This article first appeared in From Death to Life, Issue 34 (June 2007), pages 24-27.

In discussing Conditional Immortality among Conservative Protestants I am often told, “That’s not the traditional view of the church!” I believe Scripture alone binds my conscience, but I also believe that those who say this often misunderstand what the “tradition” of the church is and would be surprised to find that the view they support is generally not that held by the majority in the early church. Part One of this article focused on the Intermediate State. Part Two focuses on Eternal Destinies.

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This article first appeared in From Death to Life, Issue 33 (March 2007), pages 31-34.

In discussing “Conditional Immortality”, from the Bible, with Christians of all stripes I have lost count of the number of times I have been told, “But that’s not the traditional view of the church!” Fair call. However, when discussing Conditional Immortality with Protestants this objection seems a bit rich. “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture Alone) is one of the fundamental principles of the Reformation. As John Wesley stated in the 18th century, “The Church is to be judged by the Scriptures, not the Scriptures by the Church.”
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Henry Constable (died 1894) was canon and prebendary of Cork, Ireland. He was a strong advocate of Conditional Immortality. You can read his works online:

Duration and Nature of Future Punishment by Henry Constable.

Hades: or the Intermediate State of Man by Henry Constable.

Clicking these links will take you away from our site.

The first link provided, by an online friend of mine, leads to a good clean copy of Constable’s book. The second is a bit more complicated but the best available at present. You will have to click one of the links on the left of the page. Note the Text files are dificult to read, so it is worthwhile taking the time to download the pdf files though they will take some time to download.

By the way, the website where the books are found seems to have Constable confused with an earlier man of the same name who lived from 1562-1613.