Irenaeus on Conditional Immortality

Irenaeus was one of the earliest church fathers and theologians, living in the second century (A.D. 130-202) well before the Council of Nicea. In his main surviving work, Against Heresies, he presents a “conditionalist" view: the soul is not immortal, rather eternal life is a gift from God that is extended to mortal souls and those who reject it will perish rather than endure.

The two key passages are reproduced below:

It is the Father of all who imparts continuance for ever and ever on those who are saved. For life does not arise from us, nor from our own nature; but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. And therefore he who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to Him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days for ever and ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created, and has not recognised Him who bestowed [the gift upon him], deprives himself of [the privilege of] continuance for ever and ever. 

Against Heresies 2.43.3

Those who assert that He [Jesus Christ] was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son...But, being ignorant of Him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life; and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life...For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God.  For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that might receive the adoption of sons?

Against Heresies 3.19.1

Conditional immortality has been a minority view within orthodox Christian theology since that time and I believe it is the view most consistent with biblical evidence such as John 3:16 (“whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life") and 1 Corinthians 15:42 (“what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable").

It contrasts with a view of the immortality of the soul which is arguably drawn from Greek philosophy and a doctrine of eternal torment that is potentially inconsistent with the nature and love of God. It also stands as a defensible alternative to notions of universal salvation and straight universalism that have gained ground in recent decades (for further background also see my posts on “The Reconciliation of All Things" and “Time's Arrow").

Towards True Reconciliation

God of holy dreaming, Great Creator Spirit,
from the dawn of creation you have given your children
the good things of Mother Earth.
You spoke and the gum tree grew.
In the vast desert and dense forest,
and in cities at the water's edge, creation sings your praise.

Your presence endures
as the rock at the heart of our Land.
When Jesus hung on the tree
you heard the cries of all your people
and became one with your wounded ones:
the convicts, the hunted, and the dispossessed.

The sunrise of your Son coloured the earth anew,
and bathed it in glorious hope.
In Jesus we have been reconciled to you,
to each other and to your whole creation.

Lead us on, Great Spirit,
as we gather from the four corners of the earth;
enable us to walk together in trust
from the hurt and shame of the past
into the full day which has dawned in Jesus Christ.

“A Thanksgiving for Australia", A Prayer Book for Australia, pp. 218-219

Urakami

Three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a lone B-29 bomber took off from Tinian Island bound for the Japanese city of Kokura. After several unsuccessful approaches due to heavy cloud cover and running low on fuel it diverted to the secondary target of Nagasaki.

Nagasaki was the centre of Japan's small Christian community, a port city where the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier had first landed nearly 400 years earlier and the site of the crucifixion of 29 martyrs in 1597. After centuries of severe persecution the Kakure Krishitan (“hidden Christians") re-emerged and built St Mary's Cathedral in the district of Urakami, completing it in 1925.

The bomb detonated directly over Urakami, only 500 meters away from the cathedral just as morning mass was commencing. At least thirty five thousand people were killed in the blast, including more than 8,000 Japanese Catholics.

Several months later Dr Takashi Nagai, who lost his wife in the bombing, addressed a memorial service in front of the destroyed cathedral and invoked the providence of God:

On August 9, 1945, at 10:30 A.M. a meeting of the Supreme Council of War was held at the Imperial Headquarters to decide whether Japan should capitulate or continue to wage war. At that moment the world was at a crossroads. A decision was being made that would either bring about a new and lasting peace or throw the human family into further cruel bloodshed and carnage.  

And just at that same time, at two minutes past eleven in the morning, an atomic bomb exploded over our district of Urakami in Nagasaki. In an instant, eight thousand Christians were called into the hands of God, while in a few hours the fierce flames reduced to ashes this sacred territory of the East. At midnight of that same night the cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was burned to the ground. And exactly at that time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known his sacred decision to bring the war to an end.  

On August 15, the Imperial Edict which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated, and the whole world welcomed a day of peace. This day was also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant to reflect that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. And we must ask if this convergence of events—the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast—was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God... 

Is there not a profound relationship between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Nagasaki, the only holy place in all Japan—was it not chosen as a victim, a pure lamb, to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate the sins committed by humanity in the Second World War? 

The human family has inherited the sin of Adam who ate the fruit of the forbidden tree; we have inherited the sin of Cain who killed his younger brother; we have forgotten that we are children of God; we have believed in idols; we have disobeyed the law of love. Joyfully we have hated one another; joyfully we have killed one another. And now at last we have brought this great and evil war to an end. But in order to restore peace to the world it was not sufficient to repent. We had to obtain God’s pardon through the offering of a great sacrifice...  

Our church of Nagasaki kept the faith during four hundred years of persecution when religion was proscribed and the blood of martyrs flowed freely. During the war this same church never ceased to pray day and night for a lasting peace. Was it not, then, the one unblemished lamb that had to be offered on the altar of God? Thanks to the sacrifice of this lamb many millions who would otherwise have fallen victim to the ravages of war have been saved. How noble, how splendid was that holocaust of August 9, when flames soared up from the cathedral, dispelling the darkness of war and bringing the light of peace! In the very depth of our grief we reverently saw here something beautiful, something pure, something sublime... 

“The Lord has given: the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” 

Let us give thanks that Nagasaki was chosen for the sacrifice. Let us give thanks that through this sacrifice peace was given to the world and freedom of religion to Japan. 

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

For further background see:

• The story of Takeshi Nagai's life and conversion
• The Catholic holocaust of Nagasaki
• Religious responses to the bombing of Nagasaki 

Time's Arrow

In previous posts I have written that the current scientific consensus regarding the beginning of the universe is consistent with the doctrine of creation. But how consistent are scientific and theological perspectives on the end of the universe?

We are currently living in the Stelliferous Era, the age of starlight. This will eventually come to an end as larger stars explode or collapse over billions of years while small red dwarf stars burn slowly through their remaining fuel over trillions of years. Ultimately though even the red dwarfs will fade and become white dwarfs.

British physicist Dr. Brian Cox describes what will happen next:

A black dwarf will be the final fate of those last stars, white dwarfs that have become so cold that they barely emit any more heat or light. Black dwarfs are dark, dense decaying balls of degenerate matter. Little more than the ashes of stars, their constituent atoms are so severely crushed that black dwarfs are a million times denser than our sun...

We think that the matter inside black dwarfs, the last matter in the universe, will eventually evaporate away and be carried off into the void as radiation, leaving absolutely nothing behind. With the black dwarfs gone, there won't be a single atom of matter left. All that will remain of our once rich cosmos will be particles of light and black holes. After an unimaginable length of time, even the black holes will have evaporated and the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons, gradually tending towards the same temperature, as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero...

It's what's known as the heat death of the universe, an era when the cosmos will remain vast and cold and desolate for the rest of time. There is no difference between the past, the present and the future. There's no way of measuring the passage of time because nothing in the cosmos changes, the arrow of time has simply ceased to exist.

Although we do not know the final outcome of all things with certainty it seems to me this scientific view is consistent with a “conditionalist” or “annihilationist” theological perspective. Arguably Luther held some form of this view as evidenced by his rejection of the innate immortality of the soul - anything that is not in the end restored with God in eternity will pass away.

Whether one believes in our Christian God or not the ultimate fate of all things in this world is the same.