IX. Conditionalist Kearney-Assembles Brilliant Quota of French Writers

A fruitful search into contemporary French writers on aspects of Conditionalism has just been completed by CLARENCE J. KEARNEY, ^{8787) CLARENCE J. KEARNEY (1894-), Advent Christian, was trained at the French Canadian Baptist Institute Feller McGill University, and Aurora College. After a period as journalist in New England and the Midwest he was for fifteen years on the editorial staff of the Chicago Herald-Tribune. He then turned to Christian relations work, and later became editor of The Present Truth Messenger. Deeply interested in French-speaking Protestantism, he discovered a strong Conditionalist testimony, as here presented.} veteran writer and editor. It was suggested that these findings be published in periodical article form, which could be quoted from directly. This has been done. A real contribution has thus been made, now giving contemporary French and Swiss voices their rightful place along with Conditionalist writers of other lands. These have appeared in serial form in the Advent Christian Present Truth Messenger, of Live Oak, Florida. ^{8888) Present Truth Messenger, March 1, 8, 15, 22, 1962.} All translations from the French have been made by Mr. Kearney, himself an ardent believer in Conditional Immortality. The credit for the witness of this section therefore goes to collaborator Kearney.CFF2 1017.4

The nineteenth-century French and Swiss Conditionalist writers—among whom Dr. Emanuel Petavel was pre-eminent —have already been presented in Part II. Kearney mentions De Pury, De Coppet, Antomarchi-Doria, Mehl, Mehl-Koehnlein, Bourget, Crespy, De Sassure, Hering, La Morte, Von Hoff, Berdiaeff, Bertoud, Carrel, LaVelle, and Vaucher. Many of these are also noted by Dr. J. Cruvellier, in his La notion de chatiment eternal (“The Concept of Eternal Punishment”). It is an impressive list, and attests a growing chorus, for there are many others, not cited, who share these views. We can give only samplers here, which authenticates the contemporary French Protestant witness to the various facets of Conditionalism. We have elsewhere cited Barth, Brunner, and Cullmann. Here are others. For example, Dr. Marc Boegner, president of the French Protestant Federation, also first president of the World Council of Churches, is a Conditionalist. Now note six in sequence.CFF2 1018.1

1. DE PURY-DELIVERANCE AT ADVENT, NOT DEATH

First observe the powerful advocacy of Prof. ROLAND DE PURY, climaxing a profitable ministry in Lyon, with service in a West African Protestant Seminary in the Cameroons. In his Presence de l’Eternite he warns against the “ravages” of the Platonic “doctrine of the immortality of the soul,” and says searchingly:CFF2 1018.2

“If our soul is by nature immortal; if it is in no way touched by death; if death is not its wages... who then is this Saviour who saves us from a death that only seems like death, who gives us only what we already possess?” ^{8989) Roland de Pury, Presence de I’Eternité, pp 129, 130.}CFF2 1019.1

He adds earnestly that Immortal-Soulism “nullifies the Cross,” “cheapens the love of God,” and brings “confusion.” Here is another De Pury statement, uttered with startling forthrightness:CFF2 1019.2

“We are forced to this conclusion: the Christian is a man who does not believe to the immortality of the soul. He believes God created him body and soul; that God has condemned him to death, body and soul, and that God, through Jesus Christ, will resurrect him, body and soul.... To believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is to believe in the mortality of our soul and to wait on Him alone for deliverance, which our soul needs as much as our body....CFF2 1019.3

“In Christ is our help and not in ourselves, certainly not an our soul, of which there is not the least spark which does not succumb to death.” ^{9090) Ibid., pp. 132, 133.}CFF2 1019.4

Then comes this classic:
“Never speak of the life which death lifts up, but of the Life which raises the dead.CFF2 1019.5

“It is not death that delivers us, but the death of death, the resurrection. It as not death that reunites us with Christ, but His Return. We do not ‘fly away to eternal dwellings’; we wait for the Bridegroom.” ^{9191) Ibzd, pp 133, 134.}CFF2 1019.6

2. MEHL-CHRISTIANITY TEACHES MORTALITY OF SOUL

Dr. ROGER MEHL, professor at the University of Strasbourg, writing in 1953 in Notre vie et ndtre mort (“Our Life and Our Death”), maintains that the “life beyond” is entered only through the gateway of the resurrection. For example:CFF2 1019.7

“The soul is not an islet of divinity which finds itself shut up in the human body. The soul shares the fate of the entire person. A sinner, it needs salvation, for without this it will die. It is therefore the mortality of the soul that Christianity teaches....CFF2 1019.8

“Let us reflect also that the doctrine of the soul’s immortality as an elimination of the problem of salvation, because it becomes in itself a salvation. What need is there of a Saviour if salvation comes so naturally?... But all the Scriptures testify to our inability to save ourselves. And it is precisely at this point that in our pride, in our passion to be like God... we have invented the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.... One cannot be truly a Christian and believe in the immortality of the soul.” ^{9292) Roger Mehl, Notre vie et notre mort, pp 56, 57.}CFF2 1019.9

It should be noted that Dr. Mehl’s wife, Mme. Herriade Mehl-Koehnlein, likewise on the faculty at Strasbourg, in 1951, in L’homme selon l’apotre Paul (“Man according to the apostle Paul”), takes the same position-that immortality is never attributed to man but springs from Greek philosophy.CFF2 1020.1

3. DE COPPET-PUNISHMENT ETERNAL IN RESULTS?

Passing the clear statements of Pierre Bourget, in his Problem of Death and the Beyond (1956), we note “PASTOR DE COPPET,” as he was known, in The Great Problems of the Beyond, which went through thirteen printings, who candidly confesses:CFF2 1020.2

“For a long time I have been committed to this last-named opinion [Conditionalism], with an ever-increasing conviction that it is the only one which conscience and reason can accept and which, at the same time, can conform to the teachings of God’s Word.” ^{9393) M. de Coppet, Les grands problémes de l’au-dellà, pp. 185, 186.}CFF2 1020.3

Holding that those who persist in evil will be “annihilated” and the soul will “perish,” along with the body, he says:CFF2 1020.4

“The word ‘eternal’ (in Matthew 25:46) often signifies irreparable, irrevocable, definite. Here it deals with the destruction of sinners, their second death as opposed to the eternal life of the Elect. This punishment obviously is eternal in its results, in its consequence. For it is thus that it speaks of eternal redemption.” ^{9494) Ibid., pp. 201, 202.}CFF2 1020.5

De Coppet summarizes by saying:
“The doctrine of Conditional Immortality restores things to their right places and their right time. Salvation remains always free, without question: eternal life is always a gift, but nevertheless there is a condition attached to obtaining this gift.” ^{9595) Ibid.: p. 283.}CFF2 1020.6

Such expressions are crystal clear.CFF2 1020.7

4. CRESPY-NOT SOUL IMPRISONED IN BODY

Scholarly GEORGES CRESPY, in Le probléme d’une anthropologie theologique (“The Problem of a Theological Anthropology”), published under the auspices of the Montpellier Protestant Seminary (1950), contends:CFF2 1020.8

“The man of Genesis is not a soul exiled in a body, as Platonists hold; neither is it the scholasticist’s ‘union of two distinctive substances.’ He does not have a soul and body... he is. He is in a created world, a creature of a world made by the Creator, a creature with special and distinctive form, with a specific destiny....CFF2 1021.1

“It is hard to explain how theologians were led to profess the original immortality of man. But it seems to have arisen from two errors... the first in accepting Platonist pronouncements; the second, a faulty exegesis.” ^{9696) Georges Crespy, Le probleme d’une anthropologie théologique; nudes theologique et réligieuses, pp. 55-57.}CFF2 1021.2

5. LA MORTE-IMMORTALITY IS REWARD OF FAITH

Passing over the converted Roman Catholic priest, Antonio Antomarchi-Doria, and his Fins dernieres et peines éternelles a la lumière de l’Evangile (“Final ends and eternal punishment,in the light of the scriptures,” 1949), with its repudiation of eternal torment, we come to ANDRE LA MORTE, in La Bible et le probleme de l’au dela (“The Bible and problems of the beyond”), who charges Innatism with being “a pagan idea, or more explicitly, a Platonism.” Hear him:CFF2 1021.3

“It is absolutely contrary to all good sense that that which had a beginning should have no end. Animals have a soul, but that soul does not render them immortal. No more is our soul, however admirably it may be endowed, immortal except on a condition that it unite itself by faith to Him Who said: ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’... Otherwise it is lost, for immortality is the reward of faith.” ^{9797) Revue de théologie et d’action évangelique, pp. 42, 43.}CFF2 1021.4

6. BERDIAEFF-IMMORTALITY ONLY IN CHRIST

Alluding, in passing, to Dr. Eugene von Hoff and his The Teachings of the New Testament on the End of the World, the Return of Christ and Eternal Life (1952), who holds to “the dissolution or extinction of the entire being” of the sinner, we next note Russian-born theologian NIKOLAI ALEXANDROVISCH BERDIAEFF who, in Esprit et liberte (“Spirit and Freedom,” 1933), likewise insists:CFF2 1021.5

“Natural man... does not enjoy immortality as an inherent quality. Only the spiritual life deserves immortality; only the spirit possesses the qualities of eternal life. Immortality is penetration into the spiritual life... the source of immortality is in God and not in nature. One cannot conceive of immortality outside of life in God. The road to life which is eternal and immortal is given us in Christ.” ^{9898) Alexandrovisch Berdiaeff, Esprit et liberté, p. 63.}CFF2 1021.6

Space forbids quoting from Aloys Bertoud on the “State of the dead according to the Bible” (L’etat des morts d’apres la Bible, 1910, page 115), and the world-famous physician, Dr. Alexis Carrel, who insists that “the soul is not independent of the body” (Reflexions sur la conduit de la vie, 1950, page 86). Such are some of the “clouds of witnesses” that assuredly include French-Swiss testimony.CFF2 1022.1