A Larger Hope 2 Read online

  George de Benneville (1703–93)

  An interesting case study from the period is that of Dr. George de Benneville, a Separatist who came to Pennsylvania in 1741. De Benneville was born in London in 1703, the son of Aristocratic Huguenot (French Calvinist) refugees, fleeing Catholic persecution. He was brought up in the household of Queen Anne, who knew the family. As a boy, around 1716, he was sent to learn navigation on a boat bound for North Africa. His encounter with some pious and compassionate Muslims in Algiers convicted him of the shallowness of his own Christian devotion, yet on his return to London he fell back into a frivolous lifestyle. Nevertheless, the deep sense of his sin got the better of him: he became ill and experienced a vision of himself burning in hell. This sense of inner turmoil became chronic, until one day, fifteen months later, he found himself overwhelmed by an even deeper despair at his sinfulness than usual, and he simply let go, abandoning himself to the justice of God. Then:

  I discovered between Justice and me the criminal, one of the most majestic appearance, whose beauty, brightness, and grandeur cannot be described.—He cast a look of grace and mercy upon me, and regarded me with such love as penetrated my whole being, and animated my soul with so pure a flame, that I loved him again with a reciprocal love. He persuaded me in my heart that he was my Saviour, Mediator, and Reconciler.

  De Benneville sensed Christ praying for him before the Father. He then heard the divine voice declare that his sins were forgiven. Unable to contain himself any longer, he wept with joy and gratitude.

  This experience was life-changing for de Benneville, and so overwhelmed was he with the revelation of the depth and breath of God’s saving love and the efficacy of the atonement that he became convinced—there and then, and for the rest of his life—that this atoning love extended to all humanity.158 It also sealed in him a passion to preach the gospel to others so that they too could know this divine love.

  The French Calvinist ministers in London became very concerned about George’s new convictions and met with him to discuss matters, but agreement could not be reached: “for they held predestination, and I held the restoration of all souls. Having been the chief of sinners, I could not have a doubt but the whole world would be saved by the same power.”159 It is interesting that the very core of de Benneville’s Evangelical conversion experience was understood by him to contain the seeds of restorationism. As far as we know, he was not aware of any others who taught universalism at this time.

  George de Benneville was excommunicated and, aged seventeen, left for France to become a preacher for a couple of years. There he associated with various radical, pneumatic Protestants. They were often arrested and imprisoned, and on one occasion he got as far as the scaffold and was about to be beheaded when King Louis XV sent a messenger granting a reprieve. After release from prison in 1725 he went to Germany and Holland, associating with various radicals, including the Philadelphian community in Berleburg (see fn 19). He continued to travel and preach around Germany and the Lowlands for about eighteen years. Then he became seriously ill from stress caused by his concern over the plight of lost souls. In his near-death state he experienced a vision in which he was assured that he would soon “see” the “restoration of all the human species without exception.”160 His health continued to deteriorate to the point that he was thought to be dead—he himself felt his soul separate from his body. (He was presumably in some kind of coma.) In this state he experienced visions in which “the Most Holy Trinity” (de Benneville’s favorite way of naming God) sent angels to guide him on a tour of seven zones of hell, where he saw the suffering of the damned and felt “great compassion towards the sufferers.” After leaving hell, a messenger was sent to reassure him that “the Most Holy Trinity always works wonders in all times within his poor creatures, without exception. . . . [Y]ou shall return into your earthly tabernacle, to publish, and to proclaim to the people of the world an universal Gospel, that shall restore in its time all the human species, without exception, to its honour, and to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.” He then witnessed the multitudes of heavenly host worshipping the Triune God. He was next taken back to hell, and saw that there was no more darkness or pain—all was quiet. Suddenly the host of heaven shouted “An eternal and everlasting deliverance, an eternal and everlasting restoration, an universal and everlasting restitution of all things.” Then the damned were delivered from their sin and clothed in white robes; they joined the heavenly host in worshipping God. At this point, he was taken on a tour of the five heavenly mansions. There he met Adam, who told him, “this love of God in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, shall not only gain the victory over all the human species, but also surmount or overflow the kingdom of Satan entirely, with all the principalities of the fallen angels, and shall bring them back into their first glory, which they had in the beginning.” He awoke from the vision and found himself in a coffin, having been assumed dead for about forty-one hours!

  Receiving a call to preach in America, he emigrated in 1741, aged thirty-eight. By the time he arrived he was very ill, but was met at the wharf by Christopher Sower from Germantown (who apparently had received a dream from God to go and bring the sick man home).161 Sower nursed him back to health, and thus began a fruitful relationship between the two men, especially in regard to various publishing projects. (Sower ran a printing press in Germantown.) The most significant of these was the publication of The Everlasting Gospel by Paul Siegvolck in 1753 (see next section).

  De Benneville was eclectic and ecumenical in his influences and associations,162 but radical in his instincts. He was of “spiritual” inclination, disliking formal creeds, religious hierarchies, and outward rituals, and eschewing social privilege (he fiercely repudiated any deference to himself on the grounds of his aristocratic lineage).

  In addition to being a preacher, de Benneville was also a medical doctor, and his skills were in much demand in the colony. He became a respected figure in the community, and among the local Native American tribes,163 and his time was spent in medicine, running an apothecary shop, as well as working as a schoolmaster, but always, until the end of his days at age ninety, preaching the “everlasting gospel” of God’s universal saving love in Christ.

  Paul Siegvolk’s The Everlasting Gospel

  One of the influential Restorationist texts of the period was Paul Siegvolck’s The Everlasting Gospel. The book was written under a pseudonym; the actual author was likely Georg Klein-Nicolai, a follower of Johann Petersen and a deposed pastor from Friessdorf, later pastor in Zeulenroda. It was originally published in German, being included as part of the first volume of Petersen’s Mysterion in 1700. The book was translated into English and published by Christopher Sower in Germantown in 1753 at the instigation and expense of George de Benneville. (Elhanan Winchester also published an edition in London in 1792.) Given its wide circulation and influence, it is worth outlining the argument.

  In good millenarian fashion, the work is presented as a gracious appeal of God to call sinners to repentance prior to the coming eschatological judgment (see its preface). What sets the book apart from some others is the theologically focused organization of the presentation of restorationism. The author builds his case step by step by highlighting key principles and defending them from the Bible.

  Siegvolck begins with God (ch. 1).164 God can only be known by divine self-revelation through the Spirit-inspired Scriptures. And what do we find there? That “all descriptions of the Divine Being, that we find in holy Scriptures, together with all that may be believed, thought, or uttered of God, center in this one word, Love: . . . GOD IS LOVE” (2). Everything God is and does comes from his love. God cannot hate himself and, consequently, cannot hate his creatures. It “necessarily follows hence, that even the most dreadful punishments which God, in the age or ages to come, will inflict on bad angels and men, as far as they proceed from him, are grounded in no other principle than that of Love” (4). We thus see
that divine wrath and justice must also be understood to be “at the bottom nothing else but Love” (5). The biblical God will not inflict never-ending punishment on sinful creatures, for such punishment cannot be for their ultimate good (ch. 2).

  The doctrine of God, as taught in Scripture, also teaches us that while sinners can resist God for a time, everything that God wills must be fulfilled in the end (ch. 3). And this divine will, according to the Bible, clearly includes the salvation of all people. So creaturely freedom can withstand the divine will for a time, but not for eternity, and God will even utilize such resistance for his ultimate purposes. (If a creature could resist God for eternity, then it would prove stronger than God, and evil stronger than the good!)

  Creatures have their origin in God, and what God has made is good and can endure for eternity. However, sin and evil spring up from the will of the creature through choices made in this world, not from God (ch. 4). Such things cannot endure forever. To suggest otherwise yields an eternal cosmic dualism of good and evil. God loves creatures, with their good natures, which originate from him, and he hates sin, which seeks to corrupt those natures (ch. 5).

  So it is not fallen creatures that are evil and worthy only of destruction, but their perverted wills. God in Christ works to undo the damage that sin has caused so as to restore creation to its primal goodness. Christ’s atoning death on the cross was intended for all and is efficacious for all (ch. 6). If, per impossible, any remain unsaved in the end, then Christ’s death for them was in vain and Satan has forever defeated Christ in regard to those creatures. If many or most remain in hell forever, then Satan far outstrips Christ in his triumph. This is unthinkable!

  Chapter 7 moves on to consider that staple of all discussions of hell in this period—the word “eternal” (aiōnios). A few Scriptures describe the punishment of the wicked as “eternal” (Isa 33:14; Dan 12:2; Matt 18:8; 25:41, 46; Mark 3:29; 2 Thess 1:7–9), and such verses were foundational for traditional theology of hell. Siegvolck distinguishes different usages of the words before arguing, in chapter 8, that the punishment of the wicked is not never-ending, but endures for an age (i.e., a set period of time, with a beginning and end). Indeed, if it endured forever, the punishment would be disproportionate and unjust.

  Damnation, like heavenly glory, comes in different kinds and in different degrees (chs. 9–10). Divine punishment of sin is “death.” In this age, such “death” is a corrupt nature and an evil conscience with its accompanying spiritual and bodily torments. It is being enslaved to sin, reaping the harvest of the bad seeds we sow. The notion of “death” as punishment covers spiritual death, bodily death, and aiōnian death. We also need to distinguish the first death from the second death. Siegvolck believes that the “first death” covers not simply bodily death but the entire state of body and soul under the rule of sin and the wrath of God during (a) this life, (b) bodily death, and (c) confinement to Hades, with its torments (proportioned to one’s sin). The second death is the lake of fire.

  The books set out a grand view of history that breaks it down in the following fashion:

  “This present age”

  “The age to come”

  The “still eternity”

  Pre-flood

  Post-flood

  WE ARE HERE

  Christ returns

  The millennium

  Final Judgment

  “the ages of ages”

  “God will be all in all”

  “the first death”

  “the second death”

  Death defeated

  We currently live in the post-flood “age” of the present age, awaiting the soon-to-return Christ. When Christ returns at the end of this present age, those who have been faithful to him in this age will be raised to rule with him for a thousand years in the millennium (these are “the church of the first-born”). The rest will be confined to Hades, with its torments. At the end of the millennium, there is a general judgment. Then a second resurrection raises those who were not worthy to partake in the first, but who have come to Christ in Hades and had their names included in the Lamb’s book of life (Siegvolck called them the “church of the after-born”). Yet, still many remain in sin and they are sentenced to the “second death”—confinement to the lake of fire for “the ages of ages” (i.e., a very, very long time). But, in the end, all will be saved through Christ from the lake of fire. The “church of the after-born” thus includes both those who are after-born from the first death and those who are eventually after-born from the second death (including those who blasphemed against the Holy Spirit).

  At this point, “the future age . . . is changed into that still or silent eternity, wherein God is to be all in all, after Jesus Christ shall have subdued everything to himself, and brought all into order and harmony. I Cor xv.28” (85).165 This return of all creatures to God does not, of course, destroy “the true difference between the being of the Creator and that of the creature” (108), but it speaks of all creatures “pervaded by God’s Spirit, and, as one might say in a sort, deified, (or made partakers of the divine nature.) God with them, and they with God, in a manner will be but one Spirit . . . joined unto the Lord. . . . But this is impossible to be so long as the creatures remain in sin and death” (112). And in order to destroy all the works of the devil, Christ must annihilate sin in all fallen creatures.

  Siegvolck ends the book with a defense of restorationism against the ever-present objection that it removes the motivation for godly living and thereby undermines civic order (ch. 13).

  There are several interesting parallels between Siegvolck’s theology and the patristic apokatastasis tradition. One thinks, for instance, of the restorative role of punishment, of an understanding of divine wrath that is “worthy of God,” of the critical role played by the understanding of evil as a privation, of the necessity for sin’s annihilation from the wills of sinful creatures, and of the distinction between “the age(s) to come” and the climax of creation beyond all ages in which God is “all in all” and the final restoration is complete. Siegvolck never makes explicit reference to any of his sources (Scripture excepted), but it seems very likely that he was aware of the patristic tradition. Yet Siegvolck is also clearly a Protestant with strong premillennialist convictions and a concern to demonstrate all his claims from the Bible in a way that the heirs of the Reformation would find acceptable. He was, in effect, rethinking and repackaging the patristic tradition for his own time and place.

  Siegvolk’s book was to become influential amongst those sympathetic to the universal restoration, especially in the “New World” of America. We shall be considering one of its most significant converts to the cause, Elhanan Winchester, in the next chapter. But before we reflect on Winchester we need to take a look at a few important British universalists in this period.

  127. The name comes from the letter to the church in Philadelphia from Revelation 3:7–13. If the seven churches are read as seven church ages, then the Philadelphian church, in the sixth church age, is the one that preserves the true spirit of Christian love until Christ’s return.

  128. German translations of most of Lead’s works were published in between 1694 and 1705, finding an immediate audience.

  129. The turn toward universalism among the Philadelphians required a move beyond and modification of the teaching of Jacob Böhme, the German mystic who was (and remained) a major influence on parts of the movement (though not all were followers of Böhme’s teaching). See the appendix of this book.

  130. Johann Petersen, Das Leben, 330.

  131. Johanna Petersen, Life, 86.

 
132. Johanna Petersen, Life, 87.

  133. Johanna Petersen, Life, 87–88.

  134. On Johann Gichtel, his initial admiration of Lead and then his subsequent rejection of her work (and his fallout and break from with the Petersens in 1701), see Martin, “God’s Strange Providence”; McClymond, Devil’s Redemption, 487–91. Gichtel was initially open on the issue of universal salvation, but subsequently rejected it; perhaps it was too much of a departure from Böhme, and he always deferred to Böhme when in doubt. According to Martin, his rejection of Lead was driven by a mix of theological and psychological factors.

  135. This particular volume was given to them by Baron Dodo von Knyphausen, a patron of various radical groups. Johann Petersen, Das Leben, 297. However, Martin has shown that they were already familiar with Lead and her work from at least 1694. Martin, “God’s Strange Providence.”

  136. Walker, Decline of Hell, 234.

  137. For Johann’s account of their conversion to restorationism, see Johann Petersen, Das Leben, 297–307.

  138. Johanna Petersen, Life, 92–94.

  139. Johann Petersen, Mysterion Apokatastaseos, 1.140–47.

  140. A book that the philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1649–1716) read soon after it appeared and considerably appreciated.