Immortality, set forth as conditional in the Old Testament, is even more conspicuously declared to be conditional in the New. The later innovation of the inherent continuity and indestructibility of the human soul, introduced into the Christian Church in a time of developing apostasy, finds no support in Christ’s personal teaching or in the subsequent apostolic theology set forth in the New Testament.CFF1 498.1

On the contrary, the New Testament completely sustains the uniform position of Moses and the prophets, giving it precision, amplification, finality, and majesty. And it is of more than passing interest that, in so doing, the New Testament often borrows the terms employed in the Septuagint translation to bring over into the Greek the corresponding words and intent of the original Hebrew, as pertains to this issue. It thus forms an invaluable connecting link between the Old and the New in this specific field.CFF1 498.2

Like the Old Testament, the New proclaims the eternity of God but has nothing to say of any innate, inalienable Immortality possessed by man. Neither the term nor the thought can be found between Matthew 1 and Revelation 22. Immortality results from personal faith in the personal power and provision of Almighty God, who has purposed and provided Immortality for man as a gift through Christ—but on clearly enunciated conditions. The redeemed, righteous, and obedient shall live; the ungodly, obstinate sinners shall be completely destroyed (2 Thessalonians 1:9; cf. Psalm 92:9). That is the gist of Conditionalism.CFF1 498.3

2. IMMORTALIZATION ACCENTUATED AND AMPLIFIED IN NEW TESTAMENT

This important addition, however, is to be noted. In the New Testament the horizons are definitely widened and the foundations more firmly buttressed and expanded. The path to the grave becomes brighter and more luminous as the gospel day begins to dawn. Eternity of life for the one, and eternity of ultimate nonexistence for the other, outlined in the Old Testament, is more fully revealed and accentuated in the New.CFF1 499.1

Jesus, supreme Authority and Witness of all time, as concerns man, not only upholds but intensifies and delimits the conditions of immortalization. Man becomes immortal only by grace, assured through faith in Christ and His righteousness, which is first imputed and then imparted to the believer. Then, upon Christ’s return, comes glorification and realized immortalization for the righteous.CFF1 499.2

This is the uniqueness of the gospel—that Jesus offers in and through His own person the sole means whereby a man may obtain righteousness and then Immortality. It is not man’s inherently. Christ’s expiatory death gives assurance of divine pardon, and the pledge of imperishable life becomes the portion of all who unite themselves to the risen, triumphant Christ by faith. Such is the fundamental offer of the New Testament and the declared aim of the gospel. This was the message still proclaimed by Christ after His resurrection, shortly before His parting commission and ascension. Here is John’s record: “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31).CFF1 499.3

There it is, compressed into a single sentence. In this climactic passage, life is used in its full sense and force—life at the highest level, life that is to be never ending and all embracing; life that will be imperishable, life based on belief in, and acceptance of, Christ’s offer of eternal life. That again is the essence of Conditionalism.CFF1 499.4

3. IMMORTALITY AN ACQUISITION, NOT INHERENT POSSESSION

“Life” in the New Testament means actual life, and “death” means the diametric opposite of life—the deprivation of all life, the end of all activity, the cessation of all individual faculties. Death, without any escape or resuscitation—absolute death, four times called the “second death”—terminates in the complete cessation of being of the wicked. It is the end of the recalcitrant human entity. Christ came that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish [apollumi, “be utterly and finally destroyed,” “brought to nought”], but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). That is the matchless provision of the gospel.CFF1 500.1

If one can “perish,” obviously he is not by nature immortal. And if he is not by nature immortal, there is nothing inconsistent in saying, in conformity with Scripture, that Christ must confer Immortality upon man if he is to live forever. Consequently all New Testament texts that directly or indirectly state that Christ is our life, and confers eternal life, such as John 3:16, confirm the Conditional-Immortality postulate. This signifies that true believers, escaping the total destruction that awaits the impenitent sinner, acquire an imperishable and perpetual life through Christ alone. Immortality is therefore an acquisition, not an inherent possession. That, once more, is the essence of Conditionalism.CFF1 500.2

4. CONTRASTING POSITIONS SUCCINCTLY SET FORTH

Conditionalists do not differ from Immortal-Soulists over the fact of a future life, but over the nature and source of that life and the time of receiving it. “Immortality” has been overlaid and loaded down with philosophical speculations and devious traditions. Immortal-Soulists insist that death is not an interruption or cessation of the natural life of man, but is simply entrance upon a new and glorified stage in that life. That, they insist, was the ancient belief of the nations of antiquity. ^{11) Presumptive evidence of the Innate Immortality of the soul is often put forth on the basis of its general belief among the nations of antiquity. But an appeal to a consensus sentium does not constitute proof, any more than does the argument of man’s inner aspirations. The fact that the vast majority once believed the world to be flat did not make it so. Universal hunger for Immortality is implanted by God as an incentive to seeking and finding immortality. But it must be in God’s way and upon His terms.}CFF1 500.3

They hold that, instead of terminating at death, the real life of man simply intensifies and enlarges into a new sphere of activity, either in holiness and happiness, or sin and misery, and that man will continue to live on forever by virtue of the innate essence of life within him, being sustained by some indefeasible power, so as to suffer forever, if incorrigibly wicked.CFF1 501.1

On the contrary Conditionalists hold that since the Fall death terminates the natural life of man, and that the life hereafter is not natural, inherited from Adam, but supernatural, received from God. They hold, furthermore, that only through the vicarious death and triumphant resurrection of Christ is there any resurrection or life whatever for man hereafter—for “if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished” (1 Corinthians 15:17, 18).CFF1 501.2

Immortality has thus by Christ been brought within reach of rebellious creatures otherwise destined to absolute death. In fact, He came to reveal and proclaim the secret of immortalization. That is Heaven’s glad tidings for man. When once this majestic truth is grasped, it throws a floodlight upon all other saving truths. That again is Conditionalism.CFF1 501.3

5. IMMORTAL-SOULISM IS IMMORTALITY WITHOUT A SAVIOUR

Conditionalists believe in the supernatural resurrection of the dead, in a general judgment, and in the absolute finality of that judgment. They believe in the “second death” for the wicked, and thus in the finality of their doom. In contrast they believe in the “life everlasting” of the righteous, raised through Christ—and that this is the highest and most glorious of all possible life, eternal life, the impartation of God’s own pure and blessed immortal life, based upon entrance into the proffered new and living relationship to Jesus Christ.CFF1 501.4

This, then, is the basic issue—whether we are immortalized by Christ, through the preparatory new birth and subsequent resurrection, or whether we are immortal by our own natural birth from Adam. In other words, it is whether Immortality, as the “gift of God,” is “eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23), or whether there is inherent Immortality without a Saviour, and His atoning death and saving life.CFF1 502.1

And it should here be stressed (as will be seen in Part IV) that the earliest, or Apostolic, Church Fathers maintained this Conditionalist position. The doctrinal deviation of one segment of the later Fathers was caused by the infiltration and acceptance of the Platonic philosophy, received into an increasingly confused and vacillating church. And, at the same time, the Platonized philosophy of the Alexandrian Jews added the pressure of its divergent weight upon the faltering theology of the Fathers. There was thus a dual pressure that proved overwhelming to a growing majority. A large segment of Christianity succumbed, and Conditionalism went into virtual eclipse for centuries.CFF1 502.2

6. CONDITIONALISM IS POSITIVE, NOT NEGATIVE

Again, Conditionalism is a positive, not a negative, position and provision. It is to be emphasized that Conditionalists hold Immortality for the good alone to be a fundamental proviso of the gospel. Thus the apostle John says, “He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:17). This gives the basis of distinction and the assurance of the permanence of the obedient. Sin, on the contrary, leads to disintegration and ruin, while sowing to the Spirit leads to the reaping of “life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8).CFF1 502.3

To view Conditionalism as largely a question of the final future punishment of the wicked is to miss its real significance. That is merely looking at the reverse side of the pattern. The glorious provision of the more abundant life is its central concept, its positive motivating principle. That is the heart of Conditionalism.CFF1 502.4

7. MORE GAINED THROUGH CHRIST THAN LOST THROUGH ADAM

There is yet another angle that must not be missed—the justice of God, blended with His goodness and mercy, implicit in Conditionalism. The trial of our first parents in Eden could not have been made under conditions more favorable to a successful outcome. They were swayed by no sinful tendencies, had no compelling habits, and possessed no bent toward evil.CFF1 503.1

But the tragic results of the Edenic test proved that the human race was not yet fit for Immortality. If God had not purposed to provide eternal life through another probation, mankind’s case would have been hopeless. But we came under the operation of a marvelous system, a divine provision of grace, by which eternal life is offered to us again by a new birth, effected through a Second Adam, the reception of the righteousness of Christ, and a subsequent resurrection from the dead. That was the divine provision and process.CFF1 503.2

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul [or being]; the last Adam was made a quickening [life-giving] spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural [psuchikon, “possessing animal life”]; and afterward that which is spiritual [pneumatikon, belonging to the Spirit]. The first man [Adam] is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven .... And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:45-50).CFF1 503.3

The same eminent apostle adds, “That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die” (1 Corinthians 15:36). Death, as explained by Inspiration, is a somber but inevitable part of this world’s mottled picture. It is therefore plain, from the gospel, that we gain infinitely more in Christ than we lost in Adam. What we lost in Adam was an earthly Paradise, but what we gain through the Second Adam is a celestial Paradise forevermore. Christ came not simply to repair the ruin of the Fall and to bring mankind back in penitence to God but to raise lost but ransomed man to a state infinitely higher than that of Adam in his first innocency in Eden.CFF1 503.4

The first Adam had but a potential, contingent life, which he forfeited for himself and his posterity under the temptation and the Fall. But the Second Adam proved Himself superior to the seductions of the great deceiver. He possesses absolute sinlessness and righteousness in His own right. And this righteousness, along with eternal life, He bestows upon His own through the supernatural second birth and a resurrection from among the dead. It is first imputed, then actually imparted. And this bestowal the great adversary can never again take away. Thus Christ said:CFF1 504.1

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27, 28).CFF1 504.2

“Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19).CFF1 504.3

“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (John 11:25, 26).CFF1 504.4

That is the glory and the triumph of the gospel. That is the gift of God through Jesus Christ. And that is the process and the principle of Conditional Immortality.CFF1 504.5

IV. Succinct Summary of Over-all Evidence

II. Issues Illuminated Through Significant Series of “Two’s”