Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Doctrine 11, the last of The Salvation Army’s doctrines, is the Army’s eschatology. Eschatology is the study of the end times, heaven and hell, what life after death means, and generally everything to do with our future reality. This page briefly explores what this doctrine means, why it matters, and how we can apply it to our life. You can read more about The Salvation Army Doctrines here and you can watch a series of short Salvation Army Doctrine Videos here.
We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the endless punishment of the wicked.
What Salvation Army Doctrine 11 Actually Says
As with every one of The Salvation Army’s 11 doctrines, doctrine 11 begins with ‘we believe’. This is something we hold together as a collective. It is not an individual belief. Shared agreement to the doctrines is one of the marks of Salvationist belonging. Yet this doctrine is one of the ones that has a really broad range of interpretations and beliefs all held within the general ‘fence’ of the doctrine.
The willingness to accept a broad view is essential when dealing with eschatology, because no one knows for certain what will happen when we die. It is a matter of faith. We hold these things to be true because of what we read in the Bible, see in the person of Jesus, work out through our reason, tested by our experience, and hear from the Holy Spirit. Not every view is equally valid, there are some beliefs that are outside the ‘fence’ of this doctrine. But we should make space for anything that fits within the broad scope of this doctrine.
Does The Salvation Army Believe in the Immortality of the Soul?
The starting point is actually a bit tricky. The Salvation Army believes in the immortality of the soul, but not in the way you might be thinking or expecting. The Army believes in the conditional immortality of the soul. This is an important distinction.
When people think about the soul, they often think of a ghost living inside a body which then goes either up to heaven or down to hell when the body dies. In this way of seeing the world, the soul is the spiritual seat of our existence, and the body is like a vehicle that we move around. For some people, and some religions, the body then becomes an evil thing. The spiritual is good and the physical is bad. But this isn’t what Christianity, or the Bible, says is true. You can read more about what the Bible says about souls here.
Instead, the Army says that our life, our existence, and the continuance of that life after death, is conditional upon God’s loving grace and desire to sustain that which God has created. We do not possess an immortal soul. Our soul is who we are, and God preserves that after our death until we can be resurrected in the coming new creation. We did not exist before we were created; there is no repository of souls in heaven which are then sent down into bodies.
So when we say that we believe in the immortality of the soul, we are saying very little about us, and an awful lot about who God is. To say we believe in the immortality of the soul means saying we believe in a God who cares about creation, who wants to sustain what they have created, and whose loving relationship with us cannot be broken even by death. It means that death is not a barrier to the love of God.
What Does The Salvation Army Believe About the Resurrection?
The body matters. It is not an after thought. Our body is who we are. Who I am is not a spiritual being inside my body. My body, mind, memory, personality, emotions, reason, and faith, are all part of who I am, all at the same time. It is the unity of these things that makes me who I am, so when we speak about souls, we are talking about our whole person.
When we talk about resurrection, this is not shorthand for a spiritual heaven. Resurrection and life after death are not automatically the same thing. Resurrection is explicitly held as resurrection of the body. The Bible speaks very little about heaven, at least not the kind of heaven we normally think about, because heaven as a purely spiritual reality after death simply isn’t really in the Bible.
Heaven as a spiritual place we go when we die is not the end goal of salvation. That heaven is only temporary. It is a resting and waiting place for us while we wait for the resurrection. That is why in Revelation 6:9-11 we see an image of the martyrs crying out to God in heaven. They are waiting for resurrection. Heaven is what we are talking about when we say conditional immortality. God is preserving us in the unnatural separation of our life from our body, until there comes the time when we will become embodied people again.
This is not reincarnation. We need to be really clear about this. Resurrection is tied into the promise of the new creation. In the future, after the end of this world (whatever that will look like), God will create the new heavens and the new earth. And the most wonderful thing about this is that heaven and earth will be joined together. They will be the same place. God will dwell directly with us, and the glory of the presence of the Lord will be in all things, people, and places.
The Physical Reality of Resurrection
This will be a physical reality, that in some way is a continuation of the old reality. It is not a creation out of nothing, it is a creation from the old. The new creation is redemption, restoration, and healing. Just as when Jesus was resurrected his body carried the marks of his suffering and death, so for this new creation will it be made out of the old. Maybe not directly, or even in a way that always makes sense to us.
We don’t know how God is going to do it. But God’s promise for our future is not a spiritual escape from the world. It is commitment to the goodness of created reality that will be healed and restored into a place where heaven and earth are joined together. And we will be there, participating and sharing in it, as a physical being, not a disembodied soul.
This has huge implications for how we see our body and this created world here and now.
What Does The Salvation Army Believe About the Last Judgement?
The general judgement at the end of the world is the promise of God’s victorious love. This is a key point to grasp. We normally think of judgement in terms of punishment, or of a law court, where your actions and intentions and maybe even your thoughts are held up to scrutiny to see if you’ve done enough. But that’s not what God is doing.
Judgement is an essential part of forgiveness and love. Judgement is the honest assessment of who we are and what we have done. But without that judgement we cannot be forgiven and so we cannot know ourselves as loved by God.
Judgement is not something to be feared. Because all of us have fallen short of who we could be. Everyone is a sinner. All of us have made and continue to make mistakes and bad decisions. But as we share in the life of Christ through the Holy Spirit it is Christ who is judged in us and so we are seen through Christ’s Righteousness and not our own. On our own we would fail. But with Christ we are forgiven and restored.
In accepting our need of forgiveness we know ourselves as loved by God. Thus the experience of judgement is the experience of love. The kind of love that desires our good above all things.
So the general judgement gives us hope for the future. Hope not also for ourselves, but for all people. For this judgement comes at the end of all things, for the living and the dead. And for the Christian faith, what else is judgement other than forgiveness? You can read more about the hope that hell will be empty here.
What Does Salvation Army Doctrine 11 Say About Heaven?
This is the hope that enabled the martyrs to go to their deaths, that preserves people in horrible suffering, and which helps people endure oppression and injustice when all else seems lost. The promise that one day all will be well, our pain will end, and we will experience pure joy for eternity, has been the comfort of millions.
The eternal happiness of the righteous is rooted in the direct experience of God. This is called the beatific vision — the moment when we see God face to face, fully and without anything in between. God in our life, fully present, is to experience the source of all love and joy. It means going back to the source of all good and life and light.
But, the eternal happiness does not mean that what happens now doesn’t matter. The promise of a better future does not mean our suffering now doesn’t matter, nor does it make oppression and injustice acceptable. The eternal happiness of the righteous is part of God’s judgement on the world.
We carry our life with us into the world to come. The eternal happiness of our future with God is the glorification and healing of what we have gone through. We do not forget it, and it doesn’t take away its significance. The reality of life with God robs that pain of its power over us.
REFLECTION SPACE — The Promise That Holds
Scripture: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4, NRSV)
A Prayer to Begin: Lord, let me receive this promise rather than just think about it. Amen.
Prompt: What are you carrying right now that you need this promise to speak to? It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It might be something small and quiet that has been heavy for a long time.
What Does The Salvation Army Believe About Hell?
This is the one that people either really love or really hate. I worry about people who love this part of the doctrine just a little bit too much.
There are three main ways of understanding this doctrine. The first is called eternal conscious torment, and basically means believing that people that don’t accept Jesus are consigned to hell where they will suffer and be imprisoned for all eternity. The second is called annihilationism, which basically means that anyone that doesn’t accept Jesus will cease to exist when they die. The third is called universalism, and basically means that one way or another everyone will be saved in the end.
Each one of those three beliefs contain lots of different interpretations and versions. But they provide the broad, generally agreed on, ways of seeing this doctrine. All three can be supported from scripture to a greater or lesser degree.
There are days when I struggle with this part of the doctrine, then there are days when I think of the people who cause immense pain and suffering to others, and I start liking it again.
But that’s the problem. We like it when people get what they deserve. We like it when things are fair. And for most of us, fair means bad people getting punished and good people getting rewarded. But God’s grace doesn’t work like that. God’s grace is essentially unfair.
None of us deserve God’s forgiveness. All of us are wicked and fallen. But in our faithful acceptance of God’s forgiveness, we are accepted despite our failures. There are many who do not accept that forgiveness in this life. But perhaps we can dare to believe that in the hope of the general judgement all might one day come to faith in Jesus.
But we need to see salvation as broader than just individuals. The Gospel is not just about me getting to heaven and avoiding hell. That would be a kind of divine insurance plan. Instead, salvation is about the restoration of right relationships, the sanctification of creation, and the destruction of evil.
The destruction of evil includes systems and structures, and dark spiritual forces. We hope and believe that even these forces might be redeemed. But they must be destroyed if they cannot be redeemed. Their punishment is eternal because it is final. Their power, broken on the cross, is destroyed in the age to come, when even death shall be put to death. You can read more about spiritual warfare against the Powers here.
How Does Salvation Army Doctrine 11 Change How You Live?
The doctrine about end things means more than just what we believe about the future. It matters very much for our life now.
If we are confident that whatever happens to us now, we can be bold in taking risks. We will be willing to put ourselves on the line for others if it is ever necessary. And it robs oppressive and abusive forces of their power.
When the worst they can do is kill and inflict suffering, they can never completely crush or destroy a follower of Jesus. It’s why tyrants are so scared of Christians. Not because of their power but because of their faith.
But the doctrine also matters for our normal, day to day life. If we believe that creation will in some sense endure into the new creation, and that our body matters, not just our inner life, then that should change how we see creation.
We are reminded that the things that happen now actually matter. How we treat our bodies, other people’s bodies, and creation, all reflects on what we believe about the future.
The doctrine of new creation means we must pay attention to creation today. How are we using the world’s natural resources? What are we doing to care for creation? To honour the gift that God has given to us? Because if we believe that this creation continues in some way into the new creation, then how we treat it now matters for our future.
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