Chapter 6: Individual Eschatology
1. What further brings you to this individual eschatology?
a)The scriptural doctrine of the intermediate state of the soul before the resurrection.
b)The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, the limbus patrum and the limbus infantum.
c)The modern doctrine of the distinction between Sheol-Hades as a general dwelling place of all souls, on the one hand, and, on the other, heaven-hell as dwelling places at the end for those good and those evil, now separated.
d)The doctrine of soul sleep. “Second probation.” Annihilation. Conditional immortality.
2. What does Scripture teach concerning the intermediate state of souls before the resurrection?
a)That after death the soul continues to exist in self-conscious immortality, that it is not annihilated, and does not lose its consciousness. This doctrine is revealed clearly in both the Old and the New Testament, although, as with other doctrines, so too with it, more light is shed by the full revelation of Christ. Proof from the Old Testament: the answer of our Lord to the Sadducees that God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the God of the living and not of the dead; Psalm 73:23–24; 1 Samuel 28 (the coming up of Samuel); Isaiah 14 (the descent of the king of Babylon, where all the dead meet him); Psalm 16 (of the resurrection of Christ); Psalm 17:15; the two clearest passages: Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2 (cf. Heb 11:13–16). Proofs from of the New Testament are unnecessary.
b)That this state between death and resurrection is a state outside the body. That, nevertheless, outside the body, too, the soul retains its capacities of observing and acting, something that shows convincingly that seeing, hearing, etc., are possible outside the body, and what the prophetic ecstasy in which this occurs accordingly confirms (proof: Phil 1:23; 2 Cor 5:6, 8). After death, in a way that is incomprehensible for us, the soul is in communication with what is outside it. It does not have a spiritual body until the day of resurrection.
c)Although this intermediate state is distinguished in certain ways from the final state that will only come after the resurrection of the dead, Scripture still always presents it as a definitive state in which a change or reversal is no longer possible. As the tree falls, so it lies. If the parable of the rich man and Lazarus teaches anything, then it is that after death no change of destiny, for good or for evil, is possible. Judgment before the judgment seat of Christ has to do with what is done in the body [2 Cor 5:10], and in this there is more of the same.
d)This intermediate state is passed by believers in heaven, by the lost in hell. Thus it is not a state without locality, as some maintain, thinking that the soul separated from the body can no longer exist in relation to space. But the soul is not elevated above space, although it is not extended in space like the body. It must be somewhere; it must have an ubi [where]. It does not exist in space circumscriptively (in a descriptive way), but definitively (in a determinative way). That believers at their death enter heaven follows from the fact that that they go to be with the Lord. We may not be able to say where heaven is, and yet that heaven is where Christ is, namely, according to His human nature (2 Cor 5:8; Phil 1:23; Luke 23:43; Eph 2:6). That the lost are in hell follows from Luke 16:23, “being in torment”; 1 Peter 3:19, “in prison”; 2 Peter 2:9, “under punishment” (kolazomenous), not as the Statenvertaling? [cf. the KJV]: “to be punished”; correctly, the English Revised Version: “to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.” Nor are the souls of those who have died elevated above time; they are and remain in time (Rev 6:11); they serve God “day and night” [Rev 7:15].
e)For believers, death is a crisis event in which they obtain perfect holiness. That was shown earlier in treating sanctification. They come into a place and into a state of blessing and rest (Rev 6:9–11; 14:13), a condition that is to be preferred far above what they share in now. It is a removal of the activity of death from the soul of the believers, an expelling of spiritual death completely and of all that takes place in temporal death. At regeneration that spiritual death is broken in principle, in sanctification the struggle is continued, in temporal death the soul is withdrawn from the terrain of the struggle and placed beyond every influence of death. In the resurrection death will also finally lose its power over the body.
What happens with unbelievers must be located within the same viewpoint. It is a further outworking of the spiritual death that comes upon them at temporal death. They are further separated from God.
Death as temporal death is for God’s children something other than it is for the unbelievers. The matter of death may be the same; the form, the scope is changed. One can debate why God’s children still have to die. Would it not have been more consistent if the re-creation of their bodies would have come at the same time as the re-creation of their souls, gradually, although were that then also in a crisis? One can give a twofold answer: (a) Believers must die in order by the consciousness of death to be loosed from the earth and what is temporal. Temporal death is a part of their cross, and the cross has this scope (Matt 16:24–25). (b) God’s providential ordering unfolds such that He has willed to reserve the material re-creation for the end of the ages; and the perfecting of the bodies of believers belongs to the re-creation of material things. Their bodies are part of matter and must therefore wait for the liberation of the entire groaning creation (Rom 8:20–22). Since now, however, believers must enter heaven, nothing else is left than that their bodies and their souls be separated.
f)Concerning the particulars of this state before the resurrection, both in heaven and in hell, for believers and unbelievers, we can say almost nothing. Only general features are described for us. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable from which one cannot or may not carry over all the features. One should keep to the point of the comparison; all the rest is setting. All kinds of questions present themselves: Can the spirits of the dead return to earth? Can they establish a relationship there in one way or another with those in the body? Do the spirits in heaven or hell know what is happening on earth? Scripture does not answer these questions. It says only as a matter of practice that we may not seek to have such fellowship with the dead in any way whatsoever, with or without magical means. Incantation of the dead is sin (Deut 18). Spiritism has something attractive to many because in the wilderness of unbelief and of materialism it promises a kind of compensation. But anything more than deception that lurks within it is not from God. It may not be used as a means of grace (Luke 16:30–31).
3. What do the Roman Catholics teach concerning purgatory?
Purgatory (purgatorium) is a place of suffering in which the souls of believers are purified after death, in order by this suffering to make satisfaction to God for their sins and in order to be prepared for heavenly glory. Someone can remain in purgatory till the day of judgment. Then it ceases. The Church has this purgatory among the power of the keys and can by its service shorten the time that the souls of the dead spend there. Usually purgatory is seen to be a place of physical fire, but this has not been given creedal status by the Church.
In purgatory one makes satisfaction for the sin committed after baptism, for Christ has only delivered us from eternal death. The mass can serve to decrease this satisfaction required of us. That is why the Church holds masses for the dead who are in purgatory.
4.Where is the alleged proof for this doctrine?
Primarily in tradition. The doctrine has its roots in paganism, in Parsiism and Manichaeism. The doctrine has been especially developed in the Western Church. Augustine first gave it a specific form. Gregory the Great developed it later.
Only in an extremely forced way can Scripture be cited for this dogma. Appeal is made to Jesus’ words that the sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this or in the world to come; hence the inference that there is forgiveness in the world to come. But this is merely a manner of speaking: “never,” “not in eternity,” as we say “neither in heaven nor on earth” for “nowhere.” Further, Revelation 21:7–8, which needs no refutation; Isaiah 4:4; Micah 7:8; Zechariah 9:11; Malachi 3:2; 1 Corinthians 3:13–15; 15:29. All these passages speak of something totally different.
The Roman Catholic doctrine is to be judged by the false premises upon which it rests: (a) the partitioning of the work of Christ, as if we must still add something to it; (b) the meritorious character of our good works, which does not exist; (c) the doctrine of the merit in good works, so that the church disposes over a treasury of merits; (d) the absolute power of the keys of the Church in a judicial sense.
5. What is the limbus patrum of Roman Catholics?
The limbus patrum (limbo of the fathers) is the place where the believing fathers of the Old Testament had to stay in a state of expectation before the coming of the Messiah. After His death on the cross, Christ descended into Hades and freed the fathers. This goes with the Roman Catholic doctrine of the sacraments of the Old Testament, to which they do not attribute power to save, as they do to the sacraments that the Church now administers. The limbus patrum is a part of Hades, of Sheol, about which more will be said below.
6. What is the limbus infantum of Roman Catholics?
A place where the souls of unbaptized children dwell. These souls may not enter heaven, for this is only possible for those baptized. It is not specified precisely in the creeds how one should think further of the state of the children in this place. The limbus infantium is a place in Hades or Sheol. But the punishment of children differs from the punishment of adults. Whether it is poena sensus, “punishment of feeling,” or only poena damni, “punishment of loss” or “privation,” the Church has not decided. The Latin fathers appear to have taught mostly the former, the Greek fathers mostly the latter. The poena damni is a deprivation of the beatitude of heaven, of the beatific vision of God. Thomas said that these children do not feel pain or sorrow as result of this deprivation. Others said they do.
7. What should be observed regarding these two dogmas?
The doctrine of the limbus patrum collapses together with the proposition that the Old Testament saints did not partake of complete salvation. If they had justification, regeneration, the full sacraments, then there is no reason at all for denying them salvation at their death. A local descensus ad inferos [descent into hell] has been refuted earlier.
The limbus infantium rests on the Catholic concept of the sacraments. If baptism is not the means, the sole means of regeneration, then unbaptized children can go to heaven. And if they do not go to heaven, they must be sent to hell. There is no place or state in between. Children are not too innocent to be lost. The entire conception results from a weakening of the understanding of original sin.
8. What distinction is made presently between Sheol-Hades, on the one hand, and hell-heaven, on the other?
Many maintain that in Scripture the Hebrew word she'ol (Sheol) and the Greek word hadēs (Hades) do not mean the place of suffering but a general dwelling place of the dead, in which there are different sections for the different kinds of people who are gathered there after their death. In this way, corresponding to each of the different places, a different state is also assumed, which is carefully distinguished from the state of eternal destruction or eternal blessing. Sheol-Hades is an intermediate place; they who find themselves there live in an intermediate state. The English Revised Version has adopted this view by rendering Hades not with “hell,” as the King James Version does, but with “Hades.” In the historical books they render Sheol mostly with “the grave” or “the pit” and in a marginal note add “Sheol,” so that the reader does not think of “the grave.” In the poetic books they use “Sheol” in the text and “the grave” in the margin. Only in Isaiah 14 has “hell” remained in the text.
It is not feasible here to enumerate all the conceptions that have been formed regarding the relationship of Sheol-Hades, hell, and heaven to each other. As an example, we give the view of Kliefoth, a modern German theologian, who has written a work on eschatology. He says: At the time of the Old Testament there was only one abode for all the dead. Both pious and ungodly went to it. At the descent of Christ into hell, this Sheol was emptied of all its inhabitants, that is, both of those called of the Old Testament, who had lived under the dispensation of the covenant of grace (believers and unbelievers), and of those not called under the Old Testament, who went down into Sheol from the pagan world. But Sheol does not disappear with the descent into hell. Indeed, Revelation 6:8 and 20:13–14 speak of it (under the name “Hades”) as of something that will continue to exist until the final judgment (Phil 2:10; Rev 5:3 also teach that). Therefore those not called—pagans, Mohammedans [Muslims], Jews, etc.—now go into Sheol-Hades at their death. Those who are called, that is, who live under the gospel, on the other hand, now go immediately at their death to Gehenna (= hell) if they have remained unbelieving; to paradise (= heaven) if they believed. According to Kliefoth, children who die unbaptized also go into Sheol-Hades.
Against this conception we observe:
a)That with the words Sheol and Hades one cannot always think of a locality. Without doubt both occur as abstract concepts by which nothing else is meant than being dead, soul and body being separated. This takes place for believers and unbelievers under the old and new covenants, and so in a figurative sense it can be said that they all, without distinction, are in Sheol or Hades. It is meant in this way in the Old Testament; for example, 1 Samuel 2:6: “The LORD kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and brings up.” Here the parallelism shows what is meant (Gen 44:31; Job 14:13; 17:13–14; Hos 13:14; Psa 89:48). And many more places of that sort can be found in the Old Testament.
But Hades occurs in this sense in the New Testament too. Acts 2:27: “You will not leave my soul in Hades (= in the state of the separation of death), nor will you give over your Holy One to see corruption” (cf. v. 31). First Corinthians 15:55: “Death, where is your sting? Hades, where is your victory?” Here again the parallelism shows what is meant with Hades. And the number of such citations can also be increased.
b)Thus we do not need to show that Hades or Sheol never mean something that applies to both believers and the ungodly, but only that they do not mean a place where the souls of believers and the ungodly dwell or exist together. Every place where Sheol-Hades is meant locally, it indicates nothing other than the place of destruction, what we usually call “hell.” Only the latter need be demonstrated. It is based on the following grounds:
1.Descending into Sheol is threatened as a danger and a punishment of the ungodly (Deut 32:22; Job 21:13; Psa 9:17; Prov 5:5; 15:24). The threatening sense disappears from these passages if Sheol is a place neutral in character, more negative than positive, where good and evil are found together. As a place, then, Sheol cannot contain two sections, Gehenna and Paradise, for here Sheol as such is identical with the place of destruction. The idea of a division within Sheol itself is a pagan one that first intruded into the Christian world of thought from paganism, and perhaps had already possessed the Jews during the sojourn of our Lord on earth, but is not supported by Scripture itself. Only of Sheol as a state can it be said that in it there are two divisions, but then one is speaking figuratively.
2.If Sheol does not mean the place of destruction, then the Old Testament has no word to designate this place, and we would have to reach the conclusion that during the time of the Old Testament there was no “hell.” This conclusion, however, completely contradicts every analogy, is in conflict with the retributive righteousness of God, and so must be rejected along with its source.
3.The Old Testament, on the contrary, speaks of a place where believers who died in their Lord enjoy a state of blessing. Hence they cannot have gone to Sheol (Num 23:5, 10; Psa 16:11; 17:15; 49:15; Prov 14:32). Enoch and Elijah certainly did not go to Sheol, the land of darkness and shadows, as the pagans imagine it, and about which they declared that it must be located far below the earth (cf. Heb 11:16, 35).
4.Sheol as a place and not only as a state occurs in the closest connection with the concept “death.” Thus one only need grasp this biblical concept of “death” in its depth to see immediately that Sheol cannot have been the dwelling place for those who died in the Lord. Death is not solely physical. It is also spiritual death. One may compare Proverbs 15:11; 27:20; 5:5 with Revelation 20:14 to see that in the former series of texts Sheol and death are linked, as are Hades and death in the latter passage.
c)Both meanings of the state of death and the state of destruction (= the place of destruction) are therefore designated in Scripture by the same word. That is not accidental. It is based on the fact that death is a punishment for sin and that in the returning of the body to dust, in the body being covered by soil, the Lord has provided an image of the destruction of death in the broadest sense that includes the damnation of hell. It is not to be thought that the designation Sheol for “hell” is a metaphor derived from the designation Sheol for “grave.” On the contrary, since for sinners God has ordained Sheol as “hell” and consistent with the spatial order determined by God this “hell” is associated with what is below, He has therefore willed that something would happen with our dead bodies that called to mind symbolically eternal destruction. Hence in Scriptural symbolism the grave is the gateway to hell. Accordingly, Sheol in the one sense is the anteroom of Sheol in the other sense. But because this was so, and this plainly cannot be applied to those who die in the Lord, therefore, by the mouth of the apostle Paul, Scripture has given another sense to this “going down” for believers, connected to another symbolism. For believers, descending into hell is being sown in a furrow. Seed, too, goes down, apparently to rot, but in reality in order to come up in the glory of stem, leaf, and blossom.
In the Old Testament, Sheol more often means “grave” and less frequently “hell.” In the New Testament the relationship is reversed. This is connected with the fact that in the New Testament more light is shed on the doctrine of future things.
One can conclude from what has been said how little justification there is for always translating Sheol or Hades in the same way and to decide that a priori. In each instance the translation should depend on the context. The English Revised Version has done something risky by taking sides here, and ultimately can itself not remain consistent (Isa 14). One should either leave Sheol and Hades untranslated everywhere or assess and decide each concrete case individually.
9. What is to be understood by the doctrine of soul sleep?
This is the doctrine that after death the soul continues to survive as a separate and indivisible spiritual being not in a clearly conscious state with continuity of consciousness but rather in a sleeping state. At the time of Eusebius there were those who advocated this doctrine. He speaks of a small Christian sect in Arabia. Such conceptions also emerge at the time of the Reformation. Calvin wrote against them; Socinus taught that after death the soul cannot have fellowship with anything outside it, although he judged that in itself it is active consciously.
Appeal is made in particular to the fact that in Scripture death is so often called a sleep (e.g., 1 Thess 4:14–15; 5:10). It is also said that the conception of a day of judgment only at the end includes that the time period between death and this judgment does not count for the soul and its conscious state. Neither of these two grounds has sufficient force to convince in the face of the express assertions of the Bible. That death is called a sleep means to say nothing else than that the connection between soul and body—and with it the connection as well between the soul and this earthly, visible world—is cut off. Suppose that someone in a rapture of the senses (ecstasy) receives a vision. He will then have the appearance of being completely asleep, and perhaps there will not be any trace of the life of his soul remaining in his body. And still at the same time, clearly his soul will be consciously active, see, hear, etc. Similarly, it can be said of the dead that they sleep. The judgment of the last day is not so much necessary for deciding as for a public proclamation of the verdict given by God.
10. What is meant by the doctrine of a so-called “second probation”?
“Second probation” is a second testing or trial. The “first probation” takes place in this life. This doctrine posits a second after this life. Usually the doctrine, described above, of Sheol-Hades as an in-between place is connected with this doctrine. In it, the dividing line for the individual between this age and the age to come is drawn not at his death but at the day of judgment. Until then nothing is decided; only then does the irrevocable decision result. The application of Christ’s work reaches beyond death; the today of grace extends to the day of judgment. It is obvious that this general principle can have multiple specific applications. One can have the time of grace continue for all without distinction. One can also make an exception for those who in this life have not yet been under the administration of the means of grace, namely pagans and children. And this restriction of a second opportunity to pagans and children, then, rests again on the fact that one will know of only one sin that is worthy of damnation, namely, the sin of rejecting Christ. Original sin and actual sin, as long as they are not related to Christ and develop into the sin of unbelief, do not doom anyone (so Dorner IV, 167).1 The sin against the gospel is the sin, the greatest sin.
Against this doctrine in general we observe:
a)That Scripture clearly teaches how everything is decided at death: “to die once, after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27); “you will die in your sin” (John 8:21); “night is coming, in which no one can work” (John 9:4; cf. Luke 21:34–35; 13:24–25; 2 Cor 6:2; Heb 3:7; 4:7).
b)The same conclusion follows from the fact that at death believers are completely sanctified and removed from all variation and change. For now life goes up and down, but this ceases at death. “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt 10:22); “Jesus Christ will sustain you to the end” (1 Cor 1:8; cf. Heb 3:6, 14; 6:11; Rev 2:26).
Against the particular form that applies this doctrine to pagans and children:
a)The basis is unscriptural through and through. For the slightest sin man is worthy of damnation before God. He does not become so only by rejecting Christ. The conception being objected to comes down ultimately to the view that God frees all people from damnation because of Christ’s merits, and then provides them anew with the opportunity to decide for themselves. It is glossed-over Arminianism.
b)The rejection of Christ is a great and severe sin, but it is nowhere presented as the only sin that condemns.
c)This doctrine would quench all missionary spirit. If pagans have the same chances in the future world as here, then to bring the gospel to them does nothing other than to hasten the crisis. That could cause their judgment to come more quickly and make them more anxious. Why not let them rather live in ignorance then? Speaking reverently, let us leave all missionary activity to God Himself?
d)Scripture is so emphatic in teaching the decisiveness of this present life for eternity that many who assume a preaching of the gospel in the hereafter still acknowledge that the outcome of this preaching is always determined by the state of the hearer already in this life. So, for example, Kliefoth: If someone from among the pagans has acted here according to the light that he had, then he will also be converted by the preaching in Sheol; otherwise not. But why then, we ask, is preaching still necessary?
e)Scripture teaches that pagans are lost (Rom 1:32; 2:11, 14–15; Rev 21:8). As little for adult pagans as the children of pagans who die before their exercise of understanding does Scripture provide us with any data on the basis of which one could hope for their salvation. Naturally one cannot say a priori that is impossible. Some of the older Calvinists explicitly left this possibility open. Dr. Kuyper, too, leaves it open, although not as doctrine but only as sheer possibility. Among others, Zanchi and Bucanus may be named here. Suppose that with these theologians one would want to leave open the possibility, then there would still have to be protest made most earnestly against the superficial view that it is just Seneca, Cicero, and the like who are chosen as typical examples. Virtue is made the basis for knowing who is elect. If pagans are saved, they could just as well be found among the base as among the noble, the virtuous, and the learned. Here one measures with an unequal standard. Appeal is made to Acts 10:35, but there the terms “fearing Him (God)” and “working righteousness” are technical terms for proselytism (Acts 13:26; 17:4, 17; 16:14). First Peter 3:19–20; 4:6 have been discussed in detail earlier.
11.What is meant by the doctrine of annihilation or of conditional immortality?
The doctrine that at their death the souls of unbelievers are either completely annihilated or lose consciousness forever. Note “forever,” for by that specifically this doctrine differs from that of soul-sleep. Usually it is said that by its nature the soul of man does not possess immortality but depends upon the body as an organism for its continuity of consciousness. In man as he is by nature (not as he has become through sin), the soul loses its consciousness as soon as the body dies. Out of grace, however, God has made His children immortal, that is, granted them a continuation of their consciousness after bodily death; hence conditional immortality. This theory accordingly denies the eternal punishment of the ungodly or says that their punishment consists in annihilation, at least of consciousness.
Objections to this doctrine are:
a)That death, in the proper sense of the word, would cause annihilation is in conflict with every analogy. God does not annihilate things but causes them to assume other forms. It is so with the body. Will it then be different with the soul? The biblical concept of death has nothing in common with annihilation. A man is spiritually dead before he dies bodily, but is his soul therefore annihilated or its consciousness diminished (Eph 2:1–2; 1 Tim 5:6; Col 2:13; Rev 3:1)?
b)Annihilation cannot be called punishment. Punishment demands consciousness of pain. And where existence ceases, consciousness obviously also ceases. At the most one could say that fear of annihilation is a punishment, but then naturally a temporary punishment and a very mild punishment. God can cause rational beings to return to nothing or cause them to lose consciousness. Would that be a punishment?
c)If the punishment of unbelievers consists in annihilation or elimination of consciousness, then no degrees of punishment are possible. All must then be punished in the same way and to the same degree. But Scripture appears to teach otherwise (Luke 12:47–48; Rom 2:12).
d)Many people see the extinguishing of consciousness as something desirable because they are tired of existing. So for them the punishment would be changed into a blessing. And if their consciousness ceased, they could not be convinced that they had erred.