A Larger Hope 2

by Robin A Parry

  We have now examined every passage in the New Testament in which the word Gehenna occurs. We have found that for the most part it is used in a purely figurative sense; that, so often as it is used in a literal sense, it denotes the punishments executed on criminal Jews in this present world: and that, in the one or two cases, in which it veils a reference to the punishments of the world to come, it would be understood by those who heard it as denoting that brief agony which, as they thought, would precede the entire destruction of the wicked. (87–88)

  Lest readers fear that Cox has gone soft on sin, he adds:

  But do not too hastily assume that, by getting rid of the word “hell,” you also get rid of the doctrine of retribution. To sin is to suffer even here and now, and will be to suffer hereafter. . . . And if any man abide in sin to the very last moment, we may well believe that he will then enter into suffering so intense and so protracted as that he may feel it had been better for him had he never been born.

  However, there is an important qualifier: “The merciful God, simply because He is merciful, does not shrink from inflicting any pain on us which is necessary to our welfare.” (89). The afterlife sufferings are “sufferings imposed by Love for our deliverance from evil” (90). This, believes Cox, is a world away from the God who sends people to everlasting suffering, with no prospect of relief, for committing brief finite sins—an action that is neither just nor loving.

  Having finished undermining the biblical basis for the classical doctrine of hell, Cox moves on to present his alternative vision. He calls it “The Christian Doctrine of the Aeons.” The Greek aiōn means “an age” or a “period of time” (not “an eternity”), whether long or short, and the adjective aiōnios means “age-long” (not everlasting). Scripture does not see time as a single aeon, but divides it up into numerous aeons or ages. Each of these ages has a start and an end. Looking backward, the past is composed of numerous ages, but so too is the future. The NT will often speak of “the age to come,” but can also speak in the plural of “the coming ages” (Eph 2:7), which can be grouped together as “the ages of ages” (Rev 5:13; 14:11). These ages “are epochs or periods of time in which God is gradually working out a gracious purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus long ere man fell from his first estate, long before those ‘age-times’ . . . in and through which men are being recovered from the fall” (107). God’s purpose for creation reaches back “before the ages,” but “binds the ages together in a sacred unity” (110) and reaches forward to a final destiny beyond the ages when “the successions of time pass away” and God will be all in all (110).

  Even when the words aiōn and aiōnios are applied to God, Cox does not think that the translation “eternal” is appropriate. Rather, he says, they describe God’s relation to the aeons of time. God is the “King of the Aeons” (1 Tim 1:17), the aeonial God (Rom 16:25–26), who rules over all the aeons. The Spirit is the aeonial Spirit (Heb 9:14), the Zeitgeist (Time Spirit), “animating and informing these ages with a Divine intention and significance” (113).

  Similarly, all aspects of God’s redemptive work are described as aeonial—aeonial judgment, aeonial life, aeonial punishments, aeonial fire, aeonial inheritance—for, according to Cox, they belong to God’s purpose being worked out through the Christian aeons. But on no occasion does Cox think that the word “eternal” or “everlasting” would be appropriate to convey the meanings of the phrases in question. In particular, aeonial fire, aeonial destruction, and aeonial punishment are age-long consequences of living orientated away from God that are “proper to and distinctive of [the age]” (130), but there is no reason to consider them everlasting. Indeed, they apply to gehenna, which Cox sees as part of Hades and thus an intermediate condition. The salting with fire in gehenna (Mark 9:42–50) is “a purifying and vivifying correction” (135).478

  This extension of time far into the past and the future was a recovery of Origenist theology, but it also resonated very well with the vast extensions of geological time that scientists were proposing, and with the ideas of evolution that were fast becoming popular in Cox’s day—ideas to which Cox happily subscribed.

  God is unchangeable—his saving purposes, his calling, and his election will not be revoked. With regard to that election, Cox is clear that election is for the sake of others: “when He elects and establishes a church, it is for the spiritual benefit of the whole world” (159). The saving work of Christ will eventually extend beyond the church to the whole world, “even the inanimate creation” (160).

  God’s punishments in Scripture are “corrective and even redemptive; . . . [they are] not simply penal and retributive, but corrective and remedial” (162–63).

  But will the unchangeable God change his attitude towards sinful men, when, despite his discipline, they have gone down into the pit? Can He? If we have once seen what his purpose is in chastening and punishing them for their sins, must not that be his eternal, his unalterable purpose? What right have we to assume that pain and wrath, and judgment will have another function in the age to come, or in any age, than that which we know them to have in this age? (164–65).

  With regard to the cross, Cox is typical of many nineteenth-century theologians in seeking an account that avoids penal substitution.479 He sees the cross as the revelation of the loving and saving will of an eternally kenotic God. The Father sorrows over our sin and the harm it causes us. For this divine passion to become redemptive, it must be revealed:

  Till we know that God is sorry for us, we shall not be sorry for ourselves with that godly sorrow that worketh life. . . . Hence, once in the ages, in the person of Jesus Christ, God became man to show His sympathy with men, His kinship with them, His care for them. To prove that He is verily afflicted in our afflictions, and that He is able to redeem us out of them all. . . . In short, the historical Cross of Christ is simply a disclosure within the bounds of time and space of the eternal passion of the unchangeable God: it is simply, the supreme manifestation of that redeeming Love which always suffers in our sufferings, and is forever at work for our salvation from them. (168–69)

  Cox finally moves on to sketch out the biblical hope of a glorious future for all humanity. This is simply a discussion of standard universalist texts (e.g., Gen 12:3; Ps 77:17; Isa 45:22–23 in Phil 2:6–11; John 1:29; 12:32; Acts 3:21; Rom 11; 1 Cor 15:24–28; 2 Cor 5:19; Eph 1:10; Col 1:20; 1 Tim 4:10). For instance, in 1 Timothy 2:1, 3, and 6, he writes:

  But if He is to be ultimately the Saviour of all men, as it is very certain that a countless multitude of men are not saved in this age, they must of necessity be excluded from that presence and glory of the Lord in the age to come which the righteous will enjoy, must be exposed to a far more severe and searching discipline than any they have known here. . . . God therefore, while the Saviour of all men, is specially the Saviour of them that believe, since these are saved in the present age, will pass into the blessedness of a perfecting discipline in the age to come, and may even be employed in errands of mercy to the spirits who are still in the bonds of their iniquity. Meanwhile the purpose of God stands sure. It is His will, His good pleasure, that all men should be saved by being led, through whatever correction and training may be necessary for that end . . . which truth will be testified to them in its appropriate seasons, and by appropriate methods, in the ages to come . . . so appropriately and so forcibly testified that at last they will no longer be able to withstand it. (188–89)

  Our ultimate future is beyond our comprehension at this stage in our story, but Cox argues in the final chapter that what is clear is that:

  1.There are degrees of bliss, or reward, in paradise, and degrees of punishment in gehenna.

  2.In the spiritual world, the reward of the righteous is at once retributive and perfecting, and the punishment of the unrighteous at once retributive and remedial.

  3.In the age or ages to come, there will be accorded a new and deeper revelation of the grace of God in
Christ Jesus, a new and more penetrating proclamation of the gospel.

  The God affirmed and proclaimed by Samuel Cox is one who is the Savior of all people.

  Cox and Jukes, while both ministers, were pastor-scholars, men who sought to better exegete the teachings of Scripture with the tools of the academy. The final universalist we shall consider in this book was no academic, and contrasts those two men in numerous interesting ways. However, like them, she too was a preacher and an author, and while lacking their sophistication, she was considerably better known among Evangelicals than either of them—we speak of Hannah Whitall Smith.

  Hannah Whitall Smith (1832–1911) and The Unselfishness of God

  Hannah Whitall was not British at all, but had her biggest impact in the UK, which she made her home later in her life. Hannah was born in Philadelphia into a prominent Quaker family. Her childhood was, by her account, a very happy one. Indeed, she believes that she learned more about God from the love of her parents then from any formal teaching. In her spiritual autobiography, The Unselfishness of God, she divides her life into five stages. First comes her Quaker childhood, with all its focus on the “inward voice” of the Spirit in the heart of the individual. It was only much later in life that she began to fully appreciate the value of her Quaker heritage.

  The second phase was what she referred to as her “awakening,” a dark period from the age of sixteen to twenty-six (1848–58). This was what we may call a crisis of faith. Hannah always longed for God to speak to her through one of the prophetic Quaker preachers, but it never happened. She also found a great pressure to have a certain kind of emotional response to religious matters, yet found herself incapable of doing so, and the constant Quaker call to introspection only made her feel the inadequacy of her lack of experience—she could not affect the necessary inward change.480 Hannah longed to know God, but seemed unable and eventually, with much agonizing and despair, became a religious skeptic around the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. If there was a God, she reasoned, he would not be as absent as he clearly was.

  In 1851, aged nineteen, Hannah married Robert Pearsall Smith, another Quaker, and together they moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her marriage managed to distract her somewhat from her religious inner torments. As we have seen, this town was a center of universalism in the eighteenth century, but Hannah gives no indication that this had any influence on her at the time or even that she was aware of it.

  In 1858, Hannah entered the third phase of her spiritual life. She became acquainted with some Evangelical Christians and, after some wrestling, found a deep conviction that God was real, some months after which she had an Evangelical conversion experience. This transformed her. She fell in love with God, read the Bible avidly, and could not stop telling people about what God had done for her. Her religious enthusiasm alienated her somewhat from some of the elders among the Quakers, and Hannah and Robert became involved with the Plymouth Brethren, who had a presence in Philadelphia. Over a period of years, the Brethren had significant influence upon their lives.

  In 1864 the couple moved to Millville, New Jersey, where Robert managed Hannah’s father’s glass factories. The fifth epoch of her spiritual life took place here. (We shall deal with the fourth phase in a moment.) It was her discovery in 1865 of how to live a Christian life of victory over sin. Here it was Methodist revivalists whose teaching made a big impact. She was struggling with her inability to live a life of victory over sin, and found the council of some Christians—that we cannot fully defeat sin in our lives—unpersuasive. But the Wesleyan doctrine of holiness seemed to offer hope. She became convinced that one could trust Christ for one’s sanctification just as much for one’s justification. Victory over sin comes not through trying harder, but through trusting Christ. This was the key to the higher life. It also proved to be the message that made Hannah internationally famous, as we shall see.

  Some years after worshipping with the Brethren, Hannah had a second “conversion”—to universalism, a trust in the “unselfishness of God.” She describes this as the fourth phase in her spiritual life, though as we shall see, it occurred chronologically later than her so-called fifth phase. It is here that our focus shall linger.

  During her years among the Brethren she had found herself increasingly disturbed by their Calvinist teaching on election. Try as she might to believe it, she found it revolting. “I felt that if this doctrine were true, I should be woefully disappointed in the God whom I had, with so much rapture, discovered” (196). She began to find her own salvation a burden, knowing that so many others who were in exactly the same undeserving condition as she was prior to her salvation would be damned forever simply because God had chosen not to rescue them.

  To relieve the pressure on her faith created by the combination of Calvinism with everlasting hell, she resorted to annihilationism, but here she found herself convinced that God would have failed if his only solution to the problems of creation was to give up and destroy his creatures. This put her in a quandary:

  I felt hopeless of reconciling the love and justice of the Creator with the fate of His creatures, and I knew not which way to turn. . . . I began to feel that the salvation in which I had been rejoicing was, after all, a very limited and a very selfish salvation, and as such, unworthy of the Creator who has declared so emphatically that His “tender mercies are over all His works.” And above all unworthy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into the world for the sole and single purpose of saving the world. (198, 200)

  Could Jesus’ saving death prove so ineffective and fall so far short of putting the world right?

  Everything changed for her in early 1873.481 She writes, “one day a revelation came to me that vindicated Him, and that settled the whole question forever” (200). Perhaps there is some slight retrospective modification of the impact of the experience in this comment. From Hannah’s letters, we see that the revelation was a transformative “intuition,” just as described in the autobiography.482 However, the question may not have been completely settled as quickly as she suggests above. In letters to her husband Robert (who was away in England, convalescing on his doctor’s advice), she seems to have acquired an immediate and clear inclination toward universal restitution, but was not fully committed to that stance. She wrote: “To me it looks like a very wide salvation at the least, if not universal” (April 3, 1873). She was also very quickly aware of the work of Andrew Jukes. She is eager to speak with him and asks Robert if he would be willing to make contact on her behalf (April 3). By June 4, she writes of her theological musings, “And oh, how all this does make me long to believe in Jukes’ doctrine of the final restitution. I have got his book over here, & am going to read it, & thee need not be the least surprised if I am convinced.” By June 6, she seems more confident in her theol-logic and appeals again to Robert to communicate with Mr. Jukes in a private letter about her ideas to see what he says. By July 17, she writes, “Jukes’ book delights me. It is wonderful the [biblical] texts he brings forward. Do talk to him about it, & see if he wont convince thee. It would be too bad for us to differ on this subject, when we generally agree so entirely on all religious and doctrinal points.” By August 6, she writes to Anna Shipley that “I am reading Jukes’ ‘Restitution of all things,’ and am being convinced by it just as fact as possible.” But, she continues, “I hardly needed the book though. The intuition came to me in the beginning of the year”—and she recounts her revelation.

  To understand that transformative day, we need to wind the clock back a little further. After attending a revivalist meeting in which the congregants were asked to share in Christ’s sufferings for the sake of others, she began to pray for this blessing. The answer to her prayer was not what she had been expecting. Instead, she had a revelation, not of Christ’s sufferings, but of humanity’s sufferings, the consequence of sin, and of Christ’s sorrow for suffering humanity. She perceived Christ’s anguish at our fate, but also his joy at being abl
e to sacrifice himself to save us from it. She saw that both God’s love and his justice motivated him to rescue his broken creatures. She grasped that “since God had permitted sin to enter into the world, it must necessarily be that He would be compelled, in common fairness, to provide a remedy that would be equal to the disease” (202–3). In a real sense, she writes, we are victims of the sin at work in the world. Hannah thought also of the love of mothers with diseased children, who would be willing to lay down their own lives for them if it would alleviate their afflictions. Could God do less? she reasoned.

  All of this was incredibly vivid to her: “I saw it. It was a revelation of the real nature of things” (203). And how much more clearly, she understood, must God see reality in this way? “And I began to understand how it was that the least He could do would be to embrace with untold gladness anything that would help to deliver the beings He had created from such awful misery” (203).

  This experience lasted for some protracted period, and it was crushing. She saw the story of human misery in every person’s face, so she took to veiling herself in public to spare herself seeing people. However, on one occasion in a tram car in Philadelphia, she was compelled to look at two men and was overwhelmed with anguish and a deeper revelation of the misery caused by sin. She upbraided God—“Oh, God, how canst Thou bear it? Thou mightest have prevented it, but didst not. . . . I do not see how Thou canst go on living and ensure it” (204). Suddenly God seemed to answer her in an inward voice, saying “in tones of infinite love and tenderness,”

  “He shall see the travail of His soul and be satisfied” [Isa 53:11]. “Satisfied!” I cried in my heart, “Christ is to be satisfied! He will be able to look at the world’s misery, and then at the travail through which He has passed because of it, and will be satisfied with the result! If I were Christ, nothing could satisfy me but that every human being should in the end be saved, and therefore I am sure that nothing less will satisfy Him.” And with this a veil seemed to have been withdrawn from before the plans of the universe, and I saw that it was true, as the Bible says, that “as in Adam all die even so in Christ should all be made alive” [1 Cor 15:22]. As was the first, even so was the second. The “all” in one case could not in fairness mean less than the “all” in the other. I saw therefore that the remedy must necessarily be equal to the disease, the salvation must be as universal as the fall. (204–5)