with [374] Christ that is broken neither by his departure, 12:32,

14:23, nor by death, 11:25, 26, and is once completed in an eternal beingtogether, 6:39, 14:3, 19, 16:16, 17:24. Dying, Stephen prays that the Lord

Jesus may receive his spirit to himself in heaven, Acts 7:59. Paul knows that the believer partakes of a life which is exalted above death, Rom. 8:10, and that nothing, not even death, can separate him from the love of God in

Christ, 8:38, 14:8, 1 Thess. 5:10; although he must remain in the flesh for some time for the sake of the churches, he nevertheless desires to depart and to be with Christ, Phil. 1:23, 2 Cor. 5:8. According to Rev. 6:8, 7:9, the souls of the martyrs are with Christ under the burnt-offering altar standing before the throne of God in the temple of heaven, cf. 2:7, 10, 17, 26, 3:4, 5,

12, 31, 8:3, 9:13, 14:13, 15:2, 16:17, and also Heb. 11:10, 16, 12:23. And just as believers already immediately after death enjoy a provisional blessedness with Christ in heaven, so unbelievers, as soon as they have died, come into a place of torment. The rich man was in torment when he lifted up his eyes in Hades, Luke 16:23. The unbelievers who reject Christ remain under the wrath of God and are already judged on earth, John 3:18,

36, and immediately after death, with all human beings, have a judgment to await, Heb. 9:27. But yet this place of torment is not identical with the γεεννα or the λιμνη του πυρος, for Gehenna is the place of the unquenchable and eternal fire, which is prepared for the devils, Mk. 9:43,

47, 48, Mt. 18:8, 25:4, 46, and the lake of fire is not the present but indeed the future place of punishment of the world-kingdom and the false prophet,

Rev. 19:20, of Satan, Rev. 20:10 and of all the ungodly, Rev. 21:8, cf. 2 Pet.

2:17, Jude 13. Rather, they are all now kept in a φυλακη, 1 Pet. 3:19, or in the ἀβυσσος, Luke 8:31, cf. Mt. 8:29, Rom. 10:7, Rev. 9:1, 2, 11, 11:7,

17:8, 20:1, 3 for the final judgment and the lake of fire, 2 Pet. 2:17, Jude 6.

13. This distinction in the intermediate state of the good and the evil does not conflict with the fact that they all together are in Hades, for all the dead as such are καταχθονιοι, belong before the resurrection still to the realm of the dead, and are only by that resurrection completely, [375] as to soul and body both, delivered from the dominion of death, 1 Cor. 15:52-55, Rev.

20:14. Cf. Cremer s. v. ἁδης, ἀβυσσος, γεεννα etc. and further on New-Test.

eschatology in general, besides the well-known works of Weiss, Holtzmann et al. on N. T. theology, Briet, De Eschatologie of leer der toek. dingen volgens de Schriften des N. V. 2 deelen, Tiel 1857/58. Haupt, Die eschatol.

Aussagen Jesu in den synopt. Evang., Berlin 1895. Schwartzkopff, Die Weissagungen Jesu Christi von seinem Tode, seiner Auferstehung und

Widerkunft und ihrer Erfüllung, Gött. 1895. Kabisch, Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihrem Zusammenhange mit dem Gesammtbegriff des

Paulinismus, Gött. 1893. Teichmann, Die paulin. Voraussetzungen von Auferstehung und Gericht und ihre Beziehung zur jüd. Apokalyptik,

Freiburg 1896. Atzberger, Die christl. Eschatologie in den Stadien ihrer Offenbarung im A. u. N. T., Freiburg 1890 S. 190 f.

5. In the earliest period Christian theology confined itself to these simple data of Holy Scripture. The apostolic fathers still have no doctrine concerning the intermediate state and are generally of the opinion that, at death, the pious immediately become partakers of heavenly blessedness and the godless of hellish punishment. Burnet in his tractatus de statu mortuorum et resurgentium 1727 and others after him, such as Blondel,

Ernesti, Baumgarten-Crusius etc., did indeed attempt to show that the oldest Christian writers let the proper blessedness of believers begin only after the world-judgment, but they were unable to adduce any conclusive proofs for that, Atzberger, Gesch. der christl. Eschatologie innerhalb der vornicän.

Zeit, Freiburg Herder 1896 S. 75-99. Only when the parousia of Christ did not come as soon as was at first generally expected, and various heretics distorted or contested the doctrine of the last things, did one begin to reflect more deliberately on the intermediate state. Ebionitism tried to hold fast the national privileges of Israel to the detriment of Christian universalism and was therefore generally chiliastically disposed; Gnosticism, by virtue of its

dualistic principle, rejected the whole of Christian eschatology and had no other expectation than the liberation of the spirit from matter, and its reception, taking place immediately at death, into the [376] divine pleroma,

Atzberger, ib. 172-218. Christian theology was thereby compelled to give itself a clearer account of the character of the intermediate state and of its connection, both with this life and with the final state after the last judgment. Justin already said that the souls of the pious after death sojourned in a better place and those of the unrighteous in a worse, in order to await the time of judgment, dial. c. Tryph. 5, and condemned it as an unchristian doctrine that there is no resurrection of the dead and that souls are taken up into heaven immediately at death, ib. 80. According to Irenaeus the souls of the pious at death do not come immediately into heaven, paradise, or the city of God, which after the last judgment will be three distinct dwelling-places of the righteous, adv. haer. V 36, but into an invisible place determined by God, where they await the resurrection and the vision of God that follows thereafter, for Christ too first sojourned three days there where the dead were, in inferioribus terrae, in order to deliver his holy dead from it, and was, after thus having fulfilled the lex mortuorum, raised and taken up into heaven, V 31. There, in the shadow of death, in Hades, every human being receives dignam habitationem, etiam ante judicium, the pious probably in the bosom of Abraham, which is thus a division of Hades, II 34. The same conception of different receptacula in Hades, where the deceased await the final decision on the last day, we also encounter in Hippolytus, Tertullian, Novatian, Commodian, Victorinus,

Lactantius, Hilary, Ambrose, Cyril, and also still in Augustine, Enchir. 109.

110, cf. Atzberger t. a. p. 275 f. 301 f. Schwane, D. G. II 585. But in proportion as the parousia of Christ receded into a far distance, it became

all the more difficult to maintain the old conception of Hades and to regard the sojourn there as a short, preliminary, more or less neutral state. For the martyrs one already made an exception early on; these, according to Irenaeus, Tertullian e. a., had entered heaven immediately after their death and been admitted to the vision of God. The descent of Christ into Hades was in connection therewith interpreted in such a way that he had delivered the believers who had died before Christ's offering from the limbus patrum and had transferred them to heaven. And the doctrine of the [377] necessity and the meritoriousness of good works, which penetrated more and more into the church, naturally led to the thought that those who had devoted their whole life in a special sense to God were now also, at their death, immediately worthy of heavenly blessedness. Thus Hades was gradually deprived of its inhabitants. To be sure, the unbelievers still remained, but this had precisely as a consequence that Hades was regarded more and more as a place of punishment and was identified with Tartarus or Gehenna. Of Christians only those could still sojourn for a time in Hades who had not, here on earth, advanced so far in sanctification that at their death they could enter heavenly glory without delay. With that the thought of a purifying fire was gradually brought into connection, which was first expressed by Origen. According to him all punishments were remedies, φαρμακα, and the whole of Hades, Gehenna included, a place of purification, c. Cels. III 75.

VI 25. 26; and specifically sins were consumed and human beings purified by the πυρ καθαρσιον, which at the end of this dispensation would set the world aflame, ib. VI 12. 13. 21. 64. V 15. 16. In the footsteps of Origen the Greek theologians later therefore assumed that the souls of many deceased persons still had to suffer pains and could be delivered from them only by the intercessions and offerings of the living, Conf. orth. qu. 64-68, but they

nevertheless had objections to a particular purifying fire, such as the Western church taught; only at the council of Florence did one make some concessions on this point, Münscher-v. Coelln, D. G. II 313. Schwane, D.

G. II 587 III 486. Kattenbusch, Vergl. Conf. I 327. In the West, on the other hand, the purifying fire of which Origen had spoken was transferred from the final judgment to the intermediate state. Augustine sometimes said that after the general resurrection or at the last judgment still some poenae purgatoriae were imposed, de civ. XX 25. XXI 24. But yet he usually lets the development of the kingdom of God close with the last judgment, and therefore deems it not impossible, nonnullos fideles per ignem quendam purgatorium, quanto magis minusve bona pereuntia dilexerunt, tanto tardius citiusve salvari, Enchir. 69. Caesarius of Arles and Gregory the Great worked this out in such a way that specifically the peccata venialia could be expiated here or hereafter. [378] And when with this doctrine the ecclesiastical practice already mentioned by Tertullian, de monog. 10. 11, de exhort. cast. 11, of making intercessions and offerings for the deceased, was brought into connection, the dogma of purgatory was completed.

Scholasticism gave it broader development, Lombardus e. a. on Sent. IV 21.

Thomas, S. Theol. appendix qu. 2. Bonaventura, Brevil. VII 2. 3; the council of Florence 1439 and of Trent, sess. 6 can. 30. sess. 22 c. 2 can. 3. sess. 25 established it, and later theology gave it an ever greater significance for religious and ecclesiastical life. According to the Roman doctrine the souls of the damned come immediately into hell (gehenna, abyssus, infernus), where they are tormented with the unclean spirits in an eternal and inextinguishable fire. The souls of those who after receiving baptism are no longer defiled by sin or have been cleansed of that defilement here or hereafter are taken up without delay into heaven and

there behold the face of God, albeit according to their merits in differing degree of perfection, in Denzinger n. 870. 875. By the descent of Christ into hell the souls of the saints who had died before that time have also been transferred from the limbus patrum (bosom of Abraham) to heaven.

Children dying unbaptized, concerning whose lot the church fathers sometimes judged more gently than more harshly, are referred to the infernus, where, however, the punishments are very unequal, in Denzinger ib., and according to the most common conception come into a special division (limbus infantum), where they suffer only an aeterna poena damni, but not a poena sensus, Lombardus, Thomas, Bonaventura on Sent. II dist.

33. Thomas, S. Theol. suppl. qu. 69 art. 4. But those who, after having received sanctifying grace in baptism or also again in penance, make themselves guilty of peccata venialia and have not been able to satisfy in this life the temporal punishments appointed for them, are not pure enough to be admitted immediately to the blessed vision of God in heaven; they enter a place between heaven and hell, not to acquire new virtues and merits, but to remove the hindrances which stand in the way of their entrance into heaven. To that end, in the first moment after dying, by an act of contrition, per actum peccato veniali contrariae [379] dispositionis, they are freed from the guilt of venial sins and then subsequently still have to bear the temporal punishments which, even after forgiveness, remain imposed on those sins. The purgatorium (purgatory from vagen, vegen, i.e. to cleanse, to purify) is therefore not a place of conversion, of testing, of sanctification, but a place of punishment, in which the fire, mostly conceived as material, serves, idealiter, through the representation of pain, to work purifyingly upon the "poor souls". Moreover, the church by virtue of the communion of saints can come to the aid of these suffering souls and

mitigate and shorten their punishment by intercessions, Mass-offerings, good works, and indulgences. To be sure, no one knows which souls specifically come into purgatory, how long they must remain there, and under what conditions on their part the prayers and offerings of the living benefit them; but this uncertainty does no harm to the cult of the dead. For more and more it holds as a rule that, with a few exceptions, such as martyrs and special saints, the great mass of believers first comes into purgatory. In any case they are far ahead of the living, who must also go through that purgatorium to heaven; poor souls on the one hand, they are nevertheless, considered from another side, blessed souls, who together with the angels and the blessed are invoked by the living in need for help.

Cf. Catech. Rom. I c. 6 qu. 3. Bellarminus, de purgatorio, Controv. II 228269. Perrone, Prael. III 309. Möhler, Symbolik § 23. Oswald, Eschatologie2

1869 S. 81. Simar, Dogm. § 164. Atzberger, Chr. Eschatologie 269.

Deharbe, Kath. geloofsen zedeleer II 328. Jansen, Prael. III 975.

6. The Reformation saw in this purgatory a limitation of the merits of Christ and taught, by virtue of its principle of justification by faith alone, that the human being immediately after a judicium particulare in agone mortis entered into the blessedness of heaven or into the perdition of hell.

Luther himself still often represented the intermediate state of the pious as a sleep, in which they calmly and quietly awaited the future of the Lord,

Köstlin, Luthers Theol. II 568; but later Lutheran theologians almost entirely erased the distinction between intermediate state and final state and said that the souls of the pious immediately after death enjoyed a plena et essentialis beatitudo and those [380] of the ungodly immediately received a perfecta ac consummata damnatio, Quenstedt, Theol. IV 540. 567. Gerhard,

Loc. XXVI § 160. 191. Schmid, Dogm. der ev. luth. K. § 63. In the main

that was now also indeed the opinion of the Reformed, Catech. Heid. 57.

58. Ned. Gel. 37. Helv. II 26. Westm. c. 32. Junius, Theses theol. 55. 56.

Voetius, Disp. V 533-539. But usually they nevertheless brought out better than the Lutherans the difference that existed in the state of the deceased before and after the last day. Calvin said in his writing on the psychopannychia, that Abraham's bosom meant nothing else than that the souls of the pious after death will enjoy full peace, but that then, however, until the day of resurrection something still remains lacking to them, namely summa et perfecta Dei gloria, ad quam semper aspirant, and that our salvation thus always remained in cursu usque ad diem illum, qui omnem cursum claudit et terminabit, C. R. 33, 177-232, cf. Inst. III 25, 6, and further, although mostly expressing themselves somewhat more weakly,

Ned. Gel. 37. Synops. pur. theol. 40. 17. Witsius, Oec. foed. III 14, 33, Heidegger, Corpus Theol. 28, 38. Others went still further and assumed a definite intermediate state. Lud. Cappellus said that the souls of the pious after death came into a state that could indeed be called blessed in comparison with that here on earth, but that was longe diversus from that blessedness which after the resurrection took a beginning; for the intermediate state consisted almost entirely in spe atque exspectatione futurae gloriae, non vero in ipsa gloriae fruitione. And likewise the souls of the ungodly after death came into a state in which they awaited the firmly determined future punishment in anxiety and fear, but yet did not suffer that punishment itself, for exspectatio supplicii non est ipsum supplicium. And thus in the main also thought William Sherlock, Thomas Burnet and many other English theologians, and among the Lutherans Calixtus, Hornejus,

Zeltner, Tresenreuter, J. H. Ursinus and others, cf. M. Vitringa IV 63-69.

Even since the previous century in Protestant theology all the thoughts

returned that earlier had been expressed by pagans and Christians, by philosophers and theologians about the intermediate state. The doctrine of the Roman purgatorium was taken up again by many mystics and pietists, such as Böhme, Antoinette Bourignon, Poiret, Dippel, Petersen, Arnold,

Schermer etc., cf. M. Vitringa IV 81. 82, and further by [381] Leibniz, Syst. der Theol. 1825 S. 340, Lessing, Erziehung des Menschengeschl., J. F. v.

Meyer, Blätter f. höhere Wahrheit VI 233. Jung-Stilling, Theorie der Geisterkunde § 211. Lange, Dogm. II 1250 f. Rothe, Ethik § 793-795.

Martensen, Dogm. § 276. 277. Dorner, Gl. II 952 f. Oosterzee, Dogm. § 142 etc. In imitation of some early-Christian writers, the Socinians taught that, just as the bodies to the earth, so the souls returned to God and with Him until the resurrection led an existence without perception or thought, without pleasure or displeasure, Fock, Der Socin. 714 f. Closely related to that was the doctrine of a soul-sleep, which earlier already was advocated by some heretics, later by the Anabaptists and since the previous century again with Artobe, Heyn, Sulzer, cf. Bretschneider, Dogm. II 395, with Fries, Jahrb. f. d. Theol. 1856. Ulrici, Gott und die Natur2 332 f. and with the Irvingians found acceptance. By others this doctrine of the psychopannychia was so modified that the souls indeed retained an inward consciousness but were cut off from intercourse with the outside world,

Episcopius, Op. II 2, 455. Limborch, Theol. Christ. VI 10, 8. J. Müller, Lehre v. d. Sünde II 402-408. Martensen, Dogm. § 276. Ebrard, Dogm. §

570. Dorner, Gl. II 952 f. Frank, Chr. Wahrh. II 460. Others avoided this doctrine of the soul-sleep by assuming that the souls at the laying aside of the material envelope retained the organic and basic form of the body, or also, that after death they received a new body composed of the finest matter, through which they could remain in communion with the outside

world, Paracelsus, Helmont, Böhme, Oetinger, Ph. M. Hahn, Swedenborg, Priestley, Schott, Jean Paul, cf. Bretschneider, Dogm. II 396, and further

Rothe, Ethik § 111 f. 793 f. Hamberger, Die Rationalität der himml.

Leiblichkeit, Jahrb. f. d. Th. 1863. Delitzsch, Bibl. Psych. 426 f. Martensen, Dogm. § 276. Ulrici, Gott u. die Natur2 333. Güder, Lehre v. d.

Erscheinung Christi unter den Todten 321 f. Splittgerber, Tod, Fortleben u.

Auferst.3 45 f. Rinck, Vom Zustande nach dem Tode 1885 S. 114 f. Mühe, Das enthüllte Geheimniss der Zukunft3 14 f. Nitzsch, Ev. Dogm. 619.

Grétillat, Théol. syst. IV 548 etc. There are even those who have returned to the old doctrine of transmigration of souls and have recommended it in this form, that the souls through continued transitions from the one into the [382] other human body gradually become partakers of perfection, Lessing,

Erz. d. Mensch., Schlosser, Ungern-Sternberg, Dr. D. Burger, De Plat. leer der zielsverhuizing, Amersf. 1877, Carl Andresen, Die Lehre v. d.

Wiedergeburt auf theist. Grundlage, 2e Aufl. Hamburg 1899, who finds the reincarnation taught in Joh. 3:3-17, and others with M. Vitringa IV 95-97.

Bretschneider, Dogm. II 388. Spiess, Entw. Gesch. der Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach d. Tode 1877 S. 31. Falke, Die Lehre v. d. ewigen

Verdammnis, 1892 S. 59 f. The idea of development is nowadays so alldominating that it is also applied to the state on the other side of the grave.

The doctrine of the limbus patrum was again taken over by Martensen, Dogm. § 277. Delitzsch, Bibl. Psych. 407 f. Vilmar, Dogm. II 290.

Splittgerber t. a. p. 110 f. Cremer, Ueber den Zustand nach dem Tode 1883 S. 9 f. The opinion that in the intermediate state there is still preaching of the gospel and possibility of conversion is a favorite notion of the new theology, Lange II 1250 f. Rothe § 796. 797. Delitzsch 413. Martensen §

277. Dorner II 952 f. Ebrard § 576. Cremer t. a. p. 48. 62 f. Kliefoth,

Eschatologie 97-113. Falke t. a. p. 152 f. Krauss, Lehre v. d. Offenbarung 112. Rinck t. a. p. 79-88. Mühe t. a. p. 30 f. Grétillat IV 540. 549. Oosterzee

§ 142. Doedes, Ned. Gel. 521 etc. Many even conceive the whole Jenseits as a continuing purification, the result of which is that some possibly are lost eternally (hypothetical universalism), or that those who persist in evil are finally annihilated (conditional immortality) or that at the end all are saved (apocatastasis), cf. § 56.

7. The history of the intermediate state proves that it costs the theologian and man in general effort to keep within the bounds of Holy Scripture and not to be wise above what one ought to be wise. The data which Holy

Scripture contains concerning the intermediate state are sufficient for life, but leave many questions, which can arise in the curious mind, unanswered.

If one nevertheless wishes to solve these, one cannot do otherwise than enter upon the path of conjectures, and one runs the danger of nullifying the Divine testimony by inventions of human wisdom. Immediately at once

[383] this becomes apparent in speaking about death and immortality.

Philosophy deals with this in a wholly different manner than Holy Scripture. The former regards death as something natural and thinks it sufficient to have immortality, that is, the continued existence of the soul.

But Scripture judges wholly otherwise. Death is not natural, but has its cause in the transgression of God's command, Gen. 2:17, in the devil, insofar as he by his temptation caused man to fall and to die, Joh. 8:44, in sin itself, because it works dissolvingly upon the whole human life and, as it were, brings forth death out of itself, Jak. 1:15, in the judgment of God, because He rewards sin with death, Rom. 6:23. And that death is in Scripture never identical with annihilation, with non-being, but always consists in the breaking of harmony, in the cutting off of the different

relations of life in which a creature is placed according to its nature, in return to the elementary, chaotic being that underlies the whole cosmos, at least logically. According to Herbert Spencer, life consists in continual adaptation of internal to external relations, part I 416. Even if with this definition the essence of life is by no means explained, yet it is true that life is the richer, the more numerous and the healthier by nature are the relations in which it stands to its environment. The highest creature is therefore man; by virtue of his creation he stands in connection with nature and the world of men, visible and invisible things, heaven and earth, God and angels. And he lives, if he and insofar as he stands in the right relation, willed by God, to this whole environment, cf. Drummond, Das Naturgesetz in der

Geisteswelt S. 121 f. Death is therefore in its essence and in its whole extent disturbance, breaking of all these relations in which man originally stood and still ought to stand. Its cause is therefore no other and can be no other than sin, that is, disturbance of the right relation to and breaking of the communion of life with God. Sin has death in this sense not merely as a consequence but coincides with it; sin is death, death in the spiritual sense; whoever does sin stands thereby in the same moment over against God, is dead for God and Divine things, has no desire for the knowledge of His ways, turns away from Him in enmity and hatred. And because this [384] relation to God, this created being according to His image and likeness, is no donum superadditum but belongs to man's essence and bears a central character, the disturbance of this relation must work destructively upon all other relations in which man stood to himself, to his fellow men, to nature, to the angels, to the whole creation. Sin, according to its nature, ought actually, at the same moment that it was committed, to have had as its

consequence the full, entire death, Gen. 2:17, return of the whole cosmos to its chaotic existence.

But God has intervened between the two and has broken the power of sin and of death. Indeed, as Schelling said, at the basis of all that exists there lies an irrational remainder. Everything that is left to itself passes over into dissolution. Nature, which is not cultivated, runs wild; the human being, who is not educated, degenerates; the people, that comes to stand outside civilization, becomes bastardized. By nature everything in and outside the human being stands in enmity over against one another. Understanding and will, conscience and inclination, duty and desire, soul and body, the human being and his neighbor, the world of human beings and of animals and of angels, all find themselves on a footing of war against each other and are in a state of dissolution and ruin. But yet God with his grace has intervened between the two, first with his general grace, to restrain the power of sin and death, then with his special grace, to break and to overcome them.

Bodily death is not only postponed and by all kinds of measures a human existence and development made possible; but Christ by his cross in principle achieves the victory over sin and death and brings life and immortality to light, Rom. 5:12v., 1 Cor. 15:45, Hebr. 2:14, 2 Tim. 1:10,

Op. 1:18, 20:14, so that whoever believes in Him has eternal life and shall not die unto eternity, Joh. 3:36, 5:24, 8:51, 52, 11:25. This life now is it and this immortality, which in Holy Scripture comes to the foreground.

Immortality in the philosophical sense, the continued existence of the soul after death, has with it a subordinate value; it does not deny it but it also does not teach it intentionally and is least of all, as deism supposed, given for that purpose, that it would make this immortality known to us as one of the most weighty religious [385] truths. For this truth is sufficiently known

to the human being by nature. What Scripture had to teach us, was this, that naked existence, mere being without more, is not yet life, as befits human beings and is fitting for human beings. That is not so on this side, and that is still much less so on the other side of the grave. Here on earth the life of the human being, also of him who lacks the communion of God, still stands in many relations and thereby receives some content and value. But when all this falls away and all these bonds are broken, then life sinks back to a poor, empty, contentless, shadowy existence. From this side the Old Testament usually views the Jenseits. Dying is a stepping out of this life, a breaking of all bonds with this world; death is, in relation to the life on this side, a nonbeing, a resting, a sleeping, in one word a complete being-dead for the whole rich, joyful life on earth. The dead have no part any more forever in all that happens under the sun, Pred. 9:5, 6. In the concept of Sheol the negation of this earthly life and work stands in the foreground and thus forms, if not the only, then yet the principal constituent of it. Whether now in Sheol for this completely severed earthly life another comes in its place and the deceased there enter, on another side, into new relations, is expressed in the O. T. only a few times, when the eye of faith of the pious penetrates through the shadows of death to eternal life in communion with God. It was enough at the standpoint of the O. T. revelation, that the great thought was carried into human consciousness, that true life is found only in communion with God. The fear of hell remained just as much as the joy of heaven for the believer of the old day shrouded in mists. Only when Christ had died and risen again, was life in incorruptibility brought to light. Christ has not acquired or revealed immortality in the philosophical sense, the continued existence of souls after death. But He has again filled the life of the human being here and hereafter, emaciated and emptied by sin, with the

positive content of the communion of God, with peace and joy and blessedness. Death is no longer death for him who is in Christ Jesus, but a passage to eternal life, and [386] the grave a sanctified resting-place until the morning of the resurrection.

8. Whoever loses sight of this doctrine of Scripture concerning immortality falls into all manner of errors. For we are unable to form any conception of a pure spirit, of its existence and life and activity. Of God, who is pure spirit, we are not able to speak otherwise than in an anthropomorphistic manner, in which, moreover, Scripture itself goes before us, part II 65v. The angels are spiritual beings, but are represented in human fashion and, upon appearing, often assume human bodies, ib. 435v.

And human beings are not only bodily beings, but all their activities are bound to the body and dependent on the body; not only the vegetative and animal but also the intellectual activities of thinking and willing. Although the brain is not the cause of the higher faculty of knowing and desiring, it is nevertheless its bearer and its organ; every disturbance in the brain has an abnormal operation of the anima rationalis as a consequence. Because the body is not a prison of the soul but belongs to the essence of the human being, we are unable to form any conception of the life and work of a soul separated from the body and are therefore readily inclined to suppositions and conjectures. Three hypotheses have therefore, in the main, been devised, in order to make the existence of souls after death somewhat intelligible.

First, many among the Heathen and also among the Christians have thought that the souls, after having been separated from the body, could lead nothing other than a sleeping life. Indeed, the change which occurs at death is of extraordinary significance. For the whole content of our life of

soul is derived from the external world, all knowledge begins with sensible perception, our whole form of thought is material; even of spiritual things we speak in words which originally had a sensible meaning. If death now, as Scripture teaches, is a sudden, violent, complete and absolute breach with the diesseitige world, then there really seems to be no other possibility than that the soul is completely closed to the external world, loses all its content, and as it were sinks back into itself. In sleep the soul also withdraws from the external world and breaks off intercourse with it; but [387] in sleep it does this only in a relative sense, since it remains connected with the body and retains the rich life which it has acquired for itself from the world; indeed it even remains there, though in a confused way, co-active in the dream. And nevertheless, what a change sleep already brings about in human life; the faculties of knowing and desiring cease their activity; consciousness stands still; all sensation and perception ceases; only the vegetative life continues its regulated labor. How much more, then, will all activity of the soul cease when death occurs and breaks all bonds with this world altogether! Everything thus seems to plead for the view that the souls after death are in a sleeping, unconscious state. And Holy Scripture is, to superficial appearance, so far from condemning this doctrine of the sleep of the soul, that it rather commends and favors it. For does it not call dying, not only in the Old but also in the New Test., repeatedly a sleeping, Deut.

31:16, Jer. 51:39, 57, Dan. 12:2, Mt. 9:24, Joh. 11:11, 1 Cor. 7:39, 11:30, 15:6, 18, 20, 51, 1 Thess. 4:13-15, 2 Petr. 3:4 etc.; Sheol is a land of silence, of rest, of forgetfulness, where there is no portion any more for ever in all that is done under the sun, above p. 366; Jesus speaks of the night of death, in which no one can work, Joh. 9:4; and nowhere does Scripture make any mention that those who returned from death to life, such as Lazarus and

others, have related anything of what they saw or heard in the intermediate state. Yet all these reasonings are not able to prove the doctrine of psychopannychia. For 1o it is clear that the dependence of the soul on the body nevertheless does not exclude its independence. The external world may be the occasion for the awakening of our self-consciousness and the first source of our knowledge; thinking may be bound to the brains and have in them its seat and organ; it is unproven and unprovable that the psychic life of man finds its source and origin in the physical phenomena.

Thinking and knowing are activities of the soul; it is not the ear that hears and the eye that sees, but it is the psychic I of man that hears through the ear and sees through the eye; the body is an instrument of the spirit.

Therefore there is also nothing absurd in [388] thinking that the soul, if need be, can continue its activities without the body. Besides, whoever would wish to deny to spirit as such conscious life, would have to come to consider consciousness and will impossible also in God and the angels. For even if we speak of God in a human way and even if we often imagine the angels bodily, they are nevertheless in themselves spirit and yet partake of consciousness and will. 2o Scripture teaches as clearly as possible that death is a total breach with this whole earthly life and in so far a sleeping, a resting, a being silent. The state of death is a sleep, the deceased sleeps, because intercourse with the diesseitige world has ceased; but nowhere does

Scripture say that the soul of the deceased sleeps; on the contrary it always represents it after death as more or less conscious; and as revelation proceeds, it comes ever more clearly to light that, while in death all relations to this world are cut off, other relations to another world immediately take their place. The great thought of Scripture, that to the service of the Lord life is bound and to its rejection death, casts its light also

over the other side of the grave. While the rich man is immediately after his death in torment, the poor Lazarus is carried into Abraham's bosom, Luk.

16:23. And all believers, who indeed already here on earth partake of an eternal life, do not lose this by death, Joh. 11:25, 26, but enjoy it after death much more richly and blessedly in communion with Christ, Luk. 23:43, Hd.

7:59, 2 Cor. 5:8, Phil. 1:23, Op. 6:8, 7:9. Dwelling in the body is precisely a being away from the Lord, and dying thus the way to a nearer and closer communion with Christ. 3o Besides, it need not surprise that those who returned to life by resurrection mention nothing of what they have seen and heard on that side of the grave. For apart from the possibility that they did communicate one thing and another, which has not been recorded in Scripture, it is most probable that they were not permitted and were not able to report to us anything of their experiences on the far side of the grave. We have enough in Moses and the prophets, Luk. 16:29; and Paul, after he had been caught up into the third heaven, could say nothing else, [389] than that he had heard unutterable words, which it is not permitted for a man to speak. Cf. against the doctrine of the sleep of the soul: Tertullianus, de an.

58. Calvin, Psychopannychia, C. R. 33, 177-232. Bullinger, Housebook Dec. 4 serm. 10. Cloppenburg, Op. II 413-417. Voetius, Disp. I 832-835.

Witsius, Oec. foed. III 14, 18-22. Gerdesius, Exerc. Acad. 592 sq. Moor VI 594-602. M. Vitringa IV 82-86. Gerhard, Loc. XXVI 293. Delitzsch, Bibl.

Psych. 419. Splittgerber, Tod, Fortleben und Auferstehung3 102. Rinck, Vom Zustande nach dem Tode 1885 S. 19. Kliefoth, Christl. Eschatologie

1886 S. 66. Atzberger, Die christl. Eschatol. 212.

9. Others are of the opinion that the souls after death receive a new corporeality and thereby can again enter into communion with the external world, above p. 381. For this view one appeals to the fact that of the life and

activity of the soul without a body no conception can be formed, and further to those passages of Scripture which seem to ascribe to the souls of the deceased a certain corporeality. The inhabitants of the realm of the dead are described exactly as they looked on earth. Samuel is represented as an old man and clothed with a mantle, 1 Sam. 28:14; the kings of the Gentiles sit on thrones and go to meet the king of Babylon, Jes. 14:9; the Gentiles lie there as uncircumcised, Ezech. 31:18, 32:19v. Jesus speaks, even with the deceased, still of eyes and fingers and tongue, Luk. 16:23, 24. Paul expects that, if the earthly house of the tabernacle is broken down, he will have a building from God and will not be unclothed but clothed over, 2 Cor. 5:1-4.

And John saw a great multitude, standing before the throne and the Lamb, clothed with long, white garments and with palm branches in their hands,

Openb. 6:11, 7:9. But 1o from this manner of speaking of Holy Scripture nothing can be inferred for the corporeality of the souls after death. For it cannot speak of God and the angels, of the souls in the realm of the dead, of the joy in heaven and the pain in hell otherwise than in human language, under images that are borrowed from earthly conditions and relations. But alongside that it nevertheless declares clearly and decisively that God is spirit and that the angels are spirits, and thereby gives the rule [390] into the hand according to which all these anthropomorphic manners of speaking must be understood. And thus it also does in relation to the deceased. It cannot speak of them otherwise than as of men of flesh and blood, but says alongside that they, while their body rests in the grave, are souls, spirits,

Pred. 12:7, Ezech. 37:5, Luk. 23:46, Hd. 7:59, Hebr. 12:23, 1 Petr. 3:19, Op.

6:9, 20:4. To these clear statements we must hold. Whoever nevertheless ascribes to the souls a kind of body must also come to represent to himself, with the theosophists, God and the angels in a certain sense as corporeal. 2o

The strongest passage that speaks for a Zwischenleiblichkeit of the souls is 2 Cor. 5:1-4. But this text too, with sound interpretation, loses all its probative force. For about the main thought which Paul here expresses there is no difference; the apostle knows that he, when his earthly body is dissolved, has a building from God; but he nevertheless sighs and is burdened in this body, because he looks up against death, and would therefore rather wish, not to be unclothed of this body, but at once, as to soul and body together, to be clothed over by the heavenly dwelling-place, in order that the mortal might be swallowed up by life. Even if this is also his dearest wish, he knows that he, after the breaking up of this earthly body, even if it is that he is unclothed of the body (the reading in v. 3 εἰ γε και ἐκδυσαμενοι deserves m. i. above εἰπερ or εἰ γε και ἐνδυσαμενοι the preference), nevertheless will therefore not be found naked but will dwell with the Lord, vv. 1. 3. 8. If, however, this is the main thought, then by the dwelling-place from God one cannot think of the resurrection body and still much less of an intermediate body. For Paul desires precisely, without dying, while he retains the earthly body, to be clothed over with that dwelling-place from God; the resurrection body now does not stand alongside the earthly body and is not drawn on over it, but comes forth from it by God's word of power or passes over into it in the case of those who remain alive by transformation, 1 Cor. 45:42, 51; and of an intermediate body there is still much less mention, since Paul would then know no fewer than three bodies, which would be drawn on one over the other successively. Holtzmann, Neut. Theol. II 199 therefore rightly says: von einem Zwischenleib redet man [391] am besten gar nicht mehr, Paulus kennt zwei, nicht drei σωματα die echter dan ook niet dualistisch na en naast elkander te stellen zijn. For this reason the οἰκοδομη ἐκ Θεον can be

nothing other than the heavenly glory conceived as a place and at the same time as a garment, the eternal light, in which God himself dwells, 1 Tim.

6:16, which is from God, not made with hands, out of and in heaven, and into which the believers at death or at the resurrection are transferred, cf.

Col. 1:12, Joh. 14:2, 17:24. Finally 3o the corporeality which one ascribes to the souls after death is a concept with which nothing determinate can be thought, and about which the opinions also diverge very far. Delitzsch, on his trichotomistic standpoint, assumes that the soul fulfills this service of the intermediate body for the spirit. With him the soul stands between spirit and matter; it is the life-principle of the body derived from the spirit, the bodily, outward clothing of the spirit and yet again also the immaterial, inward side of the body. Güder teaches that the power which organized our earthly body remains preserved and on the far side of the grave forms a new body out of the elements present there. Splittgeber says that the organic basic form of the body goes along with the soul and gives it in the intermediate state an imperfect, provisional corporeality. Binck is of the opinion that the Nervenleib, a fine, inward body, which is the bearer of the soul-life, accompanies the soul after death and in the case of the regenerate is clothed over by the Spirit of God and by the irradiation of the glorified body of Christ is formed into a Zwischenleib, while in the case of the ungodly it is more and more permeated with sin and darkness, etc. But whatever one may say about it, it remains just as unclear. We know nothing other than spirit and matter; an immaterial Leiblichkeit is a contradiction, which at an ill hour has been transferred from theosophy into Christian theology and in vain attempts to reconcile the false dualism of spirit and matter, of thesis and antithesis, by an unthinkable synthesis, cf. part II 193.

537.

10. In the third place there are many who think that the souls after death still remain in some connection with earthly life. Among many peoples the thought prevailed that the souls [392] after death remained in the vicinity of the grave, and the Jews also thought that they still for some time after dying continued to hover around the corpse and explained from that that the sorceress at Endor could still summon up the spirit of Samuel, Weber, Syst. der altsyn. pal. Theol. 324. Widely spread was the custom to give the deceased food, weapons, possessions, sometimes even also his wives and slaves along into the grave; and usually this veneration of the deceased was not limited to the day of the burial or the time of mourning, but was also continued thereafter and incorporated into the ordinary, private or public, cult. Venerated were not only the dead in general, but also the deceased blood relatives, the parents and ancestors; the fathers and heads of the tribe; the heroes of the people; the princes and kings of the land, sometimes already in their lifetime; and in Buddhism and Islam also the saints. The cult consisted in this, that one maintained their graves, cared for their bodies (e.g. by embalming), from time to time laid flowers and foods down upon their grave, paid homage to their images and relics, arranged meals and games in their honor, sent up prayers to them and brought them offerings. Between the veneration of these deceased human beings and of the gods one thereby often, as in Persia, India, Greece, did make a distinction, but nevertheless the cult of the dead was a principal constituent of religion. With their veneration one intended in part to come to their aid themselves, but especially also to ward off the misfortune that they could cause and to assure oneself of their blessing and assistance, whether in ordinary, whether in extraordinary manner, through oracles and miracles, cf.

Ch. de la Saussaye, Lehrb. der Religionsgesch. I 79-87. All these elements

from the second century on also penetrated into the Christian cult. Just as in Buddhism the monks and in Islam the mystics, so in the Christian church the martyrs soon became an object of religious veneration; on the place where they had died or their relics had been interred, altars, chapels, churches were built; there especially on the death-days (dies natales) of the martyrs, the believers came together, to celebrate their memory by vigils and psalm-singing, by the reading of the acta martyrum and the hearing of a sermon in their honor and especially also by the celebrating of the holy eucharist. And after the fourth century this cult [393] of Mary, the angels, the patriarchs, the prophets and the martyrs also extended to bishops, monks, hermits, confessores, virgines and to all kinds of saints and to their relics and images, Schwane D. G. I 389 f. II 620 f.; and in spite of all resistance both in and outside the Roman church, it has not only maintained itself up to this day but it still always increases in a terrifying manner and pushes the worship of the one true God and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, more and more into the background. Rome celebrates in this cult in a practical manner the communion of saints. The one Christian church has three divisions, the ecclesia triumphans in heaven, the ecclesia patiens in purgatory, and the ecclesia militans on earth. The share that the ecclesia patiens takes in this communion consists in this, that the blessed in heaven with their intercessions come to the aid of the poor souls in purgatory; that the church on earth softens and shortens the punishments of those souls by prayers, alms, good works, indulgences and especially by the sacrifice of the mass; and finally also still in this, that the souls in purgatory, who in any case are far ahead of most members of the militant church, and therefore may be invoked, help and strengthen the believers on earth by their intercessions. This last element, although also already in the communion

with the ecclesia patiens taking an ever broader place, nevertheless forms the principal constituent of the communion of the militant with the triumphant church. The blessed in heaven are, like the angels, partakers of perfect, supernatural holiness; and therefore they are objects of worship and veneration. In that holiness they do not all share in the same measure; like the angels, they form a spiritual hierarchy; at the top stands Mary and after her follow the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessores etc. It is a descending series, but in all something of the Divine virtues shines forth. And in that then also all that has stood or still stands in any connection with the saints shares, their body, limbs, clothes, dwelling, image etc. And in the same measure as something stands nearer to God and partakes more of his holiness, it is the object of religious veneration. Also in this there is thus all manner of difference. There is latria, which belongs to God alone; the human nature of Christ and all its members, e.g. the sacred

[394] heart, is indeed not per se and propter se but yet in se an object of latria; Mary has claim to hyperdulia; the saints to dulia; their relics to cultus religiosus relativus etc.; tot sunt species adorationis, quot sunt species excellentiae, adoratio est diversa pro diversitate excellentiae, part II 451v.

III 262. 300. The veneration of the saints consists in general in prayers, fasting, watching, feast-days, gifts, pilgrimages, processions etc., and has as its aim, through their intercessions to obtain the favor of God and to receive some benefit from Him. But this veneration and intercession is not only general, but also particular; there are definite saints for definite peoples, families, persons, and there are special saints for the various needs and necessities. Saint George is the patron saint of England, James of Spain,

Stephen of Hungary; the painters venerate Saint Luke, the carpenters Joseph, the shoemakers Crispinus; Saint Sebastian helps especially in

plague, Ottilia in eye-disease, Anthony, in case one has lost something; even animals have their protecting saint, the geese are specially guarded by Saint Gallus and the sheep by Saint Wendelinus etc. Cf. Trid. sess. 25 and other ecclesiastical determinations in Denzinger 243. 273. 866 etc. Catech.

Rom. III 2 qu. 4-14. Hieronymus, Contra Vigilantium in Migne XXXIII 339-452. Damascenus, de imaginibus, Id. de fide orthod. IV 15. 16.

Lombardus e. a. on Sent. IV dist. 45. Thomas, S. Theol. II 2 qu. 83 art. 11.

Suppl. qu. 71. 72. Bellarminus, de ecclesia triumphante sive de gloria et cultu sanctorum, Controv. II 269-368. Oswald, Eschatologie2 121-233.

Atzberger, Die christl. Eschatol. 263-269 etc. Many of these conceptions have repeatedly also returned in Protestant theology. The Lutherans conceded that the angels and also the saints pray pro ecclesia universa in genere, Apol. conf. 21. Art. Smalc. II 2. Just as Hugo Grotius already earlier in his Votum pro pace had defended the invocation of the saints, so Leibniz later took this and even the veneration of images and relics under protection, Syst. der Theol. 1825 S. 116-195. Ritualism in England goes in the same direction, Ryle, Knots united p. 491 etc. Many theologians assume that after death a certain connection between the soul and the body continues to exist, Beck, Seelenlehre 40 f. Delitzsch, Bibl. Psych. 444 f.,

[395] that the souls still maintain some intercourse with the earth, take knowledge of the most important events, pray for us and look down upon us blessing, Splittgerber, Tod, Fortleben und Auferstehung 157 f. In the previous century many thought, such as Swedenborg, Jung-Stilling,

Oberlin, to stand in direct intercourse with the departed spirits, cf. especially J. C. Wötzel, Meiner Gattin wirkliche Erscheinung nach ihrem

Tode, Chemnitz 1804. The possibility of their apparitions was and is still acknowledged by many, such as by Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers,

Lessing, Dramaturgie, J. H. Fichte, Anthropologie, Jung-Stilling, Theorie der Geisterkunde 1808. Kerner, Die Seherin von Prevorst 1829.

Eschenmayer, Das Mysterium des inneren Lebens, erläutert aus der Gesch. der Seherin van Prevorst 1830. To that since 1848 spiritism has been added, which deliberately tries to place itself in rapport with the spirit-world and thinks to have received actual revelations (through signs, knocks, writing, psychography), workings (lifting and moving of furniture, untying of knots, playing of musical instruments) and apparitions (materializations) of spirits.

Of the rich literature of spiritism let only be mentioned the work of the Russian state councillor Alexander Atsakow, which contains all the material and is entitled: Animismus und Spiritismus 2 Bde, Leipzig Mutze 1894.

In order now to begin with the last, it deserves, 1o, attention that superstitious practices occur among all peoples, also among those with whom Israel came into contact, such as the Egyptians, Gen. 41:8, Ex. 7:11, the Canaanites, Deut. 18:9, 14, the Babylonians, Dan. 1:20, 2:2 etc. Also among Israel they penetrated and were many times zealously practiced, 1

Sam. 28:9, 2 Kings 21:6, Isa. 2:6. To these practices also belonged the consulting of the dead, and those who occupied themselves with that were called ֹאבֹות or ִיְּד ֹעִנים. The word אוב first indicates the divining spirit that dwells in someone, Lev. 20:27, whom someone possesses, 1 Sam. 28:7, 8, who is consulted by someone, 1 Sam. 28:8, by whom someone causes a dead person to come up, 1 Sam. 28:9, and who, as one imagined of the dead, proclaims oracles in a whispering, mysterious manner, Isa. 8:19, 19:3,

29:4; and then subsequently denotes the diviner himself, 1 Sam. 28:3, 9, 2 Kings 21:6, 2 Chron. 33:6, LXX [396] ἐγγαστρομυθος, ventriloquist. The other word, ידענים, knowing ones, wise ones, is only a further specification of ֹאבֹות and at first indicated the divining persons and thereafter the divining

spirit that was in them, Lev. 19:31, 20:6, 27, Isa. 19:3. This divining could take place in many ways, but e.g. also by consulting the dead, Deut. 18:11, cf. Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel I 443 f. 505. Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode 69 f. But law and prophecy declared themselves decisively against that, and called the people back to the Lord, to his revelation and testimony, Ex. 22:18, Lev. 19:26, 31, 20:6, 27, Deut. 18:11, 1 Sam. 28:19,

Isa. 8:19, 47:9-15, Jer. 27:9, 29:8, Micah 3:7, 5:11, Neh. 3:4, Mal. 3:5; and the New Testament sets its seal upon that, Luke 16:29, Acts 8:9v., 13:6v.,

19:13v., Gal. 5:20, Eph. 5:11, Rev. 9:21, 21:8, 22:15. Indeed it is, 2o, unprovable that Holy Scripture accepts the possibility of the summoning and appearing of the deceased. To be sure, there sometimes take place resuscitations of the dead by God's wondrous power, and Scripture acknowledges demonic powers and workings that go beyond human ability,

Deut. 13:1, 2, Mt. 24:24, 2 Thess. 2:9, Rev. 13:13-15. But nowhere does it teach the possibility or the reality of an apparition of the dead. The only passage that can be adduced against this is 1 Sam. 28, where Saul takes refuge with the sorceress at Endor; for the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Christ on the mount of transfiguration Mt. 17, Luke 9, is effected without human mediation by God alone. But even if the rationalistic explanation is to be rejected, which in this history sees nothing other than a deliberate deception by the woman; an objective, real appearance of Samuel is just as little to be accepted. For Saul does not see Samuel, v. 14; the woman does see him but is in a hypnotic condition, v. 12, and she sees him as he looked in his life, as an old man and clothed in a prophet's mantle, v.

14. The fright of the woman, v. 12, therefore also had its cause not in this, that contrary to her expectation she really saw Samuel, but in this, that she, seeing Samuel, in her hypnotic condition also immediately recognized Saul

the king and feared him. After Saul has been brought under the impression that an underground, spiritual being, אלהים, had come up out of the earth and that Samuel himself had appeared, this one speaks out and [397] through the woman to Saul and announces to him the judgment. There is nothing in 1 Sam. 28 that goes beyond the known phenomena of hypnotism and somnambulism and cannot be explained in the same way. 3o There are, however, many who precisely from the phenomena of hypnotism, somnambulism, spiritism etc. think they must conclude to the working of spirits. But this hypothesis seems for the time being absolutely not justified.

Apart from the many deceptions that have taken place in this field, what is related of appearance and working of the spirits is so childish and insignificant that the involvement of the spirit world need absolutely not be assumed for it. Thereby it is not denied that all kinds of phenomena occur that have not yet been explained; but these are all of such a nature (such as e.g. the sudden knowing and speaking of foreign languages, clairvoyance, hypnosis, suggestion, secondsight, presentiment, knowledge of what at the same moment happens elsewhere, telepathy etc.), that they do not at all become clearer by the hypothesis of spirit-apparition. When we moreover consider that man in his perceptions is bound to and limited within a certain number of ether vibrations, so that some alteration therein would present to him a wholly different image of the world and he himself possesses a deep and rich soul-life, which in self-consciousness comes to appearance only very partially, cf. my Beginselen der Psychologie 70v. 78v.; then there lies within the bounds of the Diesseits for occultism still such an extensive terrain open, that for the present we need not yet take refuge in the influence of the spirit world. Cf. Kirchner, Der Spiritismus, die Narrheit unseres Zeitalters, Berlin Habel 1883. Ed. v. Hartmann, Der Spiritismus,

Leipzig Friedrich 1885. Id. Die Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus und seine Phantome, ib. 1891. Furthermore, 4o, the whole of Scripture proceeds from the thought that death is a total breach with life on this side of the grave. To be sure, the deceased retain memory of what happened here on earth with them. The rich man and the poor Lazarus know who and what they have been here and in what surroundings they have lived, Luke 16. In the last judgment men are conscious of what they have done on earth, Mt. 7:22. The works follow after those who have died in the Lord, Rev. 14:13. What we have done here on earth becomes our moral property and goes with us into death. Nor is there any doubt that the deceased recognize those whom they have known on earth; the subterranean inhabitants greet mockingly the king of Babylon, Isa. 14; the mighty heroes speak from the midst of Sheol to Egypt's prince and people, Ezek. 32; the rich man knows Lazarus, Luke 16.

The friends whom we acquire here by beneficence receive us once with joy in the eternal tabernacles, Luke 16:9. But otherwise Scripture always represents it thus, that communion with this earth is totally broken at death.

The deceased have no more share in everything that happens under the sun, Eccl. 9:5, 6, 10. Whether their children come to honor or fall into poverty, they do not know it, Job 14:21. Abraham does not know of the children of Israel and Jacob does not know them, and therefore they call to the Lord, who after all is their Father, Isa. 63:16. Of an intercourse of the deceased with the living there is nowhere any mention; they belong to another realm, which is totally separated from the earth. Also Heb. 11:1 does not teach that the cloud of witnesses sees and watches us in our struggle. For the μαρτυρες there are not eyewitnesses of our struggle but witnesses of faith, who serve for our encouragement. 5o Therefore there is also no place for invocation and veneration of the saints. In itself there is nothing strange or

improper in the thought that angels and blessed ones make intercession for the people on earth; an interest in the history of the militant church, a general intercession was also many times accepted by Protestants. But all the more remarkable is it that Scripture, which so often makes mention of the intercession of people on earth and definitely recommends and prescribes it, Mt. 6:9v., Rom. 15:30, Eph. 6:18, 19, Col. 1:2, 3, 1 Tim. 2:2, and moreover teaches that God often spares others for the sake of the elect and upon their intercession, Gen. 18:23v., Ex. 32:11v., Num. 14:13v., Ezek.

14:14, 20, Mt. 24:22 etc., never speaks with a single word of an intercession of the angels and of the blessed for those living on earth. With respect to the intercession of the angels this has already been proven earlier, part II 449v., and of the intercession of the blessed the Roman Catholics themselves admit that it does not occur in Scripture, cf. e.g. Oswald, Eschatologie2

132; only 2 Macc. 15:12-14 makes mention of [399] an intercession of Onias and Jeremiah for their people in a dream-vision to Judas and proves only that the Jews in that time were convinced of the intercession of the blessed departed. 6o Still less ground is there for the invocation and veneration of the saints. Holy Scripture does say that believers on earth may invoke one another's intercession, Num. 21:7, Jer. 42:2, 1 Thess. 5:25, but nowhere mentions a request to the departed for their intercession; and angels and men expressly ward off all religious veneration from themselves, which belongs to God alone, Deut. 6:13, 10:20, Mt. 4:10, Acts 14:10, Col.

2:18, 19, Rev. 19:10, 22:9, cf. part II 451v. Also of the veneration of relics there is no mention; even if God sometimes works miracles through them, 2

Kings 13:21, Mt. 9:21, Luke 6:19, Acts 5:15, 19:12, they may not be an object of veneration, Deut. 34:6, 2 Kings 18:4, 2 Cor. 5:16. Oswald t. a. p.

143 therefore also counts the invocation and veneration of the saints among

the Traditionsdogmen. Even if a general intercession of the saints for the believers on earth is conceded, it still by no means follows from that that they may be invoked and venerated for that. For indeed a request for someone's intercession is in itself absolutely not unlawful, and therefore also repeatedly takes place among believers. But such a request always presupposes some means of communication, and must be able to be conveyed orally or in writing. And precisely that is lacking here and is also in direct conflict with the teaching of Scripture about the condition of the departed. Rome therefore also does not dare to say that the invocation and veneration of the saints is commanded and necessary, but only pronounces, bonum atque utile esse, suppliciter eos invocare, Trid. sess. 25. Theology is in no way able to make clear how the saints obtain knowledge of our prayers, and puts forward all kinds of conjectures. Some think that they are communicated to them by the angels, who here repeatedly come to earth, or that the saints, like the angels, can move wondrously quickly and quodam modo ubique are; others are of the opinion that the saints are informed by God himself of the content of our prayers, or behold all things that they need to know in the divine consciousness; and there are also those who say that it is not necessary that they know everything, provided only that they bear knowledge quite in general of our needs, or also that we need not concern ourselves about the manner in which they obtain knowledge of our prayers, Thomas S. Theol. II 2 qu. 83 art. 4. Suppl. qu. 72 art. 1. Oswald,

Eschatologie2 139. In addition there comes still that the Roman Catholics absolutely do not know with certainty who of the departed are in heaven and belong to the perfect saints. The pious of the O. T. first sojourned in the limbus patrum and were indeed transferred by Christ into heaven, but nevertheless stand too far from us, to be much invoked by us, Oswald t. a.

p. 132. 167. Of some pious in the N. T., such as Mary, the apostles, and also of the later martyrs, Rome does assume that they have been received into heaven. But those are a few, and error is not excluded here. In earlier times it was the voice of the people that ascribed to a deceased person the predicate of holiness; and in that connection it occurred that men who possessed this predicate lost it again, as e.g. Clement of Alexandria by Benedict XIV. In order to prevent these errors, therefore since Alexander III and Innocent III the ecclesiastical declaration of someone's holiness, that is the canonization, has become a right of the apostolic see. However, it is here again a question whether the pope in this canonization is infallible or not. And even if this may also be the case, by the nature of the matter the pope makes sparing use of it. By far the most saints are invoked and venerated without one knowing precisely whether they sojourn in heaven or in purgatory. One must therefore be satisfied with a moral conviction, further consider that a possible error brings no harmful consequences, and for safety's sake also extend the invocation to the "poor souls" in purgatory, as in practice happens more and more, Oswald t. a. p. 148. 164. The invocation of the saints is, 7o, with Rome absolutely no longer only a request for their intercession (ora pro nobis), but has gradually passed over into an adoration and veneration; the saints are object of a cultus religiosus, be it also that this is not called latria but dulia. Now there is no doubt that we would have to show respectful homage to the angels and blessed ones, if we met them and had any intercourse with them, part II 455. But precisely this latter does not occur. And [401] therefore all invocation of the angels and of the blessed ones results in a religious veneration, which is not made good by the name of dulia, ib. 451v. On the path that Rome treads with this veneration of the creature, there is no standstill. Holiness is conceived by

Rome as a donum superadditum, as something substantial, that can be communicated to all creatures in different measure, and in that same measure may then be religiously venerated. Insofar as a person or thing has a share in the divine holiness, they have a claim to a cultus religiosus. First of all, therefore, Mary, the apostles, the martyrs, the saints share in it, but further all and everything that has been in contact with these or still stands in relation to them, thus also relics, images, dwelling places etc. According to this principle every creature can be religiously venerated, quod et quatenus respectum habeat ad Deum, even to the hands of the soldiers who seized Jesus, and the lips of Judas who kissed him, included, Voetius, Disp.

III 880. 896. In any case it is not to be seen why the saints who are on earth are not already invoked and venerated by Roman Christians, and among them then especially the pope, who is the saint par excellence. Es spricht an sich nichts dagegen, dass auch die Heiligkeit auf Erden religiös veneriert werde. Wäre man also von der Gottseligkeit einer Person vollkommen überzeugt, so durfte sie an sich wohl eine Verehrung geniessen, wie sie den

Heiligen im Himmel zukommt. In einzelnen Fällen mag es privatim geschehen sein und geschieht vielleicht noch, Oswald t. a. p. 157. What is still adduced against this by Oswald is borrowed from utility and shows that the veneration of the living saints, specifically of the pope, with Rome is only a question of time. The communion of saints degenerates into a mutual veneration, which pushes the mediator of God and of men into the background.

11. Up to this point there has only been question of whether the deceased still stand in any direct intercourse with the earth; now the question comes up, whether Holy Scripture teaches us anything about the new relations and conditions in which the dead find themselves on the other side of the grave.

It is not much that Scripture reports to us about that. Yet already in the Old [402] Test. the lines are present which, drawn through, lead to a distinction in the condition of righteous and godless after death. The fear of the Lord is the way to life, but the godless perish and come to an end, above p. 369.

And according to the New Test. the rich man comes immediately into a place of torment, which, however, is not yet identical with the gehenna or the abyssus. Where this place is to be sought is not mentioned in Scripture.

Indeed the scheol, the hades, the gehenna, the abyssus are always represented as being beneath us. But this cannot and may not be understood in a topographical sense. For the concepts above and below are, taken locally, very relative and in this connection have only an ethical significance; we place the realm of darkness of itself directly opposite that of light and, according to a natural symbolism, seek the first beneath and the second above us. Every determination of the place of punishment of the dead, in the earth, under the earth, in the sea, in the sun, in the air, or on one of the planets is nothing more than a conjecture. Only it can be said that the Jenseits is not only a condition but also a place, for souls may not be circumscriptive in time and space, they are yet much less eternal and omnipresent and must be somewhere and also have a succession of moments of time. For the rest, it is more in accordance with the few data which Scripture offers us, to refrain from every determination of the place of punishment of the dead; μη ζητωμεν που ἐστι, ἀλλα πως αὐτην φυγοιμεν

(Chrysostomus). Just as little do we know of the condition in which the unbelievers and godless find themselves after death up to the last judgment.

Only we can say with certainty that, when the wrath of God already here remains upon the unbelievers, this after death must at once be felt much more heavily, because all diversion of earthly life is lacking and naked

existence is filled with nothing but the consciousness and the feeling of that wrath. The question has, however, been raised whether for such as these, who here on earth have not heard the gospel or have heard it only very imperfectly, on the other side of the grave there will not yet exist an opportunity to repent and to believe in Christ. The first who in the Christian church gave an affirmative answer to that were Clemens, Strom. VI 6 and Origenes, c. Cels. II 44. They [403] inferred from 1 Petr. 3:18, 19 that Christ and also the apostles had proclaimed the gospel to the dead in the hades who were receptive to it. Although this opinion was now refuted by Augustine, de haeresi c. 79 and others and the descent of Christ into hell was usually understood otherwise, part III 378v., it nevertheless returned time and again and found acceptance especially in this century, in which one obtained a clear awareness of the great multitude and the rapid expansion of the non-Christians, with very many, above p. 382. Indeed it is a fact of the greatest significance that there have been and still are millions of people who have never borne any knowledge of the way of salvation in Christ and thus have also never been placed in the opportunity to accept

Him with a believing heart or to reject Him with decisiveness of will. These are not to be reckoned among the unbelievers in the narrower sense, and Scripture itself says that they are judged by another standard than Jews and Christians, Mt. 10:15, 11:20-24, Luk. 10:12-25, 12:47, 48, Joh. 15:22, 24,

Rom. 2:12, 2 Petr. 2:20-22.

Yet it follows from that in the least not, that there is or must be also a preaching of the gospel on the other side of the grave. For 1o Scripture speaks of that with not a single word. Many passages, which have indeed sometimes been adduced for it, such as Mt. 12:40, Joh. 20:17, Hd. 2:24, 27,

31, 13:29, 30, 34-37, 1 Tim. 3:16, have not the least force of proof and deal

absolutely not with a preaching of Christ in hell. Ezech. 16:53-63 also opens no prospect upon this; there it is promised by the Lord, that He, in spite of the abominations which Jerusalem has committed and which are worse than those of her sisters, Sodom and Samaria, will nevertheless in the end restore her again and accept her in grace. But in order, however, to remove all false confidence in God's promise and all self-exaltation with Israel, it is added that the Lord will turn not only the captivity of Jerusalem but also that of Sodom and Samaria, vs. 53, so that these also will return to their former state. From this some have concluded to a possibility of conversion in the intermediate state; for Sodom and her sisters, i.e. the other cities in the valley of Siddim, were in Ezekiel's days all already long destroyed and thus could not be restored to their former state and accepted by God in grace, if their former [404] inhabitants did not in the sheol come to conversion through the preaching of the word of God. But this thought lies far outside the text. The Lord promises here only, that He, in spite of her whoredom, will nevertheless again accept Jerusalem in grace; and that not only, but also Sodom and Samaria, which definitely, as appears from vs.

61, are types of all the heathen peoples, will be restored in their former state, i. w. z. the future will be this, that Jerusalem will be restored and the heathen cities will be subjected to her. Of a preaching and conversion in the Sheol and of a resurrection and return of the former inhabitants there is no mention. 2o The only passages, to which one can appeal with semblance of right for a preaching of the gospel in the hades, are 1 Petr. 3:19-21 and 4:6.

But these texts also do not contain what one wants to read into them. Even if there should be mention there of a preaching which Christ after his resurrection held to the contemporaries of Noah in the hades, then only this fact would thereby be established but by no means give a right to the

doctrine that in the hades a continuing proclamation of the gospel took place to all who have not heard it on earth. For indeed the contemporaries of Noah were precisely not such people who had never heard the word of God during their life on earth; they had despised the word of Noah, the preacher of righteousness, in wilful wickedness and had been disobedient to the voice of the Lord in full consciousness. With them it was thus a wholly special case, which gives no right to further conclusions; the aorist ἐκηρυξεν also indicates that this preaching by Christ has happened only once. Further, this preaching cannot have been a proclamation of the gospel unto salvation, for if one considers how strictly Scripture always judges concerning all ungodly persons and how it always describes the race of men during Noah as given over to all wickedness and unrighteousness, then the thought becomes absurd that Christ precisely to them in distinction from so many others would have proclaimed the gospel of salvation. At most there can then be mention of a solemn announcement of his triumph to the inhabitants of the underworld, as the old Lutherans explained the text.

Moreover, to such a continuing preaching of the gospel in the hades all manner of difficulty is connected. [405] According to 1 Petr. 3:18, 19

Christ, specifically after He had been made alive and had risen, held that preaching. Did He then with his body go locally to the hades? When did He do that? How long did He sojourn there? And let all this now be possible, however improbable it already is in itself, who then brings that preaching in the hades after that time and now always on? Is there then also a church in the underworld? Is there a mission, a calling, an ordering? Are they men or angels, are they the apostles or other ministers of the word, who after their death there proclaim the gospel? The doctrine of a Missionsanstalt in the hades comes in all manner of ways into conflict with Scripture. But it also

finds, as was already shown earlier, part III 422 cf. 379, in 1 Petr. 3:18-22 absolutely no support. There it is only said that Christ, after his resurrection, being made alive as Spirit, has gone to heaven and through this his ascension into heaven has preached to the spirits in prison and has made the angels, powers and forces subject to himself. Neither is there in 1 Petr. 4:6 mention of such a preaching of the gospel in the hades. Already the aorist εὐηγγελισθη calls to mind, not a continuing preaching but a definite fact.

That proclamation of the gospel took place once, and indeed with the purpose that they who heard it would be judged in the flesh according to the manner of men, i.e. would die, but would live in the spirit according to the manner of God. The preaching of the gospel thus preceded the dying; the νεκροι are those who are now dead, but who in their life heard the gospel.

The reason why Peter calls these people νεκροι lies in the preceding verse.

There it was said that Christ stands ready to judge the living and the dead.

Well then, just as to the living now, so formerly to those who are now dead the gospel was proclaimed, in order that they, yes, would still indeed die in the flesh, but would nevertheless now already live in the spirit with God. 3o

With these objections, derived from Scripture, the whole doctrine of the preaching of the gospel in the intermediate state already falls away. For if Scripture does not contain it, it is not permitted to Christian theology, nevertheless, to propound it. But there are yet also many other objections.

Granted that the gospel in the hades is still preached, does that preaching go out to all without distinction? Usually one says no and lets it be brought only to those who did not come to know it here on earth. This now is not only in conflict with their exegesis of 1 Petr. 3:18-22, for if there is mention there of an evangeliepreaching of Christ in the hades, then this takes place there precisely to such as had indeed heard the gospel through Noah, but it

then also of itself raises the question whether life here on earth is for that preaching of the gospel in the hades totally indifferent. Also to this one dares, understandably, as a rule to give no negative answer, for then this life would be wholly without value or significance. Therefore one usually says with Clement and Origen that the gospel in the intermediate state is brought only to such as are susceptible to conversion, who here on earth through their attitude toward the vocatio realis have prepared themselves for the believing acceptance of the gospel, cf. e.g. also Ebrard, Dogm. § 576. In fact thereby the centre of gravity is nevertheless again shifted into this life and the gospel proclamation in the hades only brings to light what here on earth was already hidden in the hearts. That is, the decision about salvation and perdition does not lie with the gospel but with the vocatio realis, with the law. And this is in the essence of the matter the same opinion that was also embraced by the Pelagians, the Socinians, the Deists etc., namely that there are three ways to salvation, the lex naturae, the lex Mosaica and the lex Christi. 4o To that there comes yet, that the doctrine of an evangeliepreaching in the hades proceeds from all manner of incorrect presuppositions. There lies namely at its foundation, that it is God's intention to save all men; that the preaching of the gospel must be absolutely universal; that all men personally and individually must be placed before the choice for or against the gospel; that the decision in that choice stands in the power of man; that original and actual sins are not sufficient to condemn but that only the decided unbelief with respect to the gospel makes one worthy of eternal perdition etc. All these presuppositions are in conflict with decided utterances of Scripture and make the doctrine of the evangeliepreaching in the intermediate state unacceptable. And if then finally it is asked whether it is not hard to believe that all who [407] here on

earth wholly without their fault did not hear the gospel, are lost, then there serves for answer to that: a. that in this most serious matter not our feeling but God's word decides; b. that the doctrine of an evangeliepreaching to the dead in the least does not soften this hardness, since it comes only to the benefit of those who here on earth had already sufficiently prepared themselves for faith; c. that it makes the hardness still increase, since it does not think of the interest of the millions of little children who die young and in fact places them outside the possibility of being saved; and d. that it does not reckon with the sovereignty and the omnipotence of God, which can also save without the outward preaching of the word, only through the inward calling and the regeneration of the H. Spirit.

12. The condition of the deceased believers, who here on earth have not yet attained perfect holiness, is conceived by Rome as a purification of the souls by the punishment of fire. The notion of such a state of purgation is of pagan origin and occurred especially in two forms. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which is found among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Jews, etc., implies that the soul, before it came into the human body, has already dwelt in other bodies and also, after it has left the human body, enters into new organisms, in order to purify itself and finally to attain perfection. This doctrine, however, is too much in conflict with Scripture for it ever to be able to gain assent within the bounds of Christianity otherwise than among a few sects and individual persons. For it proceeds from the thought that the souls are praeëxistent, originally possessed no body, and are indifferent toward all bodies. Further, it conflicts with the doctrine of redemption, which has been accomplished by Christ, and regards purification and perfection as man's own work. And finally, it does not at all make clear how the souls, by passing each time into

other bodies, could be freed from sins and trained up to holiness, cf. M.

Vitringa IV 87-97. Moor II 1081. Bretschneider, Syst. Entw. 846. Spiess, Entwicklungsgesch. der Vorst. v. Zustande nach dem Tode 31. 558. J. F. von

Meyer, Blätter für höhere Wahrheit 1830 I 244-299 etc. More influence on Christian [408] theology had the other representation, that the souls after death must still for a time be purified by all manner of punishments, in order only thereafter to obtain a share in the highest blessedness. In Parseeism we find the belief that after the general resurrection there follows a three-day purgation in flowing metal, which for the good is gentle but for the wicked very painful, Saussaye, Rel. Gesch. II 51. The Jews taught that only the perfectly righteous went immediately to heaven; the others were referred to Gehinnom, which according to some was for all men but in any case for the Jews a purgatory, Weber, Syst. 327. Since Origen this representation also penetrated among the Christians and there led to the doctrine of the Roman purgatory or of a purgation-period accepted by many

Protestants, above p. 381. At the first hearing this thought has much that is attractive. For the believers at the moment of their dying are all still burdened with sin; even the most holy possess as yet only a small beginning of perfect obedience. This sin, which clings to the believers, furthermore has its seat not in the body but in the soul, which therefore cannot enter into heaven unless it is beforehand not only freed from the guilt of sin but also completely cleansed from its stain. It is difficult to conceive how this cleansing could suddenly come about through or at death. For not only does sanctification in this life proceed slowly, but in every sphere we see no sudden transitions, but gradual growth and development. Everything therefore pleads for the fact that the souls of the believers after death must

undergo a purgation, in order thereafter first to be received into heaven and to be admitted to the vision of God.

But whatever human reasoning may recommend such a purgatory, the first and in itself already sufficient objection is, that Scripture nowhere speaks of it. To be sure, the Romanists cite some texts, but not one of them proves the service that is demanded of it. Mt. 5:22 does not speak a word of a purgatorium but indeed of the gehenna, cf. deel III 99. To think of purgatory in connection with the φυλακη in Mt. 5:25 is arbitrary; rather it is an image of the gehenna, for whoever enters it has beforehand been condemned by the judge and never again has opportunity to pay off the debt and to leave the prison; [409] the ἑως in vs. 26 indicates an unattainable term, cf. 18:30, 34. In Mt. 12:32 Jesus says that the blasphemy against the H. Spirit will be forgiven neither in this nor in the coming age. The words: nor in the coming age, serve only to strengthen the unforgivableness of the blasphemy against the H. Spirit and therefore by no means need to presuppose that some sins can also still be forgiven after this life. But even if this were so, then this text would still prove nothing for the doctrine of purgatory, for here there is mention of forgiveness of sin, while purgatory is precisely not a place for forgiveness but only a region for payment of temporal punishments; and the text speaks of forgiveness in the coming age, that is the time after the parousie, while purgatory falls before that parousie and ceases to exist with the last judgment. According to 1 Cor. 3:12-15 the work of the ministers of the congregation will have to stand the test on the day of Christ's parousie; whoever will have built on the foundation Christ gold, silver, precious stones, i.e. whoever in his office and service has performed good, sound work, he will indeed be tested in his work, but because that work proves resistant to the fire of judgment, he will receive

reward; whoever, on the other hand, has built on the foundation wood, straw, stubble, which are not resistant to the fire, he will be punished, lose his reward, even though he himself is saved through the fire of judgment.

Indeed, therefore, there is spoken here of an ignis revelatorius, vs. 13, an ignis probatorius, vs. 13 and an ignis exarsorius, vs. 15; but Paul thus represents the fire of judgment in the future of Christ and therefore has precisely no place for a purgatory that would now cleanse believers and would end before the last judgment. There are no other texts on which Rome can appeal for the doctrine of purgatory, even if only with some appearance of right. Only one passage in the apocryphal books of the O.

Test., namely 2 Makk. 12:42-46 teaches that the Jews of that time considered offerings and prayers for those who had died in sins necessary and good, which in fact is also known from elsewhere. But all the more it deserves attention that this popular belief existing among the Jews is mentioned neither in the Old nor in the New Testament and much less approved. 2o The doctrine of purgatory is most closely connected with [410] that concerning justification. Rome understands by it the infusion of supernatural, sanctifying grace, which then places the human being in a position to do good works and thereby to merit eternal life. This grace, however, is susceptible of increase and decrease; whoever loses it through mortal sin and then dies is lost; whoever by keeping praecepta and consilia brought it to perfection in the hour of death enters heaven immediately; but whoever still has to satisfy the guilt and the temporal punishment for a venial sin or whoever, after having received back in penance the gratia infusa lost through a mortal sin, nevertheless at his death was still in arrears in paying off the temporal punishments, is referred to purgatory and remains there until he has paid the last penny. Justification, sanctification,

glorification is with Rome the work of the human being himself, be it also on the basis of the supernatural grace infused into him; once he has received this, he must make himself worthy of eternal life and the blessed vision of God in heaven according to a meritum ex condigno; and if he thus does not get so far here on earth, he must, just as the Heathens imagined this, continue the begun work in the hereafter as long as, until he has reached perfection. But the Reformation again learned from Scripture the justification of the sinner by faith and therefore had to come to the rejection of the purifying fire. Christ has accomplished everything, not only borne the punishment but also by his keeping of the law acquired eternal life for us.

And all those benefits which Christ has acquired by his suffering and dying and which lie wholly perfect and ready in him, become at once the portion of someone, if he truly believes. Whoever believes has eternal life. In justification there is imputed to the human being not only the merit of Christ's passive but also of his active obedience. In that benefit he receives not only forgiveness, immunity from punishment, and does not thereby come into the state of Adam before the fall, who with the strength granted to him had to keep the law and merit eternal life. But he also on the basis of Christ's perfect obedience at once has a right to eternal life; the holy works which Christ has accomplished are ascribed to him; he does not have to merit eternal life by fulfillment of the law but does good works from the principle of eternal life, which has already been granted to him in faith.

Sanctification here is therefore no self-preparation for heaven, no selfperfection, but nothing other than the unfolding in the believer of what he already has in Christ, a walking in the good works which God has prepared in Christ, Ef. 2:10. God therefore does not need to wait for any further good works before he can receive the believer into heaven, for in Christ that

heaven is at once opened for everyone who believes. Whoever believes, has forgiveness and eternal life, is "ripe" for heaven, and needs neither here nor hereafter to pass through a purgatorium. Even the suffering that he here on earth often still has to bear and even as a consequence of sin is no punishment, no penance, no payment of a demand of the law, but a fatherly chastisement, which serves for his upbringing. 3o The only question on a Reformation standpoint is therefore this: when does the believer come into the full possession of the benefits of Christ granted to him. Whoever believes receives these at once in a juridical sense; he has in Christ a right to all goods of the covenant, to the whole salvation. But this is nevertheless not yet set in his full possession on earth; when then does this take place, when does the believer cease to be a pilgrim and arrive in the fatherland? To that Scripture has only one answer: at death. Nowhere does it present the pious to us as still after death tormented by punishment or suffering of sin.

Always the pious express their certain expectation that with death the end of their pilgrim course and the entrance into the eternal, blessed life of heaven has been reached, Ps. 73:23, 24, Luk. 23:43, Hd. 7:59, 2 Cor. 5:1,

Phil. 1:23, 2 Tim. 4:7. After death there is no sanctification any more, but there enters a state of holiness, in which the spirits of the perfected righteous, Hebr. 12:23, are clothed with long, white garments and stand before the throne and before the Lamb, Op. 7:9, 14. Of the modest de Saci of Port-Royal it is related that he always stood in the fear of God and therefore did not dare to hope for an immediate blessedness after death but dying cried out: o bienheureux purgatoire! But such a state of mind is wholly foreign to the pious of the O. and N. Covenant and is only to be explained from this, [412] that someone, looking at himself, has no eye for the accomplished work of Christ. 4o In what way the state of holiness

enters immediately at the death of the believer is of course not to be understood nor clearly to be described. Regeneration and sanctification, which here on earth is worked by the H. Spirit, is also a mystery. But without doubt death thereby serves as a means. Not in the sense of Platonic dualism, as if the liberation from the body without more were already the sanctification of the soul, for sin has its seat precisely in the soul. Nor also in the sense of sentimental rationalism, which by death, as a messenger of peace, lets the human being become an angel, for death is in itself a revelation of God's wrath and a wage of sin. But indeed according to the opinion of Holy Scripture, which in death for the believer sees a dying off of sin. For all chastisement serves believers for their benefit, in order that they may become partakers of the divine holiness, Hebr. 12:10. Whoever, like Christ, suffers in the flesh on account of sin, ceases from sin, 1 Petr.

4:1. But this applies especially to death. The ethical death, i.e. the dying in communion with Christ to sin, has as a consequence that someone is justified from sin and is dead to sin and henceforth lives to God in Christ,

Rom. 6:6-11, 8:10, 1 Petr. 2:24. And this ethical death is completed in the physical death, Rom. 7:24, 2 Cor. 5:1, Phil. 1:21, 23. Death is a mighty change, a breaking of all bonds with this earthly life, and an entering into a new world with wholly different relations and conditions. There is nothing strange in it that God, as of all suffering, so of death makes use, in order to sanctify the soul of the believer and to cleanse it from every stain of sin.

Against this it does not count as an objection that such a sanctification is mechanical and happens with a leap, for death is the greatest leap that someone can make, a sudden transposition of the believer into the presence of Christ, and thereby a complete destruction of the outward and a total renewal of the inward human being. 5o To this is added that the doctrine of

purgatory does not in the least make this sanctification of the believer more intelligible. For first of all Roman theology too must ascribe to death still a kindred critical [413] significance as the Protestant. Purgatory, after all, is not a place where sins are still forgiven, but only a region where remaining temporal punishments can be paid off. Whoever therefore has committed peccata venialia and for them in this life received no forgiveness, must become partaker of this in death; and thus the Roman theologians also teach that the soul dying in venial sins at once in death receives forgiveness of the guilt, in order then in purgatory to satisfy the temporal punishments determined for it, Oswald, Eschat.2 87. Next, it is not to be seen in what way the purgatorium effects the sanctification of souls. Apart from the fact that purgatory is by the Romanists mostly described as a material fire, which therefore can work upon the soul only idealiter, the question naturally arises how pain without more can sanctify. That would indeed be possible if by means of that torment contrition, humiliation, conversion, faith, love etc. might be worked in the soul. But that may not be assumed on a Roman standpoint. For the purgatorium is no Missionsanstalt, no conversion institute, no school for sanctification, but a place of punishment, where only temporal punishments are paid off. The poor souls therefore on the one hand can no longer sin and load new guilt upon themselves, and on the other hand they also cannot improve themselves, for all improvement with Rome includes merit and in purgatory no more can be merited. Of the condition of the poor souls in purgatory therefore no good conception can be made. If they are still to be thought of as more or less contaminated by sin, then on a Roman standpoint it is not to be understood that they cannot still sin and even wholly lose again the grace received. If this is excluded, then the souls are in themselves pure and holy and have only still to bear

some temporal punishments, which they could not satisfy on earth, in which case it again is incomprehensible that perfect righteous persons can still be temporarily shut out of heaven and be handed over to the torment of purgatory. And in both cases it remains a riddle how purgatory can be an ignis purgatorius; it is nothing other than an ignis vindicativus. Oswald t. a. p. 116 rightly says that this purifying character of purgatory belongs to the quaestiones difficiliores! Finally there are still various questions, [414] to which the doctrine of purgatory remains owing the answer. The pious of the O. T. went according to Roman belief to the limbus patrum; is this limbus to be thought of as a purgatorium, or was for them no purgatory necessary?

And how are they purified who die a short time before the parousie and therefore can no longer come into purgatory, because this ceases to exist with the end of this world? The souls of those who died in earlier centuries have much more heavily to answer for than those who later come into purgatory, for the possible duration of the torment in the purgatorium becomes ever shorter. How is this on a Roman standpoint to be reconciled with the justice of God and with the need of purification of souls? If one says that as the end of the world approaches, sanctification is the more transferred into the suffering of the present time and into death, then one undermines the doctrine of purgatory in a questionable way and approaches the standpoint that the Reformation took over against this Roman dogma.

6o If the doctrine of purgatory is untenable, then thereby also all offering and prayer for the deceased falls away of itself. Veneration of the dead by offerings and prayers was customary among the Heathens. Intercession for the deceased later came into use among the Jews, 2 Makk. 12:40-45 and remained so to the present day, Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode 188190. In the Christian church the custom soon arose to wish the deceased

pax, lux, refrigerium and to remember them in the prayers and at the celebration of the Lord's Supper. In the first time this took place with respect to all who had died in the Lord without distinction and these oblationes and sacrificia were celebrated only ob commemorationes eorum,

Cypr. Ep. 12, 2. 39, 3. Const. Ap. VI 30. VIII 13. 41-44. But gradually a distinction was made between those souls which were received into heaven immediately and others, who still had to remain for a time in the purgatorium. Communion with the first was then gradually exercised by invocation and veneration, that with the second by intercessions, good works, indulgences and masses for souls, cf. Trid. sess. 22 c. 2. 3. and sess.

25. Bellarminus, de purg. II 15-18. Perrone, Prael. VI 289. VIII 29. Simar, Dogm. 900. Jansen, Prael. III 1 030 etc. In the Old Catholic sense, as a prayer to God that He might increase the salvation of those fallen asleep in [415] Christ and might accept their prayers for the living, and at the same time as a commemoration and an exercise of communion with the deceased, intercession for the dead was also approved by the Greeks, M. Vitringa VIII 509, many Anglicans, ib. 515, the Lutherans, ib. IV 79, Grotius, ib. 80 and by many more recent theologians, Franz, das Gebet für die Todten in seinem Zusammenhang mit Kultus und Lehre nach dem Schriften des h.

Augustinus, Nordhausen Büchting 1857. K. M. Leibbrand, Das Gebet für die Todten in der evang. Kirche zulässig und recht, Stuttgart 1864. But the Reformed rejected intercession for the deceased, because their lot at death was unchangeably decided, Suicerus s. v. ταφη. Vossius, Disp. de orationibus et oblationibus pro defunctis, Op. VI 458 sq. Rivetus in his polemic against Grotius, Op. III 962. 1026. Moor V 30-32. In Old or New

Testament there is then also not a word of such an intercession. The only place on which one can appeal is 1 Cor. 15:29, where Paul makes mention

of such as had themselves baptized ὑπερ νεκρων. From this, however, it is not to be inferred that such a baptism was undergone by the living, in order that it would benefit the deceased. For there is not a single proof that such a practice occurred in the time of Paul or later. Tertullianus and others do indeed report that this custom was found among the followers of Cerinthus and Marcion, but in the first place the correctness of this report is by no means raised above all doubt, and in the second place it would follow from it that it was a heretical practice, which has never existed in the Christian church or found entrance. Whoever wanted to let this text count as proof for the right to pray for the dead would first of all have to begin to baptize living persons for the benefit of the deceased. Paul, however, also does not say that the living had themselves baptized for the dead, in order that that baptism would benefit the deceased. The dead are presented by Paul as the motive why the living had themselves baptized. Because those who had fallen asleep in Christ would rise, therefore the living believers had themselves baptized on their account, for their sake. The apostle expresses no other thought than this, that baptism presupposes faith in the resurrection of Christ and of believers; take away the resurrection and baptism becomes an empty ceremony. The [416] intercession for the deceased therefore finds not the least ground in Scripture, as indeed Tertullianus already acknowledged. For after he had in the cor. mil. c. 3 spoken of various ecclesiastical usages and in that connection also of the offerings for the deceased, he added in c. 4: harum et aliarum ejusmodi disciplinarum, si legem expostules scripturarum, nullam invenies; traditio tibi praetenditur auctrix, consuetudo confirmatrix, et fides observatrix, cf. also Bellarminus, de missa II c. 7. Oswald, Eschat. 95. Because there is no praeceptum Patris, one must content oneself with the institutio matris, i.e. of the church, which

thus again comes to stand beside and above God's Word. Since thus the intercession for the deceased cannot stand before Scripture, the question of its usefulness and comfort no longer comes into play. Yet these too are difficult to indicate. For although it seems beautiful that the living by their intercessions can help the deceased and can make good what they perhaps have done wrong toward them during their life; in fact this ecclesiastical practice leads Christian piety into a wholly wrong track. It makes it appear as if in conflict with Mt. 8:22 care for the dead is of higher value than love for the living; it ascribes to one's own works and prayers a meritorious, satisfactorische power, which exercises its effect even on the other side of the grave and there can benefit the deceased; it is built on and conducive to the doctrine of purgatory, which on the one hand, especially among the rich, feeds carelessness and on the other side maintains the uncertainty of believers; it weakens in Christian consciousness faith in the sufficiency of the offering and intercession of Christ. Cf. against purgatory: Calvijn, Inst.

III 5. Polanus, Synt. Theol. VII 25. Chamier, Panstr. Cath. T. III lib. 26.

Amesius, Bellarminus enervatus, T. II lib. 5. Voetius, Disp. II 1240.

Forbesius a Corse, Instruct. hist. theol. lib. XIII. Gerhard, Loc. XXVI 181 sq. Quenstedt, Theol. IV 555. Kliefoth, Eschatologie, 82 f. Charles H. H.

Wright, The intermediate state and prayers for the dead, examined in the light of Scripture and of ancient Jewish and Christian literature, London

Nisbet 1900.

13. Even if there is no place for a veneration of the saints and an intercession for the deceased, there nevertheless is and remains an [417] indissoluble communion between the church militant on earth and the triumphant in heaven. The believers on earth, when they became Christians, have joined the heavenly Jerusalem, which is above and is the mother of all;

to the many thousands of angels, who there serve and praise God; to the assembly of the firstborn, i.e. of the pious of the O. Covenant, who are enrolled in the heavens and have received citizenship there; to the spirits of the righteous, i.e. of the Christians, who have already fallen asleep and have reached perfection, the consummation; to Christ, the mediator of the New

Testament, and to God, the judge of all creatures, Hebr. 12:22-24. This communion does not include that there must exist a direct intercourse between the members of the church militant and of the church triumphant; for although this is also lacking between the different men and peoples in the distinct times and places, humanity is nevertheless an organism, sprung from one blood. The personal intercourse which each believer has here on earth is limited to few persons, but nonetheless he is a member of the one, holy, catholic, Christian church. The unity which binds together all believers, both the deceased and the living, lies in Christ, and through Him in the communion with the same Father, in the possession of the same

Spirit, in participation in the same goods of the covenant. The love which remains, even when faith and hope disappear, keeps all believers bound to Christ and to one another. And that love expresses itself on our part in this, that we remember with reverence the saints who have gone before us, that we speak worthily of them, that we imitate them in faith and good works, and, encouraged by their example, run with patience the race that is set before us, that we, one with them, feel and live in the expectation of going to them, that we with them and all creatures magnify the name of the Lord.

Among the forms in which the communion of the militant with the triumphant church manifests itself, the hope of seeing one another again occupies a broad place. Rationalism has made dreadful misuse of it; it seemed as if the blessedness of heaven lay not in communion with Christ

but in the sentimental enjoyment of one another's presence. But nevertheless there lies in it a good, true thought. The hope of seeing one another again on [418] the other side of the grave is entirely natural, genuinely human, and also in accordance with Holy Scripture. For this teaches no naked immortality of shadowy souls, but eternal life of individual human beings. Regeneration does not erase individuality, personality, character, but sanctifies them and places them in the service of God's name. The congregation is the new humanity, which bears within itself all manner of shading and distinction and in the unity reveals the richest diversity. The joy of heaven therefore lies indeed first of all in communion with Christ, but subsequently nevertheless also in the communion of the blessed among themselves. And just as this on earth, although it is here always defective, does not infringe upon the communion of the believers with Christ, but rather confirms and enriches it, so it is also in heaven. The highest thing Paul desired was to be dissolved and to be with Christ, Phil. 1:23, 1 Thess. 4:17. But Jesus himself represents the joy of heaven under the image of a meal, where all sit at table with Abraham,

Isaac and Jacob, Mt. 8:11, cf. Luk. 13:28. The hope of seeing one another again is therefore in itself not wrong, if only it remains subordinate to the desire for the communion of Christ. And on the other hand it is also not an absurd thought that the blessed in heaven long for the believers who are on earth. For they retain the memory of the persons and conditions which they have known on earth, Luk. 16:27-31. The souls under the altar cry for vengeance over the shed blood, Op. 6:10. The bride, i.e. the whole congregation both in heaven and on earth, prays for the coming of the Lord

Jesus, Op. 22:17. Even if Scripture gives us no right to believe that the blessed in heaven know everything that happens here on earth, it is

nevertheless probable that they know of the church militant on earth at least as much as this knows of them. And that little, added to the knowledge which they possess from memory and which perhaps is continually expanded by communications from angels and the newly fallen asleep, is sufficient to make them always think with interest of this earth and of the mighty struggle that is fought here. To this there is added still that the condition of the blessed in heaven, however glorious, nevertheless for various reasons still bears a provisional character. For they are now only in heaven and limited to that [419] heaven, and not yet in possession of the earth, whose inheritance is promised to them together with that of heaven.

Further, they are deprived of the body, and this bodiless existence is not, as dualism must suppose, a gain but a loss, no increase but a diminution of being, since the body belongs to the essence of man. And finally the part cannot be perfect without the whole; only in the communion of all the saints is the fullness of Christ's love known, Ef. 3:18; the one group of believers cannot without the other reach the consummation, Hebr. 11:40. Therefore there is with the blessed in heaven also still place for faith and hope, for longing and prayer, Op. 6:10, 22:17. Just like the believers on earth they stretch themselves out toward the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of all things. Only then is the end reached, 1 Cor.

15:24. This thought stands in Scripture so much in the foreground that the intermediate state shrinks to a short span of time, which at the final judgment is not taken into account at all. Nowhere is it said that also what is performed by the deceased in that intermediate state will be judged on the last day before the judgment seat of Christ. The judgment concerns exclusively what has happened in the body, whether good or evil, 2 Cor.

5:10; the judicium universale is in so far identical with the judicium

particulare. From this, however, it is still not to be inferred with Kliefoth, Eschatologie 61-66, that the souls after death live outside time and space and are deprived of all development or progress. For even if there is certainly no development such as that on earth, and even if there is still much less to be thought of a possible change for the better or for the worse, nevertheless a true existence and life of the souls without activity is not possible, unless one deems them sunk in unconscious sleep. For the deceased remain finite and limited beings and cannot exist otherwise than in space and time. The dimensions of space and the calculations of time are without doubt wholly different on that side of the grave than here on earth, where miles and hours are our standard. But also the souls who dwell there do not become eternal and omnipresent like God; they must, like the angels, part II 438, have an ubi definitivum, cannot be in two places at the same time and are always somewhere [420] in a definite place, in paradise, in heaven, etc. And likewise they are not elevated above every form of time, that is, above all succession of moments, for they have a past, which they remember, a present in which they live, and a future, which they go to meet.

The rich man knows that his brothers are still living, Luk. 16:28; the souls under the altar look out toward the day of vengeance, Op. 6:10; the bride longs for the coming of Christ, Op. 22:17; they who have come out of the tribulation serve God day and night, Op. 7:15; and they who have worshiped the beast have no rest day and night, Op. 14:11.

If now the souls exist in some form of space and time, they also cannot be conceived without all activity. True, Jesus says that in the night of death no one can work, Joh. 9:4, and the heavenly blessedness is often represented in Scripture as a resting, Hebr. 4:9, Op. 14:13. But just as it does not conflict with one another that God rests from his work of creation, Gen. 2:2 and yet

always works, Joh. 5:17, or that Christ had finished his work on earth, Joh.

17:4 and yet in heaven prepares a place for his own, Joh. 14:3; so neither does the one exclude the other, that the believers rest from their works and yet serve God in his temple. Their work on earth is finished, but for that reason they still have other works to do in heaven. Scripture teaches this clearly. Those who have fallen asleep in the Lord are with Jesus, Phil. 1:23, stand before the throne of God and of the Lamb, Op. 7:9, 15, cry and pray, praise and serve, Op. 6:10, 7:10, 15, 22:17. Besides, if they have consciousness and know God, Christ, the angels, one another, then by that very fact they of themselves exercise activities of understanding and of will, increase in knowledge and are confirmed in love. If Paul can say that the believers on earth, by beholding the glory of the Lord in the mirror of his word, are changed into his image in form from glory to glory, 2 Cor. 3:18; how much more will that then be the case when they are admitted to his immediate presence and see him face to face? There is no change of state; there is also no development in an earthly sense; not even sanctification, as in the church militant, for holiness itself is the portion of all. [421] But just as Adam before the fall and Christ as man, though perfectly holy, nevertheless could increase in grace and wisdom, so in heaven there is a continuing confirmation of state, an ever more being conformed to the image of the Son, a never-ending growing up in the knowledge and love of God. And with that each has his own task and place. The Roman Catholics assume that the pious of the O. T. after their death sojourned in the limbus patrum and were freed from it only by Christ at his descent into hell; and at the same time they think that children who die unbaptized are received neither into hell nor into heaven but into a separate receptaculum, the limbus infantum. But for neither of both receptacula is there ground in

Scripture. It is indeed self-evident that whoever loses sight of the unity of the covenant of grace and conceives the benefits, acquired by Christ, as a new substance that did not exist earlier, must let the pious of the O. T. wait in the limbus patrum for this acquisition and communication of Christ's benefits. But whoever acknowledges the unity of the covenant, and conceives the benefits of Christ as the good favor of God, which with a view to Christ could already before his suffering and death be distributed, has no need of a limbus patrum. The way to heavenly blessedness was under the O. the same as under the N. Test., even though there is also difference in the light in which the believers then and now walk, cf. deel III 196v. 211v. And likewise on the other side of the grave there is no place for a limbus infantum; for the children of the covenant, baptized or unbaptized, in dying enter into heaven; and about the lot of the others so little has been revealed to us that we do best to refrain from a definite judgment, cf. B. B.

Warfield, The development of the doctrine of infant salvation, in zijn Two Studies in the history of doctrine, New-York 1897. But nevertheless there lies in the limbus patrum and infantum this true thought, that there are different degrees both in the punishment of the ungodly and in the blessedness of the pious. There is distinction of rank and activity in the world of the angels. There is diversity among all creatures and the richest among men. There is difference of place and task in the congregation of Christ; to each believer here on earth a particular gift is bestowed and a particular task assigned. And at death each one's works follow after the one who has fallen asleep in the Lord. [422] Without doubt this diversity in heaven is not erased but on the contrary cleansed of all that is sinful and multiplied in the richest manner, Luk. 19:17-19. Yet this difference in degree takes nothing away from the blessedness which each enjoys

according to his measure. For all dwell with the same Lord, 2 Cor. 5:8, are received into the same heaven, Op. 7:9, enjoy the same rest, Hebr. 4:9 and find their joy in the same service of God, Op. 7:15.

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