The soul in the unseen world; an inquiry into the doctrine of the intermediate state

Front matter

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Contents

I Fl Teacher come from Goo

Jesus Christ the Divine Teacher—Is there a future life ?—How we know what Christ taught—The Bible in the Church—The Church teaches, Scripture proves—The Faith once delivered— The witness of miracle—and of the power of the faith—The Church not an oracle, but a witness—Dogma and doctrine—The General Councils—Liftle revealed as to Intermediate State— Tradition, Jewish and Pagan—* Back to the Holy Scriptures”

Ly Boodv, Soul, and Spirit

Appendix

On the Doctrine of the Orthooor Lastern Churcb 93

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“Rationalism has made vain efforts to destroy and to pervert the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not dethroned; the power of history protects and upholds Him against all these attacks. Therefore rationalism has been forced to attempt a last supreme effort to explain, at least, that life which it has been unable. either to destroy or to dishonour. We Catholics explain the life of Christ, we explain the success He has obtained—the greatest of all success, that of producing in minds the rational certainty of faith ; in the soul, holiness by humility, chastity, and charity ; in the world, a spiritual community, one, universal, and perpetual —we explain it by that single confession—Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”—LACORDAIRE.

“To not believe me because I tell thee things, unless thou receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of what is set forth.” —ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM.

1 A Teacher come from God

N the gospel story we read that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and professed to recognise PMinyveds: a. “teacher come) from (God!>*) olf ‘would seem, however, that Nicodemus was not prepared to accept without question all that he was_ taught. He forgot that a “teacher come from God” would almost certainly have much to say that would make demands upon the faith of those who became his disciples. True, the question which Nicodemus asked our Lord, “How can these things be?” might be understood as a request for some further explanation, and not as a refusal to believe; but from our Lord’s reply we gather that Nicodemus was wanting in that faith which he ought to have had in one whom he recognised to be a “teacher come from God.” “Tf I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” Without entering into the consideration of the

1 St, John iii, 1-12, particular “earthly things” that our Lord referred to, we may learn two lessons from this conversation with Nicodemus. In the first place, if we profess to have found a teacher come from God, we must be prepared to accept on his authority certain truths concerning “heavenly things ”»—truths that belong to the spiritual world. Secondly, our ability to receive these “heavenly things” will, to some extent, depend on our realisation of the fact that there are “earthly things” which at present we are unable fully to understand, and therefore there may. well be mystery in truths that belong to the “Kingdom of God.’ There are mysteries in the order of Nature that prepare us for mystery in the order of Grace

The application of this truth to the subject of the — life after death is obvious. We can know nothing of “the life of the world to come” except from revelation. We know nothing of that life—not even whether there is such a life—from our own experience, or from the

1 The word ‘‘ mystery” is from the Greek wiéw, meaning ‘‘to be shut or closed.” The Mysteries were a most important feature in the ancient Greek religion. To those initiated a secret was confided, and they were forbidden to reveal it to the general public.

Probably it was of a character to suggest that more than was understood lay hidden in the secret. It was spoken, as it were, through closed lips (utfw) to the one initiated (uverns), and the ceremonies, therefore, of initiation were 7& muvoTrypia—the Mysteries. The word does not occur in the purely Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures, except once in the deutero-canonical book ‘‘Ecclesiasticus.” In the Alexandrian Greek book of ‘‘ Wisdom” it occurs, and is frequently used in the New Testament. To the Christian the initiation is by Baptism. Our Lord said to His Apostles, “‘It is given unto you to know the mysteries

A Teacher come from God 5 experience of those we have met. Science can tell us neither whence life comes nor whither it goes. The facts of what is called “Spiritualism” are so confused, and so mixed up with imposture, that they can form no sure foundation whereon to rest a well-founded confidence that there is a hereafter. Failing then to find any sufficient witness in the natural order for the existence of a future life, we ask, Is there any witness whom we are justified in listening to as a “teacherscome from God”? . 1s there; one who -can truthfully say, “ Yes, the life of the world to come is no vain dream. There is a hereafter; a spiritual world that ‘flesh and blood’! cannot inherit, but which is, nevertheless, the home prepared for the children of men. I speak that which I know, and testify that I have seen”? As Christians we answer without hesitation that we believe Jesus Christ to be such a teacher.

We are not now concerned with the proofs upon of the kingdom of heaven.” St. Paul writes to the Romans of the teaching of Jesus Christ as ‘‘the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest” (xvi. 25).

A ‘‘ mystery” is therefore a truth or fact partially hidden. What is revealed leads to the knowledge that there is more which is beyond our understanding. The word ‘‘mystery” in the Bible is used invariably in the Greek sense, and is part of the ‘‘pagan residuum,” since it depends on the pagan Mysteries for its full meaning. See GROTE’S flistory of Greece, part i. chap. 1.; AZyths of Aryan Nations, book ii. sec. 11. chap. xi, ; DOLLINGER, Zhe Gentile and the Jew ; Uarcu, Lrfiuence of Greek Ideas, etc.; and Dr. LIDDON’s Sermon on Stewards of the Mysteries of God,

eer Gor Xv. ‘SO,

6 The Soul on the Unseen World which our belief in Jesus Christ is based. “Christian Evidences” form a special branch of Apologetic Theology. We must here take for granted—what is admitted by all Christians—that our Lord is not merely “a teacher come from God,’ /but: that He 1s nothing less than God Incarnate—the Truth as well as the Way and the Life. It will, then, be allowed that whatever Jesus Christ has taught about a future life is true. The only question is, How can we know what His teaching is?

If we seek to learn what any of the great men of antiquity taught we naturally refer to their writings or to those of their disciples. Without these we should have nothing but the vaguest tradition to go upon. Jesus Christ, however, as far as we know, left no writings at all. The answer, therefore, that Christians will give to the question, How are we to know what Christ taught? takes a twofold form. Sometimes it is replied that our knowledge comes through the teaching of that Society which Jesus Christ founded—the Church; and sometimes, that we learn His doctrine from the study of the New Testament. A moment’s consideration is sufficient to convince us that we have here not two distinct witnesses but a twofold aspect of the same witness. The New Testament was not written by Jesus Christ Himself, but is composed of a variety of documents written by those who were His disciples, and by the first pastors of His Church. The New Testament is therefore the product of the Church. It is her own

—

A Teacher come from God 7 work, her own book, though none the less the Word of God. It is only through the tradition of the Church that we know what Books are part of the sacred Canon.

In other words the New Testament is nothing else than the teaching of the Church committed to writing —not systematised, but scattered throughout the sacred pages. It is then from the Church alone that we can really learn anything of the inner life and doctrine of Jesus Christ. The Church comes to us as an ambassador from her Lord, and gives the sacred Scriptures into our hands. We study these writings and learn from them that, when they were written, it was part of the teaching of the Church that her message was full and complete from the first; that her office was not to reveal fresh truths, but to explain, unfold, and elucidate a deposit of truth committed to her keeping by her Founder; and further, that God had so ordered it that all truths contained in this deposit should be also set forth in these New Testament Scriptures.t Whatever the Church taught should always be capable of proof from these writings, so that what was not con-

1 «The Church may not require ‘as necessary to salvation’ what is not read in Holy Scripture, or may be proved by it. This only implies the historical fact, that the same body of saving truths which the Apostles first preached orally, they afterwards, under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, wrote in Holy Scripture, God ordering in His Providence that in the unsystematic teaching of Holy Scripture all should be embodied which is essential to establish the faith, This is said over and over again by the Fathers.” (dz Zzrenicon, E. B. Pusry, D.D.)

tained in these Scriptures could never be the teaching of the Church, but merely the doctrine—well or illfounded—of certain of her members. Hence from the first the axiom was accepted, Ecclesia docet; probat Scriptura. The Church teaches, Scripture proves. The fact that the Church has existed from the time of the Apostles is as capable of proof as any other fact of history.1_ The fact that “inspiration,” in the strict sense - of the word, ceased at the death of the Apostles and those associated with them in the foundation of the Church, is. gathered from the tradition of the Church, and witnessed to by the close of the Canon of Scripture at the time of their death. The successors of the Apostles never attempted to add their writings to those of the canonical Scriptures; neither did they claim the power to add new articles to the Faith “once delivered unto the saints.’? The post-apostolic Church was to witness to the deposit she had received from the inspired Apostles. The Apostles themselves had been instructed by their Lord, and on the day of Pentecost they received a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit for the very purpose that they might recall to mind all that they had been taught, and understand its full significance and its application to the needs of the souls of men. Those who, like St. Paul, had not been disciples of Jesus Christ were called by God Himself to

' The fact that Jesus Christ lived and was crucified we know from Pagan as well as Christian sources. ? St. Jude 3.

A Teacher come frou. God 9 share in the founding of the Church, and the fact of their having this call was witnessed to by the evidence of miraculous power and by the consent of the apostolic college. The gift of personal inspiration ceased at the death of the Apostles, with other gifts that had been granted for the purpose of founding the Church. Inspiration, in the technical sense of the word, was no longer needful when the whole cycle of the faith had been declared. Miracles were superseded by the witness of the enduring force that enabled the apparent weakness of the Church to triumph over the opposing power and wisdom of imperial Rome. Men might not know whence this mysterious force came or whither it tended, but they were compelled to recognise its presence, for the signs of it were constantly before their eyes. The Apostles knew that this power came to them from their crucified, risen, and ascended Lord. It had come upon them suddenly, accompanied by “a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.”! The hearts of men were bowed as this all-subduing breath of God swept over them and filled them with a new life. The words of the Master were verified before their eyes: “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:

I Acts i. 2.

ne) The Soul in the Unseen World so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”!_ Thus, as time went on, the new life of the children of the kingdom of God became its own witness to a divine force that just at the first had proclaimed its presence by those wonders that men call “ miracle.”

The Church, then, is not an oracle to which men may seek for an answer to every curious question they wish to ask. What she has had to declare is the old Faith, to which she can add nothing because nothing new has been revealed to her. A new revelation would require the witness of fresh miraculous power, as well as the witness of the effect of the new truth upon the life of the Church. In theory, therefore, it is confessed by every portion of the Church that nothing can be added to the original deposit of truth. But, from the first, the Church has reckoned some doctrines as of far greater moment than others. The entire Church declared at the Council of Ephesus in the year A.D. 431 that, “No person shall be allowed to bring forward, or to write, or to compose any other Creed besides that which was settled by the holy Fathers who were assembled in the city of Nicaea, with the Holy Spirit. But those who shall dare to compose any other Creed, or to exhibit or to produce any such to those who wish to turn to the acknowledgment of the truth, whether from heathenism or from Judaism, or any other heresy whatsoever, if they are bishops or clergymen, they shall be deposed, the bishops from their episcopal office, and the clergymen from the clergy, and if they be of the laity they

1 St, John iii, 6-8.

A Teacher come from God II shall be anathematised.”! This decree of the Gécumenitcal Council of Ephesus was reaffirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The dogmatic decrees of the undoubted QM£cumenical Councils —held before the separation of East and West—are binding upon the whole Church, and have been repeatedly referred to as authoritative by the post-reformation Anglican Episcopate. They are, moreover, recognised by the statute law of England where it is written: “ Provided always and it be enacted by the authority aforesaid, that such persons ... shall not in any wise have authority or power to order, determine, or adjudge any matter or cause to be heresy but only such as heretofore have been determined, ordered, or adjudged to be heresy by the authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by the first four General Councils or any of them, or by any © other General Council wherein the same was declared heresy by the express and plain words of the said

1 In this decree there is a point of some importance that is lost sight of in the English version, but is clearly marked in the original Greek. In the sentence ‘‘ those who dare to compose any other creed” the word used for ‘‘ other” is érépos not &AXos. The word érépos means ‘‘ other” in the sense of zzs/eke, ofpostte, not ‘‘other” (&\Xos) in the sense of a duplicate creed, z.e. one expressing the same truths in other words. Hence the Athanasian Creed does not transgress the decree of the Council, since it adds nothing new to the Nicene Creed; it is not ‘‘another” in the sense of being opposite to or unlike the Nicene; it merely develops and explains the truths of the Nicene Creed. See Galatians 1. 6, 7, where the two words are used: ‘‘I marvel that ye. . . unto another (é7epov) gospel: which is not another” (dAXo), z.e. *‘ there cannot be two Gospels, and as it is not the same it is no Gospel at all,” as Lightfoot explains. See

Dr. Lightfoot’s comment on the passage in his Apdstles of St. Paul to the Galatians, canonical Scriptures .....”! At the Lambeth Conference in 1867 the authority of the Councils was referred to in these words: “We, Bishops of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church . . . do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be most effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity—as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the Primitive Church, summed up in the Creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed ‘General Councils; ..;:. It is, therefore-ne assertion of private judgment that leads us to reject new dogmas.?. The divisions of Christendom hinder the meeting of a General Council, and consequently the “definition” of any new dogma — however plainly it may be taught in Holy Scripture—is impossible. The “one Faith,” as far as it has been explicitly “defined ” by the whole Church, is therefore contained in the Creeds. The articles of the Creed are few in number but of supreme importance, since they guard the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, and the Incarnation. Our Lord Himself taught the need of faith in these fundamental truths when He:said, “ This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent.” But beside this body of what we may well call essential truth, there are many doctrines capable of proof from the holy Scriptures and witnessed to by the unbroken tradition of ad Bellz, ay 30. 2 A truth contained in the Creed is in modern theological phraseology said to be de fide defintta—a defined dogma.

A Teacher come Jrom God 13

Christendom! that must have a claim upon our faith. When we apply what has been said to the doctrine of a future life we find that all that is binding upon our acceptance under pain of heresy is the statement in the Creed, “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”

It is clear, therefore, that by far the greater part of our inquiry into the future life will be in the department of revelation that lies outside the region of dogma. The Church has settled little or nothing. We have then a perfect right to explore for ourselves the teaching that may fairly be gathered from the written Word of God, and see how far the popular beliefs prevalent in the Christian Church are supported by the holy Scriptures.

Moreover, outside the tradition of the Church and the teaching of Holy Writ there is that body of doctrine that has come down to us from the enlightened reason of pre-Christian antiquity. The traditions of Judaism and the mythologies of Paganism were, we believe, part of the preparation of the world for the reception of the Gospel. We cannot afford to neglect these foregleams and anticipations of the truth, since they are in many ways bound up with the teaching and terminology of the holy Scriptures. They, moreover, often furnish the only answer there is to the question as to what impression was conveyed to the hearers by the words of our Lord and the Apostles.

1 A truth contained in Scripture but not in Creeds is said to be de fide definibth, a dogma capable of definition.

When reason is found to have arrived at beliefs very similar to those made known by revelation, we cannot but feel that our faith is greatly strengthened.

In a very marked degree men of science have found that progress can only be made by continually looking back to the past. It has been well said that advance in natural science means a fuller realisation of Newton’s. sreat principles; that progress in philosophy means, “back to Kant,” and in politics, “back to Aristotle.” ! It is equally certain that progress in theology must mean, “back to the Bible,” since the sacred Scriptures are the unchanging depository of unalterable truth “once delivered to the saints.” We have greater helps to assist us to the exact meaning of the sacred Text than our forefathers possessed, and it is in this careful weighing of the words of the Bible that we may hope for any fresh light along the dark paths of the Unseen. Jesus Christ speaking through His Church is, we believe, our “teacher come from God.” The fact that there is “a life of the world to come” He plainly asserts, and we accept His teaching as absolutely final. For any knowledge of the conditions of that life we must refer to the less clear doctrine contained in parables, conversations, and the apostolic Epistles, trusting to the promised help of that Holy Spirit Who “spake by the prophets,’ and Who guided the Evangelists and the writers of the rest of the New Testament. |

1 Study the Sources, HERDER.

II

“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccles. xi. 7).

“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality.”

But “the hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the wind; like a thin froth that is driven away with the storm; like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day” (Wisdom ii. 1-4; v. 14).

The Psalmist turns from the contemplation of the beauty and the magnificence of the inanimate creation to the thought of the apparent littleness and insignificance of man.

The heavens seem to him worthily to witness to God as their Maker; the silent voices of the stars are eloquent in their praise of the power and wisdom of the Creator. But man? What is man that God should be mindful of him, since man alone constantly departs from the obedient service of God? “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him; or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” The question leads the Psalmist towards the answer. Man, if he has affinity with the inanimate and animate world around him, has also something in common with those pure Intelligences who hold a place above man and below

God. “Thou madest him lower than the angels’”—

1 Ps.) Vill 4.

Cc 17 lower, that is, than those purely spiritual beings that rank above man because they are not linked with matter, and are yet far below God since they, like man, are creatures, and owe their existence to God, the almighty Creator of all things visible and invisible. But if man is “lower than the angels,” he is evidently placed above all the other forms of created being. God has made man lower than the angels, only that He may “crown him with glory and worship” upon the earth. “Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of Thy hands, and Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas.” This excellence of man is implied by the fact that he not only sums. up all the lower degrees of life in his own being, but has faculties that are peculiarly his own, and that far transcend the powers of the brute creation.

By his material body man is united with the inanimate earth on which he walks; by the possession of life he is linked with the vegetable kingdom; and by his sensitive soul he shares in the life of the brutes. But over and above these lower forms of life man has mental endowments of a very high order; his soul is not only sensitive, but also rational. Now the question is naturally suggested, Has man by his reason and memory and other mental phenomena something in common with a form of being that is purely spiritual, and with God, the “Father of spirits ”?1

Whom shall we ask to answer such a question? If we listen to the enlightened reason of mankind, from the dawn of history down to the present day, we shall be told that in man there is something— call it soul, spirit, or what name we will—that lifts him above all other forms of being of which we have any experimental knowledge, and places him in relationship with pure Intelligences of a spirit world, and with God Who is Spirit.

If we turn to the religious beliefs of mankind we find that, speaking generally, everywhere and at all times all religions have taught that man is composed cc of a material body and of some “inscrutable entity” that is called the soul or spirit. In the following pages, however, it is taken for granted that God has made known certain truths by revelation, and that this revelation is embedded in Holy Scripture, summed up in the Creeds, and harmonised and systematised in that body of theology that is held in common throughout the Catholic Church.

It is not of course implied that God has not revealed Himself and made known many truths in other ways. By the order of Nature, by reason, by experience, as well as by the voice of prophets and by the sending of His Son, God has throughout the ages spoken to those who have ears to hear. God cannot contradict

1 Heb. xii. 9.

Himself, and therefore the less certain voice of human speculation must be prepared to revise its conclusions if at any time they are clearly contrary to some truth declared by a more sure witness. We turn then to the Bible, and ask if it contains any answer to the question, What exactly are we to understand by the human soul ? In reply, we are obliged to acknowledge that the Bible does not give us any strict definition of the soul. Its existence is usually taken for granted in Holy Writ, but now and again we come across passages! that would, if they stood alone, imply that the soul is merely the principle of bodily life, and therefore entirely dependent upon the body. By far the greater part, however, of the teaching of the Bible speaks of the soul as the spiritual personality of man.? The soul or spirit of man is spoken of as the real self, and it is because man is a personal spirit that the Bible represents him as having dominion over all the lower forms of life. The Bible seems to take for granted that the “Ego”—the real self in man—is a spiritual entity that “informs” the physical organism.

This we shall have to touch upon when we come to the consideration of the teaching of the Bible as to the life of the spirit after the death of the body. At present it is enough to say that the holy Scriptures plainly assert the existence of a spiritual soul in man,

1 ¢.¢, ‘*They are dead which sought the young child’s life, z.e. soul” (rhv Woxhv). St. Matt. ii. 20, 2NStsuMatt. x.-20 steel. 20 + Kile slo Gavi 25 1eUC, but do not give a scientific definition of the nature of the soul.

It would therefore be possible, while firmly believing in the existence of a personal spirit in man, to offer no definition of its nature. But we may not forget that what we call revelation does not make the use of our reason superfluous, The truths of revelation are to be expressed—imperfectly, no doubt—in human language, and the intellect is never better employed than when it is occupied with the effort to place the sublime mysteries of God as clearly as may be before the minds of men. Hence we may well believe that God delayed His final message by Jesus Christ until the intellect of Greece had so ripened that. it became possible to express the deepest truths—such as the Trinity and Unity of God, and the Incarnation of the Eternal Word—in something like adequate language. What the subtlety of Greek thought thus expressed in language, the universal empire of imperial Rome proclaimed throughout the world. God never employs miracle to do that which may be done by man through the use of those gifts that we speak of as belonging to the natural order, and yet are as truly gifts from God as any that we call supernatural.

It was, then, when “the fulness of the time was come” that God “sent forth His Son.’! Jesus Christ taught men the truth, but He left it to them to harmonise the truth and to express it in the best language at their command. Bearing this in mind, we are not surprised