2. The Jewish doctrine is far in advance of heathen notions and conjectures, but presents different phases of development.
(a) The Mosaic writings are remarkably silent about the future life, and emphasize the present rather than future consequences of the observance or non-observance of the law (because it had a civil or political as well as spiritual import); and hence the Sadducees accepted them, although they denied the resurrection (perhaps also the immortality of the soul). The Pentateuch contains, however, some remote and significant hints of immortality, as in the tree of life with its symbolic import; [1107] 107 in the mysterious translation of Enoch as a reward for his piety; [1108] 108 in the prohibition of necromancy; [1109] 109 in the patriarchal phrase for dying: "to be gathered to his fathers," or "to his people;" [1110] 110 and last, though not least, in the self-designation of Jehovah as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which implies their immortality, since "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." [1111] 111 What has an eternal meaning for God must itself be eternal.
(b) In the later writings of the Old Testament, especially during and after the exile, the doctrine of immortality and resurrection comes out plainly. [1112] 112 Daniel's vision reaches out even to the final resurrection of "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth to everlasting life," and of "some to shame and everlasting contempt," and prophesies that "they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." [1113] 113
But before Christ, who first revealed true life, the Hebrew Sheol, the general receptacle of departing souls, remained, like the Greek Hades, a dark and dreary abode, and is so described in the Old Testament. [1114] 114 Cases like Enoch's translation and Elijah's ascent are altogether unique and exceptional, and imply the meaning that death is contrary to man's original destination, and may be overcome by the power of holiness.
(c) The Jewish Apocrypha (the Book of Wisdom, and the Second Book of Maccabees), and later Jewish writings (the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Ezra) show some progress: they distinguish between two regions in Sheol--Paradise or Abraham's Bosom for the righteous, and Gehinnom or Gehenna for the wicked; they emphasize the resurrection of the body, and the future rewards and punishments.
(d) The Talmud adds various fanciful embellishments. It puts Paradise and Gehenna in close proximity, measures their extent, and distinguishes different departments in both corresponding to the degrees of merit and guilt. Paradise is sixty times as large as the world, and Hell sixty times as large as Paradise, for the bad preponderate here and hereafter. According to other rabbinical testimonies, both are well nigh boundless. The Talmudic descriptions of Paradise (as those of the Koran) mix sensual and spiritual delights. The righteous enjoy the vision of the Shechina and feast with the patriarchs, and with Moses and David of the flesh of leviathan, and drink wine from the cup of salvation. Each inhabitant has a house according to his merit. Among the punishments of hell the chief place is assigned to fire, which is renewed every week after the Sabbath. The wicked are boiled like the flesh in the pot, but the bad Israelites are not touched by fire, and are otherwise tormented. The severest punishment is reserved for idolaters, hypocrites, traitors, and apostates. As to the duration of future punishment the school of Shammai held that it was everlasting; while the school of Hillel inclined to the milder view of a possible redemption after repentance and purification. Some Rabbis taught that hell will cease, and that the sun will burn up and annihilate the wicked. [1115] 115
3. The Christian doctrine of the future life differs from the heathen, and to a less extent also from the Jewish, in the following important points:
(a) It gives to the belief in a future state the absolute certainty of divine revelation, sealed by the fact of Christ's resurrection, and thereby imparts to the present life an immeasurable importance, involving endless issues.
(b) It connects the resurrection of the body with the immortality of the soul, and thus gives concrete completion to the latter, and saves the whole individuality of man from destruction.
(c) It views death as the punishment of sin, and therefore as something terrible, from which nature shrinks. But its terror has been broken, and its sting extracted by Christ.
(d) It qualifies the idea of a future state by the doctrine of sin and redemption, and thus makes it to the believer a state of absolute holiness and happiness, to the impenitent sinner a state of absolute misery. Death and immortality are a blessing to the one, but a terror to the other; the former can hail them with joy; the latter has reason to tremble.
(e) It gives great prominence to the general judgment, after the resurrection, which determines the ultimate fate of all men according to their works done in this earthly life.
But we must distinguish, in this mysterious article, what is of faith, and what is private opinion and speculation.
The return of Christ to judgment with its eternal rewards and punishment is the centre of the eschatological faith of the church. The judgment is preceded by the general resurrection, and followed by life everlasting.
This faith is expressed in the oecumenical creeds.
The Apostles' Creed:
"He shall come to judge the quick and the dead," and "I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting."
The Nicene Creed:
"He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end." "And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come."
The Athanasian Creed, so called, adds to these simple statements a damnatory clause at the beginning, middle, and end, and makes salvation depend on belief in the orthodox catholic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, as therein stated. But that document is of much later origin, and cannot be traced beyond the sixth century.
The liturgies which claim apostolic or post-apostolic origin, give devotional expression to the same essential points in the eucharistic sacrifice.
The Clementine liturgy:
"Being mindful, therefore, of His passion and death, and resurrection from the dead, and return into the heavens, and His future second appearing, wherein He is to come with glory and power to judge the quick and the dead, and to recompense to every one according to his works."
The liturgy of James:
"His second glorious and awful appearing, when He shall come with glory to judge the quick and the dead, and render to every one according to his works."
The liturgy of Mark:
"His second terrible and dreadful coming, in which He will come to judge righteously the quick and the dead, and to render to each man according to his works."
All that is beyond these revealed and generally received articles must be left free. The time of the Second Advent, the preceding revelation of Antichrist, the millennium before or after the general judgment, the nature of the disembodied state between death and resurrection, the mode and degree of future punishment, the proportion of the saved and lost, the fate of the heathen and all who die ignorant of Christianity, the locality of heaven and hell, are open questions in eschatology about which wise and good men in the church have always differed, and will differ to the end. The Bible speaks indeed of ascending to heaven and descending to hell, but this is simply the unavoidable popular language, as when it speaks of the rising and setting sun. We do the same, although we know that in the universe of God there is neither above nor below, and that the sun does not move around the earth. The supernatural world may be very far from us, beyond the stars and beyond the boundaries of the visible created world (if it has any boundaries), or very near and round about us. At all events there is an abundance of room for all God's children. "In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2). This suffices for faith.
[1103] Decline and Fall of the R. Emp. ch. XV
[1104] Plato, Apol. 40.
[1105] See Friedlaender, l.c. 682 sq.
[1106] See Friedlaender, p. 685. So in our age, too, the number of sceptics, materialists, and atheists, though by no means inconsiderable, is a very small minority compared with the mass of believers in a future life.
[1107] Gen. 2:9; 3:22, 24.
[1108] Gen. 5:24.
[1109] Deut. 18:11; comp. 1 Sam. 28:7.
[1110] Gen. 25:8; 35:29; 49:29, 33.
[1111] Ex. 3:6, 16; comp. Matt. 22:32.
[1112] Comp. the famous Goël-passage, Job 19:25-27, which strongly teaches the immortality of the soul and the future rectification of the wrongs of this life; Eccles. 12:7 ("the spirit shall return to God who gave it"), and 12:14 ("God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil").
[1113] Dan. 12:2, 3; Comp. Isa. 65:17; 66:22-24.
[1114] See the passages sub Sheol in the Hebrew Concordance. The very name Sheollv'sh expresses either the inexorable demand and insatiability of death (if derived from l'sh, to ask pressingly, to urge), or the subterranean character of the region, an abyss (if derived from l?sh, to be hollow, comp. hell, hollow, Höhle), and is essentially the same as the Greek Hades and the Roman Orcus. The distinction of two regions in the spirit-world (Abraham's Bosom or Paradise, and Gehenna, comp. Luke 16:22, 23) does not appear clearly in the canonical books, and is of later origin. Oehler (Theol. des A. Test., I. 264) says: "Von einem Unterschied des Looses der im Todtenreich Befindlichen ist im Alten Test. nirgends deutlich geredet. Wie vielmehr dort Alles gleich werde, schildert Hiob. 3:17-19. Nur in Jes. 14:15; Ez. 32:23, wo den gestürzten Eroberern die äusserste Tiefe (rvv-tbdy) angewiesen wird, kann mann die Andeutung verschiedener Abstufungen des Todtenreichs finden, etwa in dem Sinn, wie Josephus (Bell. Jud. III. 8, 5) den Selbstmördern einen, hades skotioteros in Aussicht stellt. Sonst ist nur von einer Sonderung nach Völkern und Geschlechtern die Rede, nicht von einer Sonderung der Gerechten und Ungerechten."
[1115] See these and other curious particulars, with references in Wünsche, l. c. p. 361 sqq., and 494 sqq. He confesses, however, that it is exceedingly difficult to present a coherent system from the various sayings of the Rabbis. The views of the Essenes differed from the common Jewish notions; they believed only in the immortality of the soul, and greeted death as a deliverance from the prison of the body.