BWC2e: Eternal Blessedness; Eternal Damnation

      This continues from Part BWC2d in a series (Table of Contents in Part BWC1) presenting Walther's edition of Baier's Compendium of Positive Theology. —  From pages 181–223.

Notable Quotes: (Italics follow the original. All quotes not from Baier are from Walther's additions.)

Eternal Blessedness:

181: "a more distinct knowledge of that blessedness and of the clear knowledge of God cannot be obtained by the guidance of the light of nature, but must be learned from divine revelation."

181: Augustine: "This principally distinguishes Christians from the error of the Gentiles, that they believe not only in this life, but also in the future one."

185: Gerhard: "those whom they [the blessed] know to be eternally cast away from the face of God will not in the least desire any help or consolation for them from an inordinate affection"

187: "But the chief object of charity is God."

187: "the will [of the blessed], being perfectly determined and holy to the love of God, will not be able to fall away from God, nor sin."

188: "so that the holiness will be greater than that which had been bestowed upon the first-formed [Adam and Eve]."

189: "all of it [the good that blessed do] is precisely referred by them to the glory of God."

191: "all the faculties of the soul and the body itself must be perfected, so that it may be the beatitude not of the soul only, but of the whole man."

191: Luther: "It is not called a spiritual body for the reason that he should not live corporally, nor have flesh and blood; otherwise it could not be called a true body."

195: Gerhard: "Sickness and old age destroy beauty. But in the eternal life, neither sickness nor old age will have a place."

197: "a certain inequality among the blessеd will be discerned, according as one has given more proofs of Christian virtues than another in this life.…there will be no envy of differing glory there, where the unity of charity will reign in all"

199: Antithesis: Gerhard: "1. Modern Jews conflate the joys of eternal life with corporeal pleasures, food, drink, sex, etc.… 2. Muhammad in the Qur'an …promises the blessed in paradise splendid palaces, royal feasts, dances, and embraces of virgins"

201: Gerhard: "Antithesis: 2. Some of the Papists grant salvation to certain Gentiles who lack true faith in Christ. . . 3. The same doctrine pleased some Calvinists."

Eternal Damnation: 

203: Damnation is not "a mere absence of blessedness, but contains positive adversities and torments and the keenest sense of evils."

204: Gerhard: "If the impious were not to fear a punishment more severe than annihilation, it would not have been better for them not to have been born."

205: "the bodies of the damned will be incorruptible, …[which will contribute] to the increase of their misery,"

206: "although to know God pertains to the perfection of man, yet to know Him in this way is not of perfection, but of the gravest misery."

206: "Accordingly on the part of the will there will arise … hatred of themselves, since they will be the cause of their own misery"

207: "Finding no way to escape their evil, they seek and desire to die, or to cease to be altogether, or to be utterly destroyed, Revelation 9:6." [Beyond horror! The real Hell.]

209: "It is also certain that this fire will not be a spiritual one (for a fire so called would not be literal), but a material and corporeal one." [Fire burns.]

211: Gerhard: "It is better…to be concerned about fleeing from the fire, than to argue hatefully and idly about the nature of that fire."

211: Hafenreffer: "What are those torments? They are the most exquisite pains of mind and body"

212: Gerhard: "The eyes will be tormented by the sight of demons, the ears by the shrieking and groaning of fellow sufferers, the sense of smell by an intolerable stench…" [Need I continue?]

214: Scherzer: "As for the infants of Christians who die without baptism, this remains: it is not the deprivation, but the contempt of the sacrament that damns."

216: Christ "is, indeed, the executor of divine judgment, using divine authority and power, who will effectively command the wicked, as if accursed, to depart from Him into eternal fire…Matt. 25:41"

217: Gerhard: "Although only unbelief is the formal and adequate cause of damnation, nevertheless, the remaining sins should not be excluded …because they are the fruit and effect of unbelief"

218: Luther: "a Christian, even if he wanted to, cannot lose his salvation even by the gravest sins, unless he refuses to believe"

220: Chrysostom: "Let us not seek where it [Hell] is, but how to escape it."

221: "the punishments of all the damned…will be eternal"

221: "Not that they are to be finally annihilated, but that, remaining in existence, they will suffer punishment."

In the next Part BWC2f, Temporal Death.