Is Hell Forever?
What Kirk Cameron and other annihilationists miss.
Last week, Kirk Cameron created waves across evangelicalism when he discussed his views on the eternality of hell. In the episode, Cameron explains that he now holds to a position known as annihilationism, or conditional immortality. One of the comments I’ve seen online in the past week from those seeking to either defend Cameron, or at least bring balance to the discussion, is the question: how many of you blasting Kirk Cameron for this view have ever actually looked into the arguments or ever reached out to and interacted with a proponent of the view?
Well, I have studied it. One of my old college professors became convinced of annihilationism some years ago, so I started studying the issue. Not only that, but I have reached out to and interacted with one of the prominent proponents of this view.
You’ll find our conversation below.
Annihilationism, or Conditional Immortality—the term preferred by those who hold to it—is the view that when the unsaved are cast into the lake of fire after the Great White Throne Judgment, they, body and soul, will be annihilated. They will cease to exist.
There is a group of conservative (as opposed to those who don’t care about the inerrancy and authority of Scripture) evangelical theologians who are propounding this idea through their website/podcast/book project titled, Rethinking Hell. In their “Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism,” they state:
Conditionalism is the view that life or existence is the Creator’s provisional gift to all, which will ultimately either be granted forever on the basis of righteousness (by grace, through faith), or revoked forever on the basis of unrighteousness.
Evangelical conditionalists believe that the saved in Christ will receive glory, honor and immortality, being raised with an incorruptible body to inherit eternal life (Romans 2:7). The unsaved will be raised in shame and dishonor, to face God and receive the just condemnation for their sins. When the penalty is carried out, they will be permanently excluded from eternal life by means of a final death (loss of being; destruction of the whole person; Matthew 10:28).
Although I have not been convinced of conditionalism, I have grown to respect these men and have benefited from thinking through their work. About 7 years ago, I interacted with one of the writers at Rethinking Hell, Peter Grice, about one of their common arguments, and thought it may be of help to share part of our discussion (with Mr. Grice’s permission).
After a brief introduction and thanking Mr. Grice for his work, my initial argument and inquiry are as follows:
One objection to Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is that if ECT is the punishment for sin, then how do we explain Jesus taking our punishment on himself? That would mean Jesus must have suffered eternally—which, of course, he did not.
I actually agree with you that the common answer—that Jesus, being God, could suffer infinitely in a finite matter of time—is not a good response. If the nature of the punishment must be eternal in time, then Jesus could not have experienced that temporarily. That’s equivocating on the nature of the punishment. We agree. I think your critique at this point is entirely fair, and has helped me think through my understanding of the nature of the penalty for sin.
My response would be more along the lines of this: it seems that the penalty for sin is not inherently eternal conscious torment. Rather, the penalty for sin is, and always has been, death (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23). I have not been convinced of how you define death as necessarily meaning ceasing to exist (rather than separation—see James 2:26), but the solution to your critique in my view, then, would be that the length of time someone remains in conscious torment is not necessarily inherent to the penalty itself. The penalty itself is that of being in the state of death (again, I’d still argue spiritual death is spiritual separation from God). So, for Jesus to take the penalty on himself, but only to remain dead for a short time, is not quite as problematic in my view, since—the penalty being death—Jesus did fully experience that state.
The question of how long unbelievers remain existing in that state without ceasing to exist is then simply a matter of exegesis. In other words, I don’t have any strong theological problem with the idea that unbelievers go to hell and, by implication (not by necessity) are annihilated. I would just separate out that natural result from the penalty for sin and say that this annihilation is not itself the penalty for sin.
This leads me to my actual question. The reason I would have a theological problem with annihilation itself being the penalty for sin, is, once again, the atonement of Christ. I think that your critique of the traditional view (as creating problems for interpreting the atonement) is a solid critique at this point. However, in my opinion, looking at the atonement is actually one of the strongest arguments against the conditional immortality view as well.
If you say that the penalty for sin is death, and you define death as annihilation—both body and soul ceasing to exist—and this is why annihilation of unbelievers in the lake of fire is necessary, then I think you still have an issue at the atonement. If the penalty for sin is one’s soul being destroyed—annihilated—then in order for Christ to truly take the penalty of sin on himself, that would mean his soul was annihilated—Jesus ceased to exist (at least until he was, somehow, brought back into existence at the resurrection).
Is that actually an implication you would follow through on? Or am I misunderstanding your position entirely, and you would not say that death (annihilation) is the penalty for sin (which would be difficult given Romans 6:23 et al)? Again, I would argue that death does not mean annihilation, so the absolute state of death (with no inherent reference to chronological duration of conscious torment) is the penalty for sin, though I would argue exegetically that the souls of unbelievers do remain forever in hell. [I would argue that Jesus was able to fully experience the state of death and then come out of it because he triumphed over sin, and thus was not held subject to sin’s penalty—death. Whereas unbelievers, dying in their sin, remain under the penalty—death—with no way of escape. The punishment is eternal.]
But if we connect death and annihilation and say that ceasing to exist is the penalty for sin, then I have a huge theological conundrum, because I can’t see how we can say that Jesus experienced the penalty for sin—unless his soul too was annihilated. Are you going to argue that Jesus, in his death on the cross, was, body and soul, annihilated? And if he didn’t cease to exist—his soul was not annihilated—then in what sense did he actually experience the penalty for sin as our substitute?
Thank you for your time.
Mr. Grice’s response 1:
Dear Christopher,
Thank you so much for the kind and encouraging words about our ministry!
Your question makes sense, and comes up fairly often.
It is understandable when people think that our claims include such things as the definition of death being ceasing to exist, and the punishment for sin being annihilation. I think that you’re rightly discerning some of the relationships and pitfalls in this area.
But evangelical conditionalism is a particular model to essentially bracket out the thorny questions of constitutional anthropology (physicalism vs. dualism vs. agnosticism), and whatever goes on in the intermediate state. Here’s what I would say. Death is the ending of life (not existence). In the relevant case, human life. Human life and personhood is biblically constituted in Genesis, where Adam (for example) is more than the sum of his parts, at least while alive. Whatever might be believed about an immaterial part surviving between death and resurrection, it’s not Adam as we know him, nor is he alive as we know it. So we must not shift to philosophical categories and, against the grain of biblical terminology, call the dead the living. Resurrection is a concept “of the dead” and “from the dead,” so our definition of life and death is preserved until everyone has been brought back to life again. The biblical language of sleep isn’t meant to disclose whether an immaterial part is conscious or not in death, but is a logical construct used to anticipate resurrection as a return to life.
So we arrive at Jesus’ criticism to the Sadducees: we need to know both the scriptures and the power of God, in order to see that God’s revealed intention is how we know something will happen, and no natural mechanism or circumstance could possibly stand in his way. Discussing means and mechanisms is often how our topic can get dragged into the weeds. In the final analysis, our category is soteriology, not anthropology, and we are looking to the question of immortality proper, which pertains to everlasting life.
Unfortunately, some conditionalists in the past (not necessarily part of the evangelical conditionalist movement) have conflated God’s intentions in eternal life and eternal punishment, with one of conditionalism’s tenets, the denial that an immaterial soul has immortality (note: not the denial of an immaterial soul). It turns out that even this is not a necessary tenet of our view, for that is only talking about natural immortality, the mechanistic capacity to survive on its own steam, which is not match for a God who would be prepared to annihilate such a soul nonetheless. It turns out that pretty much all of our philosophical reasoning in this area is circumvented by divine prerogative. All we need to focus on is understanding God’s will with respect to our eternal fates.
Which brings me to the other aspect of your line of questioning, to do with final punishment being eternal, and the demands for consistency with the substitutionary payment of Jesus Christ, under penal substitution.
To that I would offer that the requirements for an atoning sacrifice of death are indeed the same as the penalty for sin, where death is the cessation of life. Furthermore, the same penalty for sin is the standard for final punishment as well, as I’ll explain. But we need to also follow through on what I call ordinary death, which is Adam’s death and our own, in terms of the conundrum of how Christians can possibly still die if we annihilationionists are right about the penalty for sin (how indeed can Christians be punished for our sins anyway?).
Well, the problem is that we are reducing death to an event, when the point of a death penalty is the ongoing cessation of life. That kind of privative punishment is active so long as the person remains dead. Romans 6 helps to show that in the relevant biblical application, death is a thing that can still have dominion and power of you, even in resurrection, where to be released from that dominion means that you will never die again. Ergo, the function of death extends beyond the mere event of death, and principally has to do with an abstract administration, whether we speak of the delegated role given to Satan in wielding the power, or God’s higher judicial economy in which individual deservingness is assessed (against, for example, the harm they will continue to cause if permitted to live on).
So the payment of death for sin is foremost a judicial standard that God uses, requiring the laying down of life, and enduring so long as God is reckoning that punishment to the individual. A temporary resurrection unto judgment is not a victory over death, but a resurrection unto eternal life is. A second death is essentially a ratification of the first, and resumes it forever. Not because death itself must necessarily be permanent, but because the context of judgment day provides an “eternal judgment” (Heb 6:2) and “eternal punishment” (Matt 25:46), such that the punishment receives its eternality on that occasion from that context.
The fact that Jesus laid down his life, committing his spirit into the Father’s hands, was enough. Hypothetically, the Father could have kept him dead. But once the atoning sacrifice is accepted (let’s say three days later, as it pleased the Father), Jesus is rescued from death on account of his own righteous life (“the power of an indestructible life,” Heb 7:16). He does not deserve to stay dead forever. Instead, he deserves life forever. You might like to read my recent article at our website, responding to Tim Keller, at the point where I talk about how Jesus was saved from death not by avoidance, but in the midst of death—and this is how Christians are also saved from death, the penalty of sin (the article points to a few things that aren’t commonly appreciated). It is not as if most of us avoid the event of death. But our deaths will be swallowed up in victory, as we rise to immortal life. We are saved from the penalty of sin in this way.
Finally, it’s true that some of what I’ve said might technically leave open the door for the destruction of the body only, in final judgment. There’s more to say about that, and I’ll try to address it in an article I’m working on about this whole question. I would simply offer for now that Matthew 10:28’s “body and soul” seems to preclude it. And it’s not such a bad thing if we need to rely on special revelation to know for sure that the whole person is destroyed in the end. It may be that the term “destruction” provides that stronger connotation, as well as the notion of consuming and unquenchable divine fire being the destroying agent. All we need to know is that we really miss the point if we insist that death must be defined according to such mechanics. The whole point of annihilation is the forfeit of eternal life, and we can allow God the flexibility to do that more thoroughly than the forfeit of life on a previous occasion.
I hope that there’s something here to shed light, and that it helps to resolve some tensions for you.
Blessings,
Peter Grice
What do you think of Grice’s response? There were some helpful aspects to it, and a couple of good points he made (particularly the point about the effectiveness of the death penalty being the lasting cessation of life, and the point about not avoiding the event of death, but death being swallowed up in victory in the resurrection). But there still seem to be some weaknesses and blind-spots in his response, and in Conditionalism in general.
One item that surprised me in his response was how he shied away from defining death as the cessation of existence. Now, read their defining statement, search around on their site, and see how you think they are understanding life and death. This seems to be one of the basic tenets of their view, and yet Grice pushed against it. They may want to nuance it more than I am, certainly; but it’s difficult to get around the fact that the basic claim is: death means the annihilation of body and soul; the penalty for sin is death; thus, the penalty for sin is the annihilation of body and soul (destruction/cessation of existence). Well, I sent a short reply to Mr. Grice to see if he would more clearly explain his understanding of life and death. Here it is, with his response, below.
Mr. Grice,
Thank you so much for your response. That was helpful on some fronts. I am curious though: if you would not define death as the cessation of existence (annihilation), how would you define life and death?
Thanks again.
Grice’s 2nd Response
I think that the concepts of life and death are normally left undefined, because everybody already understands them. I’m alive right now, and my grandfather is dead. This is consistent with how the Bible speaks. Though the “dead in Christ” could be considered conscious in death, on one view of the intermediate state, nonetheless they are reckoned “dead,” not living. The dead come alive in resurrection (Rev 20:5).
It’s only when we get into theology and philosophy that we start to feel the need for definitions. In Christian theology we often hear people try to define death as separation, as if death is the splitting apart of one thing into two. And maybe that occurs, but that’s no justification for loading it into the definition of death.
When I say that my grandfather died thirty years ago, I do not mean that he split in two, or that half of him died and half didn’t. Rather, I mean that one moment he himself was living, and the next moment he himself was not living.
Hence, death is the cessation of life. That was my working definition below. Life is just what Adam and Eve had in the garden, but do not have until the resurrection.
So to me the cessation of life isn’t about annihilation, or the cessation of all aspects of being. It’s an embodied thing. A human being / living creature is not a disembodied spirit. That’s not how Genesis portrays us at all. Whatever immaterial aspects we may have are only part of what we are, not the whole.
What do you think? Is this a satisfactory answer?
The reason we “start to feel the need for definitions” when we get into philosophy and theology is because we’re seeking to really understand things. Do you think that “everybody already understands” life and death if we can’t even define them (without begging the question)? In a followup post reflecting on this conversation, I wrote the following:
I’ve never thought of not worrying about a definition for understanding death. If you can’t/won’t define something—do you really understand it?
The reason we “start to feel the need for definitions” when we get into philosophy and theology is because we’re seeking to truly understand things.
Death speaks of separation. Physical death—contra the conditionalists—is not the cessation of consciousness, or the ending of all of that person’s activity. Physical death happens when the soul and body are separated—see James 2:26. Physical death is the separation of the soul and body. Spiritual death is our spiritual separation from God. Again, not unconsciousness… not cessation of existence.
Mr. Grice did not want to define death. He insisted that everyone intuitively knows what we mean. But I disagree. If you can’t define it, how much do you really understand it? One of the most important disciplines in theology is defining your terms.
Perhaps a couple of syllogisms can best demonstrate the formal logic of the issue:
Here is the basic argument of Conditional Immortality syllogized:
The penalty for sin is death.
Death is the cessation of existence.
Jesus bore the penalty for sin on the cross on our behalf.
Therefore…
Do you see the necessitated conclusion of the logic? It’s that Jesus ceased to exist (at least temporarily).
Now, Mr. Grice would probably challenge my representation of the second premise above, as he did in his response. But, having received no satisfactory definition in response, and given the way it’s stated numerous times throughout Rethinking Hell, I think it’s fair to say that, no matter the semantic gymnastics, conditionalists are functionally defining death as the cessation of existence.
Allow me to try to put my own argument from the initial post into a syllogism as well:
The penalty for sin is death.
Jesus bore the penalty of sin on the cross on our behalf.
Therefore, however one defines death, Jesus experienced it.
But Jesus did not cease to exist.
Therefore, annihilation (cessation of existence) is not the penalty for sin.
Another syllogism, taking the above conclusion (and the foundational premise) and applying it to the definition of death then:
Death is the penalty for sin.
Annihilation is not the penalty for sin.
Therefore, death is not the cessation of existence (annihilation).
Mr. Grice then replied:
I think you are being a bit disingenuous here. In the same email you quote above, I went right on to give you my definition of death, saying, “Death is the cessation of life. That was my working definition below.” You had asked me to clarify this in a followup question, and make no mistake, I replied with an answer, as clearly as I could.
The human race has what is called a basic working definition for the term “death,” and that’s it: the cessation or ending of life, and subsequent lack thereof. You can deploy all kinds of analytical categories to give alternative definitions if you like, such as those controlling the question of what may transpire according to parts of human beings during and after the event of death. Nonetheless, at base, death is a functional term to negate life, just as cold is the absence of heat, and darkness the absence of light. Failure to acknowledge the normal definition used by conditionalists (and endorsed by some notable traditionalsts as well in this connection), leads you to continue to straw man our position with the claim that we argue “Death is the cessation of existence.” I’m sorry, this is very poor form–I completely reject that unbiblical definition, and took much time in our exchange to explain why.
My Reply:
Thanks for taking the time to interact. I do not mean to be disingenuous. I quoted your email in the previous post in which you do indeed define death as the cessation of life. I was merely looking at a specific issue from one angle in this particular follow-up post.
I think defining death as the cessation of life is tautological. Perhaps if there were a good definition of life, then this would not be the case. But how would conditionalists define life? As the state of not being dead? As consciousness? But consciousness of what—the physical body only? (in that case then, what is it that makes the body unconscious—dead—if not the separation of the soul from it). Or perhaps here too the resort would be to say that we don’t really need to worry about defining it further than our intuitive understanding.
I don’t think it works to say the human race just has an understanding of what death is. Humanity does not have a consistent working definition of death. A Buddhist has a radically different concept of what death is than a Muslim, which is radically different than that of an atheistic naturalist, which is radically different than that of a Christian. Understanding “what may transpire according to parts of human beings during and after the event of death” is not a tangential issue. It directly impacts how we understand what happens at the event of death; it is wrapped up in what exactly we mean by death; and it is not purely in the realm of speculation since Scripture does in fact have something to say about it.
I don’t think I am straw manning or failing to acknowledge the normal definition used by conditionalists. I understand that you seem to reject as unbiblical the understanding of death as the cessation of existence; I’m just not sure how that lines up with the rest of conditionalism, and am not sure you represent the “normal,” common position in completely rejecting that definition as unbiblical.
For example, the Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism says:
“Conditionalism is the view that life or existence is the Creator’s provisional gift to all, which will ultimately either be granted forever on the basis of righteousness (by grace, through faith), or revoked forever on the basis of unrighteousness.”
In other words, the synonym used in the Statement for life is existence. So what is the cessation of life if not the cessation of existence? Granted, the understanding of existence has more layers to it, as discussed in this article. But even there, focusing on the primacy of consciousness, Joseph Dear says, “This form of ‘ceasing to exist’ means to forever cease to be a conscious entity. And in that sense, sure, annihilationism is ceasing to exist.”
Dear goes on to once again make the faulty connection with our perception and understanding of dead bodies. Everyone knows a dead body is unconscious, and in no meaningful sense “exists” or lives, as we know life. Dear says, “Regardless of what one one [sic] believes about immaterial souls and their status after the body dies, we know what a dead body is like.”
But there’s the rub. We can’t discuss any of this “regardless of what one believes about immaterial souls and their status after the body dies.” That is tightly tied to the whole discussion of seeking to understand death, and then the fate of unbelievers after death.
It doesn’t work to keep pointing to dead bodies and say “that’s all there is to it.” No, it’s not. Because while that corpse is “unconscious” (because the person is dead), the Bible actually does say something more than that; the person in his entirety is not unconscious… he is dead, soul separated from body, but the soul is conscious somewhere. Now, I would argue—indeed insist—that we can still rightly refer to the person, in his entirety, as dead, even though there is a conscious soul either in heaven or hades, but that does not undo my entire position, because of the very fact that I think death does not mean the cessation of conscious existence.
Likewise, in “A Case for Conditionalism,” Christ Loewen states that “hell is a place of complete destruction and annihilation. In this view, the unbeliever eventually perishes and ceases to be.” — http://rethinkinghell.com/2018/05/30/a-case-for-conditionalism/
So, I may just be unclear on the theological spread of opinions and definitions, for others to plainly refer to conditionalism as having to do with annihilation, ceasing to be, losing conscious existence, being deprived of existence, etc. while you completely reject those understandings as unbiblical.
Anyway, thanks so much for your patience in interacting. It has been edifying and sharpening for me.
Mr. Grice’s response:
The problem you’re encountering is common. Maybe this will help.
A rock has existence, but a rock does not have life. Surely it is clear from this that life and existence are not the same thing.
So if you’re think they’re synonyms in our statement, that’s a misreading of our intent. But “and existence” was removed from our statement a few years ago because people were tripping up on it, after some of our critics began using it to deliberately straw man us.
Conditionalism is a biblical view, and trades in biblical categories. Such categories sit awkwardly with philosophical categories like existence (being) and annihilation (return to non-being). When our statement swings back around to articulate the annihilation concept, we describe an ultimate “destruction of body and soul, a permanent end to life and conscious existence.”
Existence is a prerequisite for life (living human beings certainly have being). But it is not automatically lost in death. Dead human beings can still have existence, even conscious existence as is the standard Christian view regarding the intermediate state. So very clearly, to die is not to cease to exist. Assuming you can see how clearly that is the case, perhaps you can put yourself in our shoes to appreciate just how frustrating it is to be constantly told by others that we think they are the same thing (worse, that we argue it!).
Please do not conflate consciousness during life with consciousness during death. The conscious awareness that is part and parcel of being alive as a human being does end when life ends. Joseph Dear is right to point to the lifelessness of a corpse (colloquially, a “dead person”) because that is the life that has ended in death, namely, human life, as laid out in Genesis. Ecclesiastes does the same thing, which is why it can speak of the dead knowing nothing, having no thoughts and plans, etc., without this being some pronouncement of non-consciousness in the grave/underworld. Consciousness in death is something categorically distinct. It’s not the same life that was being lived, nor is it half of the life that the whole person was living, as if they only half stopped living by half-dying. All kinds of fallacies of composition are lurking here.
You conclude that intermediate subsistence is “tightly tied to … the fate of unbelievers after death,” but are you not forgetting resurrection? This is the reversal of that state, a return to life. People go into final punishment in the living state, much as we are now. If conditionalists argued that the destruction of body and soul (annihilation) is the same as what happens in ordinary death, then perhaps we’d need to inspect the mechanics of human constitution during and after ordinary death. But of course we don’t, and that’s part of the straw man we’re constantly having to correct. Critics hear the term “annihilationism” and attribute all kinds of made-up arguments to us, such as the claim that Jesus must have been annihilated or ceased to exist. But the case for conditionalism is extensive, and we by no means argue that the concept of death entails cessation of existence, or annihilation. All it entails is cessation of life. Still, if the Bible does turn out to teach a second, punitive occasion for humans to die, which is something expressly denied by eternal torment but expressly affirmed by conditionalism, that plays to our favor.
To return to definitions, defining death as the cessation of life is not tautological. This would only be the case if life were the absence of death, but of course life is a thing in itself. Death isn’t a thing, it’s the absence of a thing. That’s how functional/relational definitions work: in this case by negation. The term “death” also negates over time: a person is not dead for as long as they are alive, and vice versa. Importantly, life is likewise a thing to persist in time, even though this important aspect is often missing from reductive definitions of life.
If you want a definition of life, the relevant context is important. The first and grandest statement of conditionalism is that “life is the Creator’s gift.” In this statement, is it replicating DNA that is in view, or some similar modern biological description? Of course not. The gift of life is one of the richest concepts we could possibly explore, inclusive of the manifold layers of human experience and proclivity, and so in much tension with all levels of analysis seeking to reduce it to an ever-simpler “definition” (reductionism under the standard of “precision,” at the expense of accuracy and adequacy). Even the phenomenon of human consciousness, which most people instantly associate with the inquiry into human life, is admittedly an elusive mystery at this point. We literally don’t understand what consciousnes is or how it arises, and this is but one ingredient in any adequate analytical account of what human life is.
But while we encounter such limits when approaching the subject analytically, and purely constitutionally, we do apprehend so much more data about life through direct experience, including via special subjective access, which informs our understanding of what it is like to have conscious life as a human. Thoughts, feelings, desires, values, plans… all very real ingredients in my consciousness, which is part of my life and being. Must we reduce this to biology, or to constitutional anthropology (body and soul)? If we must reduce, then it’s at this point that we need to hasten back to biblical theology, because that’s what conditionalism is. And the only way we apprehend what life is when we say that it’s a gift from our Creator that ends in death and resumes in resurrection, even an eternal one, is to consult the creation account. There, we learn several salient points: 1) The impetus and purpose for our lives is “Come, let us make man in our image.” That is what we are, God-imagers, and any analysis not accounting for this is reductive. Our purpose and function is to image God. 2) We became “living creatures” once God had formed us from the dust of the earth, and breathed into us something called the breath of life. Whatever that means precisely, is what it means to be alive as a human, just from the constitutional standpoint. 3) We depend on God’s good grace for our ongoing lives, typified in the sustenance of the Tree of Life. In other words, we are not self-sustaining. 4) New life comes from us by procreation (to whatever extent divine creation still operates is not specified in Genesis). There you have it: an adequate and accurate summary of what human life is for purposes of doing biblical theology, and which somebody could probably beat into a succinct enough definition if they wanted to.
My Reply:
Thanks for the thoughts and clarifications!
“…if the Bible does turn out to teach a second, punitive occasion for humans to die, which is something expressly denied by eternal torment but expressly affirmed by conditionalism…”
I don’t think anyone can expressly deny that without being blatantly unbiblical (I think you agree)… So what do you mean that ECT denies this?
Grice’s Reply:
The point of ECT is for humans to live forever in torment. They are resurrected forever, and never again die. Historically this was articulated via a doctrine of the immortalization of their bodies (such that they could resist destruction by hellfire), perpetuated in large part by Augustine’s latin misreading of 1 Cor 15 as if it described the somatic liberation of all from liability to death, when in fact it only describeds the transformation of the saved. But regardless, the damned live forever in hell on ECT.
On CI, they are resurrected mortal (with the same corruptible bodies as now), and will go on to die a second time (a result of the punishment of eternal destruction by eternal fire issuing from God’s manifest glorious presence at the judgment of Gehenna, which is unquenchable, and insatiable until it destroys utterly, body and soul). This is an eternal ratification of the judgment of death that already stands against all humanity since Adam, which Jesus entered into for our sake and rescued us from via his resurrection. In “abolishing death, he brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
So if the scriptures do teach that human death occurs again in final judgment, then ECT is false and CI is supported. This could be taught directly, or it could also be inferred from the teaching that the saved avoid such a fate. I think it’s both, but to illustrate the latter line of evidence, we have numerous references to the saved no longer dying, never again dying, being incapable of dying, etc. For instance, Romans 6 explains that the risen Lord Jesus and his followers are resurrected victoriously out from under the “dominion” of death, which means that they “will never die again.” The corrolary is that the unsaved are resurrected from death but not from its judicial dominion, death still having its outstanding claim over their lives. Whereas the righteous will never die again, the unrighteous will, as final judgment reveals it to be just and deserving. Meanwhile, Luke 20 teaches that only the sons of God (not the sons of the present age) “can no longer die” in the resurrection, because they will be judged worthy of belonging to that resurrection age. The judgment against others is a barring from continuing on into that eternal life/kingdom, like Moses not entering the promised land, or Esau not receiving his future inheritance, or Lot’s wife turning back to the old sinful world, or the people of Noah’s time being destroyed and prevented from living on. Except that now, with the new covenant in place, and God calling all people everywhere to repent, the stakes are eternal–we can either receive eternal life, or we can perish for good. The ECT paradigm is not faithful to biblical cosmology, which is holistic and integrated and unfolds a redemptive timeline of cosmic scope, but rather it bifurcates eschatological space in order to reserve a corner of creation for recalcitrant evil beings to live forever. This does not follow the normal course of all of God’s judgments and redemptive works, and the whole Greek-influenced paradigm is biblically untenable from start to finish.
My Final Reply:
I see what you mean, and that’s a very good point. But I would argue too that the unsaved are raised in mortal bodies, to suffer a second death, and do not remain in immortal bodies forever. I agree with you that that would go directly against the plain reading of the text. So, I’m not sure it’s true across the board that “if the scriptures do teach that human death occurs again in final judgment, then ECT is false.”
Also, you said, “rather it [ECT] bifurcates eschatological space in order to reserve a corner of creation for recalcitrant evil beings to live forever. This does not follow the normal course of all of God’s judgments and redemptive works…” But do you hold that the devil and his angels and the beast and false prophet are all also annihilated (to use a touchy word again for the sake of oversimplification)… or do you grant that Revelation 20 indicates that the devil, beast, and false prophet are not just destroyed by an everlasting fire, but they are “tormented day and night forever and ever?” In which case it certainly seems that the text itself is saying that at least for those three (and perhaps Satan’s angels as well?), a corner of creation, if you want to think of it that way, is reserved for recalcitrant evil beings to exist in conscious torment forever (again, using the word exist because of the limitations of language here)?
I never received a reply to this final comment. I don’t fault Peter Grice for that; people get busy, and he was willing to go back and forth a number of times. I reached out 3 years later (about 3 years ago now), and still didn’t get a response. I only bring that up to say that I am more than willing to continue hashing out these issues with conditionalists. Over the course of my initial study of the subject, I certainly gained an appreciation for these men as well as the motivations behind this interpretation. However, I repeatedly (and especially culminating with my interaction with Grice), remained unconvinced when it comes to the actual fundamental definitions of the words Scripture uses.
There are a number of positive arguments for what’s known as Eternal Conscious Torment, and a simple search will provide you with the exegetical data needed to track that argument. My aim here was to dig into one particular implication of the conditionalist view. Conditional immortality itself is not a heretical position, in my opinion. However, if one defines death as ceasing to exist, then you inevitably end up in heresy when it comes to the person and work of Christ.
Giving me a lot to think about. I’ve wrestled with this issue in the past. Kirk’s comments reawakened my interest. I lean more towards ECT, but I’ve heard compelling arguments from the other side. I skimmed your article but plan to do a deep dive into it tomorrow. Thanks for writing on this topic. I look forward to learning from it.
Great article!