Meet the Men who, Step-by-Step,
Steered the Church Away from Bible Truth

Written truth can at times be very cutting when exposing lies and those who tell them. This chapter is a shocking exposé containing some very harsh language. God loves all people; He desires reconciliation with every person and yet He expresses angry indignation and sharp rebukes to those who reject truth. His warnings to untruthful misguiding religious leaders are especially severe. He warns religious and civil leaders of a coming judgment and hell’s torments in very graphic terms.

“As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:40-42)

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” (Matthew 7:22-23)

The Scribes and Pharisees were the religious leaders of Christ’s day 2,000 years ago. His public rebukes to them were at times scathing.

“How horrible it will be for you, scribes and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You give {God} one-tenth of your mint, dill, and cumin. But you have neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These are the most important things in Moses' Teachings. You should have done these things without neglecting the others. ²⁴  You blind guides! You strain gnats {out of your wine}, but you swallow camels. ²⁵ “How horrible it will be for you, scribes and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You clean the outside of cups and dishes. But inside they are full of greed and uncontrolled desires. ²⁶ You blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cups and dishes so that the outside may also be clean. ²⁷ “How horrible it will be for you, scribes and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You are like whitewashed graves that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead people's bones and every kind of impurity. ²⁸  So on the outside you look as though you have God's approval, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. ²⁹ “How horrible it will be for you, scribes and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of those who had God's approval. ³⁰ Then you say, ‘If we had lived at the time of our ancestors, we would not have helped to murder the prophets.' ³¹  So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. ³² Go ahead, finish what your ancestors started! ³³ “You snakes! You poisonous snakes! How can you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:23-33 GW)¹

In our day, we have not only misguiding religious leaders but also misguiding scientists who teach their doctrines with religious fervor. People trust the word of scientists with an incredible level of gullibility that resembles unthinking religious devotion. For example, the theory of Biocentrism is nothing short of a religion, which claims that there is no such thing as death, not even for a flea!² How absurd! Physicists and Biologists are collaborating to develop this theory of reality that flies in the face of God’s plain statement that incorrigible rebels against His jurisdictional authority will ultimately experience the “second death” of complete cessation of existence! Millions believe the swollen-headed scientists and doubt the Word of God. Science and spiritism are merging in the religion of Biocentrism. It’s frightening to think where this will lead but it fits Bible prophecy. (See Bite-a-book™ chapters 18 & 19)

Now I have a question. Is it possible for God to be angry and indignant toward misdirecting leaders and yet at the same time offer the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation to those persons? Oh, yes! The Bible is very clear on this point.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you kill the prophets and stone to death those sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings! But you were not willing! 38 Your house will be abandoned, deserted.” (Matthew 23:37-38 GW)³

“[As] I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die. . . ?” (Ezekiel 33:11)

“God our Savior . . . desires [all] men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”(1st Timothy 2:3-4 NKJV italics supplied)

“For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn [yourselves], and live ye.” (Ezekiel 18:32)

God has placed a burden on my heart to write. I have a responsibility to tell the truth even when it cuts to the heart. As a writer, I have many tools at my disposal including some with very sharp edges such as irony and sarcasm. When using sharp word-tools I try as best I can to soften the edge with a little humor and wit. I’m about to express my convictions with satire — I think it is appropriate here considering that millions upon millions of precious human beings have gone to their graves utterly hopelessly lost because they have bought into the lie that there is no Creator and therefore no Savior. Do narrow-minded agnostic and atheist scientists have an excuse for their blindness?

“That which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed [it] unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:19-22)

I do have compassion for confused scientists because Christian ministers have presented God to them in a false light. Christian leaders are partly to blame for the rise of the modern skeptical scientist because they teach silly mind-numbing superstitions in the name of God. But if thoughtful scientists would carefully study the Bible, they would see that it does not teach silly superstitions such as soul immortality and eternal torment. Sadly, they reject noble origins as taught in the Bible and shamefully proclaim themselves to be the sons of monkeys!

The universe is so incredibly vast as to be literally beyond human comprehension. But advocates of the Big Bang hypothesis claim that all the matter of the gigantic universe was once condensed into an unstable spinning object about the size of a pinhead! Do you believe that?

Speculating hypothesizers claim that a tiny unstable “pinhead” began to wobble out of control and then blew apart billions of years ago expanding into the more than 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies of the known universe each galaxy containing multiple billions of gigantic stars.⁴ The Big-Bangers also speculate that the energy emanating from one star, our sun supposedly interacted with chemicals in the oceans of the earth and an amazingly complex rudimentary form of life spontaneously emerged, by accident. Whew! — I think those self-proclaimed sons of monkeys have a more fertile imagination than I do!

Oh well, the brilliant monkeys with graduate degrees (please forgive me ☺) then conjured up the hypothesis that the first accidental life form on earth began to accidentally evolve into more complex forms until after billions of years of development part of the original, unstable pinhead accidentally evolved into your eyes, blood vessels, nervous system, and other body parts all functioning harmoniously together. Even the frontal lobes of your brain, the governor of all your emotions, seat of your conscience, and intellect, and creative, and reasoning powers accidentally evolved from that ancient unstable pinhead.

I just have one question for the self-proclaimed ape descendants that imagined up all these really smart Big Bang ideas: Where did the original pinhead come from? . . . . . . . . . . . I’m sorry; I couldn’t hear that answer . . . . . . . . . . . Hmm — I don’t think they know! ☺

The vast majority of people in the western world, including hundreds of millions of professed Christians tragically trust the word of speculating scientists rather than the word of God. Professing Christians then take the next leap of faith (gullibility) and believe in Darwinian evolutionistic theory as the manner in which humans entered into existence. Millions of Christians actually believe that their forefathers were Australopithecine apes. The Biblical affirmation that God created man in His own image within the confines of one 24-hour day is considered absurd. But where is honor? Where is purpose? Where is introspection? Where is meaning for life in the “mind” of a monkey?

If you are nothing more than a biological accident whose ancestry traces through filthy lice-picking monkeys back to a burping primordial slime, how much value and purpose do you really have? And what is your eternal destiny — nothingness? God has a far more encouraging and enlightening answer if you are willing to give Him a fair hearing.

My brother Jessie, and I were discussing one evening how people in the western world deal with catastrophic illness and imminent death. He commented that the vast majority, even though they have some form of Christian background, don’t make serious attempts to bring God into the equation when preparing to die. I wondered, if that is the case, if it might be because we have for more than a century now, ingrained into society the belief in creation by accident rather than Creation by an intelligent Designer. Thousands of theologians and church pastors have amalgamated evolutionist notions with Scripture and thereby reduced the Bible to a book of implausible stories albeit with good moral teachings. God thereby becomes at best, a sort of vague presence in nature but not a loving personal Being with supernatural life-giving power.

If you were hiking a trail in a forest and you came to a pile of seven rocks, stacked neatly one on top of the other you would naturally assume that someone had stacked them — right? You would think it quite ridiculous to imagine that somehow all seven of those rocks managed to get stacked there so neatly all by accident. How, then are we so easily duped into believing that the fantastic order and design in all of nature happened by accident? My friend, the scientific evidence in favor of Creation by design is overwhelming — Darwin is dead!

Yes, God is alive and Darwin is dead yet billions of people believe in macroevolution because it has become the predominate teaching in our “Christian” culture during the past century. It is scientifically unfounded and yet it predominates. This is exactly the situation in the debate between traditionalists and conditionalists. Traditionalism is Biblically unfounded and yet it predominates.

As we noted in chapter 1, there are two major opposing schools of thought among religionists concerning the nature of the human soul. We refer to these two groups as traditionalists and conditionalists. Traditionalists believe that immortality (never-ending conscious existence) is the automatic God-given inheritance of every human soul, both redeemed and damned. Conditionalists believe that God grants immortality only to people who have faith in Him and that immortality will be bestowed in a bodily resurrection at the second coming of Jesus. The Bible clearly teaches the Conditionalist view from cover-to-cover and nowhere teaches anything even remotely resembling the traditionalist view! In fact, the Bible, speaking of God, says, “He alone possesses immortality.” (1^st Timothy 6:16a NEB)

Traditionalists base their beliefs about the soul on popular traditions handed down from previous generations. Of course, there is nothing wrong with keeping traditions so long as those traditions don’t clash with God’s Word. (See 2^nd Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6) The problem arises only when we teach traditions made up by men, which fly in the face of God’s Word. (See Matthew 15:1-9; Colossians 2:8) Unfortunately, many theologians and pastors do place tradition above the authority of the Bible when dealing with the nature and destiny of the human soul.

In this chapter, we expose the men who replaced Bible truth with pagan superstition. These men began false traditions in the church. Their writings are the source of traditional teachings that God creates human souls immortal and that He abandons lost people to horrible mental torments for all eternity without end. Those presumptuous speculators also taught in very graphic terms that God tortures His enemies for never ending ages with the most horrible physical pain imaginable.

Traditional teachings on the nature and destiny of the soul fly in the face of the Bible’s claim that “God is love.” (1^st John 4:8, 16) God is not schizophrenic. He is very consistent. When we cast off the superstitious biases that our culture has conditioned us with we can then begin to understand what the Bible actually teaches. We then discover that the Bible makes perfect sense. The pure Gospel is a pleasant soothing ointment. In its pure form, it perfectly heals every hurting soul to which it is applied. The pure Gospel ointment has no false teachings in it.

Traditionalism’s ointment has a dead fly in it. That stinking fly has been in the Christian ointment far longer than the baptized belief that your great grandpa & grandma were apes. Darwinian evolution was introduced less than two centuries ago and has already become the dominant teaching concerning origins in most of the Christian world — even popes have ludicrously proclaimed it as scientific fact! Just as the evolutionary theory has spread rapidly, likewise it only took a few centuries for lies to take the place of truth in most of the Christian world concerning the nature and destiny of the human soul.

Oh — I do have a question for the Darwin promoting theologians. “When did the first humanonkey receive so-called ensoulment?” Hmmm. Yes, I know there is no such thing as a humanonkey; the word isn’t in the dictionary. But what else would you call a creature that is morphing from a monkey into a human and hasn’t quite made it all the way yet? Of course, there’s no such thing as ensoulment either. God did not insert a soul into a body at creation. He created a wholistic human being, body, mind, and vitality combined. That is what constitutes a human soul. (Chapter 10, Do Ghosts Really Wear Clothes and Smoke Cigars? presents the clear Biblical teaching on what constitutes a human soul.)

Let’s peer into scenes from the past which will help us understand how we got to where we are today with all of our mixed up ideas about the human soul. We are going to travel back in time and meet the men who, step-by-step, steered the church away from what the Bible says.

Beginning about one hundred fifty years after the founding of the Christian Church and over the centuries thereafter, several pagan-influenced Christian theologians led the mainline Church (there were many dissenters, especially at first) to integrate modified versions of the platonic dualistic view of human nature into Christian belief. Among the most influential were Athenagorus (A.D. 127-190), Tertullian (A.D. 155-240), Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-ca. 215), Origen (ca. A.D. 185-254), Chrysostom (A.D. 345 or 347- 407), Augustine (A.D. 354-430) and Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274). The first of these theologians and philosophers began spreading their confused teachings after the deaths of all of Christ’s original Apostles and after the deaths of the faithful first and second century Fathers Ignatius, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp.

Athenagorus (A.D. 127-190) was an Athenian pagan who, when converted to an aberrant form of Christianity, retained corrupt Hellenic notions about the nature and destiny of the soul. After his conversion, he relocated to Alexandria, Egypt, a hotbed of Hellenized Christianity. He is the first Christian on extant record to deny explicitly that God will ultimately exterminate the wicked. His writings had a definite influence on the Latin Christian writer Tertullian who followed him a generation later. Tertullian in turn influenced Augustine the chief founder of Latin theology. Augustine still holds a major influence over much of the Christian world. Thus, the corrupt Hellenic notions about the nature and destiny of the soul that Athenagorus introduced have been embellished and passed down to modern Christianity as tradition. Hellenic speculations about the soul directly contradict what the Bible teaches.

The Greek philosopher, Plato taught that all souls have existed from all eternity past and possess un-derived innate immortality. Athenagorus modified the Platonic definition of immortal soul to allow it to have a beginning as a creation by God. This seems to be the position of most modern traditionalists. Furthermore, traditionalists claim that God will sustain every soul in a conscious state throughout endless ages, no matter how despicably wicked and worthless that soul becomes.

In his treatise, On the Resurrection of the Dead, Athenagorus makes a philosophical leap into heresy. He first asserts that God did not make man for His own use because He doesn’t need anything. He then jumps to the conclusion that man has an immortal soul by nature. The following excerpt is from his treatise. There are some ellipses in this quote because the whole content of his writing is very long and tedious. (If you want to read the whole passage without ellipses, please see the footnote referenced at the end of the quote.) I have italicized words and phrases in the quote to which I want you to pay special attention. Please note in this passage that Athenagorus relies totally on philosophical reasoning and does not refer at all to Scripture for support of his suppositions.

God can neither have made man . . . for His own use, for He is in want of nothing. But to a Being absolutely in need of nothing, no one of His works can contribute anything to His own use. . . . He made him for the sake of the life of those created, which is not kindled for a little while and then extinguished. . . . To those who bear upon them the image of the Creator Himself . . . the Creator has assigned perpetual duration. . . . That which was created for the very purpose of existing . . . can never admit of any cause which shall utterly annihilate its existence. But since this cause is seen to lie in perpetual existence, the being so created must be preserved for ever, doing and experiencing what is suitable to its nature, each of the two parts of which it consists contributing what belongs to it, so that the soul may exist and remain without change in the nature in which it was made, and discharge its appropriate functions such as presiding over the impulses of the body. . . . The resurrection is a species of change, and the last of all, and a change for the better of what still remains in existence at that time.⁵

The quote we have just read speaks directly to the redeemed, although by implication it also refers to the lost. The statement “this cause is seen to lie in perpetual existence, the being so created must be preserved for ever” also applies to souls who will be cast into the fires of hell and not experience “a change for the better.” Athenagorus makes that very claim in chapter 31 of his A Plea for the Christians.

When we are removed from the present life we shall live another life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not earthly (since we shall abide near God, and with God, free from all change or suffering in the soul, not as flesh, even though we shall have flesh, but as heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work, and that we should perish and be annihilated.⁶

Here Athenagorus explicitly teaches that after being “removed from the present life” (after the death of the body), the fallen (lost) souls will suffer in fire without any hope of annihilation. Athenagorus believed that eventually dead souls will “live another life” being reunited with their bodies. The unrepentent will then suffer endlessly in fire.

Athenagorus was trained in Greek (Platonic) philosophy. As already noted, after professing himself a Christian, he settled in Hellenized Alexandria. Even a cursory review of Athenagorus’ writings reveals unmistakably that he did not use Scripture to support his teachings on the subject of immortality but rather he used philosophical reasoning. Furthermore, Athenagorus abused Scripture in the most glaring manner when he did attempt to support his teachings from it. For example, as Edward William Fudge notes,

Athenagorus applies Paul’s description of the glorified immortal body [bestowed only on the redeemed at Christ’s second coming] to all men alike, the lost as well as the saved, a view held by many traditionalists since, but one without a shred of exegetical support.⁷

With my Adobe PDF search tool, it only took about an hour or so to find Athenagorus’ statement to which Fudge is apparently referring. Here is Athenagorus’ actual statement.

In the language of the apostle, “this corruptible (and dissoluble) must put on incorruption,”in order that those who were dead, having been made alive by the resurrection, and the parts that were separated and entirely dissolved having been again united, each one may, in accordance with justice, receive what he has done by the body, whether it be good or bad.⁸

The phrase “this corruptible must put on incorruption,” comes from 1^st Corinthians 15:53. Without a doubt, the spin Athenagorus puts on this text is a glaring misuse of Scripture. Fudge is correct to state that traditionalists are “without a shred of exegetical support” when they attempt to use this text to prove that lost people will be given incorruptible bodies. The whole context of 1^st Corinthians 15:53 is related to the glorification of the redeemed at the second coming of Jesus. Let’s read the passage in context, and you will see that it has absolutely nothing to do with the damned. This is clearly a reference to the resurrection of the redeemed to eternal life.

“Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal [must] put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory?”(1^stCorinthians 15:51-55)

May I suggest that you read the entirety of 1^st Corinthians 15 in your Bible? That whole chapter is a powerful passage describing the meaning and purpose of the second coming and resurrection. It presents the resurrection as a central theme of the Gospel of salvation. Indeed, the resurrection to life for the redeemed is “the blessed hope.” (Titus 2:13)

Athenagorus’ philosophical but non-Biblical support for his teachings betrays him as a useless example of “Christian” teaching in the early church. Despite this, Traditionalist authors, to their shame, repeatedly trot out his writings in their mulish attempts to “prove” that early church fathers taught eternal soul consciousness and never-ending torment of the lost. Obviously, they place their creeds above Scripture.

Finally, we must realize that even Athenagorus was not as “early” as the hype surrounding him might sometimes imply. He wasn’t even born until nearly a hundred years after the founding of the Christian church and didn’t propagate his false teachings until several decades after his birth, well into the latter part of the second century (ca. 176-180). Athenagorus’ philosophical writings, combined with the writings of Tertullian, are the foundation upon which all later Traditionalist theologians in the West have built their “orthodox” dogmas. They are building their dogmas on the backs of pagan influenced philosophers who do not provide credible support from the Bible in their writings.

Although it is clear that Athenagorus’ believed in never-ending torment of the lost, I haven’t seen any elaborate or gory detail in his writings. On the other hand, the next actor who thrusts himself onto the stage, Tertullian, fires up his imagination and spews out horrible descriptions of God torturing sinners in hell for never-ending ages. The revolting language he belches in his hell ranting virtually gives God a sort of homicidal intent toward those he is “eternally ‘killing’.”⁹ In chapter 35 of his treatise On the Resurrection of the Flesh, Tertullian alleges that God’s “never-ending ‘killing’ [of the lost] is more formidable than a merely human murder.”¹⁰

Tertullian (A.D. 155-240) was a Roman-educated pagan of fiery temperament who dramatically converted to a radical faction of Christianity. Tertullian claimed that the sufferers in hell would burn forever in a fire that itself kept them alive to suffer on. Such teachings are not found in the Bible — nowhere!

The profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner shall be consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire — that fire which, from its very nature indeed, directly ministers to their incorruptibility. The philosophers are familiar as well as we with the distinction between a common and a secret fire. Thus that which is in common use is far different from that which we see in divine judgments, whether striking as thunderbolts from heaven, or bursting up out of the earth through mountain-tops; for it does not consume what it scorches, but while it burns it repairs. So the mountains continue ever burning; and a person struck by lighting is even now kept safe from any destroying flame. A notable proof this of the fire eternal! A notable example of the endless judgment which still supplies punishment with fuel! The mountains burn, and last. How will it be with the wicked and the enemies of God?¹¹

The “evidence” Tertullian gives for support of his bizarre theories is the opinions of pagan philosophers and his own defective human perception. He does not use Scripture to prove his strange notion of an everlasting fire that “ministers to their incorruptibility,” and of course, his “scientific evidence” is obviously absurd.

Tertullian began teaching his confused concepts more than 150 years after Jesus founded the Christian church. His premise begins with a netherworld deep in the interior of the earth called Hades in which God holds all disembodied souls, good and bad. Let’s read a little from his wild and silly speculations:

We have established the position that every soul is detained in safe keeping in Hades until the day of the Lord. . . . By ourselves the lower regions (of Hades) are not supposed to be a bare cavity, nor some subterranean sewer of the world, but a vast deep space in the interior of the earth, and a concealed recess in its very bowels; inasmuch as we read that Christ in His death spent three days in the heart of the earth, that is, in the secret inner recess which is hidden in the earth, and enclosed by the earth, and superimposed on the abysmal depths which lie still lower down. Now although Christ is God, yet, being also man, “He died according to the Scriptures,” and “according to the same Scriptures was buried.” With the same law of His being He fully complied, by remaining in Hades in the form and condition of a dead man; nor did He ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the lower parts of the earth, that He might there make the patriarchs and prophets partakers of Himself. (This being the case), you must suppose Hades to be a subterranean region, and keep at arm’s length those who are too proud to believe that the souls of the faithful deserve a place in the lower regions.¹²

Tertullian’s reference to Jesus spending three days in the heart of the earth is a twisted reference to Matthew 12:40. That passage is a reference to the time Jesus body lay in the tomb. There is absolutely nothing in Scripture about Jesus visiting dead Patriarchs and prophets in secret recesses of the earth. (See Bite-a-Book™ chapter 9) Tertullian’s claim that secret recesses are “superimposed on the abysmal depths which lie still lower down” is also a complete fantasy with no Biblical support.

Tertullian taught that Hades had two chambers, a place of tormenting flames for the bad and a place called “Abraham’s bosom” for the good.¹³He taught that the patriarchs and prophets are all in H ades(somewhere in the interior of the earth) awaiting a bodily resurrection. Tertullian also taught that Enoch and Elijah, who have already been translated alive to heaven, will eventually have to die and be resurrected!

Enoch no doubt was translated, and so was Elijah; nor did they experience death: it was postponed, (and only postponed,) most certainly: they are reserved for the suffering of death, that by their blood they may extinguish Antichrist.¹⁴

Please note that Tertullian does not use Scripture to prove his assertions in any of these quotes. In fact, he goes on for hundreds of pages at a time without noting more than a handful of Scripture passages, and even then, he rarely gives a direct quote. The few that he actually does quote are often mangled (possibly from a badly translated Latin version).¹⁵Despite all of this, he makes the following statement in A Treatise on the Soul: “Now things are not true because they appear to be so, but because they are fully proved to be so.”¹⁶Where, I ask, in all of Tertullian’s writings does he actually “prove” anything about the nature of the soul or its destiny? Of all the ancient Fathers that I have reviewed, Tertullian is definitely one of the most flagrant in his abuse of Scripture. In fact, he actually seems to prefer philosophical reason above Scripture as a superior means of discovering the “truth” about the nature and destiny of the human soul.

Based on the nature of his writings, do you believe that Tertullian is a truly credible witness to “prove” that the Christian Church, as Jesus founded it, actually taught that the soul is immortal and that the lost are tormented for all eternity without end? Beyond question, the evidence reveals that Tertullian did not base his teachings on Scripture. Let’s further investigate his writings to see what else he taught and what he based those teachings on. Let’s look now at two more of Tertullian’s confused statements on the alleged abode of disembodied souls in the bowels of the earth:

So then, you will say, it is all the wicked souls that are banished in Hades. (Not quite so fast, is my answer.) I must compel you to determine (what you mean by Hades), which of its two regions, the region of the good or of the bad. If you mean the bad, (all I can say is, that) even now the souls of the wicked deserve to be consigned to those abodes; if you mean the good, why should you judge to be unworthy of such a resting-place the souls of infants and of virgins, and those which, by reason of their condition in life were pure and innocent?¹⁷

All souls, therefore; are shut up within Hades: do you admit this? (It is true, whether) you say yes or no: moreover, there are already experienced there, punishments and consolations; and there you have a poor man and a rich.¹⁸

This last statement is a misinterpretation of Jesus’ parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus recorded in Luke 16:19-31. (See chapter 7)

In the following statement Tertullian claims that while the disembodied soul is not material, it is nonetheless corporeal, consisting of a solid substance:

We on our part, however, do here maintain, and in a special treatise on the subject prove, that the soul is corporeal, possessing a peculiar kind of solidity in its nature, such as enables it both to perceive and suffer. That souls are even now susceptible of torment and of blessing in Hades, though they are disembodied. . . . It is no longer enough that the soul apart from the flesh be requited with pleasure or pain . . . although it has members (of its own), which in like manner are insufficient for its full perception, just as they are also for its perfect action. Therefore as it has acted in each several instance, so proportionally does it suffer in Hades, being the first to taste of judgment as it was the first to induce to the commission of sin; but still it is waiting for the flesh in order that it may through the flesh also compensate for its deeds, inasmuch as it laid upon the flesh the execution of its own thoughts. This, in short, will be the process of that judgment which is postponed to the last great day, in order that by the exhibition of the flesh the entire course of the divine vengeance may be accomplished. Besides, (it is obvious to remark) there would be no delaying to the end of that doom which souls are already tasting in Hades, if it was destined for souls alone.¹⁹

Of course, this entire statement is nothing but wild speculation on the part of Tertullian. He does not use a single passage from Scripture to support his made-up theory of soul-solidity. In the next quote, he goes to imaginative extremes that are even more outrageous. Tertullian describes God’s “never ending ‘killing’” of sinners in hell as “more formidable than a merely human murder” in the following statement:

If, therefore, any one shall violently suppose that the destruction of the soul and the flesh in hell amounts to a final annihilation of the two substances, and not to their penal treatment (as if they were to be consumed, not punished), let him recollect that the fire of hell is eternal — expressly announced as an everlasting penalty; and let him then admit that it is from this circumstance that this never-ending “killing” is more formidable than a merely human murder, which is only temporal. He will then come to the conclusion that substances must be eternal, when their penal “killing” is an eternal one. Since, then, the body after the resurrection has to be killed by God in hell along with the soul, we surely have sufficient information in this fact respecting both the issues which await it, namely the resurrection of the flesh, and its eternal “killing.” Else it would be most absurd if the flesh should be raised up and destined to “the killing in hell,” in order to be put an end to, when it might suffer such an annihilation (more directly) if not raised again at all. A pretty paradox, to be sure, that an essence must be refitted with life, in order that it may receive that annihilation which has already in fact accrued to it! . . . Whence shall come that “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” if not from eyes and teeth? — even at that time when the body shall be slain in hell, and thrust out into that outer darkness which shall be the suitable torment of the eyes.²⁰

These and other passages in Tertullian’s writings reveal that he was meeting stiff resistance from Scripture-based Christians regarding his teachings. He criticizes Christians who “ violently suppose that the destruction of the soul and the flesh in hell amounts to a final annihilation.” In addition, we read a quote earlier in this chapter in which he incites his readers to keep at arm’s length those who are too proud to believe that the souls of the faithful deserve a place in the lower regions.” These and other similar statements indicate that there was a sharp conflict between Tertullian and some other second century Christians in their beliefs concerning the nature and destiny of the soul. He even asserts that Christians who disagree with his theology are not true Christians and, “Thus, not being Christians, they have acquired no right to the Christian Scriptures.²¹ Here we see early seeds of the horrific totalitarian form of perverted Christianity that dominated Europe during the Dark Ages.

We have seen that Tertullian substitutes human reason in the place of Scripture, to reach his conclusions. I have asked myself numerous times, after reading Tertullian’s confused mass of fantastic imaginings, “How could intelligent, 21^stcentury theologians with doctoral degrees give any credence whatsoever to anything that he has to say on the nature of the soul and its destiny?” “Can it be that when we really want to believe something, we unconsciously overlook obvious evidence to the contrary, despite our intelligence and good intentions?”²²

Tertullian was involved in numerous disputes with other Christians over doctrinal beliefs throughout his lifetime. While some of his views in these disputes were correct, he quite often took extremely heretical positions. He also entangled himself in other radical movements, most notably the extreme asceticism of Montanism. Actually, “even the Montanists were not rigorous enough for Tertullian, and he broke with them to found his own sect, the Tertullianists.”²³Christianity had begun breaking into many factions even during the time of the Apostles, as noted in the epistles of John and numerous other New Testament passages. But these doctrinal discrepancies became more radical and widespread after John, the last living Apostle, passed from the scene near the end of the first century.

Tertullian contributed greatly to the doctrinal discrepancies that were flooding into the church after John’s death. Tertullian did not support his doctrine of natural soul immortality from Scripture. Instead, he depends on his own misguided perception and then quotes the opinion of the Greek pagan philosopher Plato. Tertullian wrote:

One may no doubt be wise in the things of God, even from one’s natural powers. . . . For some things are known even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many. . . . I may use therefore, the opinion of Plato, when he declares: “Every soul is immortal.”²⁴( italics supplied)

By using the word “many” Tertullian inadvertently reveals that many other Christians at that time disagreed with him. He did not say that all or even most held that the soul is immortal but only that many believed in natural soul immortality. The majority in the church were likely still straight on the subject accepting the Scriptural teaching that humans are mortal. Nevertheless, men like Tertullian were at work feverishly inserting their stinking flies into the sweet Gospel ointment.

The reason Tertullian could not use Scripture to prove his doctrine of eternal soul consciousness for both the saved and wicked is because Scripture does not teach it. Tertullian’s practice of devaluing the Bible while developing church teaching from theoretical speculations is continuing today in the traditions of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians. For example, Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006) was one of the twentieth century’s most renowned Christian scholars and intellectuals. Pelikan, an ordained Lutheran minister, left the Lutheran church very late in life, moving his membership to the Orthodox Church in America in 1998. “Members of Pelikan’s family remember him saying that he had not so much converted to Orthodoxy as ‘returned to it, peeling back the layers of my own belief to reveal the Orthodoxy that was always there.’”²⁵Pelikan is an example of a highly accomplished theologian who unjustifiably devalues Scripture. The following quote from Pelikan is a typical example of devaluing Scripture:

Christianity has no doctrine of the soul; or, more precisely, it has several. If Christian theology is to make sense of the references to the “soul” in the Bible, it needs a doctrine of the soul from some other source. This need prompts Christian thought to borrow from the speculation of several centuries of Greek thinkers regarding the distinction between body and soul. During the first half of the twentieth century it has become a ritual for Protestant theologians of varying positions to lament this borrowing from Greece, and often with good reason, but the lamentation becomes irresponsible when it gratuitously assumes that instead of borrowing from the Greeks Christian theology should simply have stayed with the “clear teachings of the Bible about the soul.” Either Christians are not to speak about the soul in any consistent and reasoned manner at all, or they must be willing to learn about the soul from other places, in addition to their Scriptures.²⁶

Unfortunately, most Protestant and Evangelical theologians, while claiming to rely solely on the “clear teachings of the Bible about the soul,” actually rely by default on speculations Athenagorus and Tertullian introduced. And as we have already noted, those men never put forth any clear teaching from the Bible. When church history is unfolded layer after layer, going back in time, it becomes evident that Traditionalist teachings about the soul are not built on Scripture but rather on modified platonic imaginings.

In chapter 7 of his A Treatise on the Soul, Tertullian asserts that “the soul is corporeal” and that it has a “bodily substance,” yet in other places he claims the soul not to have a material aspect to its nature. Aren’t those positions contradictory?

If you read any of Tertullian’s writings on the soul, it is strikingly evident that he did not place his judgment under the authority and guidance of Scripture. Tertullian vehemently blusters against various pagan philosophies throughout his voluminous writings while he himself is guilty of placing human perception and philosophical reasoning above Scripture. His powerful influence (along with Athenagorus’ influence) began the process of knocking the church out of alignment with Scripture on the nature and destiny of the human soul eighteen hundred years ago.

The following statement from Tertullian further reveals his lack of Scriptural support for his teaching that God creates the human soul wholly immaterial and immortal:

We claimed [in a previous treatise] the soul to be formed by the breathing of God, and not out of matter. We relied even there on the clear direction of the inspired statement which informs us how that ‘the Lord God breathed on man’s face the breath of life, so that man became a living soul’ — by that inspiration of God, of course. On this point, therefore, nothing further need be investigated or advanced by us.²⁷(Emphasis and brackets supplied)

The text in question says nothing about the soul being formed “not out of matter” as Tertullian claimed. In fact, the clear language of the text actually indicates a physical aspect of the human soul with the words, “And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) Clearly, God breathed into the nostrils of a material man and that whole man became a living soul!

Origen (ca. A.D. 185-254) was a third century Christian teacher who “interpreted scripture allegorically and showed himself to be a Neo-Pythagorean, and Neo-Platonist.”²⁸Neo-Pythagoreanism had elements of Neo-Platonism fused into it. Essentially it

emphasized the fundamental distinction between the Soul and the Body . . . . The soul must be freed from its material surrounding, the “muddy vesture of decay,” by an ascetic habit of life. Bodily pleasures and all sensuous impulses must be abandoned as detrimental to the spiritual purity of the soul. . . . The non-material universe is regarded as the sphere of mind or spirit.²⁹

This radical statement introduces us to the happiness-destroying practice of asceticism. Asceticism is the practice of disdaining or denying natural bodily appetites and emotions. This unbiblical philosophy is pervasive in the teachings of confused theologians ranging from Athenagorus in the late second-century through Augustine in the fourth-century. Both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism reek with oppressive ascetic teachings. Please note that the Bible teaching of temperance (reasonable moderation) is not to be confused with asceticism (extreme deprivation). Asceticism is a fanatical denial of normal, God-given, sensual pleasures and, in many cases, even goes so far as to deny oneself of necessary bodily care. It is an affront to God’s institution of marriage and therefore destructive to the family. Asceticism is not taught anywhere in the Bible, but is wholly a creation of Pagan philosophy. Therefore, it has no place in reality-based Christian teachings and lifestyle. Origen’s immersion in pagan ascetic notions and dualistic concepts of the soul unfit him as a source of authentic Christian doctrine as it relates to the soul and Christian lifestyle practice.

Origen’s early education was an amalgamation of Christian and Hellenistic thought. He followed Clement of Alexandria as the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, which was established for the training of theologians and pastors. That trend-setting school corrupted Christian doctrine by mixing it with numerous pagan concepts. The students of the Alexandrian school spread their contaminated doctrines far and wide from the late second century onward till at least the late fourth century. The diseased doctrines caused tremendous confusion and division among Christians.

Origen speculated that God would never destroy anyone in hell. He used platonic dualism mixed with badly misinterpreted Scripture to support his speculation that God will eventually restore all the wicked. In his De Principis he wrote:

If even through neglect the mind fall away from a pure and complete reception of God, it nevertheless contains within it certain seeds of restoration and renewal to a better understanding, seeing the “inner,” which is also called the “rational” man, is renewed after “the image and likeness of God, who created him.” And therefore the prophet says, “All the ends of the earth shall remember, and turn unto the LORD; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.”³⁰

Origin was engaging in shear fantasy with his absurd interpretation of Psalm 22:27. “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before [God]” only after all incorrigible rebels receive the “second death” being destroyed in the fires of hell. Taken as a whole Scripture is abundantly clear that there will be universal harmony and obedience only after all the wicked are finally blotted from the face of the earth. Theologians like Origin get into trouble when they isolate a text and interpret it in a way that causes it to fly in the face of numerous other texts, which contradict the biased interpretation. We find more of Origen’s imaginative speculations asserting the eventual purification and restoration of the wicked in his Against Celsus:

Celsus says we speak of “God coming down like a torturer bearing fire,” and thus compels us unseasonably to investigate words of deeper meaning. . . . Our God is a “consuming fire” in the sense in which we have taken the word; and thus He enters in as a “refiner’s fire,” to refine the rational nature, which has been filled with the lead of wickedness, and to free it from the other impure materials, which adulterate the natural gold or silver, so to speak, of the soul. And, in like manner, “rivers of fire” are said to be before God, who will thoroughly cleanse away the evil which is intermingled throughout the whole soul. But these remarks are sufficient in answer to the assertion, “that thus they were made to give expression to the erroneous opinion that God will come down bearing fire like a torturer.”³¹

Origen believed that the human soul is indestructible. That is the starting point from which he imagined his unsubstantiated theories about universal restoration. He reasoned that if God is going to bring sin to an ultimate end (a correct Bible teaching), then the wicked must be restored because their souls are indestructible (a wrong conclusion based on a false premise).

Perhaps, as some scholars have claimed, Origen invented his ideas of universal restoration as an attempt to rebut the terrifying picture of God that Tertullian painted. Why then didn’t he teach the Biblical doctrine that the “second death” is the end of unrepentant sinners? (See Revelation 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8) It was because he held to the very same pagan dogma of unconditional immortality of the soul that had led Tertullian to his notion of endless life in hell.

Both Tertullian and Origen perverted their minds through the adoption of pagan philosophies. As a result, they both developed heresies, though in opposite directions. Their opposing heresies were both based on the same unbiblical supposition that the human soul is eternal. These heresies have caused succeeding generations of Christians to filter Bible passages through the blinding fog of pagan thinking.

The heresy that Origen germinated and brought to fruit had been planted in his mind in seed form by his mentor Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-ca. 215). Clement of Alexandria (not to be confused with Clement of Rome) was born into a wealthy pagan family (perhaps in Athens). His constant quoting of the Greek philosophers and poets indicates his confidence in Greek philosophies. Clement amalgamated Greek philosophical traditions with Christian doctrines and concocted a form of “Christian” Platonism. This is especially evident in his teachings on the nature and destiny of the soul. The modern theologian Jaroslav Pelikan, an unabashed supporter himself of many Greek suppositions about the soul, makes the following observation about Clement of Alexandria:

From the Greek thought to which he owed so much Clement received the picture of a circle of immortality. His assignment as a Christian intellectual was to Christianize this picture and to make the circle of immortality congruent with the shape of the Christian message.³²

Surely, Mr. Pelikan is kidding, isn’t he? Sadly, Mr. Pelikan is not kidding! But shouldn’t we ask, “Upon whose authority did Clement get this supposed assignment?” Certainly not upon the authority of Scripture! Pelikan goes on in his dissertation to “examine Clements’s ideas in comparison with the Greek theories behind them, especially those of middle Platonism.”³³

Clement taught the immortality of the soul and emphasized the “corrective” function of punishment. Origen further developed Clement’s ideas into the belief that hell is not punitive as much as purgative and remedial, and therefore ultimately redemptive. Clement hailed from Hellenized Alexandria where both Jewish and Christian teachings traditionally were amalgamated with Greek pagan philosophy. Christian teachings with various Greek philosophical spins were then propagated within the church at large by men such as Athenagorus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and even the Latin Father Tertullian.

Outstanding oratory skills earned one of the most famous of the Greek-influenced Fathers the title Goldenmouthed, which in the Greek is Chrysostom. John Chrysostom (A.D. 345 or 347- 407) was raised by his mother (his father died soon after his birth). He began his education in Greek philosophical literature and rhetoric under the pagan teacher Libanus, and later studied Christian theology under Diodore of Tarsus. Chrysostom became such a fanatical ascetic that by mid-life he had permanently damaged his health as a result of practicing severe bodily deprivation. He espoused virulent anti-Semitic views as well as many other extreme and fanatical beliefs that Scripture opposes.

Chrysostom popularized and expanded the graphic imagery of never-ending torment that Tertullian had introduced into the Christian community. A reading of some of his descriptions of the sufferings of damned souls in hell seems to indicate that perhaps his speechifying abilities were exceeded only by his extremely fertile imagination. To state it plainly, he used very intemperate and unbiblical language to paint powerful word pictures of souls suffering endless horrors in hell. For example, his preaching pictured lost souls in “the sea of the bottomless pit, where the punishment is not accompanied with insensibility, where there is no suffocation to end all, but in ever-lengthened torture, in burning, in strangling, they are consumed.”³⁴ He teaches his hearers to ponder “how great a misery it must be to be forever burning, and to be in darkness, and to utter unnumbered groanings, and to gnash the teeth, and not even be heard.”³⁵

Chrysostom’s outlandish imagination evolved the Bible’s “worm” into a “venomous worm,”³⁶ a description nowhere found in the Bible. He fumes that “to be for ever burning” and “never consumed,” and to be “ever being wasted by the worm, is corruption incorruptible.”³⁷ Of course, this oxymoron “corruption incorruptible” does not occur anywhere in Scripture because it is obviously nonsensical and impossible. Goldenmouthed further states that “some such torment as this shall it [the soul] undergo, when the worms surround and devour it, not for two years, nor for three, nor for ten, nor for ten thousand, but for years without end; for ‘their worm,’ saith he, ‘dieth not.’”³⁸ Thusly, the goldenmouthed one conjures up images of a “corruption” that is “incorruptible,” and an experience of being “consumed” but “never consumed,” contradictory spectacles alien to the sound and sober teachings of Scripture. As Fudge so aptly puts it, “Such language, at the very least, is patently unscriptural on its face.”³⁹

What is Chrysostom’s Biblical authority for this teaching that the lost spend never-ending eternity in hell suffering a “corruption incorruptible”? Unbelievably, he dares to use 1^st Corinthians 15:53 as his proof text. He virtually stands the text on its head in an effort to prove that unsaved people experience a “deathless death.” He claims:

“This corruption” of the body “shall put on incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:53), but the other of the soul, never; for where incorruption is, there is no corruption. Thus is it a corruption which is incorruptible, which hath no end, a deathless death.⁴⁰

Let’s examine 1^st Corinthians 15:53 in its context and see if it really teaches what Chrysostom used it to teach.

“We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal [must] put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory? The sting of death [is] sin; and the strength of sin [is] the law. But thanks [be] to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”(1^stCorinthians 15:51b-57)

Chrysostom has used a passage, which obviously applies exclusively to the redeemed, and twists its meaning to make it apply to the damned! This is unmistakably a resurrection to “victory” over death and the grave. This passage is obviously not describing what Chrysostom calls a “corruption incorruptible” and a “deathless death”! Nowhere in this passage is there any reference to the resurrection of the lost.

Scripture mentions two resurrections, one for the redeemed and one for the lost. “There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” (Acts 24:15b) These two resurrections occur a thousand years apart. “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. . . . Blessed and holy [is] he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power.” (Revelation 20:5b-6a) The thousand years begins with a resurrection of the just at the second coming of Jesus. God will raise them with incorruptible bodies. This is the resurrection obviously referred to in 1^st Corinthians 15:51-57. The resurrection of the unjust comes at the end of the thousand years. Obviously 1^st Corinthians 15:51-57 is not referring to that second resurrection. The unjust that arise at the end of the thousand years will not be raised with incorruptible bodies. God will raise them with the old corrupt nature; they will face judgment and will utterly perish in a permanent “second death.”

Augustine (A.D. 354-430) was born in North Africa to a pagan father and a superstitious Christian mother. As a youth, he became educated in pagan beliefs and practices and lived a very hedonistic lifestyle, even taking concubines at times, one for fifteen years with whom he had an illegitimate son. Around the age of thirty-two, he decided to convert to a rigorous form of Christianity, and become celibate. Thereafter he lived and promoted a very ascetic lifestyle. Augustine became a famous leader in the Latin branch of Christianity. “ His generally favorable view of Neo-platonic thought contributed to its entrance into the European intellectual tradition.”⁴¹As we shall see, Augustine was a major link in the chain, which connects modern notions of the immortality of the soul to ancient Platonic speculations.

Both Catholic and Reformed Protestant theologians quote Augustine in their defense of the doctrines of universal soul immortality and never-ending conscious existence of the damned. Augustine’s influence over the major Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century was enormous. Perhaps no other theologian has had a more far-reaching and corrupting influence on the Christian understanding of the soul than has Augustine.

Augustine’s modified form of Platonism dominated much of medieval Catholic thought in the West until the appearance of Thomas Aquinas. During this time the teachings of Socrates and Plato became so widely accepted that they were frequently regarded as divinely inspired pre-Christian saints.⁴²

Through the teachings of men like Augustine, the church morphed into the magisterial, totalitarian church of the Dark Ages.⁴³ How is that so? Augustine taught that the church should forcibly compel men to godliness. Augustine never envisioned the depths of butchery to which the Roman church would descend during the Dark Ages, but his teaching planted the seeds that later grew into the Inquisition and torture dungeons. After all, if it’s okay for God to torture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Augustine recognized that God sometimes uses suffering to purge sin from an individual’s life. From that observation, he took a leap into the notion that the church could inflict suffering upon a sinner to bring him to his senses and therefore purge him of sins. From that notion Augustine then took another leap into the speculation that God punishes some disembodied souls after death temporarily but not eternally. Those souls, once purged from sin by their temporary punishment after death, are then ushered into heaven. This worthless speculation is not found anywhere in Scripture but is a modified and softened version of the platonic superstition of purgatory. The Platonists supposed that all punishment of disembodied souls is administered for remedial purposes. Augustine modified this notion to cover only minor sinners who weren’t righteous enough yet for heaven but not wicked enough to merit eternal torment either. Augustine speculates on some of his unbiblical, purgatorial imaginings in the following words:

For our part, we recognize that even in this life some punishments are purgatorial, — not, indeed, to those whose life is none the better, but rather the worse for them, but to those who are constrained by them to amend their life. All other punishments, whether temporal or eternal, inflicted as they are on every one by divine providence, are sent either on account of past sins, or of sins presently allowed in the life, or to exercise and reveal a man’s graces. They may be inflicted by the instrumentality of bad men and angels as well as of the good. For even if any one suffers some hurt through another’s wickedness or mistake, the man indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm; but God, who by His just though hidden judgment permits it to be done, sins not. But temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains which are to follow that judgment; for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come.⁴⁴

Chrysostom and Augustine both lived after state-sponsored persecutions of Christians had ended under Constantine. Under Constantine, Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman world. This popularity was more a curse than a blessing as half-converted pagans began to flood into the church. Actually, Emperor Constantine was Christian only in a syncretic sense. His “conversion” was as much political in nature as spiritual. He deliberately blended the Christian religion with the pagan (especially Mithraism) in order to unite his realm. This is the environment in which both Chrysostom and Augustine developed their belief system and teachings.

Let’s briefly review: Athenagorus and Tertullian inserted a dead stinking fly into the Gospel ointment when they began presumptuous and intemperate exaggeration about the nature and destiny of the human soul. Chrysostom carried this exaggeration to gross extremes. Augustine, though he softened it somewhat, confirmed this unbiblical teaching in medieval theology. Disastrously, even his attempts at softening the doctrine to allow for some forms of temporary torment were so flawed with human speculation that they led to the unscriptural doctrine of Purgatory instituted by Pope Gregory I at the end of the sixth century.

In our review thus far we have clearly sketched, with original source documentation, how in the span of just a few generations two major false doctrines (universal soul immortality and never-ending torment) are (1) introduced, (2) popularized, (3) entrenched within Christendom as unquestioned orthodoxy; and all this without the slightest authority from Scripture! We have presented powerful evidence that universal soul immortality and eternal torment of the wicked, in their “Christianized” form, were birthed in the late second and early third century. They have no New Testament foundation.

Tertullian laid the foundations upon which Chrysostom popularized and Augustine entrenched false notions about the nature and destiny of the soul. During the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, some of the leading reformers relied heavily on Augustine for doctrinal guidance. Through this “domino effect,” Tertullian’s ideas still contaminate Christian theology in the twenty-first century.

In this chapter, we have presented clear evidence that Athenagorus and Tertullian, the first writers to vigorously merge pagan notions of eternal torment with Christian teaching, did not base their teachings on Scripture. Instead, they worked from flawed philosophical reasoning and concocted a horrific perversion of Christian doctrine on the nature and destiny of the human soul. They planted gross seeds 1,800 years ago. Those seeds, which Chrysostom popularized and Augustine legitimized, grew and produced the awful fruit of Spiritism (supposed communication from the dead) many generations later. This Spiritism or Spiritualism is steadily developing into the scourge of Christianity in the 21^st century. It will be a major catalyst for the return of Dark Ages principles in perverted 21^st century Christianity. (See chapter 19)

Thomas Aquinas’ (A.D. 1225-1274) “was an Italian Catholic priest in the Dominican order, a philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition.”⁴⁵

Scholasticism was the dominant form of theology and philosophy in the Latin West in the Middle Ages, particularly in the 12th, 13^th, and 14^{th centuries. It was both a method and a system which aimed to reconcile the Christian theology of the Church Fathers with the Greek philosophy of Aristotle and his commentators.46}

Aquinas was the most prominent figure of scholasticism during the

Dark Ages. His presumptuously ambitious theological work Summa Theologica unjustifiably fused Greek philosophy with Christian doctrine. His thirteenth century dark-age ideas regarding the soul are dominant today in the Roman Catholic tradition. Aquinas’ dualistic teachings were less radical than those of Plato and Augustine. Even though he differed with the Platonists in some ways, he retained the fundamental notion of dualism. Aquinas erred by teaching the conscious existence of a so-called disembodied soul which, as he saw it, longed to be returned to its natural state of union with the body. As a follower of Aristotle, he considered the soul “the form of the body” and emphasized the natural unity between the two. He got his unity reality backwards, however, because the body is actually the form of the wholistic soul.

Aquinas, like Augustine, Chrysostom, Origen, and Tertullian, possessed a brilliant mind. Unfortunately, he, like they, mixed pagan philosophical reasoning with Biblical teachings. Such amalgamating of truth with error always distorts even the elements of truth contained in the theologian’s teachings. When adopted by the Christian community, these distortions lead in turn to other perversions of belief and practice among Christians.

In the final analysis, because Aquinas began with the presupposition that all souls are immortal, he was forced to follow that notion with the teaching that God will ultimately give even the damned not only immortal souls but also incorruptible and deathless bodies. New Testament writers never apply these adjectives to the damned but only to God and to the glorified resurrection bodies of the redeemed. How then do Christian theologians feel at liberty to do so in clear contradiction of the New Testament? When passed from generation to generation, these confused ideas lead to such developments as the unbiblical dogma of purgatory and the idea of never-ending torment in hell.

Many centuries after Tertullian, the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine became one of the major players in the Roman Catholic theological thrust known as the Counter-Reformation of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Bellarmine helped popularize the new dogma of futurism, which the Jesuit Francisco Ribera had developed to counter the Protestant claim that the papacy was the primary antichrist power in the world. Futurism led eventually to the so-called secret rapture heresy. Bellarmine also worked to popularize the teachings of Tertullian and Chrysostom concerning the nature of hell.

In his published sermon, Hell and its Torments, Bellarmine echoes many of the descriptions of hell that Tertullian and Chrysostom introduced into Christian teaching. In that sermon he exceeds even Tertullian and Chrysostom in descriptions of every kind of filth in hell (including piles of bodies saturated in urine and feces), and describes the physical torments of the lost in language that, like Tertullian, virtually equates God with murderous intent toward the lost. Speaking of the lost he says, “They shall curse God because He is now continually killing them, yet never allowing them to die.”⁴⁷Famous Protestant preachers such as Jonathan Edwards described hell with language that is strikingly similar to hell statements in the writings of Bellarmine.

During the Dark Ages, the doctrinally corrupted church went to further extremes than even Tertullian had dared to go. Theologians and pastors propagated awful notions such as the superstition that the dead can come back in ghost form and haunt the living. Many a bereaved medieval mother grieved that her dead baby’s soul might come back as a firefly or some other insignificant creature. Churchmen including ignorant superstitious pastors propagated these outrageous fallacies.

The God of the universe is an incredibly loving Person. Amazingly, He even loves the agnostic and atheistic scientists who have deceived billions into believing that He doesn’t even exist. He offers these swollen-headed fools (God’s description of them; See Romans 1:19-22) every opportunity to open their eyes, to get wisdom, and to repent of their folly before it’s too late. He also loves misguiding ministers who unwittingly or knowingly tell lies about the nature and destiny of the human soul — lies that slander His glorious character. He doesn’t want them to burn. He doesn’t want their life-work to burn, and He doesn’t want their followers to burn. He commands them to replace their unfounded traditions with the teachings of the Bible. He pleads with these misleading spiritual shepherds to turn from their folly before it’s too late for them and for their flocks.

When Jesus dealt with lying church leaders 2,000 years ago He at times uttered scathing rebukes. Matthew chapter 23 records one such scene where He publicly called them snakes, murderers, hypocrites, extortionists, blind guides, fools, unjust, merciless, faithless, impure, disobedient, self indulgent and hell-bound. They made an outward pretense of goodness but inside they were just as bad as the open sinners they condemned. And yet while hanging on the cross, He prayed that His Father would not withhold forgiveness from even His murderers if any were to repent. Among those murderers where the phony pretentious self-deceived church leaders He had so scathingly reprimanded. Though this incredibly loving God will ultimately keep His promise to cleanse His universe of both sin and sinners, He does not have the heartless, vindictive character portrayed by the pagan influenced men who, step-by-step, steered the church away from Bible truth.

The Bible’s message is comforting. The grave is a temporary and peaceful resting place for both the good and the bad. We have assurance from God’s Word that our worst enemies cannot come back in ghost form and haunt us. We can be at peace knowing that our loved ones are not wandering aimlessly as an insect or a ghost with unrequited desires and unsettled issues left over from their temporal life. We can be sure that Tertullian’s bizarre netherworld, where both saved and lost “souls” dwell side-by-side in the bowels of the earth, simply does not exist.

When those who have been sleeping are resurrected by Jesus, it will seem to them that they have slept only a moment. How can that be? It is because there is no thinking in the sleep of death. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” (Psalm 146:4) Thousands of years may pass from the moment of death to the resurrection but it will seem like only a flash, a split second of time.

The retribution of hell is a future event that will take place on the surface of the earth. (See 2^nd Peter 3:3-13; Revelation 20:5-15) That final executive phase of judgment will punish each unrepentant person and angel with the exact degree of mental and physical suffering they deserve (some more and some less) and then they will be blotted out of existence and cease to exist forever — they will completely perish. (See Ezekiel 28:14-19; Malachi 4:1; Matthew 25:41b; John 3:16) All will suffer intensely and horribly. (See Matthew 13:40-50) Some will suffer relatively briefly, some longer and some very much longer! (See Luke 12:46-48) Consistent with His just and merciful character, this is the right thing for God to do — the right thing for both the lost and the saved. (See chapter 5, Hell, When, Where, for How Long?) That disinfecting, sterilizing event will clear the way for the eternal security and happiness of earthly society. (See Psalm 85:10; Nahum 1:9; Isaiah 28:21; 14:7; Revelation 21:1-8)

“The LORD . . . will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time.” (Nahum 1:9)

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