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The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1 - Contents
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    I. Paralleling Tragic and Lyric Poets Buttress Positions

    1. TIDES OF POETIC OPINION EBB AND FLOW

    The lyric poets kept within the Homeric framework, and the dramas of AESCHYLUS (525-456 B.C.), greatest of Greek tragic poets, likewise mirrored the faith of the populace, unmodified by alien influences. But these are the “princely dead,” not the common run. They reproduced the old Homeric conceptions of Hades and the soul—the soul not being a shadow, but a real, actual being. But its state was cold and dreary. Their only light was commingled with darkness. The underworlds and afterworlds were retributive, but the penalties of guilt overshadowed the rewards of righteousness. Souls continue semiconsciously after death, their forms resembling their earthly state. 11) A. M. Fairbairn, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 194, 195.CFF1 547.2

    To give life to the personages in his dramas, Aeschylus took the legends of the past, adjusting them to current thought, and put them in the setting of his own convictions. Sometimes there is a twilight existence, as in Homer. But speculation on the soul after death did not interest him. 22) Rohde, Psyche, pp. 421-425. However, there is a judgment beyond death, in Hades. But this judgment only completed the retribution generally executed on earth.CFF1 547.3

    EURIPIDES (c. 480-406 B.C.), another Athenian tragic dramatist, sounds no clear note. His dramas likewise reflect the popular view as well as the variant conflicting views of the Orphics, philosophers, and Sophists—sometimes doubting, sometimes affirming, the possibilities of the other world. They sway to and fro, the whole question of the afterlife being left unanswered. At death the soul returns to the air, its creative element, parting with its independent existence. Man is nothing, and sinks into nothingness. 33) Salmond, Christian Doctrine, p. 139.CFF1 548.1

    2. PINDAR: SOUL IS “IMAGE OF ETERNITY.”

    While philosophers represented the personal views of a few elite, the parallelling tragic and lyric poets were more national in their portrayals, largely repeating the mythology of former times. PINDAR (c. 522-443 B.C.), pre-eminent lyric poet of Thebes, drew upon both the old Orphic theosophy and the newborn philosophy for his portrayals of the soul and afterlife.CFF1 548.2

    Two distinct, irreconcilable views are presented. Sometimes they are Homeric, with Hades as the everlasting abode of the shades; in others the Orphic type prevails. Thus the soul is the “invisible double” of the man, largely dormant during earth’s activities—an “image of eternity.” It springs from the gods (Frag. 131), and what survives in the other world is the soul itself, not a shadow-image.CFF1 548.3

    There are moral awards, the good going to dwell among the gods, with descent into a body being the result of some ancient guilt. After death retributive judgment follows in Hades to atone for past offenses, and the condemned are plunged into Tartarus. The soul must be embodied at least three times before it can hope for an end of its earthly course. The past life determines the conditions of the present, and the present fixes those of the future. After a period of years in Hades the purified soul can ascend and enter the “Isles of the Blest” (Ol. ii, 57-60, 69-75). 44) See Charles, The Doctrine of a Future Life pp. 150, 151; Salmond, op. cit., pp, 139-142; William R. Alger, The Destiny of the Soul. A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, pp. 182-184. In Pindar this course of the soul appears, one ode telling of the mythical interchangeable immortality, alternately in Heaven and Hades (10th Nemean Ode).CFF1 548.4

    The soul, descending from the gods, remains alive after the death of the body. If it does not find a suitable resting place, it must live again in another earthly body until a third faultless life ends its earthly course. Thrice tried by birth and death, the soul, if it keeps free from sin, ascends to the upper world to live in the “Islands of the Blest.” 55) Fairbairn: op. cit., pp. 192 193. That, of course, is out-and-out transmigrationism simply in Greek form. As Zeller puts it, punishment thus gives opportunity for happiness in the hereafter, which concept was acquired from the Orphics. 66) Zeller, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 71.CFF1 549.1

    According to Rohde’s minute examination, Pindar teaches that, “after its separation from the body, the soul disappears in the underworld.” This other life, which is “everlasting and immortal,” dwells for a time in a mortal body because of “ancient guilt.” Hades, with its dark rivers of inky blackness in Tartarus, awaits the impious after death. Rohde summarizes Pindar’s position as a divine origin for the soul, wanderings through several bodies (incarnations), judgment in Hades, assignments to the upper or lower worlds, and at last escape from the constricting circle of births, to become a “god.” 77) Rohde, op. cit., pp. 414-418. Such, he avers, is Pindar’s doctrine of the soul.CFF1 549.2

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