Islip Collyer on the New Theories

 

"When the pamphlet entitled ‘The Blood of the Covenant’ first came to hand, I read it carefully and at once wrote a reply, partly for practice and partly with the object of seeing whether there was really anything in the contention. I soon discovered that the new position was entirely untenable, and that the evidence in favor of our previous convictions was far stronger than I had supposed—indeed, absolutely conclusive.

"Your reply [The Resurrection to Condemnation] contained most of the points I had made, and a great deal more besides, but there were one or two arguments of which you made no use, so I though I might submit them to you.

"It is an argument of the pamphlet that if resurrection is possible outside of covenant relationship with Christ, he ‘made a false claim’ when he said ‘I am the resurrection and the life;’ he ought only to have said ‘I am the life.’

"Now, a mere child in the truth knows that resurrection means a great deal more than a simple renewal of mortal life; for we read ‘The dead shall be raised incorruptible,’ I Cor. 15, and Paul, a circumcised, baptized believer, said, ‘If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.’

"The writer of the pamphlet attempts to forestall this obvious rejoinder by saying that the word ‘life’ in this passage evidently means immortality, and if we take resurrection to mean the same, it would read ‘I am the immortality and the immortality,’ which would ‘reduce the matter to an absurdity.’ That argument is hopelessly bad, for we read that ‘Christ brought life and immortality to light by the gospel,’ the writer therefore accuses Paul of ‘absurdity.’ But take the other side of the case. If when Christ said ‘I am the resurrection’ he simply referred to a raising from the dust to a renewal of mortal existence, he did ‘make a false claim’ since some unjustified sinners had been so raised. Thus the argument is shown to be entirely illogical.

"By far the strongest point in the pamphlet is the quotation from Psalm 50, but it is hopelessly inadequate.

"I quite disagree with the writer’s conception of the word saint. All saints have made a covenant with God, but all who have made or attempted to make a covenant with Him are not saints. In Psalm 149 we read of the judgments meted out on the nations at Christ’s second appearing, and we find the words, ‘This honor have all the saints.’ It is therefore evident that the word saint, although used in a general sense, in the mind of God applies only to those who will finally attain to immortality. The fiftieth Psalm is therefore referring only to the important part of those who will be gathered together and like 1st Cor 15 does not take the unjust into account.

"So far as proof of the correctness of our position is concerned, most of it has already been adduced, during the controversy, and so it is not necessary to refer to the declaration of Paul on Mar’s Hill; or the passage, ‘this is the condemnation that light is come into the world.’

"As regards Felix trembling at Paul’s argument concerning ‘judgment to come’ we need only ask how any rational man can seriously contend that Felix, being a Roman, trembled on hearing that his countrymen would be successful in overthrowing Jerusalem.

"The writer of the pamphlet makes a great point out of the converse of passages. This argument on that score has been shown to be wrong and due to his narrow understanding of the word resurrection, but we might just point out a certain declaration concerning some who are not responsible. ‘Man that is in honor and understandeth not is like the beasts that perish.’ The converse of this is, ‘man that is in honor and does understand is not like the beasts that perish,’ but he is responsible to resurrection, which the beasts are not.

"As regards the contention that those who have been baptized are free from Adamic condemnation, it has already been shown to be absurd; but sufficient attention has not been called to the fact that even from the standpoint of the new theory, it is knowledge that begets responsibility. If not, what does? A baby might be circumcised on the eighth day and die on the ninth. Would it be raised? Or, if it be contended that under the old dispensation, it was the offering of sacrifice that made men responsible, how about those who became idiots? Or, how can it be contended that those Jews utterly without understanding would be raised for judgment in the face of the declaration concerning such in Psalm 49?

"Then again we have the explicit statement of Christ that the Pharisees of his time would be raised. How could the fact that they offered sacrifice free them from condemnation in Adam when they rejected the one who ratified those sacrifices?

"If the mere offering of animal sacrifice and the rejection of the true Messiah could free from condemnation, then in the present time baptism, while rejecting Jesus as the Christ, would free from condemnation! What a position!

"If the Pharisees, who held such grossly incorrect ideas, would be raised simply because they had offered sacrifice, is it not logical to suppose that at the present time a man who believed in the immortality of the soul and other kindred abominations, if he were baptized into a trinity of imaginary co-equal Gods, would also be raised? So far as I can see, this is the inevitable conclusion. But the Pharisees would not be raised because they had offered sacrifice, but because ‘light had come into the world’; and when we understand this, all difficulty vanishes.

"One more argument, absolute, final and crushing. Christ said to the Pharisees ‘If I had not done among them works which no other man did, they would not have had sin.’ Then would they have been raised? Would men be raised to the resurrection of condemnation when, being ignorant, they had no sin? No one would contend for anything so monstrous, and yet Christ said, ‘Ye shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God and ye yourselves cast out.’ They would be raised because Christ had done those mighty works; in other words, because ‘Light had come into the world,’ and that was the condemnation.

"This question is made so serious by the change of position which it involves. What a dreadful predicament we should be in if we had to contend that every human being by the accident of birth was condemned to a violent death on the eighth day! When it is inquired why the heathen live, the writer of the pamphlet replies, ‘They live by God’s mercy.’ So then, while the people of whom God said, ‘Thee only have I known of all the nations of the earth’ had to stave off a violent death by constantly renewed sacrifice, those nations whom God had not known at all lived by his mercy!

"Really if the arguments of everyone else fail to convince brother Andrew of his error, my strongest and best advice to him is that he should read his own book."—Islip Collyer, Glenfield, Leicester. The Christadelphian, June 1894.