"Thou Shalt Be With Me in Paradise"

THE PULPIT AND THE STUDY": Thou Shalt Be With Me in Paradise"

"We must know with all assurance that the message we are preaching contains the truth, and verity of the apostolic faith."

Head, Bible and Systematic Theology Department, S.D.A. Seminary

We are so accustomed to think that a great deal that was taught in the church after the time of the apostles was false, that it is a comfort to find some in those ancient days who believed as we now do. It is good, for instance, to know that a large majority of Christians, though they kept Sun day after a fashion, also, up to A.D. 500, used the seventh-day Sabbath as a day of worship. It is also good to know that so important a pope as Leo the Great advocated immersion, even though it was of infants. It is probably true that almost every theological idea and religious practice that has ever been put forth under the guise of Christianity found some sort of expression before the year A.D. 600. Exceptions, to this would, of course, be in extremely apostate positions of late Roman Catholicism.

It is refreshing to know that there were earlier Christians who interpreted Christ's promise to the thief on the cross in the same way that we do today. While doing some research recently in the writings of John Cassian, prolific writer on Monasticism in the fifth century, I came across this statement, which can be found in volume 11 of the Nicene and Post- Nicene Fathers, second series, pages 301, 302:

"But if you care too to understand the words spoken to the thief 'To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise,' what do they clearly show but that not only does their former intelligence continue with the souls, but also that in their changed condition they partake of some state which corresponds to their actions and deserts? For the Lord would certainly never have promised him this, if He had known that his soul after being separated from the flesh would either have been deprived of perception or have been resolved into nothing. For it was not his flesh but his soul which was to enter Paradise with Christ. At least we must avoid, and shun with the utmost horror, that wicked punctuation of the heretics, who, as they do not believe that Christ could be found in Paradise on the same day on which He descended into hell, thus punctuate 'Verily, I say unto you to-day,' and making a stop apply 'thou shalt be with Me in Paradise,' in such a way that they imagine that this promise was not fulfilled at once after he departed from this life, but that it will be fulfilled after the resurrection, as they do not understand what before the time of His resurrection He declared to the Jews, who fancied that He was hampered by human difficulties and weakness of the flesh as they were: 'No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven:' by which He clearly shows that the souls of the de parted are not only not deprived of their reason, but that they are not even without such feelings as hope and sorrow, joy and fear, and that they already are beginning to taste beforehand something of what is re served for them at the last judgment, and that they are not as some unbelievers hold resolved into nothing after their departure from this life: but that they live a more real life, and are still more earnest in waiting on the praises of God."—"Conferences," bk. i, chap. 14.

John Cassian's reasoning concerning this statement of Jesus is very familiar to us. The belief that there was a soul, or detachable personal essence, which went up from a man at his death, was the standard idea in the world, both classical and Jewish, in which Christ and His apostles had to do their work; and it was the view held by almost every writer after the apostles, particularly after about A.D. 175. It is no wonder, therefore, that Cassian was astonished that anyone should hold a view different from that which had been taught by churchmen for three hundred years.

But here is a clear proof that there were people in Cassian's day, "heretics" whom, he felt, he "must avoid, and shun with the utmost horror," who believed that men did not come to their reward until after the resurrection. Whether they believed in the singularity and unity of man's nature, as the Bible teaches it, or whether they believed that there was a human soul that was reserved at some place until the resurrection, is not clear. It is very likely that they believed the former. But they did believe that Christ said on the cross, "I say unto thee today, Thou shalt be with me in paradise."

We must know with all assurance that the message we are preaching contains the truth, and verity of the apostolic faith.

 

 


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Head, Bible and Systematic Theology Department, S.D.A. Seminary

November 1950

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