ETERNAL FIRE
ETERNAL FIRE
537
form. Most of the \
; have ceased to expect an equitable
imagery of retribution to the hfe after death. The Book of Enoch is the j^reat storehouse of teachinij on this subject. For the impure an{;rels and the faithless ani^elic rulers an abyss of fire is prepared, in which, .after the judgment, they will be tortured for ever (!«« i^ 18" iV i" .'546 9u24 25). For human ofTenders, a fiery abyss is opened on the right hand of the Temple (9026. 2') ; this is Gehenna. They descend into 'the flame of the pain of Sheol ' (63i»), or into the ' burning fire of Sheol' (103'- 8). Thus it appears that the NT 'eternal fire' of Gehenna is anticipated in this book : the only difference being that, while in the NT the tire prejiared for the devil and his angels is identified with that into which wicked men are cast, in the Book of Enoch they are always distinguished.
Two questions arise regarding the nature of the eternal lire. Is it material ? And in what sense is it eternal ?
(1) In many OT passages, even where it is said that the fire is unquenchable, and will burn for ever, material fire is undoubtedly meant, for tire is one of the physical agents which God commonly employs in His temporal judgments, and its burning forever must refer to the lasting destruction which it effects. Sodom, Gomorrah, and Edom are given as examples of places on which the doom of eternal hre fell, and they still bear its proof-marks. But in other passages the literal sense cannot be main- tained, as, e.g., where God's anger or jealousy and man's wickedness are said to burn like fire. Nor can it be allowed in passages like Is 66-^ if Cheyne's interpretation is accepted ; since undying worms, preying on souls or bodies that are being con- sumed by unquenchable lire, is an impo.ssible idea. In the NT, as we have seen, Christ drew largely on OT imagery in speaking of the 'last things.' But the whole' drift of His interpretation of jiro- phetic language is at variance with the literal sense of the fire penalty. Wliat He gives in His eschatological teaching is not a dogmatic but an imaginative presentation of the truth ; and the imagery He employs belongs, not to the substance, but to the form of His thought. The prophet, like the poet and the artist, must present the future in terms and forms borrowed from present experience, and the underlying truth must be spiritually discerned. If, as Christ tells us, tlie eternal ftre was prepared for the devil and his angels, it cannot be material fire ; for .spirits can- not undergo physical torture. *
Death by fire was the severest penalty under the Jewish law, and as it was inflicted only for the most shameful sins (Lv SO" 21», Jos 7-=), a peculiar infamy was associated with it. Christ, therefore, when He employed this imagery in speak- ing of the doom of the wicked, intended to warn men that God has attached a terrible retribution to sin. At the very least it signifies an ordeal of suffering analogous to that which hre causes in the living tissues. To the question. How will the suftering be caused? Scripture gives only the figurative answer, 'as by fire.' Bp. Butler (Anal. pt. ii. ch. V.) thought t"liat it might come in the way of natural consequence, without any direct infliction on the part of God. Sin, whicii yields pleasure here, becomes misery there without chang- ing its nature, through the natural working of moral law. The agony of remorse, which some- times overwhelms the sinner in this life, has been
^ Yet the contrary has been maintained on high authority. Augustine held that the fire \ya3 material, and that spirits may he tortured by it, since it is always the mind and not the body that suffers, even when the pain oriL'inates in the body. He also suggests that devils may have bodies made of air, 'like what strikes us when the wind blows, and thus he liable to sutfering from fire' (de Cimt. xxi. 3, 9, 10). Th. Aquinas held that the fire is material (Summa Tlieot. pt. iii. supplmt. Ixx. 3). And in our own day Ed. White inclines to the view that the wicked before extinction will be punished bv material fire (Life HI CAraf, p. .■552). '^ '
regarded as a foretaste of the eternal fire. The pif)ia (/am III, or the consciousness of being for ever cut oil' from the .sight of God, the only satisfying good, will be, it has been said, intense sutt'ering as by fire, when the distractions of the world have ceased to dazzle. And these will, doubtless, be elements in the retribution. But if this were all, a possible consequence would be that tlie penalty would fall most lightly on the most degraded. A soul that can be made miserable through remorse, or the conscious loss of God's presence, has not reached the lowest stage of hardening ; while ex- perience tells us that those who have reached tliis stage are least liable to suffering from such a source. In them remorse can be awakened, not by the poena c/aimii, but by suffering externally caused. And the language of the NT suggests that in the future world an environment is prepared, with its appropriate agencies and influences, for the punishment of those who are morally and spiritually dead. Such expressions as 'Depart into the eternal fire,' 'shall be cast into the lake of fire,' etc., clearly presuppose such an environ- ment, one in which the least worthy shall sutt'er the most, ' be beaten with many stripes.'