Traditionalism ~ Everyone lives forever.
The unsaved suffer everlasting conscious torment.
Universalism ~ Everyone lives forever.
The unsaved are refined and ultimately saved.
Conditionalism ~ The saved are raised in immortal glory to live forever. The unsaved are raised in mortal shame to be finally destroyed. This may include temporary suffering.
Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism
Today there is a growing number of evangelical Christians who reject the majority doctrine of hell known as "eternal conscious torment" (ECT), as well as the more controversial minority position of universal reconciliation. These Christians are embracing a third historical and biblical alternative known as conditional immortality (CI)—or simply "conditionalism"—which is also known as "annihilationism" in reference to God's final judgment of the unsaved.
As a group of evangelical conditionalists, we have collaborated on the following statement to articulate our shared beliefs and areas of theological diversity, in order to foster greater clarity as we engage in dialogue with fellow evangelicals. The statement has been prepared by Rethinking Hell, a non-profit organization promoting conditional immortality and respectful dialogue on the topic of Hell.
Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism
Conditionalism is the view that life is the Creator's provisional gift to all, which will ultimately be granted forever to the saved and revoked forever from the unsaved.
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, implicating the whole person in a destruction of human life and being (Matthew 10:28).
1. We Affirm the Essentials of Evangelical Christianity
Evangelical conditionalists readily affirm statements of faith that are characteristically evangelical, such as that of the World Evangelical Alliance:
We believe in…
The Holy Scriptures as originally given by God, divinely inspired, infallible, entirely trustworthy; and the supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct…One God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…
Our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, His virgin birth, His sinless human life, His divine miracles, His vicarious and atoning death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension, His mediatorial work, and His Personal return in power and glory…
The Salvation of lost and sinful man through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ by faith apart from works, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit…
The Holy Spirit, by whose indwelling the believer is enabled to live a holy life, to witness and work for the Lord Jesus Christ…
The Unity of the Spirit of all true believers, the Church, the Body of Christ…
The Resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life, they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
Many prominent evangelical leaders have held to the view of conditionalism without compromising their core theological commitments, and groups such as the Evangelical Alliance UK explicitly include conditionalism as an acceptable view. We call for unity among evangelicals on the essentials we all affirm, and for charity where diversity is not any cause for division.
2. We Believe in Hell
Evangelical conditionalists take the biblical language describing hell and final punishment quite seriously. While many of us recognize that Scripture often uses highly symbolic imagery to describe final judgment, we also believe that we interpret the biblical language overall much more straightforwardly than those who hold to ECT: the analogy of weeds being completely burned up in fire; the comparison of the fate of the unsaved to those who perished in the flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah; the biblical emphasis on the final death and destruction of the unsaved; and more. We don't reject the existence of hell; we simply disagree concerning its nature and duration.
3. We Represent a Broad Range of Evangelical Backgrounds
Evangelical conditionalists are uniform in our belief that the unsaved will not live forever, and yet we are as theologically varied as evangelicals holding to the majority view of hell, concerning various in-house debates over the nonessentials of Christian doctrine.
We belong to many diverse denominations and faith communities: non-denominationalist, Baptist, Churches of Christ, Episcopalian/Anglican, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and to many evangelical organizations. We are scholars and lay people, pastors, teachers, overseers, missionaries and ministry workers.
4. Scripture, Not Emotion, Ultimately Determines Our Convictions
Evangelical conditionalists hold to a view of hell that results from a firm commitment to the truthfulness and perennial relevance of the Bible, and not from a desire to have its message be more palatable to our own culture. We are not seeking to construct a more tolerable version of hell, as though primarily motivated by an emotional aversion to the idea of eternal torment. Neither do we assume, however, that the correct view of Hell must be whichever is perceived to be the harshest and most intolerable.
However we might feel emotionally about any view of the fate of the unsaved, we do not subject Scripture to our emotions. We have been convinced primarily by direct statements of Scripture that the penalty God has outlined for those who reject his offer of life is clearly the eternal punishment of the "second death," rather than endless torment.
We believe that the punishment of annihilation as the permanent loss of life is a terrible fate, analogous to the most extreme form of human justice: capital punishment. The conditionalist view does not allow a Christian to escape from emotional anguish at the fate of the unsaved. Imagining a person under judgement coming to the realization that they are bereft of hope, devoid of the gift of eternal life, and facing the end of their existence should produce a profound sadness at the present plight of the lost. It should kindle in us a deep desire to share the gospel of God's forgiveness and the offer of eternal life, found only through Christ's work on our behalf.
5. We Believe the Unsaved Will Be Raised from the Dead for Final Judgment
Evangelical conditionalists affirm the future, bodily resurrection of both the saved and the unsaved: those who are saved, to the resurrection of eternal life with God; those who are unsaved, to face final punishment, consisting ultimately in the destruction of body and soul, a permanent end to life and conscious existence.
6. We Believe Eternal Life Is Found Only In Christ
Evangelical conditionalists reject the unbiblical notion that all human beings are naturally immortal (which many holding the mainstream view accept), and affirm that it is only through receiving the benefits of Christ's victory over death that any person can be made alive forever, which Scripture only describes as being given to those who are saved. Therefore, since immortality will not be granted to unsaved human beings, we see no way for them to have ongoing life or conscious existence. Though they will be raised from the dead to face judgment, their rejection of God's free gift of eternal life in Christ will mean that they will have to face death a second time, from which there can be no return to life.
7. We Believe Final Death is the Just Penalty for The Unsaved
Evangelical conditionalists do not elevate the love and mercy of God above his holiness and justice. In principle, we do not conceive of the final destruction of the lost as an act of mercy, or form of "divine euthanasia." The lost are not rescued from the serious implications of a "cosmic death penalty," which is truly deserved as an expression of God's perfect justice. God has shown mercy to the unsaved throughout their lives, but final punishment requires that with their very lives they must pay the price of rejecting God's forgiveness and grace. (Note: the question of how death is experienced is addressed in 8.2.)
8. We Accept Diversity on Particular Details
8.1. We differ on whether final punishment is finite in duration
Conditionalists sometimes put forward the idea that the biblical word translated "eternal" means "age-lasting" rather than "everlasting" when describing final punishment, or that it refers to punishment in or of the everlasting age to come. However, many of us wholeheartedly affirm that "eternal punishment" is an apt phrase to refer to the fate of the unsaved. In these terms, the punishment of death involves an everlasting deprivation of life. We can therefore agree with proponents of ECT that the punishment is eternal in scope, even though we disagree about its nature.
8.2. We differ on the timing, nature, degrees and relative duration of suffering
All conditionalists agree that there will at least be mental anguish experienced by the unsaved, in terms of abject shame, dread, anger and bitter regret.
Those who describe final punishment as basically finite in duration do so by locating punishment in the experience of conscious suffering (whether mental or physical), which culminates in death. Since suffering is seen as the thing which exhausts God's punishment, those who hold to this view tend to see this as relatively protracted, and varying by degrees among individuals. As a further difference, some might see here a more passive death, as God ceases to sustain life.
Those who instead locate final punishment primarily in death's significance as the means of exclusion from eternal life, tend to emphasize that any suffering is part of the process of a person being destroyed. If they do hold to suffering (whether mental or physical) in addition to the generally accepted anguish prior to punishment, as many do, they tend to see it as relatively brief in duration, comparable to the experience of Christ on the cross. This may include varying degrees, with the caveat that these exhaust an aspect of God's justice, while preserving death as the ultimate, universal penalty.
8.3. We differ on whether Satan and demons will be destroyed
Evangelical conditionalists, though uniform in their shared belief that unsaved human beings will not live forever, do not all agree when it comes to the eternal fate of the devil and demons. According to many conditionalists, these beings will be destroyed forever, sharing the fate of unsaved human beings. Others disagree, believing that demonic beings will be tormented for eternity. While this is an interesting question, it has no impact on our central concern about human beings.
8.4. We differ on anthropology and the intermediate state
Evangelical conditionalists also differ in terms of what we believe the Bible says about the constitution of human beings, and also about whether people are conscious in the intermediate state between death and resurrection. Some are anthropological physicalists or materialists who believe human beings are physical creatures, the functioning of whose minds is dependent upon their living bodies. Others are substance dualists who believe human beings have immaterial souls, but that they lack consciousness between death and resurrection. Still others embrace a traditional body/soul dualism and contend that the immaterial souls of human beings live on consciously after death, until a resurrection of the body. The same diversity of perspectives exists within evangelicalism more broadly, and therefore is not a logical requirement or consequence of CI.
What Is Evangelical Conditionalism?
Conditionalism refers to the biblical doctrine of conditional immortality, which holds that God alone possesses immortality innately and therefore any other being who is immortal (imperishable, deathless) is so extrinsically, that is, as the result of a positive act of God. No other being, human or otherwise, whether by creation or resurrection, possesses immortality innately but only as God's specific gift.
Anytime the New Testament mentions immortality in connection with human beings, there are three contrasts which bear out as true:
(1) that immortality is ascribed only to the redeemed and never to the damned,
(2) that it is a gift of God in the heavenly body and never the natural body, and
(3) that it is always in reference to the whole person and never a disembodied soul or spirit.
Conditionalists believe that since the damned are not immortal and never will be, they will actually perish in Hell (annihilation). This is the punishment referred to in the Bible as destruction, by which one will perish in the lake of fire, the second death.
Some Christians suppose that everyone innately has an immortal soul, redeemed and damned alike, which God will not or cannot destroy. But Jesus implied otherwise, saying that we should fear God because he "can destroy both soul and body in Hell" (Gehenna).
Immortality is a gift bestowed by God upon his children. To receive this crown, a person must belong to Christ. Such is the condition of this conditional immortality. And this conditionalist view is evangelical insofar as it is understood and articulated within a framework of evangelical Christian orthodoxy.
So this view, then—evangelical conditionalism—is what we explore and commend at Rethinking Hell, whereby we examine how those who do not belong to Christ will be resurrected to face both judgment and the punishment of their destruction in the lake of fire, "the second death."
What is annihilationism?
On the one hand, conditionalism emphasizes what awaits the redeemed, namely, eternal life and immortality. (See What is evangelical conditionalism?) On the other hand, annihilationism is about what awaits the damned, namely, the eternal punishment of destruction in Hell. Such is their perishing, the permanent end to the conscious existence of the whole person.
There is some debate among evangelical conditionalists regarding finer eschatological details. For instance, some believe there is a consciously experienced intermediate state between physical death and judgment day, and others believe the intermediate state is not consciously experienced.
All evangelical annihilationists believe that the damned (those who do not belong to Christ) are raised bodily from their graves at an appointed day of judgment and are then finally punished. They perish with finality, suffering the eternal punishment of destruction in Hell.
Why is it controversial?
Conditionalism can be controversial for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it has been affirmed historically by a minority of Christians, while the majority of the church has believed and taught the traditional view of Hell since at least the time of Augustine. Furthermore, until the recent rise of conditionalism among evangelicals, it was popular to dismiss the final annihilation of the damned as a doctrine believed and taught only by pseudo-Christian cults (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, etc.) and Christian denominations which some consider questionable (Seventh-Day Adventists, etc.).
It can also be controversial because there have been some outspoken evangelical proponents of conditionalism who have given the impression to critics that this view was arrived at on more sentimental grounds, as if they had interpreted scripture through a fallen sense of justice and a humanist view of love. Other proponents of conditionalism have represented arguably questionable views such as open theism and anthropological physicalism (or some other variation of monism, mortalism, or soul sleep), or denied substantive evangelical doctrines like the inerrancy of scripture.
For these reasons and perhaps others, conditionalism is a controversial view. But the climate is changing and an increasing number of evangelical lay people and professionals are becoming convinced of this view. And there are critics who suggest that it may be affirmed by a majority of evangelical scholars. But conditionalists come from a variety of backgrounds and theological positions; one can find conditionalists on virtually every side of virtually every theological debate within evangelicalism.
Some Reasons to Consider Conditionalism
Important Biblical Themes and Texts
Immortality in scripture
From cover to cover the Bible indicates that immortality and everlasting life are gifts given by God only to his people. In Genesis 3:22-23 God banished Adam and Eve from the garden so that, without access to the Tree of Life, they would not live forever. In the imagery of Revelation 2:7 and Revelation 22:14, only believers will have access to the Tree of Life as inhabitants of paradise, the New Jerusalem. The hope of immortality was lost in the fall, but 2 Timothy 1:10 says life and immortality were brought to light through the gospel. According to 1 Corinthians 15:50-53 believers in Jesus Christ will be clothed with immortality so that they can inherit the kingdom of God. The lost will not be granted immortality and will therefore not live forever. No wonder John 3:16 says those who do not believe will perish, and Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death.
The biblical vision of eternity
The biblical vision of eternity is one in which sin and evil are no more, and everything will be united under Christ. Ephesians 1:10 says God will "bring all things in Heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (NIV). Thus using an accountant's terminology Paul says that all the totals will be summed up, the accounts settled, and everything will be in Christ's name. He writes similarly in 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 that when the end comes, after Jesus Christ "has destroyed all dominion, authority and power . . . then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all" (NIV). In God's creation there will be no eternal dualism of horror and bliss, good and evil, for as 1 John 2:17 says, "The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever."
Jesus' atoning death
All orthodox views of the atonement share in common the belief that Jesus' atoning work consisted largely of acting as a substitute in the place of his people. But what did he bear on their behalf, so that they would not bear it? Isaiah 53:8-9 says that "he was cut off out of the land of the living" and that "they made his grave with the wicked." Romans 5:6 says that "Christ died for the ungodly," and 1 Corinthians 15:3 says that "of first importance" is that "Christ died for our sins." And if it weren't clear enough, 1 Peter 3:18 makes explicit that it was by physical death that Jesus stood in place of believers, saying, "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh." So the saved will not die, since Jesus died for them. But the lost must die, since they reject the substitute.
The language and theme of destruction
It should be no surprise by now that, of all the language scripture uses to describe the fate of the lost, most of all it promises their death and destruction. Matthew 10:28 says, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell." Matthew 7:13-14 warns that "the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction." In Matthew 13:40-42 Jesus interpreted his own parable of burned up weeds to caution that "as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire" so too will Jesus and his angels "gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace." 2 Peter 2:6 says that "by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes" God "condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly."
Other Important Considerations
Like traditionalists, evangelical conditionalists are committed to the authority of scripture, and are not liberal in their bibliology. First and foremost, conditionalists believe in the final annihilation of the lost precisely because they find it to be the product of sound exegesis, a better application of the traditional rules and principles of hermeneutics. They believe that their view is the more accurate, better reasoned, and proper understanding of the biblical passages concerning Hell and final punishment. However, many conditionalists believe that there are additional, secondary but important arguments from moral reason and philosophy that support the case for conditionalism against the traditional view.
The character of God
Before we suppose that either the traditional or conditional view is correct, we might first ask of any doctrine, "Is this consistent with the moral character of God revealed in the scriptures?"
While it is true that God's character is primarily revealed to us by what scripture says he has done and will do, it is nevertheless fairly intuitive and obvious that there are some things which he would not do, for it would be inconsistent with his revealed character. When apologists leverage the moral argument for God they will often ask their detractors whether or not it is objectively wrong to torture young children for fun, a rhetorical question whose affirmative answer ought to be obvious. While this is not an argument for the character of God, a fairly intuitive corollary is that God would not torture young children for fun, because it would be inconsistent with his perfectly moral character.
One such description of God's character is that he is full of mercy and truth, and the delicate balance between these complementary opposites must be maintained in our understanding of God. We have all seen the error of those who dismiss part of the nature of God by over-emphasizing either his justice or his mercy—making God either overly harsh, as the Pharisees did, or so loving that he excuses sin and subverts justice.
So one is not completely without warrant in asking whether the traditional view of Hell as eternal conscious torment (ECT) is incongruent with God's character. It is true that God is holy and wrathful, justly punishing wickedness. At the same time, however, God's righteous anger is apparently not unending (Psalm 30:5; 103:9). He is also a God of love (1 John 4:8) and of mercy (2 Samuel 24:14; Psalm 119:156), and it is legitimate to ask if such a God would render immortal the risen lost or otherwise supernaturally keep them alive forever in order that he might cause them to suffer unimaginable pain and misery for all eternity, as punishment for their sin.
Proportional justice and punishment
One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime. Philosophical and subjective intuitions about the justice of God are certainly not to override what the scriptures teach, but such reasoned counter-indications at least ought to warn us and make us reconsider our current understanding of scripture. Have we misunderstood? And is there a biblical warrant for these concerns?
First we must answer a more foundational question: Does God expect us to understand and do justice here on earth to some extent? And, if so, does he give us principles and examples in the Bible? The clear answer is yes. And, further, insofar as those principles reflect the nature of God we would expect God to act according to those same principles.
When Abraham pleaded with the Lord by the oaks of Mamre on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah he asked God, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" He said to God, "Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" (Genesis 18:20-33). Abraham knew, as do evangelicals, that God is perfectly just, for "all his ways are justice . . . just and upright is he" (Deuteronomy 32:4). It follows, therefore, that the final punishment of the unredeemed would reflect God's perfect justice.
Like Abraham many conditionalists ask, "Won't God act according to the principles of mercy and justice that he has revealed to us as part of his righteous character?" In this example Abraham is questioning harsh retribution that sweeps away the innocent with the wicked. Surely God would not do that! That is rather unlike him. And what this demonstrates is that we can understand and question theologies which seem out of character with God's revealed ways of exacting justice.
With that idea established, we can now ask the question relevant to ECT and proportional justice: Does the eternal torment view actually violate the principle of proportional justice, and can such a principle be found in Scripture? Most readers will immediately think of or recognize the Old Testament principle of an eye for an eye (Exodus 21:24). This principle of proportionality is central to God's view of justice and is repeated in Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21.
Many conditionalists argue that when the philosophical and moral objection to the disproportionality of ECT is brought up there is scriptural support for such a stance. This does not, however, invalidate the traditional view. We must still primarily rely on good exegesis—interpretation of the specific Bible passages that teach on hell—but we must also admit that the important yet secondary proportionality argument may also have biblical merit.
Is conditionalism more proportional than ECT?
Assuming for the moment that the exegetical argument for conditionalism is the superior and correct understanding of the biblical passages on Hell, we might then ask, "How does the conditionalist view fare when evaluated by the argument for proportional justice?" Many conditionalists argue that, while both annihilation and ECT have eternal consequences, conditionalism has a temporal experience of punishment for the wicked ("the second death") while ECT requires an eternal experience of suffering. The conditionalist view, in a sense, can be viewed as administering a temporal experience of punishment for temporal sins, rather than an eternal experience of punishment for temporal sins, thereby being much more proportional than ECT, if not less cruel and unusual and non-tortuous.
Again it must be admitted that arguments around the relative harshness or eternality of these two views is a bit of an endless debate but, as mentioned, they always take a backseat to direct and accurate interpretations of what the Bible actually teaches. If we elevate philosophic arguments over biblical authority we run the risk of being taken captive "by philosophy and empty deceit" that is "not according to Christ" (Colossians 2:8). However, for many people this moral objection to ECT is a strong one, and many conditionalists will at least agree that for those who need an answer to the question of proportional justice, conditionalism is much better answer than the traditional view.
Impact on evangelism
One primary objection that many traditionalists level at conditionalism is that it reduces in some sense the harshness of God's justice and so provides less of a contrast to the sacrifice of Jesus, thereby lessening the gospel's appeal. The conditionalist, however, has many replies to such an objection.
First, whether or not conditionalism is more or less harsh is a debate, and some even argue that the annihilation of sinners is actually more harsh than ETC.
But second, and more importantly, there is a bad hermeneutic assumption underlying the traditionalist's objection, that the harsher punishment is more likely the correct one because it forms a greater contrast for the gospel. The problem with this view is that it suggests that we should take the harshest possible view of Hell as the correct one. But is this a valid hermeneutic? And is it consistent with the balance of justice and mercy of God as revealed in the Bible? No.
Third, the conditionalist would reply that what is most impactful for the gospel is to preach the truth, which is what the Holy Spirit will confirm in the hearts of hearers.
If the ECT view is incorrect, as conditionalists claim, then we may be doing grave harm to the cause of the gospel, adding an additional stumbling block to the gospel and barring many from faith who otherwise might be saved.
Bertrand Russell, articulating the sentiments of many who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, said, "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that he believed in Hell." (Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 17.)
Charles Darwin said, "I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so . . . men who do not believe . . . will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine." (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 87.)
It is the Holy Spirit who changes hearts, to be sure, but whether salvation is monergistic or synergistic, we're not to add offense to the gospel in our evangelism efforts because how the gospel is delivered can play a role in how it's received. And the traditional view of Hell often impacts how the gospel is received.
Few reasons for rejecting Christianity are given more often than the prospect that the lost face an eternity of torment as punishment for their sins. Many people cannot conceive of worshiping a God so malicious (in their mind) as to cause endless suffering forever. Others simply scoff at the message of Christ, finding the traditional view of Hell to be an absurdly ludicrous, laughable notion. Of course, unbelievers will in their enmity toward God drum up any number of reasons to reject him, but there can be no doubt that this issue will feature toward the tops of their lists.
Conditionalism, from the perspective of the proportionality argument, may actually have a huge positive impact on evangelism, opening up the minds of those who might otherwise reject the gospel on hearing the ECT doctrine. In addition, however, it may also positively affect our presentation of the gospel in other ways.
First, it may simplify the gospel to something we all understand: a simple reckoning of our works before God, resulting in being brought to an end, the deprivation of life perhaps by means which are painful. In light of the fact that societies throughout history, including many today, punish the most grievous of sins with the death penalty, the final destruction of the wicked may ring more true and reasonable than the traditional view.
Second, rather than viewing God as mainly punitive, that is, depriving humans of something they had (eternal souls), annihilation allows one to instead see the lost as being given exactly what they had earned - the wages of sin is death. This removes undue emphasis on the punitive nature of God and makes Hell more of a just consequence. Therefore, immortality is presented more as something graciously given to the repentant rather than something maliciously taken away.
Common Misconceptions
This view is about denying Hell!
On the contrary, we affirm the realities of Hell. The biblical testimony is clear that Hell represents something very real and very fearful. Even as we say this, however, we all tend to supply ideas and assumptions about what Hell is like. That important question is different, and secondary, to the affirmation of Hell.
You believe that the unsaved go to the grave and cease to exist
Actually, evangelical conditionalists hold to a resurrection for the wicked who are to face final judgment. Afterwards, they will be utterly destroyed in what the Bible calls the second death. It is really not all that different from the traditional view; the main area of difference has to do with the duration of conscious torment.
Annihilation is an error of the Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
If this view is an error, it will not be on account of who believes it. That ignores the primacy of the Bible in addition to demonstrating the genetic and association fallacies. Jehovah's Witnesses also believe in God and the inerrancy of the Bible. By the same logic, these beliefs would be in error. Moreover, the traditional view of Hell is believed by both Mormons and Muslims. Obviously we shouldn't conclude from this that the traditional view of Hell is false.
You are twisting the Bible to fit your ideas of justice and the love of God
It is true that there are conditionalists, formerly affirming the traditional view of Hell, who began rethinking Hell because they could not reconcile it with what they believed was a biblically and theologically accurate understanding of justice and the love of God. Many of them, however, affirm the authority of scripture over such considerations and are perfectly willing to bow their knee to the Bible if it can be shown to teach the traditional view of Hell.
As John Stott said, "As a committed Evangelical, my question must be—and is—not what my heart tells me, but what does God's word say?" (John Stott, Evangelical Essentials (IVP, 1988), 315.) But conditionalists are convinced that Scripture does not teach the traditional view—and that this can be conclusively demonstrated.
Furthermore, it is not true that this is how all conditionalists begin to rethink Hell.
Edward Fudge himself affirmed the traditional view of Hell without misgivings until he was hired to research the topic, and over the course of that research became convinced of conditionalism as a result of exegesis of the biblical text (among other things).
Rethinking Hell contributor Chris Date maintains, to this day, that the traditional view of Hell is compatible with justice and the love of God, and was convinced of conditionalism purely as a result of biblical exegesis.
You are teaching the error of Rob Bell
There are evangelicals who for some reason associate conditionalism with universalism, which seemed to be what was promoted in Rob Bell's book Love Wins. But conditionalists, by virtue of their annihilationist view, cannot be universalists. They instead side with traditionalists in affirming that the punishment of the lost will be eternal and that those who are sent to Hell will never have eternal life.
You are liberals who deny the authority and reliability of Scripture
There are some conditionalists—just like some traditionalists and universalists—who have a somewhat low view of scripture, although many do not. We here at Rethinking Hell affirm the supreme authority and complete infallibility of the Bible. John Stott, who held to conditionalism at least tentatively and admitted that he found the traditional view of Hell intolerable, nevertheless affirmed the authority and reliability of Scripture, saying, "our emotions are a fluctuating, unreliable guide to truth and must not be exalted to the place of supreme authority in determining it. As a committed Evangelical, my question must be—and is—not what my heart tells me, but what does God's word say?" (John Stott, Evangelical Essentials (IVP, 1988), 314-315.)
You are denying the historic Christian creeds
Surprisingly little is said about Hell in the most famous Christian creeds:
Nicene Creed
We believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and [Holy] Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgement of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life.
The Apostles' Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty . . . And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord . . . he descended into Hell . . . I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body; and life everlasting.
Athanasian Creed
At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies; And shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire.
The statements in these creeds concerning Hell consist in little more than simple repetitions of biblical language—everlasting judgement, Hell, and everlasting fire. Conditionalists and traditionalists debate what this biblical language means, of course, but since these creedal statements do not speak beyond the language of scripture they cannot be cited as support for either view, or as being denied by those who hold to either view. And the fact that the nature of Hell plays such a diminished role in the creeds means it was not considered an issue worth dividing over (that is, a doctrine considered foundational to Christianity).
Some have argued that annihilationism was condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople, but in fact it was Origen and universalism that were anathematized, not annihilationism.
Anathematism 9 reads, "If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema" (emphases added).
Annihilationists do not contend that the punishment of the lost will be temporary or have an end, nor that they will one day be restored. Therefore, annihilationism cannot be thought of as included in this anathema.
Traditionalist Proof-texts Against Conditionalism
Ecclesiastes 3:11
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."
Although not used very often, this verse is sometimes said to teach that man is an eternal or immortal being. But nothing contextually suggests that this is what is being communicated. The meaning of ????? (‘olam; darkness, perhaps eternity, or the future) is a matter of some debate. If we translate it as eternity like the ESV does, then it should be pointed out that this passage is not telling us something about human nature in itself but about a contingent human desire set there by God. The KJV translates it as "world," so that some commentators suppose God made man with an interest in nature. Both views are common among most traditionalists, and in either case this passage does not appear to indicate that humans were created eternal. (The NET translates it as the darkness of "ignorance," such that it is ignorance which God placed "in the human heart so that people cannot discover what God has ordained, from the beginning to the end of their lives"—a translation that certainly makes sense contextually.)
Daniel 12:2
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
According to the traditional view, the contempt spoken of in this verse refers to an emotion experienced by the one who is raised to judgment. Thus, since the contempt is everlasting, the risen wicked must exist for eternity in order to experience that everlasting contempt. But the Hebrew word translated here as contempt, ????????? (dera'own), does not seem to refer to an experience on the part of the contemptible. It is used only one other time, in Isaiah 66:24, where the corpses of the slain wicked are "an abhorrence [?????????] to all mankind." In other words, contempt is not the experience of the contemptible, but rather how they are perceived or remembered by others. So this passage arguably tells us little beyond the fact that the unsaved will be resurrected to judgment, after which they will be remembered in contempt forever. Whether or not they continue to exist forever experiencing ongoing conscious punishment is not a question answered by this verse.
Matthew 3:12 (cf. Luke 3:17)
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Those who hold the traditional view seem to think that to quench means to go out, so they argue that the chaff—the risen wicked—will be burned eternally in a fire which never goes out. But this is not even the primary meaning of quench in English, never mind biblical Hebrew. Rather, its primary meaning is extinguish, such that an unquenchable fire is one that cannot be put out, a fire which cannot be stopped from fully consuming its fuel (2 Kings 22:17; Isaiah 34:10; Jeremiah 7:20; 17:27; Ezekiel 20:47).
The Greek word translated here as burn is ?ata?a?? (katakaio) and means to burn up or consume by fire, not a generalized burning but being burned down completely. Thayer contrasts this meaning by the use of this term in the Septuagint translation of Exodus 3:2, where the bush was burning but was not consumed (?ata?a??). Jesus uses the word in Matthew 13:30 and Matthew 13:40, in the parable of the wheat and the tares. He said that just as the tares in the parable are utterly consumed, so too will his angels throw sinners into a furnace of fire, recalling Malachi 4 and its imagery of the wicked being reduced to ashes like chaff in a furnace of fire.
Not quite servicing the traditionalist critique of conditionalism, the unquenchable fire of Matthew 3:12 and Luke 3:17 stands as strong support for the view that the unsaved will be raised, judged, and irrevocably destroyed by fire.
Related Links:
The Fire Is Not Quenched: Annihilation and Mark 9:48 (Part 2)
What the Qal? Revisiting the Unquenched Fire
The Passive Qal and Other Issues
Matthew 5:25-26 (cf. Luke 12:58-59)
"Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny."
There are some traditionalists who argue that this passage refers to the final judgment. Since the guilty one is thrown into prison until every last penny is paid—which will never happen, on that view, because the debt owed is infinite—this is said to indicate that eternal punishment is a kind of everlasting prison sentence.
But other traditionalists disagree. Some are skeptical that the final judgment is in view here. Others believe this has nothing to do with Hell at all, instead seeing it as practical advice for avoiding conflict in the here and now. Still others believe it refers to final judgment but metaphorically rather than literally. (And were it indeed taken in a literal sense it would actually support annihilationism, since a person never freed from prison would eventually die there.)
At the end of the day, if this has anything to do with final judgment at all, the most that could be argued is that there will be a punishment—perhaps even that the damned will not be released. But the nature of their punishment? That is not at all arguable from this passage.
Matthew 8:12 (cf. 22:13, 25:30; Luke 13:28)
". . . while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Passages like this one that speak of outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth do not specify any duration. It is strange, then, that critics should often point to these passages as if they were a challenge to the final annihilation of the unsaved. They are not.
Weeping and gnashing of teeth does not communicate suffering and pain in the Bible. In fact, weeping communicates grief and sorrow and teeth-gnashing communicates anger and hatred. So these passages are not proof of any extended period of suffering and torment. But even if they were, conditionalists do not typically believe that God will snap his fingers and the risen wicked will instantaneously and painlessly disappear. Rather, we believe the execution of the unsaved will be a painful one, as our Savior's was. Either way this language of weeping and gnashing of teeth does not challenge an annihilationist view but is rather consistent with it.
Moreover, this language of darkness, grief, and anger appears in the parable of the marriage feast (Matthew 22:1-14), where guests are bound hand and foot and thrown out of the wedding hall into the darkness of night. In such a scene, particularly in first century Israel, someone so bound and thrown outside at night would die if not freed at some point, from thirst or exposure or killed by beasts or robbers. Again, the imagery favors the annihilation of the unsaved, not their eternal torment.
Matthew 10:15 (cf. 11:24; 16:27; Luke 12:47-48; Revelation 20:12)
"Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town."
Those arguing for the traditional view of Hell often appeal to such texts as this and others like it as evidence that final punishment will be meted out in varying degrees, according to each individual's level of guilt before God. This is contrary to the conditionalist view, they suggest, which holds that all unsaved human beings will eventually cease to be.
Yet none of these texts indicate exactly how varying degrees of punishment will be accounted for. They indicate only that the day of judgment will be more tolerable for some than for others, and that each person will be judged according to his works. Only the text in Luke is more explicit, but its servants who are beaten with different numbers or severity of blows appear in a parable, one that is not taken literally by even most traditionalists.
Conditionalists debate among themselves when it comes to how degrees of punishment will play out. Perhaps some will be forever remembered as more shameful than others (cf. Daniel 12:2), much like Hitler's legacy of evil is considered more contemptible than that of less noteworthy unbelievers. Alternatively, the annihilationist view allows for an array of possible combinations of type, intensity and duration of suffering as part of the process by which the lost are destroyed. Perhaps it is these differences in the degree of suffering, experienced while being destroyed, that accounts for degrees of punishment.
In the end, conditionalists can account for degrees of punishment in multiple possible ways, though they might hasten to add that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), and that "whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (James 2:10), and as such everyone deserves death.
Matthew 18:8
"And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire."
The phrase eternal fire evokes in the mind of the traditionalist a picture of the unsaved burning and suffering in flames for all eternity. But the text indicates that it is the fire which is eternal, not those thrown into it. And both the local context and the use of the phrase elsewhere indicates that eternal fire utterly destroys and reduces to lifeless remains.
Jesus' admonition here, recorded also in Matthew 5:30 and Mark 9:43, likens final punishment to Gehenna, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew "valley of [the sons of] Hinnom," which was once a place where idol worshipers burned up children as sacrifices to their gods. But Jeremiah 7:32-33 says that Gehenna would become "the Valley of Slaughter . . . And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away." Isaiah 30 speaks of God's fiery vengeance upon Gehenna, likening it to a funeral pyre, which is a pile of wood for burning up corpses.
Another place the phrase eternal fire is used is in Jude 7, where Jude writes that Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities "serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." Jude explicitly states that the cities suffered the punishment of eternal fire, as many theologians admit. No wonder the parallel in 2 Peter 2:6 refers to their having been reduced to ashes.
The punishment of eternal fire is therefore not suffering for eternity as everlasting fuel for its flames. Rather, it is the punishment of being utterly destroyed, completely burned up, reduced to nothing but lifeless corpses and ashes by a fire that is eternal insofar as it cannot be quenched—no mere earthly fire but an eternal fire from God.
Matthew 18:34
"And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him."
Some traditionalists have argued that since the offender is handed over to be tortured until all that is owed is paid—which they say will never happen since the debt owed is supposed be infinite—this therefore indicates that eternal punishment involves an eternity of suffering due to the infinite debt of sin. But this is a parable, and its point is that those who do not forgive will not be forgiven.
The most that could be argued is that there will be a punishment, and that the damned will not be released from their punishment. But the nature of their punishment itself cannot be determined from this parable. Interpreting it to mean that the risen wicked will consciously suffer forever involves bringing material to the text not found in the parable and doing violence to its intended meaning. And most traditionalists do not believe anyway that the unsaved will literally be whipped and beaten by torturers for eternity.
Matthew 25:41
"Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'"
The phrase eternal fire evokes in the mind of the traditionalist a picture of the unsaved burning and suffering in flames for all eternity. And it is assumed that this eternal fire, prepared for the demons, is the same lake of tormenting fire found in the symbolic imagery of Revelation 20. But the text indicates that it is the fire which is eternal, not those thrown into it. And the use of the phrase elsewhere indicates that eternal fire utterly destroys and reduces to lifeless remains.
Jesus uses the phrase elsewhere, in Matthew 18:8, and his admonition there, also recorded in Matthew 5:30 and Mark 9:43, likens final punishment to Gehenna, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew "valley of [the sons of] Hinnom," which was once a place where idol worshipers burned up children as sacrifices to their gods. But Jeremiah 7:32-33 says that Gehenna would become "the Valley of Slaughter . . . And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away." Isaiah 30 speaks of God's fiery vengeance upon Gehenna, likening it to a funeral pyre, which is a pile of wood for burning up corpses.
Another place the phrase eternal fire is used is in Jude 7, where Jude writes that Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities "serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." Jude explicitly states that the cities suffered the punishment of eternal fire, as many theologians admit. No wonder the parallel in 2 Peter 2:6 refers to their having been reduced to ashes.
The punishment of eternal fire is therefore not suffering for eternity as everlasting fuel for its flames. Rather, it is the punishment of being utterly destroyed, completely burned up, reduced to nothing but lifeless corpses and ashes by a fire that is eternal insofar as it cannot be quenched—no mere earthly fire but an eternal fire from God.
Also see our discussion on the lake of fire in Revelation 20.
Matthew 25:46
"And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Traditionalists argue that since eternal (a??????, aionios) is used in both clauses, the duration of the punishment for the damned must endure as long as the duration of the life for the redeemed. And most conditionalists do not disagree! If the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), such that the damned will die and never live again, then the duration of the punishment surely is every bit as eternal. It is not the punishing itself that is eternal, a process that never ends. It is the punishment that is eternal, the final death sentence which is permanent (that is, forever).
When eternal describes a so-called "noun of action" in the New Testament—that is, the noun corresponding to a verb (punishment versus punish)—it frequently is the verb's outcome, not its process, whose duration is everlasting. Eternal judgment refers to the everlasting outcome of a finite process of judging (Hebrews 6:2). Eternal salvation and eternal redemption refer to the everlasting outcome of a finite process of saving and redeeming (Hebrews 5:9, 9:12). Eternal sin refers to a sin the consequences of which are eternal (Mark 3:29, unless its original reading is "eternal judgment," in which case it is once again the everlasting outcome of a finite process of judging). Likewise eternal punishment may refer to the everlasting outcome of a finite process of punishing.
Of course, some conditionalists argue that a?????? is not properly translated "eternal" in the first place. Rather, they make a case for understanding it as having a qualitative meaning, rather than a quantitative one. In their view, a?????? life does not inherently communicate "everlasting" life in the sense of forever ongoing—although they believe that that teaching can be found elsewhere—but rather a "kind" of life, one corresponding to the age to come. In other words, eternal might refer to the quality of the age in which the life is lived, that is "in the age of, and with the qualities of, eternity"—not merely a temporal quantity. This explanation would also track with the idea that the eternal fire of Jude did not continue to burn in Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, but was of an eternal nature and origin. (See section on Matthew 25:41.) Likewise a?????? punishment may refer to the punishment corresponding to the age to come, not one of unending duration.
Related Links:
"Punishment" and the Polysemy of Deverbal Nouns
Eternal life vs. eternal punishment: A response to TurretinFan
No Retreat on Nouns of Action: TurretinFan's Premature Celebration
Matthew 26:24
"The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born."
Traditionalists sometimes suggest that the non-existence of never being born is existentially on par with the non-existence of having been annihilated. But this text says that "it would have been better for that man if he had not been born" so therefore, they reason, annihilationism must be rejected. However, they seem to neglect a rather important element: the unsaved lived a life of sin and guilt from birth until death.
Given the conditionalist view, the lost live a life of sin and rebellion against God until the day they die. At judgment they are raised and stand accountable before God, whose judgment casts them in the shame of their guilt—and in the case of Judas it is particularly intense. They are sentenced to face the second death, knowing not only that the blessings of eternal life have been missed but also that their shameful deeds will forever be remembered in contempt. Moreover, the final punishment of the lost will likely be violent and painful. Surely to have never been born would be better than all of that!
Mark 9:48 (cf. Isaiah 66:24)
". . . where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."
Perhaps unbeknownst to many traditionalists who cite this verse as a challenge to conditionalism, Jesus is quoting Isaiah 66:24 here, in which it is said explicitly that it is corpses being consumed by fire and maggots—not living beings. Those traditionalists who are aware of this nevertheless insist that the worm is depicted as never dying and the fire as never going out. But this is not what these idioms communicate.
The phrase "does not die" is used several times in the Hebrew scripture and does not mean will never die (Genesis 42:20; Exodus 30:20; Jeremiah 38:24). It means that someone or something will not die at a particular time or in a particular context. In Isaiah 66:24 that context is the consumption of corpses. So their worm, it is promised, will not die before fully consuming the bodies. And like other tenacious scavengers that are difficult to prevent from fully consuming their corpses (Deuteronomy 28:26; Jeremiah 7:33), the irresistible and complete consumption of the dead by the worms makes their shame permanent and everlasting.
And a fire which "is not quenched" is not a fire that will never go out. The primary meaning of quench is "to extinguish." The biblical picture here is of a fire that cannot be quenched, a fire which cannot be prevented from fully consuming its fuel (2 Kings 22:17; Isaiah 34:10; Jeremiah 7:20; 17:27; Ezekiel 20:47).
Related Links:
Their Worm Does Not Die: Annihilation and Mark 9:48
Worms and Fire: The Rabbis or Isaiah?
Mark 9:49
"For everyone will be salted with fire."
It is sometimes argued that this verse, following Jesus' infamous statement about undying worms and unquenchable fire, indicates that the fires of Hell will have a preserving effect that keeps the risen wicked alive to be tormented for eternity. However, this is one of more than a dozen understandings offered by commentators throughout history, and even those critical of conditionalism have acknowledged the perplexing nature of the statement. In fact some traditionalist commentators do not even see this as saying anything about the damned at all.
And others, supported by some early interpolations during the text's transmission, see this as harkening to the salting of Levitical sacrifices—which were subsequently burned up, rather like the picture of the fires of Hell permanently destroying the unsaved. Bruce Metzger notes that other early interpolations indicate that this salting by fire is consuming and destructive. And Hebrew lexicographers indicate that salting is sometimes a Hebrew idiom meaning "to destroy completely." While the original text of Mark 9:49 was undoubtedly in Greek, nevertheless Jesus' Hebraic background would have allowed him to use the idiom, whether speaking in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek.
Given the diversity of possible understandings of this strange and unclear statement, there is no contextual justification for insisting that Jesus must be saying that the lives of the damned will be preserved forever in Hell.
Related Links:
Salted with Fire: Annihilation and Mark 9:49
Luke 16:19-31
"The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side" (verses 22-23)
In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus portrays the rich man being tormented by flames. Abraham tells him that a great chasm is fixed and cannot be crossed from the side of agony to the side of rest. It seems that traditionalists see torment, flames, and irreversible separation and suppose they have here all the elements of their view, bringing up this passage time and time again when talking to conditionalists. The problem is that while it does have those elements it has others as well, elements ignored when using it to defend the traditional view of Hell.
First, the rich man and Lazarus are dead and buried, awaiting their resurrection. And so, second, they are indeed in Hades, the place of the dead, not Hell as a place where the resurrected wicked are ultimately punished. Third, the rich man's brothers are still alive, and he asks that Lazarus be sent from the grave to encourage them to repent. For these reasons (and perhaps others), the setting of this tale is the first death, the grave, the intermediate state, and the parable tells us nothing about the future eternal state—even if one wishes to interpret it as a literal, historical account rather than a parable.
Related Links:
Lazarus and the Rich Man: It's Not About Final Punishment
John 5:28-29
"Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment."
This text is sometimes used by traditionalists in support for their view. However, this text says only that the lost will be resurrected and judged. It does not speak to what awaits them afterward. In fact, this text indicates that only the righteous will be resurrected to life, underscoring that the resurrected lost will not be, contrary to the traditional view.
2 Thessalonians 1:9
"They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might . . ."
According to the traditional view, this eternal destruction Paul speaks of militates against conditionalism. At best there would be no point, it is argued, in calling annihilation eternal; the word destruction would be sufficient, making the qualifier superfluous. At worst the presence of the qualifier means the destruction must last forever, an eternal destroying. The wicked are also said to experience this "away from" (ESV) or while "shut out from" (NIV) the presence of the Lord.
As a matter of fact, it makes perfect sense for Paul to call the destruction awaiting the resurrected wicked eternal. Although in this life they die only to face resurrection to judgment, thereafter they are destroyed forever, sentenced to the second death which is eternal. And the phrase "shut out from" (NIV) does not appear in the original Greek; even the translation "away from" (ESV) is dubious. But if we were to accept that meaning, all it would mean is that the destruction takes place away from the presence of God. The unsaved will be sent away from God's presence, thrown into a furnace of fire where they will be burned up (Matthew 13:40-42).
Paul said in the preceding verses that Jesus will be revealed "in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance"—a combination of terms found elsewhere only in Isaiah 66:15. This chapter of Isaiah, and the book as a whole, ends with the wicked having been reduced to lifeless, smoldering, maggot-ridden corpses. This is then the eternal destruction of which Paul speaks, being destroyed, rendered lifeless, never to live again.
Jude 6
"And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day . . ."
Many conditionalists, including us at Rethinking Hell, believe that the Bible teaches it is not just the unsaved who will be annihilated at the final judgment but Satan and his demons, too. Some critics of our view think that this verse in Jude is proof otherwise. They suppose that it refers to the final sentence of fallen angels, which amounts to being kept in bondage (rather than destruction) and forever since the chains are said to be eternal.
While this verse and its parallel in 2 Peter 2:4 indicate that fallen angels are now in bondage, having been cast into what Peter called Tartarus, according to both passages that bondage is said to be "until the judgment."
Although it is no proof that Satan and his demons will be annihilated in the end, these verses nevertheless do not contradict that view. Jude calls these perhaps figurative chains eternal but does not say that they will eternally bind fallen angels. After all, consider the very next verse.
Jude 7
". . . just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."
Conditionalists find it strange when this verse in Jude is called upon as support for the traditional view of Hell. After all, not only does it appear to indicate that Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the punishment of eternal fire—as even some traditionalists admit—but it also says their destruction by eternal fire serves as an example (presumably of what final punishment looks like). How better could the Bible indicate that the final punishment of the unsaved will be their utter destruction?
But some translations read differently, making it appear as if the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is not itself "a punishment of eternal fire" but is rather an example of that eternal fire which awaits the risen wicked in final punishment. For example, the J. B. Phillips translation reads, "Sodom and Gomorrah . . . stand in their punishment as a permanent warning of the fire of judgment." Similarly the New Living Translation renders it, "Those cities were destroyed by fire and serve as a warning of the eternal fire of God's judgment." Based on translations like these, some traditionalists argue that this verse is a challenge to conditionalism because final punishment consists in eternal fire, suggesting that the unsaved will burn forever.
In response, it is first worth noting that many traditionalists (if not most) do not believe that eternal Hell consists of literal, natural fire. So one is then left to wonder in what sense a finite destruction by fire (Sodom and Gomorrah) is an example of an eternity spent apart from that sort of fire. The comparison would make little sense. Moreover, the Greek word de??µa (deigma, example) is literally translated "thing shown" or "showing," and is closer in meaning to the word specimen than something like type or prefigure (which is the meaning of some derivatives of de??µa). In other words, even if Sodom and Gomorrah didn't suffer the punishment of eternal fire, those who wish to understand what that punishment will look like need only look at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Additionally, the phrase eternal fire is used also in Matthew 18:8 and Jesus' admonition there, recorded also in Matthew 5:30 and Mark 9:43, likens final punishment to Gehenna, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew "valley of [the sons of] Hinnom," which was once a place where idol worshipers burned up children as sacrifices to their gods. But Jeremiah 7:32-33 says that Gehenna would become "the Valley of Slaughter . . . And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away." Isaiah 30 speaks of God's fiery vengeance upon Gehenna, likening it to a funeral pyre, which is a pile of wood for burning up corpses.
So regardless of which translation gets this verse in Jude right, whether Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the punishment of eternal fire or simply serve as an example thereof, Jude tells us that eternal fire does not inflict agony forever, but reduces to lifeless remains.
Jude 13
". . . wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever."
It is sometimes argued, because the "utter darkness has been reserved forever" for these false teachers, that this suggests Hell is to be understood as an eternity spent separated from God in some metaphorical darkness (because fire produces light and so the fires and darkness of Hell cannot be taken literally). But this text follows shortly after verse 7 in which Jude says Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the punishment of eternal fire as an example of what awaits these false teachers. It comes after verse 10, too, which indicates along with its parallel in 2 Peter 2:12 that false teachers will be destroyed like animals are destroyed.
There is no good reason to think that darkness forever refers to some conscious separation from God for all eternity. Upon being afflicted Job wished that he had never been born. In other words, he wished that either he had never existed or that the day of his birth had never existed. He says (Job 3:3-10),
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, "A man is conceived." Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry enter it. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning, because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.
Darkness in Job's plea is not the darkness of conscious existence in some place absent of light, but rather the darkness of complete nothingness. That darkness reserved for false teachers may be understood as the utter nothingness awaiting the wicked who will rise to judgment and annihilation.
Revelation 14:9-11 (smoke of torment goes up forever and ever)
". . . and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night . . ."
If it were not for this passage and one other in Revelation, what is now the traditional view of Hell may never have developed. The angel promises that beast-worshipers will be tormented with fire and the smoke thereof goes up forever, which seems to suggest that their torment goes on forever. He also says they will have no rest day or night, suggesting that their restlessness will never come to an end. The challenge to conditionalism seems obvious.
But equally obvious should be the fact that the vision given to John consists of highly symbolic and apocalyptic imagery, so it must be interpreted carefully. The imagery of restlessness and smoke rising perpetually from torment may not actually communicate eternal torment, any more than a seven-headed, ten-horned beast (Rev 13:1) ridden by a prostitute with the name of a city on her head (Rev 17:3-6) communicates a future reality like something pictured in a horror movie.
So then what does the imagery in this portion of John's vision communicate? The harlot Mystery Babylon is seen tormented as well (Rev 18:7,10,15) and smoke from her torment also rises forever (Rev 19:3). But with respect to the city the harlot represents the interpreting angel says, "Babylon the great city [will] be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more" (Rev 18:21), borrowing language from Ezekiel 26:20-21, a prophecy concerning the destruction of the city of Tyre fulfilled long ago: "you will not be inhabited . . . you will be no more; though you will be sought, you will never be found again."
So this imagery of smoke rising forever from torment, when interpreted in the light of the Old Testament source it is quoting from, communicates permanent destruction that leaves lifeless remains. This should serve as no surprise to students of the Old Testament; the imagery comes straight from Isaiah 34:8-10 which describes the fires which long ago destroyed the city of Edom and have since dissipated: "Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever." Edom is not literally burning to this day, smoke is not still rising from its remains.
The imagery of smoke rising forever communicates the permanency of Edom's destruction and that of Mystery Babylon. Therefore, the smoke rising from the torment of the beast-worshipers amounts to imagery communicating their permanent destruction as well.
Related Links:
Underneath the Hood of Revelation 14:9-11: Turbulence, Chaos and Aftermath
Annihilation in Revelation, Part 1: Worth a Thousand Words
Annihilation in Revelation, Part 2: In with the Old—in the New
Revelation 20:10-15
". . . and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."
If it were not for this passage and perhaps one other in Revelation (See section on Revelation 14:9-11), what is now the traditional view of Hell may never have developed. The beast and false prophet are seen thrown into the lake of fire at the onset of the millennium (Rev 19:20) and are still there a thousand years later when the devil joins them and they are tormented forever. After rising from the dead the unsaved are thrown in, joining their fate, and consistency would seem to demand that they, too, are tormented forever. The challenge to conditionalism again seems obvious.
Other equally obvious factors, however, often go unnoticed or unmentioned. First, it should be obvious that the vision given to John consists of highly symbolic, apocalyptic imagery and must be interpreted carefully. As discussed above, the imagery of eternal torment may not communicate literal eternal torment any more than a seven-headed, ten-horned beast (Rev 13:1) ridden by a prostitute with the name of a city on her head (Rev 17:3-6) communicates a future reality like something pictured in a horror movie.
Secondly, it should be obvious that death and Hades are abstractions, not concrete entities, and are thus incapable of experiencing torment at all. And yet in this image they're thrown into the same lake of fire as the others after being emptied of their dead (Rev 20:13-14). Most traditionalists acknowledge that this means death and Hades will be no more, yet they nevertheless argue that even though the resurrected lost are not explicitly said to be tormented eternally in the lake of fire their fate must be the same as the others thrown into the fire. But consistency demands that everything thrown into the fire experiences the same fate, so that of the devil, beast, false prophet, and risen wicked should be annihilation in reality, even though some of them are depicted in the imagery as eternally tormented.
Thirdly, not only do we have the Old Testament uses of the imagery to rely on (see section on Revelation 14:9-11), but the book of Revelation in many cases interprets the images for us! John's vision is sometimes interpreted for him (Rev 17:7), and John appears to explain the imagery of the lake of fire itself by calling it "the second death" (Rev 20:14), the same interpretation offered by "he who sits on the throne" (Rev 21:8). So the imagery does not symbolize everlasting suffering but death—a permanent, irreversible death of body and soul (Matthew 10:28). Furthermore, the divine interpreter of imagery, foretelling the same events, explained to Daniel that what the beast experiences in the imagery symbolizes the permanent annihilation of the dominion of the kingdom it represents (Daniel 7:11, 25).
Lastly, the symbolic nature of the vision recorded in the book of Revelation is such that it must not be the foundation upon which we build our doctrine of Hell, even though it is arguably used in just that fashion by traditionalists. When we allow the divine interpreters of Daniel's and John's visions to explain the imagery to us, we can see that it communicates annihilation. The dominion of the kingdom represented by the beast comes to an end. Death and Hades come to an end. The devil and his angels will come to an end. The unsaved will likewise come to an end, a permanent destruction of body and soul.
Related Links:
Consistency in Preterism: Annihilation and Revelation 20:10
Annihilation in Revelation, Part 1: Worth a Thousand Words
Annihilation in Revelation, Part 2: In with the Old—in the New
Revelation 22:11
"Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy."
These words, spoken by Jesus' messenger to John, follow the imagery describing the New Jerusalem which had descended from Heaven. It is therefore sometimes argued that after the unsaved are cast into the lake of fire they continue to exist and sin, thereby challenging conditionalism. But many conditionalists happily acknowledge that in the symbolic and apocalyptic imagery of chapter 20 the beast, false prophet, devil, death, Hades, and the risen wicked are all depicted as eternally tormented in the lake of fire (implicitly in the case of death, Hades, and the damned). As such, the verse does not quite begin to challenge conditionalism since the question of the imagery's interpretation remains.
However, just as in Revelation 22:15 (See section on Revelation 22:15.), this verse does not speak of those who continue to do evil in the lake of fire. These words were spoken by the angel to John after the vision had concluded. John concludes in verse 8, "I am the one who heard and saw these things." And in verse 10 the angel tells John, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near." The dialogue is no longer taking place in the vision of the future, but in the present. The angel is speaking of how people will respond to the letter in John's time.
Related Links:
No Penitent in Hell: A [Reformed] Response to D. A. Carson
Revelation 22:15
"Outside [the city] are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."
These words, spoken by Jesus' messenger to John, follow the imagery describing the New Jerusalem which had descended from Heaven. So it is sometimes argued that after the unsaved are cast into the lake of fire they still exist, thereby challenging conditionalism. But many conditionalists are quite aware that in the symbolic and apocalyptic imagery of chapter 20 the beast, false prophet, devil, death, Hades, and the risen wicked are all depicted as eternally tormented in the lake of fire (implicitly in the case of death, Hades, and the damned), but they understand that the proper interpretation of that imagery is destruction. As such, the verse does not quite begin to challenge conditionalism since the question of the imagery's interpretation remains.
However, just as in Revelation 22:11 (See section on Revelation 22:11.), this verse does not depict the ongoing existence of the unsaved in the lake of fire outside the gates of the New Jerusalem. These words were spoken by the angel to John after the vision had concluded. John concludes in verse 8, "I am the one who heard and saw these things." And in verse 10 the angel tells John, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near." The dialogue is no longer taking place in the vision of the future, but in the present. Speaking of the gates of this future city in the present tense is nothing new; the author of Hebrews did it (Hebrews 12:22).
Related Links:
No Penitent in Hell: A [Reformed] Response to D. A. Carson
Conditionalist Proof-texts
Genesis 3:19
"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
God had warned Adam and Eve, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Traditionalists take this as indicating that Adam and Eve spiritually "died" the very day they ate from the tree, arguing that therefore death does not mean cessation of life but separation, in this case separation from God. This verse, however, demonstrates that by death God had meant literal, physical death, for in pronouncing the consequences of their sin he promised that they would surely one day return to the ground from whence they had come.
Genesis 3:22-23
"‘Now, lest [the man] reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—' therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden."
Traditionalists and conditionalists often differ in their interpretation of God's warning in Genesis 2:17, that Adam would surely die "in the day" he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Proponents of each view, however, generally agree that in Genesis 3:22-23, God banishes Adam and Eve from the garden so that, lacking access to the tree of life, they would not physically live forever. Whatever spiritual penalties sinning incurs, then, one consequence of sin is death.
What's more, this passage indicates that, whether Adam and Eve were originally immortal or whether their lives would have been indefinitely sustained by the tree of life, the hope of immortality, of living forever, was lost in the fall. Thankfully it can be found, but only through relationship with God. As Paul told Timothy, "our Savior Christ Jesus . . . abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Tim 1:10). Eternal life, he said, is given only to those who seek after immortality (Rom 2:7). It is those who will inherit the kingdom whose "mortal body must put on immortality" (1 Cor 15:50, 53).
The tree of life appears again at the other end of the Bible, in the apocalyptic vision shown to John on the island of Patmos, and in light of the above texts it should come as little surprise that it is only the righteous who have access to it in the end (Rev 2:7; 22:2). All of this stands in stark contrast to the traditionalist's vision of eternity, in which the risen lost live forever, too.
Psalm 1
"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked . . . He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither . . . The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment . . . but the way of the wicked will perish."
Throughout the psalms, the destiny of evil men is consistently said to be death, destruction, perishing, vanishing, being no more—a theme clearly present from this, the very first psalm. Righteous people, we are told, will persist in life indefinitely as all that remains after wicked people, being unable to stand in judgment, disappear by means of death, like the disposable parts of a grain plant swept away from the threshing floor by wind.
It is worth noting that this first psalm's contrast is not between specific people at a specific time in history, but between kinds of people: the righteous and the wicked. This is important, because frequently in life the righteous are the ones who are cut off and disappear, and the wicked live long and prosper. The author of the divinely inspired psalm, then, must have in mind the ultimate destinies of the righteous and the wicked.
Psalm 11:5-6
"The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup."
Here the psalmist likens the ultimate fate of the wicked to that which befell the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who were violently slain by raining sulfur and fire (Genesis 19:23-29). The picture is of death by irresistibly consuming fire, not enduring life in fire which never consumes.
Psalm 37
"Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb . . . For the evildoers shall be cut off . . . the wicked will be no more . . . The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming. The wicked draw the sword . . . to slay those whose way is upright; their sword shall enter their own heart . . . the wicked will perish . . . they vanish—like smoke they vanish away . . . those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land, but those cursed by him shall be cut off . . . For the Lord loves justice; he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off . . . transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the future of the wicked shall be cut off."
Psalm 92:6-9
"the fool cannot understand this: that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever; but you, O Lord, are on high forever. For behold, your enemies, O Lord, for behold, your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered."
Psalm 112:10
"The wicked man sees [the horn of the righteous] and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish!"
Proverbs 10:25-31
"When the tempest passes, the wicked is no more, but the righteous is established forever . . . The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short. The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish. The way of the Lord is a stronghold to the blameless, but destruction to evildoers. The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not dwell in the land. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut off."
Proverbs 12:28
"In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death."
Proverbs 24:19-20
"Fret not yourself because of evildoers, and be not envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future; the lamp of the wicked will be put out."
Isaiah 33:11-14
"You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you. And the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire . . . The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: ‘Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?'"
Isaiah 53:8-9
" . . . he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people . . . they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death . . . "
Most orthodox atonement models include the element of substitution, whether penal or otherwise. Jesus is believed to have taken the place of sinners, suffering their fate in their stead. Calvinists believe Jesus substituted only for the elect, from which it follows that his fate must await those in whose stead he did not stand. Non-Calvinists believe Jesus substituted for all mankind, but that his fate awaits those to whom, failing to exercise saving faith in him, his atoning work is not appropriated. But in what did Christ's atoning work consist?
Familiar to most Christians is Isaiah's famous "Suffering Servant" who, we so frequently recall, "was pierced for our transgressions" and "was crushed for our iniquities." Perhaps overlooked, however, is what Isaiah goes on to write about him, that "he was cut off out of the land of living," that he died and was buried. Jesus did not only suffer pain in the stead of those for whom he substituted; he also died. Therefore the destiny awaiting the lost, and escaped by believers, is death, not everlasting life.
Daniel 12:2
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
Contrary to the traditional view of Hell, in which all mankind is resurrected unto immortality and eternal life, here Daniel is told that only some people will live forever. The corollary? The rest will die. The word "contempt" is used to describe the experience of those who find something abhorrent or abominable, like the righteous who look out in disgust at the corpses of God's slain enemies (Isa 66:24). This passage indicates, then, that after they're dead and gone, the wicked (or the memory of them) will be held in contempt by others who still live.
Malachi 4:1-3
"For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name . . . you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts."
Matthew 3:11-12 (c.f. Luke 3:16-17)
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
These two verses are part of John the Baptist's introduction of Christ where he is emphasizing the superiority of Christ's ministry and work over his own ministry. This episode is recorded in Matthew 3:1-12 and Luke 3:1-18 and while there are differences between the two presentations in the broader contexts they make the same point about the nature of the eschatological judgment. In both passages, Christ's greater ministry involves the expected eschatological judgment associated with the coming of the true Messiah. The imagery of harvested wheat being separated from the chaff via a winnowing process (throwing the wheat into the air with the fork so the wind separates the grain from the chaff) is used to pictorially unpack the nature of this aspect of Christ's ministry.
Of interest for our purposes is the burning of the chaff. The use of the verb "to burn" (?ata?a??, katakaio), which has the meaning of "to burn up" indicates that whatever is being burned is completely consumed by the fire with nothing but ash remaining (c.f Acts 19:19; Heb 13:11). It should be noted that numerous Greek lexicons and traditionalist scholars agree that this is the meaning of ?ata?a??. This is not an obscure shade of meaning the at Conditionalists are appealing to for support. The imagery of chaff being consumed by fire clear speaks to its destruction any this is most likely how the first century audience would have understood it. Taken at face value – and there is no reason to not do so – then the imagery demands an annihilationist reading of this text.
Nevertheless, some Traditionalist commentators often refuse to admit the validity of this reading of this text on the basis that the fire is described as "unquenchable". The argument is that the fire is unquenchable because there is always fuel to burn (c.f. Robert Yarborough in Hell Under Fire and Craig Blomberg in his commentary on Matthew in the NAC series). This is a non-sequitur! The Greek adjective ?sß?st? literally means "a fire that cannot be put out". It references the quality of the fire per se and has nothing to do with the fuel. Trying to maneuver around the issue by relating "unquenchable" to the burning chaff lacks exegetical credibility.
Furthermore, consider the Baptist's statement that Christ will baptize "with the Holy Spirit and fire". In the Greek, this phrase forms a specific construction where the two nouns "Spirit" and "fire" are modified by the one preposition "with/in" (??). Now, when this construction is used it means that both nouns refer to the same concept (this is sometimes called a hendiadys ["one-through-two"]). The implication of this insight is quite important since it means that the Baptist is not talking about two separate baptisms but one Spirit-fire baptism. This explains why the word "unquenchable" is used in relation to the fire in verse 12 since it is referring to the Holy Spirit. It also renders assertions that the "unquenchable" nature of the fire relies on the burning chaff theologically absurd since, as God, the Spirit exists necessarily of Himself.
In conclusion, the Conditionalist reading of Matthew 3:11-12 as a reference to the absolute destruction of unrepentant sinners by God at the last judgement is the only exegetically, logically, and theologically sound position.
Matthew 7:13-14
"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
Matthew 10:28
"And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell."
Matthew 13:40-42
"Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Matthew 18:8-9
"And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the Hell of fire."
Matthew 25:46
"And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Most people cite this verse thinking the parallelism here excludes a Conditionalist reading of the text. There are very good reasons, however, to think that this verse is a key verse supporting Conditionalism. Let us focus for the moment on the word for "punishment" (???as?s). When this word is used in the LXX (Jer 18:20; Ezekiel 14:3-7; 18:30; 43:11; 44:12) and in the NEW TESTAMENT (1 John 4:18) it is usually used in an undefined and ambiguous way. The only exception to this is Ezekiel 18:30 where the context dictates that he punishment in question refers to physical death. There is, therefore, nothing in the meaning of word "punishment" (???as?s) itself demanding the idea that sinners suffer an unending punishment of torture.
If we consider some of the other ways that Matthew refers to the punishment of sinners throughout the Gospel we can gain a very good idea of the punishment in 25:46. Take for instance Matthew's use of fire imagery in 3:10-12 to convey the idea that the "chaff" (sinner) will be completely burned up and in 13:40-42. Then there is Matthew's references to the destruction of sinners (Matt 7:13) and his exhortation to fear God who can indeed destroy "both the soul and body in Hell" (for more detail see the commentary on these verses). The imagery used in these texts tells us that for Matthew the eschatological punishment is the kind where sinners experience utter destruction.
It is usual for traditionalists to point to the adjective "eternal" (a??????, aionios) to argue that this punishment will be experienced by those in Hell forever. At first blush a?????? can appear to lend support to the traditional reading but once one considers the way "eternal" is often used with other "nouns of action" it becomes clear that we cannot make this assumption. By "noun of action" we mean those nouns that refer to the results of its corresponding verb (also known as a deverbal result noun). If that is all too much to get your head around then consider the following examples: eternal judgment (Heb 6:2), eternal sin (Mark 3:29), eternal redemption (Heb 9:12), eternal salvation (Heb 5:9), and eternal inheritance (Heb 9:15). In each of these cases it is obvious that a continuing and unending action is not in view. Now, it is not our contention that all uses of the noun "punishment" are deverbal result nouns. It is our contention, however, that given the context in Matthew, where the fire/burning/destruction imagery clearly indicates the destruction of unrepentant sinners, the best way to understand "punishment" in Matthew 25:46 is as a deverbal result noun.
One other argument used by traditionalists is to assert that the parallelism in Matthew 25:46 demands that just as those experiencing "eternal life" will never die so also those experiencing the "eternal punishment" will continue to live forever (an argument dating back to Augustine). Conditionalists agree that the parallelism has a bearing on the meaning of the text and that a contrast is being made between "eternal life" and "eternal punishment". Given Matthew's use of imagery in previous contexts that point to the complete destruction of sinners it is our contention that the contrast made between "eternal life" and "eternal punishment" is one where one group will experience true life in the coming eschatological age while the other group will experience the complete destruction and ruin of both the spiritual and the physical dimensions of the person. We agree this punishment is eternal but we also insist that, based on sound exegetical principles, it does not involve the eternal conscious torture of sinners.
Related Links:
"Punishment" and the Polysemy of Deverbal Nouns
Matthew 25:46 Does Not Prove Eternal Torment – Part 1
Matthew 25:46 Does Not Prove Eternal Torment – Part 2
"Eternal Punishment" and the LXX: A Brief Note on Matthew 25:46
Mark 9:48 (cf. Isaiah 66:24)
". . . where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."
Perhaps unbeknownst to many traditionalists who cite this verse as a challenge to conditionalism, Jesus is quoting Isaiah 66:24 here, in which it is said explicitly that it is corpses being consumed by fire and maggots—not living beings. Those traditionalists who are aware of this nevertheless insist that the worm is depicted as never dying and the fire as never going out. But this is not what these idioms communicate.
The phrase "does not die" is used several times in the Hebrew scripture and does not mean will never die (Genesis 42:20; Exodus 30:20; Jeremiah 38:24). It means that someone or something will not die at a particular time or in a particular context. In Isaiah 66:24 that context is the consumption of corpses. So their worm, it is promised, will not die before fully consuming the bodies. And like other tenacious scavengers that are difficult to prevent from fully consuming their corpses (Deuteronomy 28:26; Jeremiah 7:33), the irresistible and complete consumption of the dead by the worms makes their shame permanent and everlasting.
And a fire which "is not quenched" is not a fire that will never go out. The primary meaning of quench is "to extinguish." The biblical picture here is of a fire that cannot be quenched, a fire which cannot be prevented from fully consuming its fuel (2 Kings 22:17; Isaiah 34:10; Jeremiah 7:20; 17:27; Ezekiel 20:47).
Related Links:
Their Worm Does Not Die: Annihilation and Mark 9:48
The Fire Is Not Quenched: Annihilation and Mark 9:48 (Part 2)
Worms and Fire: The Rabbis or Isaiah?
What the Qal? Revisiting the Unquenched Fire
The Passive Qal and Other Issues
Luke 20:35-36
"those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead . . . cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection"
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
John 3:36
"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."
John 5:28-29
"an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment."
John 6:49-51
"Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from Heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever."
John 8:51
"Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."
John 10:28
"I give them eternal life, and they will never perish . . . "
John 11:25-26
"Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.'"
Romans 2:6-8
"He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury."
Romans 5:17
"For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ."
Romans 6:23
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
1 Corinthians 15:50,53-54
"flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable . . . For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.'"
Galatians 6:8
"For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life."
Philippians 3:19
"Their end is destruction . . . "
2 Thessalonians 1:7-9
"when the Lord Jesus is revealed from Heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might."
1 Timothy 6:15-16
"the King of kings and Lord of lords . . . alone has immortality . . . "
2 Timothy 1:10
"Christ Jesus . . . abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel"
Hebrews 10:26-27
"For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries."
James 5:20
" . . . whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death . . . "
2 Peter 2:6
"by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly"
2 Peter 2:12
"But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction"
2 Peter 3:6-7
"by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly"
1 John 2:17
"And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever."
1 John 5:11-12
"And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."
Jude 7
"Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."
Revelation 20:13-14
"And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire."
Revelation 22:1-2
"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month."
Some Major Proponents of Conditionalism
Note: inclusion of notable proponents does not imply endorsement.
Early Church Fathers and Documents (1st-4th C)
First Clement (late 1st century)
Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st century)
Epistle of Barnabas (late 1st or early 2nd century)
Irenaeus (2nd century)
Arnobius (early 4th century)
Athanasius (4th century)
Historical Church Figures (5th-18th C)
Isaac Barrow, English mathematician and theologian of the 17th century. His works on theology are published as Sermons and fragments attributed to Isaac Barrow: to which are added two dissertations on the duration of future punishments and on dissenters (edited by J. P. Lee).
Henry Constable, Canon and Prebendary of Cork, Ireland, author of The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment (1872).
Charles Ellicot, Anglican Bishop (Gloucester and Bristol), academic and author of several books, in particular Destiny of the Creature (1865).
William Ewart Gladstone, British Prime Minister on four occasions in the nineteenth century and lay theologian.
Joseph Parker, English Nonconformist (congregationalist) pastor.
J. H. Pettingell, Congregationalist author of several books including Theological Tri-lemnia (1878) and Life Everlasting (1883).
Samuel Richardson, pastor of the First Particular Baptist Church of London, who wrote A Discourse on the Torments of Hell: The foundations and pillars thereof discovered, searched, shaken, and removed. With Infallible Proofs that there is not to be a punishment after this life, for any to endure that shall never end (1658).
Joseph Nichol Scot, minister and author of Sermons, Preached in Defense of All Religion, Whether Natural or Revealed (1743).
Sir George Stokes, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, theologian and president of the Victoria Institute, president of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Richard Francis (R.F.) Weymouth, Greek scholar and Bible translator. Best known for the Weymouth New Testament (aka The New Testament in Modern Speech) published in 1903, the year after his death.
Recent Christian Leaders and Scholars (20th/21st C)
Basil Atkinson, Greek scholar and under-librarian at the University of Cambridge. Dr Atkinson was a key figure in the formation of the Intervarsity fellowship and wrote numerous scholarly and popular books including The Greek Language and Life and Immortality.
Horace Bushnell, Congregationalist theologian.
S. Parkes Cadman, Congregationalist clergyman, newspaper writer and pioneer Christian broadcaster.
E. Earle Ellis, Professor at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, founder of the Institute for Biblical Research, and author of Pauline Theology: Ministry and Society and Paul's Use of the Old Testament
R.T. France, Anglican Greek scholar, one time teacher at London Bible College, principal of Wycliffe Hall and New Testament commentator.
Edward Fudge, theologian, speaker, and author of The Fire that Consumes, considered to be the definitive work on conditional immortality and annihilationism
Harold Guillebaud, author of The Righteous Judge: A Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment.
Homer Hailey, preacher in the Churches of Christ, professor at both Abilene Christian University and Florida College, and author of more than a dozen books on theology and biblical studies.
Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, Anglican clergyman, Calvinist and New Testament scholar, author of numerous scholarly books and articles including The True Image: The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ.
Dale Moody, Professor of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, 1948-1984.
I. Howard Marshall, Professor Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen, author of numerous biblical commentaries and New Testament Theology: Many Witnesses, One Gospel
Emmanuel Pétavel-Olliff, Swiss pastor and biblical scholar, author of The Problem of Immortality and The Struggle for Eternal Life; Or the Immortality of the Just, and the Gradual Extinction of the Wicked.
Clark Pinnock, theologian and lecturer at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Regent College and McMaster Divinity College. Pinnock authored numerous books and articles including several articles in defense of conditional immortality. He defended that view in Four Views on Hell.
W. Graham Scroggie, Evangelist, pastor and author of numerous commentaries and theological studies including The Unfolding Drama of Redemption and Guide to the Gospels.
John Stott, renowned Evangelical leader, and author, one-time Rector of All Souls' Church, Langham Place, who was especially well known as a supporter of Intervarsity Fellowship. Stott's revelation in Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue that he held to the annihilationist view sent shockwaves through the evangelical world and significantly boosting the visibility of our position.
John Wenham, Anglican biblical scholar, author of The Elements of New Testament Greek and The Goodness of God (also published as The Enigma of Evil).
Contemporary Christian Leaders and Scholars (Living)
Richard Bauckham, Professor at University of Cambridge, and formerly the Universities of St. Andrews, and Manchester and author of numerous biblical commentaries and Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and The Jewish World Around the New Testament
Greg Boyd, co-founder and Senior Pastor of Woodland Hills Church, creator of ReKnew.org, and author of Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity.
Jeff Cook, Professor at University of Northern Colorado, Pastor at Atlas Church, and author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes and Everything New: One Philosophers Search for a God Worth Believing In
Roger Forster, founder and pastor in the Icthus Christian Fellowship (UK) and co-author of God's Strategy in Human History
John Franke, Executive Director of Yellowstone Theological Institute and Theologian in Residence at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA
Michael Green, Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, Anglican priest, Christian apologist and author of more than 50 books including Evangelism in the Early Church and "But Don't All Religions Lead to God?"
David Instone-Brewer, Senior Research Fellow in Rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House, and author of The Jesus Scandals: Why He Shocked His Contemporaries (and Still Shocks Today).
Gordon Isaac, Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and author of Left Behind or Left Befuddled: The Subtle Dangers of Popularizing the End Times
Douglas Jacoby, Professor at Lincoln Christian University, apologist, and author of What's the Truth About Heaven and Hell?: Sorting Out the Confusion About the Afterlife
Thomas Johnson, Professor at The Seattle School of Psychology and Theology, previously at George Fox University and author of a commentary on the Johannine epistles
Claude Mariottini, Professor at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Rereading the Biblical Text: Searching for Meaning and Understanding
Christopher Marshall, Professor at Victoria University of Wellington and author of Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment
David Powys, Anglican vicar and author of 'Hell': A Hard Look at a Hard Question: The Fate of the Unrighteous in New Testament Thought
Jim Spiegel, Professor at Taylor University and author of The Making of an Atheist
John Stackhouse, Professor at Regent College and author of Humble Apologetics and Can God Be Trusted?
Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and author of Faith and Reason and Responsibility and Atonement
Anthony Thistleton, formerly Professor at Nottingham University and author of numerous commentaries and works on hermeneutics, as well as Life after Death: a New Approach to the Last Things
Stephen Travis, formerly Vice-Principal and Lecturer at St. John's College, Nottingham and author of Christ and the Judgement of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought
Nigel Wright, formerly Principal of Spurgeon's College and author of The Radical Evangelical: Seeking a Place to Stand
Contemporary Traditionalists Who Support Conditionalism as an Evangelical Doctrine
Craig Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary and author of A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis and Interpreting the Parables.
Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today and author of Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit and God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins
Roger Olson, Professor at Truett Seminary (Baylor University) and author of The Story of Christian Theology and The Mosaic of Christian Belief.
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of many works of systematic theology, as well as co-editor of the Global Dictionary of Theology.
"Hell was not made for men. It is in no sense parallel to Heaven; It is 'the darkness outside,' the outer rim where being fades away into nonentity." C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
MY INVITATION TO YOU
No doubt about it . . . HELL is a hot topic. And whatever they say on the subject, it seems almost everyone has an opinion. On one side of the aisle, promising sunny days and fair skies now and forever, are the television gurus, New Age evangelists and outright skeptics. On the other side we find prophets and priests, preachers and pundits—in full agreement as to hell's reality, while still debating the precise details.
If, like me, you take the Bible seriously (whether or not you also take it literally), you know that Hell is part of its vision of the final future. That means we also must take Hell into account in our own understanding of Last Things, else we will find ourselves looking at a distorted picture when measured by the book we all claim to follow.
That, of course, will require much thought—which itself calls for certain preparation if we are to do it well. Chief among those preparations, I suggest, are an open Bible, an open heart, and an open mind. Come join me with all three and let's see what surprises might await!
HELL FIRE AND HELL FEAR
I was only a fourth-grader, for Heaven's sake, but the whirlpool of hellish fears that threatened to drown me seemed no less real based on my tender years on earth. And the panic—it was the kind you feel in a nightmare, the kind in which you are being chased by slimy, stinking, flesh-eating monsters, already breathing down your neck and gaining ground in hot pursuit. Perhaps you think it strange for a ten-year-old to be pondering Hell in the first place. Especially—and can you believe it—on the day of his baptism?
The thought of facing God in judgment unbaptized scared the bejeebers out of me. Not because I thought that the physical event itself could forgive sins. Nor did I imagine that the gospel ordinance puts God in our debt or obligates him to do anything good in response (Romans 11:33-36).
No, it was all about uniting with Jesus in the likeness of his burial and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4). Baptism was the way faith jumped into the arms of God, trusting that Jesus' blood would wash away sins (Colossians 2:12; Acts 22:16). This was not "baptismal regeneration," not magic, not "sacramentalism," as that word is properly used. But my ten-year-old mind added all those things together and concluded that if I died unbaptized, I was toast!
Despite a godly upbringing in a truly devout home, I cannot truthfully claim that God's love—either his love for me or my love for him—was the conscious motive that moved me to action on that September Sunday morning. What shook me to the core and kicked me in the seat of the pants, the impulse that energized me and dragged me down that aisle to request baptism, was holy terror, raw and naked fear.
Some day my final destination would be either Heaven or Hell, I was thinking. And the very thought of Hell sent chill-bumps racing down my spine. I pushed my way past the people situated between me and the aisle, rushed to the front of the room, and blurted out my request: "I do not want to go to Hell. I want God to forgive my sins. I want to be baptized."
Through the years, many sensitive children have been frightened by the fear of hell—just as I was—into receiving Christ as Savior and being baptized. No doubt very many of those children decided later—just as I did—that they really had not made a responsible decision, and so they repeated the conversion experience, "just to be sure." And perhaps some, even after two baptisms, felt the desire (as I later did as a senior in college) to kneel at my bedside and repeat Billy Graham's prayer asking God's forgiveness and inviting Jesus into my heart and life.
When I responded to the invitation song on that September Sunday in 1954, I could not possibly have known that a quarter-century later I would be head-over-heels into a year-long research project on the final fate of the wicked. Nor could I have imagined, on the day I was baptized, that the research project would end with me writing a five-hundred-page book titled The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment.
I could not have dreamed that the British scholar F. F. Bruce would contribute a foreword to the first edition or that the Evangelical Book Club would choose it as an Alternate Selection. I certainly had no hint in advance that God would use that book to help spark a restudy of the doctrine of Hell among Bible-believing Christians on several continents. And I would have laughed with disbelief had anyone dared to suggest in 1954 that my future book would be the subject of a 2012 feature movie titled "Hell and Mr. Fudge," based on the true story behind the book.
Yet it is the sober truth that all these things happened, one after the other, without my planning and certainly apart from my power—which could never have brought any of it into being, much less all of those things. God being sovereign, I trust that each event fell into place according to his agenda, through his power, and to his glory. At most, any of us just happens to be a hunk of mortal clay that he had prepared for some purpose, then picks up and uses when the time is right in his own eyes.
If I am ever tempted to think otherwise, I need only remember that this entire chain of events resulted from an intensive restudy of the subject that I did not plan, and required a change of my own mind that I did not desire. Indeed, I would have happily avoided the entire matter and everything connected with it, had there been any honest way around it.
But in the end there was not another honest way. Truth is more important than material comfort, my Daddy used to say—and I trusted his opinions more than the opinions of anybody else in the whole world. In fact, it is fair to say that my five siblings and I were raised on just such godly affirmations as that.
ENLARGING THE CONVERSATION
While researching the doctrine of final punishment about twenty-five years later, I discovered that many of my childhood ideas about Hell were based firmly on the Scriptures and needed no adjustment. Those things deserved to be taught, defended, and perpetuated because they are clearly taught in the Word of God.
These truths are not lifted from their settings and harvested as prooftexts. They are studied in context with due regard to the meanings of words, using the tools and following the rules of standard biblical exegesis (bringing out the sense) and hermeneutics (interpreting the meaning). The picture of Hell as it looked in my ten-year-old imagination included some other elements that definitely needed restudy.
At the time, I would have insisted that these details also belonged in the box of items marked "Things-we-know-for-sure." But no matter how strongly I might have insisted—or with what volume or intensity or repetition—I still would have been wrong. However, God is merciful, and he steers us to the light when light is what we are seeking (John 3:16-19).
Part of my assignment for that year-long project was to discover the origin of the doctrine of everlasting conscious torment. As it happened, I found that origin to be in Greek philosophy and not in Holy Scripture. Of course, many others through the centuries had made the same discovery before I did, and I would never claim otherwise.
I will tell you this—with no desire to exaggerate or to be controversial—that no one before or after could have been more astounded at the things I found throughout the Bible during the course of my study. I knew instinctively that I had to write a book. Time and again, I prayed for God to give me a spirit of wisdom and of revelation as I opened the Scriptures to another passage (Ephesians 1:17). Time and again I was surprised by the truth that stood out in some familiar text, as if I were reading it for the very first time.
In the end, I wrote that book. It was titled The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, and I mentioned it briefly in the previous chapter. In The Fire That Consumes, I examined every passage of Scripture in both Old and New Testaments that comments on the topic of final punishment.
I had to share what I had found with my Christian brothers and sisters. If I had read the Bible correctly, they also deserved to know these things that had surprised me so. And, if my thinking was wrong, someone needed to write a better book than mine, to point that out very plainly for everyone to see.
The book you are reading now is titled Hell: A Final Word. That title reminds us that when Hell finally has completed its job, there will be nothing left to say. Everyone who goes there will be gone, entirely and eternally. For everyone who continued throughout life in opposition to God, "Hell" will have become the "final word."
But the title Hell: A Final Word also has a second meaning. Since 1982, I have written two separate books and one major revision on the subject of Hell. The book in your hand at this moment will be my last book on that subject. In the final few paragraphs of this chapter, let me fill in a few details about those books as background to this one.
Bringing you current
The Fire That Consumes landed in the world of evangelical Christianity like a match lighting a fuse going straight to a bundle of dynamite. Carefully and kindly, it directly challenged the traditional Christian understanding of Hell as a place of unending conscious torment—the "orthodox" view that had been held for at least 1,600 years by almost the entire Christian world. Most important, its challenge to the nearly universal understanding of Hell rested solely on the Word of God, the Bible. Because its power is in the Word of God, The Fire That Consumes has had a dramatic effect on the larger conversation. One traditionalist author considered it "the start of the current conservative attack on hell."1
A second, British edition of The Fire That Consumes was published in 1994 by Paternoster Press in the U.K., with a new foreword by the Anglican priest-scholar John W. Wenham of Oxford. For half a century, Mr. Wenham had championed the high authority of Scripture, both within the Anglican Church and among British evangelical Christians in general. He was also, for several decades, the author of the most widely used Greek textbook published in the English-speaking world. This second edition of The Fire That Consumes is no longer in print.
In the year 2000, InterVarsity Press published Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue, in which I presented the case for conditional immortality or annihilationism, Robert A. Peterson presented the case for everlasting torment (traditionalism), and we each responded to the other. That book, which gives the reader these two views, continues to sell steadily.
In the spring of 2011, Cascade Books, the academic/theological division of Wipf and Stock, released the third edition of The Fire That Consumes. Like the two previous editions, it included a new foreword— this time by Richard Bauckham, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, now at Cambridge University in England. Although Professor Bauckham is not yet so well known among non-scholars in the United States, in academic circles he is regarded as one of the top New Testament scholars in the world today.
As it happens, books written in defense of the traditional view of Hell regularly quote Richard Bauckham's description of the extent to which church-going believers have abandoned the traditional view of Hell. However, I have not seen one traditionalist author who mentions that Dr. Bauckham himself has rejected the traditional view of Hell as unending torment, or that his personal website now includes an article in which he endorses the same view of final punishment that I have set out in this book you are now reading.
The conversation continues
The new third edition of The Fire That Consumes was a major revision of the earlier editions, thoroughly reorganized, with several new chapters. But perhaps the most important addition to the third edition was the interaction throughout the book with seventeen leading defenders of the traditionalist view.
During the twenty-nine years between the publication of the first edition of The Fire That Consumes in 1982 and the third edition in 2011, these seventeen widely-recognized evangelical scholars had written twelve books in response to my book and others. In the third edition, I replied to their objections and responded to what I considered problems in their defenses of the traditional view. This continued the conversation that began nearly three decades ago.
Hell is a subject that the sixteenth-century Reformers did not reach to restudy. It is a topic still crying out for serious Bible study. The evangelical conversation on Hell has been too long coming, and now that it has started, it desperately needs to grow both deeper and broader. This is my goal in writing Hell: A Final Word—to put the same biblical data and historical facts into the hands of serious Bible students and readers in general that the scholars have had for at least thirty years.
A best-selling book in 1986 was titled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things, by Robert Fulghum. The title speaks eloquently for itself. Nothing of great importance is new, the author tells us. Things that matter most are mostly obvious.
It is a bit like that with Hell. Most of what I thought about Hell as a ten-year-old, I continue to believe and teach today. Before we go further, let's pause and pay tribute to the simple truths about Hell that always remain—the elements of good theology that need no revising.
A PRIMER ON HELL
How can I begin to describe the Hell I imagined on my baptismal day in September 1954? Decades of additional Bible study on the topic have only confirmed the accuracy of most of what I already believed at age ten. Thinking back on that scene now, just three years short of birthday number seventy, five brief statements sum up what I already believed about Hell so many years ago.
Hell is real.
Hell is bad.
Hell is punishment.
Hell is separation from God.
Hell is eternal.
Hell is real
Make no mistake about it—Hell is real. Despite all the jokes and cartoons, it is as real as Heaven. It is real, despite the totally fictitious details invented by Dante and other medieval figures, and by today's flimflam artists and internet sensationalists. Hell is real, despite the crust of human traditions that has accumulated around the true teaching of Scripture until the original version is hardly even recognizable.
When the New Testament refers to "Hell" as the place of final punishment, it translates the Greek word Gehenna. However, there are some who say that the lost are never raised from the dead. They never face God in judgment. They are never expelled into Hell based on a judicial sentence of divine justice. In this explanation of things, the lost simply remain dead forever. This view says that Gehenna refers to the grave alone and to nothing more.
Jesus seems clearly to disallow this viewpoint. When he was sending out his disciples on a mission into dangerous territory at the risk of their lives, Jesus exhorted them not to fear human beings, who could do no more than to kill them now. Instead, Jesus urged his disciples to fear God who, after killing the body, has power to throw people into Hell (Luke 12:5), where he is able to destroy both soul and body forever (Matthew 10:28). There is a second death for the wicked. The grave is not their end. Hell is indeed real.
Others acknowledge that Jesus warned of Gehenna, and that he pictured it as a horrible and dreadful destination. They freely admit that Jesus said that God "is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell" (Matthew 10:28). But having said that, these deniers insists that God is "too good" to allow anyone actually to go to Hell. Why, however, would Jesus warn of something that he knew would never take place? The teachings of Jesus that we have considered already are sufficient to refute this wishful thinking.
Hell is bad
One could argue that it is pointless to say that Hell is bad, because everybody knows that already. The final point in that statement is probably accurate. Who is not familiar with the ubiquitous cartoon featuring a red devil with horns and pitchfork, prodding a helpless mortal whom he has been assigned to torment? The internet is full of fanciful fictions about petroleum or gas crews drilling in the remote parts of Siberia or elsewhere, whose seismic instruments supposedly picked up the screams of people in Hell, deep in the center of the earth. Society understands that Hell is bad.
On the other hand, the notion is widespread that Hell will be a picnic in the park for rogues and scoundrels, an eternity of nonstop partying and having a high old time forever with one's earthly friends. This vision of infernal camaraderie might be as mild as Huckleberry Finn's, which author Samuel Clemens reveals in an early conversation Huck has with Miss Watson, the spinster sister of his caretaker Aunt Mollie:
Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewhere; all I wanted was a change; I wasn't particular . . . .
Now she had got a start, and she went on and on and told me all about the good place. . . . I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.2
Make no mistake about it: Hell is not a place of laughter—not even the slightly naughty kind. In fact, when Jesus talks about Hell, he pictures it as a place of weeping, or a place of defiant anger, but never as a "fun" place, never as a place where anyone is laughing or even smiling just a little.
Hell is punishment
Jesus not only taught that Hell is real. He also taught that Hell is punishment. What comes to your mind when you see or hear the word "punishment"? Could you think of a prisoner who has been confined to a dark and smelly, underground cell, where his only human contact is a jailor who torments the prisoner at every opportunity? Or perhaps the word "punishment" conjures the scene of a man paying a fine to the magistrate.
Or might you visualize an ancient site of executions, where Roman soldiers are viciously scourging ten men? When the scourging is ended, the near-dead men are nailed to crosses, where they will hang until life is gone. These three scenes differ considerably, but what we see in each of them can truthfully be called "punishment."
They are all fairly labeled as "punishment," not because of what each man suffers, or how much he suffers, or how the suffering endured by any particular one compares with the conscious pain experienced by the others. What makes them "punishment" is the fact that each situation we described was the penal consequence of crimes committed, as officially ordered by a judge with authority to pronounce guilt and to pass sentence based on law.
According to Jesus, every human being—wicked and good alike—will be raised from the dead to face God regarding the deeds done in the body now. "A time is coming," Jesus said, "when all who are in their graves will hear [Jesus'] voice and come out—those who have done good . . . to the resurrection of life . . . and those who have done evil . . . to the resurrection of judgment" (John 5:28-29, emphasis added). We can mark it down as settled truth: What happens in Hell in the Age to Come will be the consequence of choices, actions and inactions here and now (Mark 9:43-47).
By the way, did you notice that no text we have read about Hell even remotely suggests that hell's punishment is a means of instruction, or that it is intended to rehabilitate or restore? As you continue to study the Bible on this topic of final punishment, you will not find a single hint that those who are banished to Hell will ever come out again. Nor is there any Scripture that suggests that bad conduct in Hell prolongs the punishment, which already is said to be eternal.
Hell is separation from God
In all the teaching of Jesus, no element stands out more vividly than that final judgment will result in two destinations. Hell will involve separation from family and friends, if some are redeemed and some have rejected God's grace. But far more important, it will mean final separation from God. Not everyone finally goes to Heaven.
Jesus describes scenes of a great party, from which some would-be guests are tossed out (Matthew 8:11-12). He tells stories of people expelled into the darkness outside, a place noted for weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 22:13). Another parable describes a fisherman separating the edible good fish from the "trash" fish that are sold as bait (Matthew 13:47-50).
The world of Jesus' parables is a world full of separations: weeds must be separated from grain (Matthew 13:30). And in Jesus' most famous parable of this sort, he compares God's final separation of human beings to the separation of sheep and goats by a Palestinian herdsman (Matthew 25:31-46).
But far more dreadful than human separations is the total separation of the lost person from God the Creator and from Jesus Christ the redeemer. But that is a sober reality and not an idle threat either. Jesus spoke of some to whom he will say in judgment, "Go away from me!" (Matthew 7:23). The Apostle Paul says that when Jesus is revealed from Heaven, he will "inflict vengeance" on the wicked. They will "suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thessalonians 1:9, rsv).
Hell is eternal
When we come to the subject of last things in the New Testament, nearly everything in sight is marked "eternal." The unknown author of Hebrews refers to "eternal judgment" (Hebrews 6:2). Jesus speaks of "eternal punishment" (Matthew 25:46) and "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41). Paul speaks of "eternal destruction" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Many texts speak of "eternal life" (John 3:16). Although the exact expression "eternal Hell" does not appear, there can be no doubt that Hell belongs in the category of things that are eternal.
Clearly something about Hell is eternal. Exactly what that is, and what it means, is the subject of earnest conversation and sometimes heated debate among the scholars.
The traditional majority view says that Hell is eternal, that those who go to Hell are eternal, and that they will live eternally in Hell. In addition, this view says the torments of Hell are eternal and will never end. When I was baptized at age ten, that was what I had been taught and so that is what I thought.
Where did the details of that Hell originate? Did they come from the Bible? If so, in which Scripture texts can they be found? Did I make up the picture of Hell that was so frightening to me that day? Might that picture of Hell have been created by some author of great literature? Was it born from the pen of some medieval poet such as Aligieri Dante, author of The Divine Comedy (perhaps best known for its first section, Inferno)? Did my Hell of unending torment that never, never ends perhaps begin with John Milton's famous saga Paradise Lost?
Could it be possible that the Hell I imagined that day owes its details, not to Scripture at all, but rather to some preacher who replaced the Bible's plain language with his own vision of Hell, simply because he thought the Bible's picture of Hell was not clear enough?
History is full of imaginative preachers. We have plenty of examples from which to choose all throughout church history. For example, we might look at statements on Hell by Chrysostom or Augustine (fifth century), or Wesley or Edwards (eighteenth century), or Spurgeon or Moody (nineteenth century). These men all wrote their sermons, and collections of their sermons are usually accessible today on the internet.
All these preachers took Hell very seriously. They believed that the word "punishment" required pain of body and soul, and that such pain would be constant with no intermission. And they believed that the word "eternal" made it necessary for that pain to continue forever without end. When they spoke of Hell, that is what they envisioned, and they worked very hard to communicate that same vision to those who heard them preach or who read their works.
It is enough to say that a Bible full of surprises has led me to a very different conclusion. This is a book about those surprises. Many ideas about Hell have developed over the centuries. Did you know, for example, that the worst section of Hell in Dante's Inferno is not the hottest, but rather is freezing cold?
Today it is not enough to ask if someone believes in Hell. It is necessary also to ask the nature of the Hell in which they believe. If you are not already convinced of that, just talk to some of the folks walking down a street in any city.
4 WHICH HELL DO WE MEAN?
Imagine that a major television network is preparing a special program on popular beliefs concerning the afterlife. You have been hired as a pollster to interview people on the street about Hell. These are some opinions you would certainly encounter:
"Hell? I believe Heaven and Hell are now. Heaven is the good stuff we experience in this life and Hell is all the bad."
"What do I think about Hell? I don't believe in it. A good God would not send anyone to Hell."
"Bad people go to Hell when they die, where they suffer horrible torment in fire forever."
"What is Hell like? It will differ according to each person's own tastes and desires. One person's Heaven might be another person's Hell."
"I think that Hell is the grave. That's all. When wicked people die, that's the end of them. Period."
We've all seen the stereotypical representations of Satan and Hell. There's the devil—that red, horned creature with a pointed tail, fiery pitchfork in hand—mercilessly shoving his victims into the pit of Hell. And what a pit it is—a murky chasm, rumbling like a hot, bubbling cauldron, belching steam and rancid vapors. From its smoky depths echo the torturous screams of the damned.
From Dante's Inferno to late night B movies, our supposedly Christian culture has accepted a view of Hell that owes more to human imagination and pagan myth than to the Bible. Unfortunately, the mythology has also invaded many pulpits—even in churches which desire to teach nothing but the Bible, churches led by good pastors who are completely sincere.
Of course, most modern speakers don't present the late-night movie version of Hell described above. However, their ancestors in the pulpit did present that overdrawn picture in mythical proportions. Two examples from leading preachers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are enough to demonstrate the point.
Consider this quotation from a sermon preached by Charles Spurgeon on September 4, 1855. In this sermon, Spurgeon personalizes his description of a sinner being thrown into Hell to include each member of his audience.
The angel, binding you hand and foot, holds you one single moment over the mouth of the chasm. He bids you look down— down—down. There is no bottom; and you hear coming up from the abyss, sullen moans, and hollow groans, and screams of tortured ghosts. You quiver, your bones melt like wax, and your marrow quakes within you . . . .
You shriek and cry, you beg for mercy; but the angel, with one tremendous grasp, seizes you fast, and then hurls you down, with the cry, "Away, away!" And down you go to the pit that is bottomless, and roll forever downward—downward—downward—never to find a resting-place for the soles of your feet. You shall be cast out.3
Early in 2011, I engaged in a friendly debate with a professor at an evangelical college in southern California on the nature of Hell. Throughout the debate, he claimed to represent what the church has always taught. Yet before the night was over, the professor was saying that those in Hell do not necessarily feel any pain. The good professor was in a bind, squeezed from one side by an intellectual sense of obligation to say what "the church has always taught," but pressed from the emotional side by all that is merciful and humane to minimize the horror of the traditional position.
The professor in California certainly did not represent "what the church has always taught" when he denied that the lost feel pain. Charles Spurgeon, from whom we just heard, would roll over in his grave at such an idea! So would A. W. Pink, an influential twentieth-century representative of the traditional view of Hell, who wrote the following description of hell's torments: "To help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into the midst of a blowing brick-kiln, or of a great furnace, where your pain would be as much greater as that occasioned by accidentally touching a coal of fire, as the heat is greater."4
And how will the redeemed react to such eternal torment? Will they beg God on behalf of the lost to save them, or even mercifully to allow them to die? Will the saved simply avoid the torture scene and keep it far from mind? Probably so, according to most sensitive Christians you encounter in your survey.
However, those same believers would likely wince in disbelief at the answer of Dr. John H. Gerstner, who claimed to speak for orthodox Reformed Christianity at the end of the twentieth century. Gerstner saw himself continuing the tradition of Jonathan Edwards, insisting that godly people should already find great pleasure in reflecting on the agonies of the damned. Few people would go to such an extreme, but to show just how far some have gone, we hear these incredible words from Dr. Gerstner:
"If [a Christian] loves God, he must love Hell, too. If God decrees it, it must be good and for God's glory, and the evangelical knows that he will sing God's praises eternally as the smoke ascends from the burning pit! AMEN! . . . When Christ asks, 'Do you love Me? He is asking also "Do you love hell?'"5
And again: "Even now while the evangelical is singing the praises of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, he knows that multitudes are suffering the torments of the damned. . . . The true Christian, aware of this, is happily, exuberantly, gladly praising the Judge of the Last Day, Jesus Christ, who has sentenced to such merited damnation millions of souls."6
To be sure, most thoughtful Christians today probably reject such teaching. Yet your poll will show that, even in this kinder and gentler age,7 the majority Christian opinion about Hell still raises some troublesome questions—and leaves plenty with which to quarrel. For, according to the majority traditional view, we must believe that God finally will keep millions of people alive forever in a place resembling a fiery furnace. There he will torment them endlessly with some type of pain throughout all eternity.
The mere mention of such a fate deeply stirs anyone who takes the possibility seriously. Such a subject is too important for careless thinking and too awful for uncaring feelings. This is the time for tough minds and tender hearts.
5 TOUGH MINDS AND TENDER HEARTS
Our first question must always be: "Is this what the Bible teaches?" How we might feel about Hell cannot be the measure of what Hell really will be. Despite the sensational tales of some who claim to have been there, all that we really know about Hell comes from the Bible. We must be very careful to form our own understanding about Hell from the sacred pages of Scripture. However, that does not mean that we cannot ask honest questions as we examine widespread notions about Hell in light of God's Word.
For example, what does the traditional doctrine tell your mind and heart about the character of God whom you love and worship, the same God you sometimes beg in prayer to relieve your own suffering and that of others? Is this picture of Hell consistent with the Bible's stories about Jesus—whom to see, is to see the Father? Must we believe that God, who made every human being in his own image, and who is sorry when even a sparrow dies, will torment men and women forever—although he could easily allow them to die instead?
Perhaps you have assumed, as I once did, that the Bible requires such a view of Hell. After all, everlasting torment is what almost everyone says the Bible teaches. But have you never doubted or wondered whether such a picture could be true? Many sensitive Christians have struggled with the traditional doctrine of Hell. Supposing that it came from Scripture, however, most of them have suppressed their deepest thoughts and feelings and remained quiet.
Astonishingly, many believers have become so accustomed to the idea that the lost will agonize in conscious torment forever that they scarcely give it a second thought. Indeed, the traditional doctrine of Hell as everlasting conscious agony has gained such acceptance during the past sixteen centuries that millions of good-hearted people placidly accept it as necessary to believing the Bible. Yet these same individuals instinctively recoil in horror whenever they hear the news of some temporary human atrocity—whether it be detestable child abuse, a mass murder, or an especially vicious assault or rape.
Others, who have not become desensitized by long familiarity with the traditional doctrine of Hell, are appalled. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people created and loved by God have fled from him in horror at the thought that he would torture anyone forever. Famous atheists have attributed their unbelief to this traditional Christian teaching.
For more than half a century, British philosopher Antony Flew was the face and voice of atheism in England. He wrote against God and debated Christians. He tried to destroy faith. Then one day, Antony Flew's logic caught up with him. He had been wrong, he said. There is a supernatural being whose work the universe reflects. But don't think that Antony Flew, the atheist son of a Methodist preacher, is about to become an evangelical Christian, he cautioned. In Flew's opinion, a God who would torment humans forever without end would be unworthy of their worship.
Surely Flew was out of place in deciding what God must be like in order to deserve worship. But the traditional view of final punishment as everlasting conscious torment ought not to stop anyone from being a believer in God, Jesus Christ, the gospel, or the Bible. Scripture nowhere suggests that God is an eternal tormenter. It never says the damned will writhe in ceaseless pains, or that the glories of Heaven will forever be blighted by the screams from Hell. The Bible does not teach the traditional doctrine of everlasting conscious torment. Don't blame God for something he never really said.
Today, devout believers in increasing numbers are saying aloud what they have long believed—that the doctrine of everlasting torment slanders God's character as revealed in the Bible and in the life of Jesus Christ. By challenging the basis of the traditional Hell, a person nobly imitates the ancient Bereans, whom Luke commended for testing a teaching by searching the Scriptures to see if it was so (Acts 17:10-11).
These are not rebellious people on the fringe of Christianity. They are faithful workers, humble disciples, who are prayerfully devouring God's word to digest whatever it has to say. Asking questions is an act of extraordinary courage. It is not easy to challenge a belief that almost everyone holds—and has held for at least 1,600 years.
Can you consider it possible that the majority interpretation of Hell as conscious everlasting torment is not the teaching of Scripture after all? That is a very important question, because the Bible is our final authority. Whatever it teaches is right, no matter what any person may say. So I ask it again. Does the Bible really teach that God finally will keep people alive forever in Hell just to suffer torment that never ends? Does Scripture require us to believe that will be the destiny of most men and women whom God loved and sent his Son to redeem? If that is not what Scripture teaches, is it not a slander against the heavenly Father almost too heinous to describe?
Suppose for the moment that I am quoting God accurately in saying that human beings who reject his grace will finally be cut off from his life-giving Presence and cease to exist. How do you think it makes God feel for someone to misquote him by saying that he will keep wrongdoers alive forever in Hell and torment them without end?
Imagine your reaction in a roughly similar situation. Suppose you hired a babysitter for your evening out. You learn later that she told your children that you said you would punish any misbehavior by putting staples in their fingers, cutting off their ears, then stuffing them into the microwave oven until they popped. And suppose your children were young enough that such nonsense made them question and distrust your parental love.
If you are like me, there would be no words strong enough to describe your feelings in response. Yet the babysitter's misrepresentation is nothing by comparison with the slander against God, if everlasting torment is not true.
Some express concern that without the threat of everlasting torment, sinners will lose all motivation to repent. There is no cause for alarm. God's judgment remains severe but it is also fair. Those who go to Hell will suffer conscious pain exactly measured by perfect, holy, divine justice. The ultimate punishment common to all the lost will become a reality: they will cease to be. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible repeatedly warns that the wicked will "die," "perish" or be "destroyed."
In John's vision in Revelation, a voice from the Throne refers to this punishment as the "second death" (Rev.21:8). This is capital punishment of an infinite sort. It destroys both soul and body . . . forever. It is no wonder that Jesus refers to it as eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46), or that Paul calls it eternal destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9). This death-punishment is indeed "eternal." Those who die this second death will never live again.
But another question also looms in the background like the dark clouds of an approaching storm. Whatever we finally understand Hell to be—whether unending torment or total annihilation—must we suppose that most of the human race will go there in the end?
6 WHO GOES TO HELL?
It is frequently stated that Jesus says more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible. Unfortunately, when anyone says only that much— that Jesus says more about Hell than anyone else—the result is often a miscommunication.
This happens whenever someone hears the word "Hell," but thinks "unending torment," then concludes that Jesus says much about unending torment. In fact, Jesus never mentions unending torment, and what he says about Hell explains why he does not.
Jesus uses the word "Hell" (Gehenna) eleven times and is the only person in the Bible who uses it at all to speak of final punishment. It is important to know what Jesus says about Hell.
Hell is the place, Jesus warns, where God is able to destroy both soul and body (Matthew 10:28). The same verse says that this destruction is total and includes the whole person, soul and body alike. On another occasion, Jesus repeats the description of the destructive process found in Isaiah 66:24 and applies it to Gehenna. The most obvious details in that text are the worms that do not die, in fires that cannot be extinguished (Mark 9:43-48). Such irresistible fire and maggots will consume corpses until nothing remains. Since the whole being is totally destroyed, everlasting torment is out of the question.
It is also instructive to notice whom Jesus addresses about Hell, and who he says will go there. Strikingly, he does not address his remarks on Hell to the riff-raff, prostitutes, drunkards, or tax collectors—the people who traditionally were recipients of "hell-fire" preaching by the rabbis at that time. Instead, Jesus' remarks about Hell are almost always directed either to his own disciples or to the religious leaders of Israel. In the Gospels, Jesus normally does not talk about Hell to public crowds, and he never singles out the "sinners" in particular.
On the question of who is going to Hell, Jesus differs again from most teachers of his time—and of ours. He warns the person who verbally abuses a fellow human (Matthew 5:22). He cautions the man whose eye leads him to sin (Matthew 5:29-30). He describes the sectarian missionary who makes proselytes—then makes them twice as bad as himself (Matthew 23:15). And, although Jesus does not use the word "Hell" (Gehenna) in the story, that is clearly the fire into which he says people will go who see others suffering and turn the other way (Matthew 25:31-46).
As a lad, growing up Christian in a small Southern town, I knew some believers who took all matters of true religion extremely seriously. And if anyone ever asked who will go to Hell, these folks were ready and able to answer.
First, all non-Christians, of course—without exception. Jesus is the only way to Heaven. Then all the professing Christians who landed in the wrong church. Jesus built his church; people built the others. Now add all those in the true church who are either unsound in doctrine or have erred in practice. Finally, list any of those still left whom God sees as lacking in sincerity, commitment, or genuine repentance.
Some days it seems everybody will go to Hell. Other days offer hope for a few exceptional saints to miss it and be saved. Barely, of course. But is that the approach of Scripture? Does this analysis sound like Jesus? Is it harmonious with the spirit of the gospel? I must confess that there were times in my younger life when the caricature above would have been a picture of me, with my rationalized self-righteousness and easy condemnation of others.
Boy, was I wrong! Misguided. Not seeing the forest for the trees. I have had to ask God for forgiveness. And sometimes, when I have encountered people whom I knew and judged in those days, I have had to ask their forgiveness also. What a mess I made. But as my friend Jeff Walling says, if there were no mess we would not need a Messiah!
Some biblical points about salvation
So who will go to Hell? More than a handful of people, to be sure. Yet Scripture is not nearly so stingy in its expectations on this point as many of us are. Let's consider some of the Bible's statements that might cause one to think otherwise.
There is no salvation in any name except the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12). That wonderful affirmation highlights the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and of the saving work he has accomplished for sinners. It tells us that every person in the new heavens and earth will owe it all to Jesus. It constantly reminds us that the only hope for sinners rests in the atoning work of Jesus Christ, symbolized by his life, death, and resurrection.
To affirm this ancient Christian confession is to deny that there are many paths to God, of which Jesus Christ is one. That idea is called "pluralism." It is increasingly popular in a society that believes all truth is subjective and that no truth is any more "true" than another truth, even one that says the opposite of the first.
Salvation is ours by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). This means it is undeserved and not deserved. It is received and not earned. Because it is a gift, we must be content to trust God for it.
The same principles apply to everyone. God rescues all human beings. It does not matter if one is a Jew or a Gentile . . . or where one lives . . . or when one lives. God declared Abraham in the right with himself ("justified" him) based on Abraham's faith-trust in God's promise to Abraham.
Significantly, this took place before Abraham was circumcised. The timing is important, says Paul, for it shows clearly that God declares all people in the right based on their trust-faith in God's promises, whether they are Jew or Gentile (Romans 4:10-12).
God will judge each person based on the light from God that person possessed. He will not judge people based on light they did not have and could not have obtained (John 3:20-21). We have seen that Abraham was declared right with God through his trust-faith in God's promise that he knew (Romans 4:19-22). Today, God normally encounters people in a saving way through the gospel. However, God is able to accomplish his plans by making stones cry out if he sees fit (Luke 19:40).
We are forbidden to pass judgment on other people (Matthew 7:1). There are several good reasons for this very wise prohibition. We do not know their opportunities or their circumstances. And we cannot see the heart. We are also incapable of passing judgment on others because we cannot carry out the sentence—whether it be to save or to destroy (James 4:13).
We can read about the many and the few in the perspective of God's wishes. Jesus speaks of "many" on the roadway to destruction, and "few" that find the path to life (Matthew 7:13-14). When we are talking about a God who does not wish for any to perish (2 Peter 3:9) but for all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), even one person finally lost is too many.
The beginning promise of the Bible's salvation story encourages us to be very optimistic. This is true whether we think of relative numbers or relative percentages of saved and lost. The story opens with Abram, to whom God comes with something new. Not a law to keep. Not a deal to take advantage of. Not an opportunity to exploit. God comes with a promise— a promise for Abraham to trust, and lean on, and live by—a promise for God to fulfill. Abraham's spiritual descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, as many as the sands by the seashore (Genesis 22:17).
The near-closing vision of the Bible's salvation story encourages us to be very optimistic. As the story nears its end, John sees in a vision a multitude of men and women from every political, ethnic, and linguistic category. They are celebrating victory by the blood of the Lamb. This multitude is so huge it cannot be counted (Rev. 7:1-12).
God is predisposed to save, not to condemn. We have it from Jesus himself. God sent the Son into the world to save the world, not to condemn the world (John 3:17). It seems that human beings are programmed, whether by genetics, environment, or habitual choices and conduct, to see the good in any situation and be hopeful, or to notice the bad and to fall into despair. Stated in those terms, God is always leaning toward saving people and not condemning them.
Some things that are not reasons anyone goes to Hell
Based on the gospel itself and the New Testament's explanations, implications, and applications of the gospel, we can identify some things that are not reasons anyone will go to Hell.
No one will go to Hell because God made them go. There is a form of Calvinism which says that before creation, God programmed everything that would ever happen, then sat back to watch the show. In this view of matters, the final destiny of every individual was settled before any human existed, whether Heaven or Hell, and there is simply nothing anyone can do to change that.
I have studied and struggled for forty-five years with the issues that divide Calvinists from non-Calvinists and I have no brilliant plan for reconciliation. Scripture clearly says that we call on God for salvation, but that he called us long before that (Acts 2:21, 38). That statement, it seems to me, is no more or less shocking than the statement that we love God because he loved us first (1 John 4:19). I tend to approach such situations with a desire to collect all the good I can from both sides, and have learned to live with unanswered questions.
The bottom line, by my calculation, is that the saved must give God all the credit for their salvation, while for their condemnation the unsaved must take all the blame. We see this illustrated in Luke's account of Paul's second Sabbath sermon in the Jewish synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia. The message draws a mixed response: some contradict and some believe (Acts 13:45-48). Luke notes that "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (the saved give God the credit). But Paul tells the opponents that they judge themselves "unworthy of eternal life" (the condemned take all the blame). The two "sides" of this scenario (saved vs. lost) are simply not symmetrical.
Similarly, John 3 records Jesus' comments about those who receive eternal life (v. 16) and also about those who are condemned and perish (v. 18). It is surely significant that Jesus blames the condemned person for his own condemnation ("because he has not believed"), but when he describes the person who receives eternal life, there is no human because.
No one will go to Hell based solely on Adam's sin. We suffer many consequences from Adam's sin as our representative, and if Jesus had not come, we all would have gone to Hell because of Adam's sin. But Jesus did come—also as our representative—and the consequences of his obedience "much more" than outweigh all the consequences of Adam's sin (Romans 5:12-21).
No one will go to Hell merely because he or she was born in a particular time or place and not in another. God will judge based on available light, and a person either loves or hates light whatever its content and wherever its location (Acts 10:34-35).
No one will go to Hell because of "missing" the true church. There have been "true" churches that imagined themselves superior to others ever since some believers at Corinth adopted the slogan that said, "We are of Christ." All churches claiming that they alone are "the true church" have at least this much in common: they all are wrong in making that claim.
As many faults, errors, sins, and problems as the Corinthian church had, Paul addressed them as "the church of God that is in Corinth" (1 Corinthians 1:2). His confidence for them was based on God's actions: his calling, his grace, his gifting, his confirming, and demonstrations of his divine faithfulness (1 Corinthians 1:2-9). Like Paul, our hope is to be found "in Christ," not in any "true church" or particular segment of his always-imperfect followers (Philippians 3:8-9).
No one will go to Hell for accidentally misunderstanding some doctrinal point while sincerely seeking God's will. If there ever was an important issue in the church, surely the truth that there is only one God and one Lord would qualify (1 Corinthians 8:1-3). Apparently some at Corinth were confused about even that. Paul's response: "It's not what you know that finally counts, but who knows you." This does not mean that Paul considered the subject of little importance. He wrote the letter we call First Corinthians, among other reasons, to correct the mistaken thinking on this point.
Those who finally go to Hell are those who refuse to be saved
Those who go to Hell respond to God's grace in a way directly opposite the way believers respond, and the opposite of belief is not unbelief but disbelief (Mark 16:15-16). They intentionally refuse to believe. They decide not to believe. And they live by the spirit of disbelief all of their life on earth. In the end, God gives them what they had always wanted—never to see, to hear, or to be reminded of God again.
It is not difficult to imagine an adult with such a heart. Most of us have known such a person. What is harder to imagine is a child with that kind of heart. Could a boy of fourteen, for example, ever be so sinful that he would deserve to be kept alive forever for the sole purpose of being tormented without end?
7 WILL DAVY BURN FOREVER?
He was a polite and decent kid, my classmate Davy,8 and at age fourteen, certainly too young to die. As adults, we know very well that youth does not really bestow invincibility and that the young die too.
Of course, in much of the world babies die every day and mothers expect to bury many of their own offspring. Our very expectation of children outliving the parents is based on the fact that we are so very blessed. But we imagine that we all will live to grow up, and when we are Davy's age, no argument can convince us otherwise.
At fourteen, Davy was too young to drive on a public highway in Alabama, but like most youngsters then and there, he sometimes took the family pickup truck on short outings anyway. This particular evening Davy was alone. That means, of course, that the official fatality report was based entirely on the police investigation, including the accident reconstruction, not on eyewitness testimony.
There were no skid marks, usually meaning no application of brakes. The extent to which the pickup was wrapped around the tree suggested the truck's speed on impact. When all the evidence was spread out and reviewed together, the known facts supported the investigator's conclusion that when the highway made a half U-turn, the truck kept traveling straight ahead, directly into the giant oak that stood there long before the highway had been built. Officially, those were the details that mattered. To Davy's mother, sister, and friends, only one thing mattered. Davy was dead.
So far as I knew, Davy had never received Jesus Christ as Savior (John 1:12-13). Perhaps he was too young to be responsible for sins—some of the preachers talk about an "age of accountability" in that regard. I cannot find that expression in the Bible, but I am far from infallible and might have missed it.
God alone knows Davy's state for sure, and God is the judge of all such things. Without claiming certain knowledge on the subject, I thought that Davy had died unforgiven. My own feelings sprang from that belief. I felt sadness first, of course, at his death. That was an immediate feeling that stayed for some time.
Other reactions came more slowly and somewhat later. Why did God let Davy die so young? Did God make him die? Could God have kept Davy from dying? Not, did God have enough power for that, but did God's own rules allow it? Are we all born with a death date already set? If so, is there anything we can do to change it?
But the most troubling questions inquired beyond this life, this death, this grave. Questions that interrupted the mind when it was occupied with matters wholly unrelated to sin and fourteen-year-olds. Questions concerning guilt, and goodness, and God.
We have questions about a God who himself is wholly good, whose character defines guilt for others, and who keeps a record of their sins. Those kinds of questions don't require a friend's death for them to show up, but when a friend like Davy does die, and so young at that, such questions seem to have been waiting just around the corner.
Were the sins of a generally clean-living fourteen-year-old boy bad enough for him to go to Hell and burn forever?9 Suppose Davy had even begun committing some hell-sin every day of his life when he was six years old and he lived to be fourteen. That would be fewer than three thousand sins. And suppose God decreed that everybody burns one year for each unforgiven sin. That would mean Davy had to burn for three thousand years, which is the time covered from King David of Israel until the present. Even if God set the punishment at a thousand years of burning for each sin, Davy would pay his penalty in three million years. And while that is impossible to really imagine, it would at least have an end.
But we have not yet even begun to imagine the Hell that we have always been taught, a fire that torments those in it forever. How does anyone begin to visualize that? Maybe it would go something like this.
Imagine an earth made of solid granite, a sphere of rock about 7,900 miles through. Now imagine that one time every million years, a tiny hummingbird flies past and brushes that earth with a feathered wing. How many times would the feathers have to brush against the stone planet to wear away one inch of rock? Are there enough zeros to say how many once-every-million-years brushes it would take to cut that rock earth in half? Yet that much time would be a speck too tiny to see compared to "forever."
Is anyone genuinely surprised that millions who hear the gospel and feel themselves drawn by God's love and by the beautiful character of Jesus Christ, finally dismiss the entire story because what started as good news of eternal life somehow changed into what these hearers perceive as a horror chamber called "Hell"?
Is there any wonder that noted atheists from Bertrand Russell10 to Antony Flew11 identified the traditional Christian doctrine of Hell as a primary reason for disbelief in God and in Jesus Christ? Can anyone be surprised that when devout Christian believers hear the biblical evidence that the lost will finally die, perish, and be destroyed forever, one of the most common, almost-instinctive verbal reactions is something like "That certainly sounds more like God!"
In short, the doctrine of everlasting conscious torment strikes countless numbers of people, ranging from devout believers to militant atheists, as intuitively and irreconcilably inconsistent with fundamental justice and morality.
Again I emphasize that this fact alone does not prove everlasting torment wrong. If every human who ever lived declared the traditional view of Hell both immoral and unjust, their unanimous negative reaction would not be reason enough to abandon the doctrine. The only legitimate measure of its truthfulness or falsity is the testimony of Scripture on the subject.
However, if a careful study of the Word of God shows the traditional teaching to be wrong, or if Scripture teaches something else to be the final wages of sin, or, very significantly, if both the above should occur, the apparently widespread aversion to the doctrine of everlasting torment as inherently unfair and unjust suddenly becomes important indeed.
"Ah," say some, "but there's the rub. Who are you to talk to God about justice? In fact, how can fallen humans even know what justice looks like when they see it?"
8 CAN WE EVEN TALK ABOUT JUSTICE?
Is it ever right for human beings to consider whether God's judgments are just? Can we even comprehend what "justice" really looks like? Can sinful humans distinguish between fairness and unfairness when we see it? According to the Bible, the answers to these questions are Yes, Yes and Yes. Or, to be precise, perhaps we should say Yes, but.
Both the Old and the New Testament invite us to reflect on God's justice. Throughout Scripture, God reminds us that we can recognize what is just, what is unjust, and that we can confidently tell the difference between the two.
Israel's legal system
When God gave Israel the Law of Moses on Mount Sinai, he defined a society in covenant with himself, with all the complexities that any society involves. Among the details in that Law are provisions for a legal system—including the various areas of law familiar to us today. There are regulations involving commerce, property, and domestic affairs. There are laws concerning governance, public health, and safety. We find law embodied in statutes and in what we call common law. God provided what Israel needed to know for all aspects of their life as his covenant people residing on his land.
To this end, God also provided a judicial system for deciding legal disputes and for implementing his laws. These provisions included judges to carry out both civil and criminal law. When he gave these laws, God specifically identified justice as the goal, and he commanded the judges to practice fairness and to reach just results. "Do no injustice in judgment," he said. "You shall not be partial to the poor or favor the great, but judge your neighbor in righteousness" (Leviticus 19:15).
Later, God reminds the people of these same principles. "I charged your judges at that time, 'Hear cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the foreigner who is with him'" (Deuteronomy 1:16). Since God tells the people to judge righteously, it is clear that he expects them to know the difference between judgment that is fair and judgment that is unfair.
Abraham pleads for Sodom
Long before the Exodus and the giving of the Law at Sinai, we see indications that God has given human beings the ability to sense and to appreciate that God's activity is just (according to justice) and right (morally "righteous"). When God decides to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he sends angels who tell Abraham of his plans in advance. In the beginning of the conversation, God says the destruction is inevitable.
Abraham intercedes for the people of Sodom and begins to bargain with God. In the end, God concedes to Abraham's pleading and agrees to spare the city if ten righteous people can be found. Of course, even that proves to be an unrealistic burden and the city is destroyed. How, one might ask, could a mortal man begin to reason with the Creator to show mercy?
For Abraham, the answer seems obvious—he raises the issue of justice. He puts God on the spot, as it were. "Far be it from You to slay the righteous with the wicked," Abraham says to God, "so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from You! Shall the Judge of all the earth not do what is right?" (Genesis 18:25.)
Do you see Abraham's argument? God is judge of the whole earth. As such, he always does what is right. It would be unfair—unjust—unrighteous (in this context, these three words all mean the same) for the same fate to befall righteous and wicked people alike. And because of these premises, the only outcome consistent with God's own nature is for him to agree to spare the righteous people in Sodom.
God does whatever he wishes
But cannot God—simply because he is God—do whatever he wishes, whether we think it fair or not? The only appropriate answer to that question is a resounding "Yes!" God is in the heavens, and he does exactly as he pleases (Psalm 115:3).
This truth is one that faithful Job learned the hard way—through a long and grievous period of physical suffering, economic disaster, and personal loss. Throughout Job's ordeal, his so-called friends accused him of secret sin so great that it could explain and justify his suffering. Equally insistent, Job asserted his innocence, and challenged God to come down and defend the injustice heaped on him.
In the end of the book, God does finally speak. He reprimands Job's friends, tells them they did not know what they were talking about, and instructs them to ask Job to offer a sacrifice on their behalf. God reminds Job that God is God and Job is not. He restores Job's lost blessings but he does not explain why he allowed them to be lost to begin with. Job says, in summary, "Well, shut my mouth!" and then he does just that.
God is God, the story of Job tells us. Nothing ever changes that. And God is not answerable to his creation—including human beings who have a beef against God, who believe that God has given them a raw deal, who complain that God is unjust. That is one side of the double-sided truth we are now considering.
In Romans 9-11 in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul makes the same point, this time involving ultimate salvation—Heaven and Hell, if you please. And when he has asked the most difficult of questions, and affirmed the hardest truths, Paul concludes much as the book of Job does. God is God, Paul says. He needs no help from anyone else. He made everything, he controls and sustains the universe, and history will end exactly when God has determined. In view of such truths, the best thing we can say is "Amen."
Along the way, in Romans 9, Paul stretches his point to the most extreme stretching point imaginable. Because God is God, the apostle reasons, he can do anything he wishes—just as a ceramics teacher can make anything he or she wishes from the lump of clay. What is more, Paul says, because humans are creatures made from God's lump of clay, they have no right to object to anything that God wishes to make of them.
This means that, if God should wish to do so, he could create people for the express purpose of destroying them—for any reason that suited him, or for no reason at all—and no human would have any right to complain or to call God into question.
But note carefully that Paul does not say that God actually did such a thing. In fact, other passages of Scripture make it very plain that God did not do that. But until we acknowledge that God could have done so if he wished, we are not in the proper position as creatures to say that is not what God chose to do. Like Job, we must confess that God is God and we are not.
Having said that, we can confidently ask with faithful Abraham, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" Because it is God of whom we speak, we know that he will do what is right and just and true.
When Paul addressed the Greeks in Athens, he was speaking to people whose culture had long celebrated justice as an ideal. Paul did not tell them that the concept of judging fairly was beyond their ability to understand. He said that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. God's judgment will be just (Acts 17:30-31). In saying that, the apostle expected the Greeks to relate to the concept of justice, to recognize it in practice, and to honor it as a noble ideal.
9 A NERDY KID AND HIS COURSES
Edward Benjamin Fudge was born in North Alabama one year before the end of the Civil War. He grew up during Reconstruction and survived, as they say, "by the hardest." Which meant, in his case, that he married late, lived into his eighties, and left eight children. Benjamin Lee Fudge, the oldest of the eight, was my father.
My grandmother taught my grandfather to read and write, which enabled him in later years to run a country store in addition to dirt farming as a sharecropper on other people's farms. When grandpa was disabled at age sixty-six, my daddy, at sixteen the oldest child, assumed responsibility of providing for the family.
So the four brothers took turns going to school and farming. Daddy read his Bible while the mules rested from plowing rows. Sometimes he practiced delivering his sermons by preaching to the silent fields of cornstalks and tree stumps. At age twenty-one, he went to Nashville to attend David Lipscomb College, then on to Texas to finish a degree in New Testament Greek at Abilene Christian College. He took Bible study very seriously, as part of a personal relationship between him and his Savior.
By the time I was born in 1944, Daddy was preaching every Sunday, although he never relied on preaching for his livelihood. He earned that in his other ministry of publishing and selling Christian books and Bible study materials. Although quite conservative in his opinions, he was broad in his attitude toward other people, whether they agreed with his conclusions or not.
I often thought when growing up, and even now still do, that the primary difference between religious teachers is not the views they hold but whether they genuinely desire to understand Scripture in order to teach and to be shaped by it, or if they simply use Scripture as a means to advance their own career and personal interests.
Daddy did what he professed . . . and perhaps above all else, he taught me and his five younger children to do the same. But sometimes even good intentions are not enough to remove blind spots in understanding, or to open doors that have been shut by common tradition for many, many centuries.
Like many boys growing up, I always wanted to be like my father. For about thirty years, Daddy had a fifteen-minute radio program every Monday through Friday, on which he answered questions that his listeners mailed in concerning Bible passages and Christian living. The program was called "Spiritual Guidance," and I often accompanied my father to the radio station, where I sat quietly across the desk from him as he spoke.
Inspired and encouraged by my father's example, I was always a voracious reader and an independent thinker. For several years as a teenager, I studied religious/spiritual correspondence courses from a wide variety of sources—Christian and non-Christian alike. At one time, I studied material from the Order of the Rose (Rosicrucians), the Knights of Columbus (Roman Catholic), Back to the Bible (evangelical mainstream), Worldwide Church of God (Herbert W. Armstrong), the Voice of Prophecy (Seventhday Adventist), and Churches of Christ (our own fellowship).
Daddy was always present but never imposing as I read, replied, and often argued with the variety of viewpoints these studies included. If I had a question, he was available and always willing to provide guidance as requested. In due course the Voice of Prophecy materials came to the subject of final punishment. As far as I can remember, this was my first introduction to any interpretation of Hell other than everlasting conscious torment. I was sixteen years old, newly licensed to drive, and learning to steer my way through doctrinal disputes of all kinds.
The particular lesson in this correspondence course pointed to well-known Scripture texts that I had memorized years before. These were verses like Romans 6:23 which says: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Or John 3:16, with its declaration that "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life."
The choice is simple and straightforward, the correspondence course pointed out. It is life or death; life or perish. What could possibly be easier to understand? Yet I did not then understand. From this vantage point today, nearly six decades later, I can think of several possible reasons why.
Perhaps I was looking for something more complicated and this answer seemed too simple. It is possible that I did not really hear because what I heard was new to me and I was wishing to hear something old. Is it even possible, I ask myself now, that subconsciously I was unwilling to hear because I did not want to be associated in anyone's mind with the Seventh-day Adventists who produced the Voice of Prophecy course?
In theory, that should be totally irrelevant. Why should it matter for even one second who believes a particular teaching? Truth does not depend on who believes it or how many people accept it. We all say that, but we sometimes forget to practice it.
The only question that counts, the only one worthy of consideration, should be, "What does the Bible say?" This has nothing to do with Roman Catholics or Seventh-day Adventists or Herbert W. Armstrong. It's a matter of Bible study and that is all. Sounds noble, doesn't it? But it is easier said than done.
My conscious desire was only to know God's truth. I thought my mind was open to receive whatever Scripture taught. But for whatever reason—something I cannot decipher now—on this subject there was a blind spot in my spiritual vision. The blind spot did not affect me alone. It reached beyond me, my household, and my family. This particular blind spot was not limited to my church. It was and is found in almost every denomination or group of identifiable believers today.
In the somewhat fictionalized movie "Hell and Mr. Fudge," there is a scene in which a friend named Arvid McGuire is advising me about the consequences of going against the view of Hell that has been taught by almost everyone for at least 1,600 years. In a powerful bit of oral interpretation, accompanied by a two-handed gesture for emphasis, actor Frank Hoyt Taylor says: "Folks are partial to the truth that they a-l-r-e-a-d-y got." So far as I remember, Arvid never really said those words. But he would have spoken the truth if he had.
10 EXCITING TO WALK BY FAITH
My years seemed to pass quickly from childhood to adulthood. Markers came and went—high school graduation . . . college graduation . . . marriage . . . graduate school . . . serving a church. Everything was according to plan. Next on my agenda was gradually to earn a doctorate, then spend a career somewhere teaching Greek and the Bible.
Human plans are predictable, but God's are anything but. Homer Hailey, one of my favorite Bible teachers during eighteen years of Christian education, had a saying: "It's an exciting thing to walk by faith!" And as everyone who walks by faith can agree, it also frequently means a life filled with surprises. We cannot imagine in advance God's plans or his power to carry them out (Ephesians 3:20). We are mostly along for the ride.
It was February 1972.We lived in St. Louis, Sara Faye and I, and we loved it. I was the preacher at Kirkwood Church of Christ; she taught Senior English at Kirkwood High School. We had met at Florida College as sophomores in 1964. We had quickly discovered that her home town of Franklin, Tennessee was only eighty miles north of my home town of Athens, Alabama. I had grown up making business trips with my dad to Nashville, driving within a hundred yards of her house—but we went 650 and 750 miles away to college to meet as sophomores.
After one year together, Sara Faye transferred to Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) to study English and education. I stayed a third year at Florida College to study Bible under Homer Hailey, then transferred to Abilene Christian College (now University). After one year apart, we both graduated in May 1967, married in June, and moved to Abilene in August. There she taught school while I earned a master's degree in biblical languages, and we moved to St. Louis in the summer of 1968.
Saint Louis University offered a Ph.D. in biblical languages and literature, and I had done a year's worth of prerequisites at Covenant and Eden seminaries, both local institutions. Saint Louis University, here I come! But the phone call came first.
It was my next brother Henry, calling to tell me that our daddy had died at age fifty-seven, unexpectedly, after one week's illness. His sudden, unplanned departure left Mother with the family's Christian publishing company and retail bookstore, three children still at home, and a mountain of debt.
As oldest of six children, my next move seemed obvious. We resigned our jobs in St. Louis, waved goodbye to SLU before we got to say hello, and moved to Athens, Alabama, county seat of Limestone County and "home" to the Fudges since 1805. We built our first house, prepared for the birth of our first child, and struggled to live on one spouse's income for the first time. I took a preaching appointment at a sleepy country church and went to work for my mother in the family publishing business. Each job paid the princely sum of $80 per week.
Mother's elderly parents were life-long missionaries in Africa, where she was born and raised. After Daddy's death, Mother wanted to rejoin her parents. When a group of twenty businessmen who were affiliated with our same religious fellowship presented her with a buy-out offer for the family business, she was ready to sell. One condition was that the jobs of all present employees were safe.
As a very minor part of my job, I was named associate editor of a religious periodical my father had recently acquired. He hoped to rehabilitate it from a contentious history and transform it into a positive instrument of spiritual health.
Our periodical was under long-term attack by another publication that saw itself as savior of the faithful segment of the true church on earth, which just happened to be the same as their constituency. And one of the primary threats requiring this magazine's existence was me. My supposed error they named "the grace—unity—fellowship heresy."
I taught that we are not saved on the basis of our own performance records or doctrinal test scores, but by trusting in Jesus who took our place in his life, death, and resurrection; that we are one in Christ with all others who also trust in Jesus; and that we can and should express that unity by joint efforts in good works that all can do in good conscience. They denied all these convictions and denounced me as hell-bound.
When the same group aimed their guns at my old professor Homer Hailey for some supposed error, he would not dignify the attack with a reply, explaining that he didn't mind being swallowed by a whale for his beliefs, but he refused to be nibbled to death by minnows. The image came to my mind more than once.
As the shock waves from these changes gradually settled down, life gained a largely pleasurable routine that often could be called exciting. It must have seemed to God that it was time for more surprises.
11 THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT
On July 10, 1975, I was conducting some business at the printing shop in a nearby town when the telephone rang for me. It was Mother's secretary.
Unknown to us, the men who had bought the family business from Mother had sold it to a nonprofit foundation that published the religious magazine devoted to saving the church. The magazine's publisher and editor had just arrived at our offices to announce the change and to take over as new owners.
I returned to the office immediately. The publisher assured me of his good intentions, and said that his financial backer in California was prepared to provide for my family's future—if only I would publicly renounce my teaching on grace, unity, and fellowship. I told him that my convictions resulted from prayerful Bible study and were not for sale.
Within five minutes I was fired, and went home several hours early. In my pockets were paychecks for that week and for two weeks of earned vacation. My wife had recently come home from the hospital with Jeremy, our newborn son. He was fifteen days old that day.
For the next year, God provided our necessities day by day, eventually providing me a job as typesetter in the printing shop our business had used for many years. My wages were $7.00 per hour—almost double my income at the family business and church combined. As a bonus, the owners of the printing shop could not care less about my spiritual beliefs.
About this same time, the elders of the church I served asked to meet with me, the only such request in our entire relationship. They announced that they were dismissing me, and gave two reasons. The longest preacher tenure before me had been two years, and I had been there four. And some church members had concluded from my sermons that I thought people in other denominations might also go to Heaven.
A third matter went unstated but had not been unnoticed at the time. I had recently invited a Black brother preacher to lead prayer when he visited our revival, which infuriated an influential man in our congregation. When I learned that he was stirring up trouble over the matter, I confronted him publicly and rebuked his attitude.
For about a year, a group of friends from different churches had been meeting at our home one night each week for Bible reading, worship, and fellowship. Now that I had no preaching responsibilities, we decided to begin meeting as a nondenominational church. Soon a sign appeared on a renovated red barn: "Elm Street Church: A Meeting Place for Christians."
For six years, I was the little church's unofficial and unpaid pastor. We were free in Christ. I was in a place of absolute liberty under the Word, answerable only to godly brothers and sisters with the same allegiance. Out of the recent storms, God had created a safe haven—as if he knew I was about to need one. Life was truly exciting! I did not know it, but another surprise was about to arrive.
12 AN OFFER TOO GOOD TO REFUSE
We had been "churching" in the Barn for three or four years when I received a letter one day from an Australian theologian named Robert D. Brinsmead. Brinsmead was publisher, editor, and primary writer of Verdict Magazine, a journal focused on the Reformation and the gospel. Verdict had been a great blessing to many people, including me, and Brinsmead had published two or three of my articles over a period of several years.
If my name created sparks within a certain fringe element of my own denomination, the name of Robert D. Brinsmead set off a fireworks show worthy of July Fourth among Seventh-day Adventists. Originally an Adventist himself, he was for decades a reformer or a rebel, depending on one's point of view, finally leaving the denomination entirely.
In the process of separating from the church, Brinsmead told me, he had gradually abandoned all the distinctive Adventist doctrines except one—the belief that Hell will be a place of total, everlasting destruction rather than unending conscious torment, as most Christians believe. Now he had decided to study that subject afresh and decide whether he should reject it as unscriptural or continue to teach it as biblical truth.
To assist him in his study, he had decided to hire a non-Adventist trained in theological research, who would spend a year in the Bible, the Jewish writings from between the Testaments, and in church history, then provide Brinsmead all the materials with any notes.
Brinsmead had seen an article of mine in Christianity Today titled "Putting Hell in Its Place," published in August 1976. The piece was mildly provocative, although at that time I held the traditional view on the subject. Apparently concluding that I was both competent and objective for the task, Brinsmead came to my home in Alabama to discuss the project and hopefully to return home with my commitment.
He offered a modest but respectful stipend and reimbursement of all expenses. I accepted the assignment and, in ways I could not then have believed or even imagined, changed the course of my life and my legacy. No sponsor could have been more helpful, attentive, or unselfish. He located resources that I identified but was unable to find. He faithfully and promptly reimbursed every conceivable expense—especially appreciated because cash flow, even with the print shop job, continued to be tight.
13 A RESEARCH PROJECT BEGINS
For the next year, I devoted approximately forty hours each week to the research project, in addition to my regular forty-hour job as typesetter. Being myself obsessive-compulsive in temperament, the project quickly became the priority as well, to the neglect of my family. I later confessed that to my wife and asked her forgiveness.
Each Friday when I got off work at the printing company, Sara Faye would have packed our family of four for an overnight trip to her parents in Franklin, Tennessee, about eighty miles north of our home in Athens, Alabama. She and the children, Melanie (age 5-6) and Jeremy (age 3-4) would stay there. I would drive twenty more miles into Nashville to the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, do research until the library closed, and join the family for the night.
When the library opened on Saturday morning, I was there waiting. I worked until Saturday evening, copying hundreds of pages of new materials, which I carried home to pore over the following week.
I had been taught unending torment all my life. Nobody suggested that the subject of Hell might be complicated, and I honestly expected to learn nothing more than a few details. But, like most Christians, I had never read one presentation of the biblical grounds supposedly supporting the traditional view. After prayerful reflection, I decided to begin my study by reading books written in defense of the traditional view, followed by books against that view. From all these readings I listed scripture citations, as starters for my own direct Bible study.
There were considerably fewer books then on the subject of final punishment than now, and library cards reflected almost no interest in any of them, on any side of the subject. As I read the books promoting and defending everlasting torment, I became aware of a sort of unstated pattern to the argument.
Every author I found who promoted and defended the traditionalist view—the view traditionally taught by most Christians, which sees Hell as a place of everlasting conscious torment—generally believed four fundamental pillars to be true.
Some authors explicitly argued one or more specific pillars as a basis for a conclusion. Other authors simply asserted the pillars without argument. Others merely assumed them and took them for granted. But regardless of the differences in presentation, these four pillars formed the foundation beneath the traditionalist's case.
(1) The Old Testament says nothing about Hell.
(2) Between the time of the Old and New Testaments, the doctrine of unending conscious torment developed from Old Testament principles. By the time of Jesus, it had become "the Jewish view" in Palestine. When we read Jesus' teaching, we should assume that he held the same view and interpret what he says accordingly.
(3) New Testament writers follow Jesus and teach unending conscious torment.
(4) The immortality of the soul requires unending conscious torment unless those in Hell are restored to God and join him in Heaven.
As I read these arguments in defense of unending conscious torment again and again, the seriousness of what I was seeing became very clear. Either these pillars are true or they are not. They are declaratory statements of fact, and they can be verified or disproved. For the next few months, it would be my challenge to identify, collect, and summarize evidence in a way that would enable a thoughtful person to determine which verdict is appropriate.
I did not know it then, but for at least sixteen centuries, since the time of St. Augustine, the overwhelming majority of the church has accepted unending conscious torment without question. Could all those people be mistaken? What if the pillars of traditionalism's Hell crumbled upon investigation?
As I began this first phase of my project, I could not possibly know, and had no reason even to suspect, the number or the nature of the surprises awaiting me on the trail I was about to explore. Those are the surprises I found in the Bible, and they are the surprises I will share with you in the rest of this book.
Everlasting Torment: Pillar 1
OLD TESTAMENT SAYS NOTHING ABOUT HELL
According to the traditional view of everlasting torment, the Old Testament does not say anything about Hell. Therefore, it is implied, we need not spend time reading the Old Testament in hopes of learning anything on this subject.
14 SURPRISING PICTURES OF DIVINE JUSTICE
If we ask what the Old Testament says about Hell, meaning a place where people are kept alive to be tormented forever, the answer will be "nothing." That picture is not in the Old Testament. If we look in the Greek Old Testament for Gehenna, the word translated "Hell" in the New Testament, again we will find nothing. But if we go to the Old Testament asking what it says about the end of the wicked, we will meet our first great surprise. And we will learn very much indeed, from all parts of the Old Testament, through at least three methods of teaching.
For example, the Psalms contain much teaching based on principles of divine justice. This is teaching designed to answer the question that recurs in every generation, in a world where righteous people sometimes suffer and wicked persons sometimes die full and happy.
The Psalms especially are filled with reminders of divine justice. Psalm 37 provides one of many such texts. This psalm begins by urging the reader not to be envious of the wicked man, even though he prospers now (v. 1). His end will be to wither and fade away like grass that dies (v. 2). He will be cut off and perish. He will vanish and be no more, the psalm assures (v. 9-10, 20). In fact, it says, wait for the Lord to act, because you will see this happen (v. 34).
But what if we do not see it now? Is God's justice thwarted? Sometimes the wicked person dies rich, happy, and honored by his community. When that happens has God been displaced as judge? Are God's principles of divine justice annulled? When we do not see justice done now, is that the last word?
That is not the end, as we know. God is still on the throne, and the wicked person will certainly answer to God—whether now or later. Even death does not let the wicked escape unjudged. God's absolute justice is not meted out here and now, but a day of divine justice is coming.
The Psalms use more than fifty verbs to assure us of the certainty of God's justice. They declare, for example, that the wicked will:
wither (Psalm 37:2), be no more (Psalm 104:35), perish (Psalm 1:6), vanish (Psalm 37:20), and be destroyed (Psalm 37:38).
We know this will happen because God is the one who will do it. In other passages throughout the Psalms, God says that he will tend to the wicked people himself, and that he will:
break them in pieces (Psalm 2:9), slay them (Psalm 139:19), cut them off (Psalm 94:23), blot them out of the book of the living (Psalm 69:28), and rain fire & brimstone (Psalm 11:6).
The Psalms employ at least seventy similes to tell us that when these things happen the wicked will be like:
chaff blown away (Psalm 1:4),
a snail that melts (Psalm 58:8), grass cut down (Psalm 37:2), wax that melts (Psalm 68:2), a clay pot broken (Psalm 2:9), water that flows away (Psalm 58:7), smoke that vanishes (Psalm 68:2), and stubble before the wind (Psalm 83:13).
To be sure, these are not literal descriptions. The wicked will not become oversize snails, or turn into straw or wax, or be changed like magic into clay pots. But even though these statements are not literal, they are accurate. The reality will correspond to the picture stated. When people see God's justice carried out, the picture God has stated in his principles will not be the exact opposite of the thing that finally happens.
Finally, this variety of pictures, similes, and metaphors create a general impression in our minds. What is the general impression in your mind at this point? Do the images these word pictures conjure up appear to be more consistent with a fire that torments forever, a fire that purifies, or a fire that consumes?
15 TWO SURPRISING PREVIEWS
As we read the books of Moses, we encounter two surprising previews of the end that awaits those who reject God and his grace throughout this life. These previews come in the form of two great historical prototypes, examples in advance of what will befall the wicked at the end. They are the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Flood
We are all familiar with the story of the Flood, an act of divine judgment against a wicked world that once was. The picture is clear. There is no mistaking what took place. No one is confused by the language. We do not wonder if the words that tell the effects of this divine judgment are literal or figurative. We hear the story and immediately visualize it without difficulty or effort.
Genesis 7:21-23 sums up the result of the Flood like this: "Every living being on the face of the earth perished . . . died . . . God blotted out them all." We know what these words describe. We do not wonder at their meanings. In this context of judgment, we never consider reading these words figuratively. Their meanings are crystal clear to all.
When we turn to the New Testament, to our surprise we hear Peter say that this Flood we just reviewed is a sample of what awaits the wicked at the end of the world. In his second epistle, Peter writes: "For . . . the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water … through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But . . . the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire , kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men" (2 Peter 3:5-7).
According to Peter, the old world was destroyed by water in the past, and the present world will be destroyed by fire in the future. Peter states one similarity: both worlds are destroyed. We know what that means in the first unit of the first pair. There is every reason to assume the same meaning of destroy in the case of the second unit as well. Peter also affirms one difference: the first world was destroyed by water; the second will be by fire. The same fire will also destroy "ungodly men."
Sodom's destruction
The second prototype of divine judgment from the Books of Moses is God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Again we know what happened and what that meant. God rained fire and brimstone from Heaven and everything in Sodom was wiped out. Again Peter surprises us by saying that when God "condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes," he "made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter" (2 Peter 2:6).
Jude adds to Peter's surprise with one of his own. He reaffirms that Sodom and Gomorrah "are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7). If we did not have the Bible's own definition of "eternal fire," we might assume that it was fire that burned forever and never went out.
However, we have Jude's own statement that Sodom and Gomorrah are examples of "eternal fire." Sodom's fire is not still burning, but what it burned will never be seen in this world again. That is what makes "eternal" fire eternal—the fact that its destruction is permanent and that it will never be reversed.
16 PROPHETIC SURPRISES: Broken pottery & battlefield victims
The Jewish Bible that we call our Old Testament also contains many straightforward predictions of God's judgment awaiting the wicked at the end of the world. When we read them and visualize what we are reading, we realize that God has wrapped more surprises in packages of direct prophecies.
We do not wish to take any passage out of context or to impose a meaning on it which a Scripture writer did not intend and would not approve. The texts that follow all include specific predictions of God's future judgment. We can know that each text is talking about that subject, either by its Old Testament context or because a New Testament author ties the text to Jesus the Messiah who will carry out God's end-time judgment. Finally, let me add that these are only a few of many such texts. I also want to assure you that the picture they portray is consistent with the image found in those other texts.
Broken pottery
The wicked will be like smashed pottery (Psalm 2:7-9). This is a clear messianic Psalm as interpreted by New Testament writers, and it contains three scenes. First, we see the rebellious nations plotting against God and his Messiah. Second, Messiah speaks (the part we notice here). Third, the narrator warns the nations to submit while they can receive a blessing or face God's judgment through his Messiah. This is the central portion that includes Messiah's words.
"I will proclaim the LORD's decree: He said to me, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery'" (Psalm 2:7-9).
We all have seen dishes made of clay—pottery, we call it. These bowls and plates and cups are plentiful around the world and nowhere more than in the Middle East. There the working poor use clay dishes most of the time. So plentiful are these pottery pieces that they are sometimes disposable: instead of washing a clay pot to use it again, one might simply use it and then throw it aside into a pile of other used, discarded, broken pots.
The key word here is broken. A shattered pot is thoroughly broken. One would scarcely find a more vivid example of literal brokenness than a piece of shattered pottery. That is the picture Psalm 2 gives us of the final end of the wicked.
Battlefield victims
The wicked will be like corpses on a battlefield (Psalm 110:5-6). The first verse of this Psalm is the most-mentioned Old Testament verse in the New Testament. It is quoted or cited more than twenty times, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation (at least). Verse four of this Psalm is a theme verse for the author of Hebrews, who discusses every phrase of the verse somewhere in the book of Hebrews.
Verses 5-6 of Psalm 110 provide our next picture of the final destiny of the wicked when Messiah judges at the end of the world. The Psalmist describes the judgment like this: "The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead, and crushing the rulers of the whole earth" (Psalm 110:5-6).
This second prophetic prediction shows us a picture of dead men, of bodies being thrown into stacks. Piles of corpses. This is the way we can imagine the end of sinners, says Psalm 110. After you visualize pottery dishes being smashed to pieces, think of a pile of enemy corpses on a battlefield. It's a scene as old as human war. It is also a significant scene, with a meaning that is instantly understandable by people around the world.
17 PROPHETIC SURPRISES: Unburied dead bodies
Our next image of the end shows the wicked as unburied corpses tossed into an open city dump (Isaiah 66:24). If Bible passages won Oscars, this scene from the end of Isaiah could easily sweep the prizes almost any year you might choose. It would capture the medal for "most familiar" picture and also "most frequently mentioned," but surprisingly it would also win "most ignored" and "most misrepresented."
How can all these things be true at the same time? Because this is where so many people get tripped up, let's spend a moment just making sure we understand what this image of final punishment actually includes and does not include.
Isaiah 66, the chapter at the end of Isaiah, begins with God coming in vengeance against his enemies who refused his offered peace. The narrator says "those slaughtered by the Lord shall be many." Make no mistake about it—God's side finally wins! Every time. No exceptions.
There are plenty of moments during the "game" when things appear differently on earth. Especially if you are Moses on one of those many occasions when the stubborn, rebellious Israelites are complaining that they would prefer to die as slaves in Egypt of some known cause than to perish in the wilderness from some unknown hazard they cannot even name.
It doesn't always look like God's side will win in the Old Testament. Such as when the Babylonians are lowering Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship the king's image. Or when the Persians drop Daniel in the lion's den for praying to the true God and not to the king. Of course, those stories have happy endings even in this life, but some other stories do not.
The writer of Hebrews 11 mentions some of those other stories. Isaiah's story, the prophet cut in two with a wooden saw. The godly Maccabean mother—watching her seven sons tortured to death one by one, encouraging them all the while to remain firm in their allegiance to God.
The New Testament adds its own tales of heroism and great faith. John the Baptist is beheaded by a drunk and lecherous king. James is murdered with a sword. Jesus himself is crucified. John is exiled to Patmos, where he sees visions of Christ's martyrs calling "How long, O Lord, how long?"
The imagery we look at now in the closing verse of Isaiah 66 is very important in light of all these stories. This scene reassures us that God will have the last word. The final victory belongs to the faithful. Jesus was right when he urged his disciples not to fear man who could kill the body, but instead to fear God who can destroy both soul and body in Hell. And what are the details that make this scene so encouraging? Let's notice them one by one.
Isaiah 66:24 is the last photograph except one in the prophet's album. Isaiah has shown God slaughtering the rebellious. He has pictured the righteous at peace in the New Jerusalem, blessed and happy forever. Now he adds a final scene of God's everlasting victory over all evil. Speaking of the redeemed, the prophet writes: "Then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind" (Isaiah 66:24).
In this final picture of the wicked, Isaiah underscores the final and everlasting defeat of God's enemies with four powerful images. They are dead. They are unburied. They are disappearing. They are disgusting.
Isaiah identifies the wicked as "the corpses" of God's adversaries. Corpses are powerless. They cannot harm anyone. Regardless of their advantageous position over the righteous while alive, corpses enjoy no such advantages. This final picture of the wicked is a picture of corpses.
These corpses are unburied. It would be disgraceful to drag the body of a dead person into the front yard and leave it there exposed. It would be even worse to haul a corpse to the old-fashioned city dump and toss it there—a place of smoldering piles of garbage, of dead and rotting animals, a place of consuming fires and devouring maggots.
But that is the picture before us now. Further, these corpses are disappearing, because the fires and the worms are doing the very thing they are supposed to do—consuming the corpses. These agents of destruction are relentless. They do not stop consuming.
The fire will burn and the maggots will devour so long as anything is left to devour. Nothing stops them from their task. The fire is not extinguished. The worm does not die. Some day nothing will be left of these corpses. Then the fires can go out and the worms can finally die. But not a moment before.
This is a picture of dead corpses, not living people. They are being destroyed, not tormented. The worms and fire consume, they do not torture. People who see this scene find it repulsive, not sad. The observers feel disgust and not pity. This is a picture of the way it will be with the wicked at the end of the world.
Jesus was not yet born when someone began to change the picture— essentially reversing all its details—making it exactly opposite to the picture that Isaiah had given. We will return to discuss these when we come to the Apocrypha.
18 PROPHETIC SURPRISES: Total burnup
The Old Testament closes with one of its most graphic descriptions of the end of the wicked. It is also one of the most unmistakable images, leaving no room for doubt concerning the total destruction it portrays. The prophet says: "The day is coming, burning like a furnace; and . . . every evildoer will be chaff; and the day . . . will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither root nor branch." The wicked "will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing," says the LORD of hosts (Malachi 4:1-3).
The scene progresses step by step in predictable order. Evildoers are like chaff, the highly-flammable, almost-explosive outer shell of the wheat. The day of God's judgment ignites them. They are totally burned up—nothing is left, neither root at one end nor branch at the other. Nothing but ashes remains to remind that the wicked ever existed.
These pictures are not necessarily literal. Even so, those who see the fulfillment will remember the prophecy and will say that the two things match. The reality will not be the exact opposite of its description that is given to us now.
Advocates of everlasting torment read the Old Testament, do not find their view in it, and conclude that it has nothing to say on the subject of final punishment. Instead of seeking some specific picture of Hell, I went to the Old Testament asking if it had anything to say about the end of the wicked. To my great surprise, it answered with principles, prototypes, and prophecies. In each case, the material left a general impression. Sometimes the Old Testament author left specific prophetic detail as well.
Now that we have considered what the Old Testament says about the end of the wicked, ask yourself again: What general impression do you get from the Old Testament on this topic? Do these prototypes and predictions sound more like a fire that torments forever, a fire that purifies, or a fire that consumes?
Does your answer surprise you as much as my answer surprised me?
Everlasting Torment: Pillar 2
ONE 'JEWISH VIEW' IN THE TIME OF JESUS
Pillar Two of the traditional view states that the doctrine of everlasting torment developed during the four hundred years between Malachi and Matthew. By the time Jesus was born, everlasting conscious torment had become "the Jewish view" held by everyone Jesus encountered. We should therefore assume that Jesus also held this view, according to this pillar, and interpret all his teachings based on that assumption.
19 FOUR CENTURIES
Between the days of Malachi at the end of the Old Testament era and the announcement and birth of John the Baptist at the beginning of the New Testament Gospels is a period of about four hundred years. Four centuries. A block of history equal to the period from the settlement of the Jamestown Colony in the New World colony of Virginia and the publication of the King James Version of the Bible until today. Now that's a long time. But that is how much time went by between our Old and New Testament Scriptures.
Naturally the generations of people who lived during the four intertestamental centuries did not consider themselves or their place in history to be irrelevant. They worked, played, had families, and taught and thought—and wrote some of what they thought for posterity, some of which we still have.
The Jewish literature during this time is sometimes called the intertestamental literature, meaning that it arose during the time between the Old and New Testaments. It is sometimes called the literature of Second Temple Judaism, because these centuries included the time when King Herod the Great rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple that had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon years before. Herod's Temple stood until it was destroyed by the Roman armies in A.D. 69-70.
This Jewish literature between Malachi and Matthew can be divided into three major groupings known as the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The authors of these three groups of literature held a variety of views about the final end of the wicked. In fact, the same three views that have been held by Christians throughout church history are also found within the Jewish literature from the years between the Testaments.
20 THE APOCRYPHA
The Apocrypha is best known today as the collection of Old Testament books found in the Catholic Bible but not in the Protestant Bible. A hundred years and more after Malachi, Alexander the Great conquered the Mediterranean world. One important effect was the spread of Greek language and culture wherever "civilized" people were found.
During this period, Jewish scholars at Alexandria in Egypt translated the Hebrew Bible of the Jews into the spoken Greek of the common people. This translation, which tradition says had seventy translators, is called the Septuagint, the Greek word for "seventy," and is abbreviated as the LXX (Roman numeral for 70). The Apocrypha are the books that were included in the Septuagint, but were never a part of the Hebrew Bible.
On the subject of final punishment, the Apocrypha agrees with the Old Testament, with one notable exception in the Book of Judith, which tells the story of a Jewish heroine who saves the Jews from the murderous plots of pagan king Holofernes. The final verse of Judith contains a warning against any others who might entertain similar evil designs.
Judith wrote: "Woe to the nations that rise up against my race; the Lord Almighty will take vengeance against them in the day of judgment, to put fire and worms in their flesh; and they will weep and feel their pain forever" (Judith 16:17).
It is clear that Judith 16:17 is based on the picture we saw already in Isaiah 66:24—a picture of a city dump with smoldering fires and hungry maggots, competing with each other to consume dead corpses of God's enemies that had been discarded there as garbage. But it is also clear that Judith changes Isaiah's picture . . . so drastically that we can safely say she completely reverses the point the prophet made in his book.
Isaiah pictures dead corpses; Judith talks about living people. Isaiah's corpses are consumed by external fire and maggot; Judith's people are tormented by internal fire and worm. Isaiah's scene suggests shame and evokes our disgust; Judith's scene suggests pain and evokes our pity. In short, Isaiah paints a word-picture totally consistent with the teaching of the whole Old Testament, and (as we will shortly see) of the New Testament as well. It is a scene of total and irreversible extinction.
Judith changes Isaiah's picture of the fire that consumes into a clear picture of the fire that torments forever. This is the first time we see this fire that torments—in anything related to Jewish scriptural literature. Unfortunately, it will not be the last.
21 RABBIS, SCROLLS, AND NOT-REALLYS
During these years, rabbis were passing down the oral explanations of the Torah (Books of Moses) to a younger generation of rabbis. This oral tradition was eventually written down as the Mishna and, later, the Talmud. These rulings and reasonings of the rabbis are summarized by German scholars Strack and Billerbeck.
Rabbinic materials
The dates covered are uncertain, but according to Strack and Billerbeck, the rabbis during the century or two after Jesus Christ were divided in opinion about Hell or Gehenna. Some expected a fire that torments either temporarily or even forever, others a fire that purifies, and others a fire that consumes. That certainly comes as a surprise to anyone who thought that all Jews of Jesus' day expected the wicked to burn alive forever in Hell.
But Strack and Billerbeck have another surprise as well. According to these scholars, when the authors of the Jewish literature between the Testaments spoke of everlasting torment in Hell, they might have used even that language to symbolize total and irreversible annihilation.
Dead Sea Scrolls
Perhaps the best known Jewish writings of the period between the Testaments are the Dead Sea Scrolls, thought to have been written and finally hidden by a community of sectarian Jews. These Jews, seeking a purer religious life, had separated themselves from the corrupt religious establishment at Jerusalem to follow the ways of the Lord in the desert at Qumran near the Dead Sea.
Some scrolls describe a final world battle between forces of good and evil. Others detail the rules of life in the Qumran community. Many are commentaries on biblical (our Old Testament) books—which "accidentally" provided modern scholars with Hebrew biblical texts one thousand years older than the oldest texts they had ever seen.
More than eight hundred scrolls and fragments of scrolls now have been found and translated into English. It appears that the community that produced the Scrolls at Qumran consistently expected the wicked finally to be destroyed and gone forever. It is not always clear whether the authors of the Scrolls expected the wicked to perish in the final war between good and evil, to survive that battle (or to be raised after dying in it) and then be destroyed by God, or perhaps to become extinct through some combination of those events.
What does seem clear, however, is that the Dead Sea Scrolls look for a fire that consumes. They do not mention anything that resembles a fire that torments forever.
Pseudepigrapha
Not included in anyone's Bible is another body of intertestamental literature called the Pseudepigrapha. The name means "false writings." It is given because these books claimed to have been written by ancient Jews and their ancestors—Adam and Eve, Enoch, Moses, and other people who lived and died long before the books appeared bearing their names. If we imagine modern literary critics living in those days, we can almost see a critic refer to the Pseudepigrapha authors as "the not-reallys."
The Pseudepigrapha offer mixed views about the end of the wicked. Some books expect a fire that consumes until the wicked no longer exist anywhere. A book known as Psalms of Solomon speaks of a day when sinners "will be taken away into destruction, and their memorial will be found no more" (Psalm Sol. 13:11).
Other books look for a fire that torments, sometimes for a limited period of time, sometimes apparently forever. One such book speaks of a place that is "everywhere fire, and everywhere frost and ice, thirst and shivering, while the bonds are very cruel, and the angels fearful and merciless, bearing angry weapons, merciless torture" (2 Enoch 10:1-6).
Summary
The important truth from all this is that when Jesus was teaching, there was no such thing as "the Jewish view" on Hell, but rather there was a variety of opinion on this subject. We therefore cannot assume that Jesus held a particular view based on any supposed unanimity of Jewish opinion. Instead we investigate each teaching of Jesus with open mind and open heart to discover its meaning. When we do that, we discover that Jesus' teaching on final punishment, as on other subjects, was rooted in Old Testament revelation, which it sometimes advanced but never contradicted.
22 WHAT DID JESUS ACTUALLY SAY?
We come now to the New Testament, where the first word of teaching about the end of the wicked comes from John the Baptist. Malachi, the last Old Testament writing prophet, had predicted John's coming four hundred years before his birth. Interestingly, when John appears, his first words about final punishment portray the same picture with which Malachi had closed his book.
John's primary task and message was to introduce Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Savior of the world. But this happy announcement carried with it a call to repentance and a warning of judgment. John pictured Jesus as the harvester at the end of the world.
"I baptize you with water for repentance," said John. "but he who is coming after me is mightier than I . . . . His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor; and he will gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:11-12).
Malachi had closed the Old Testament by predicting a day when the wicked would be set ablaze, the fire would leave them neither root nor branch, and they would become ashes under the soles of the feet of the righteous. Now John pictures the same end for the wicked at the hands of Jesus, who will burn up the chaff (wicked people). Because this fire cannot be resisted or extinguished, it will continue to burn until it has thoroughly burned up whatever is put into it.
It is often said that Jesus speaks more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible. That is true, if one means that Jesus uses the Greek word for Hell (Gehenna) more than any other person. If we do not require that particular word, the prize for "most said" goes to Paul instead.
Now it is time for us to look more closely at this special word and see what surprises it also might hold for our inquiry.
The word Gehenna was formed from the phrase "valley (of the sons) of Hinnom," a literal place south of the city of Jerusalem. In ancient times, this valley was a site of idol worship involving the burning of infants. It was an abominable place in God's sight, and he prophesied that in the future it would be desecrated and despised. This valley is most likely the historic site in Isaiah's picture of future punishment, described in Isaiah 66:24, where exposed corpses are consumed by fire and maggots.
For many centuries it has been said that this valley was the open garbage dump for Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. That is now widely questioned, and it cannot be proven, although there is some archaeological evidence that supports the idea. Whether the literal valley of Hinnom was a garbage dump then or not really makes no difference.
The scene described in Isaiah 66:24 clearly has all the same connotations as an open city dump. Further, the name Gehenna began to be used during the intertestamental period for the place of final punishment. Jesus himself quotes Isaiah 66:24 and applies its language to Gehenna as the place of final punishment in Mark 9.
Most important to us is what Jesus says about Gehenna and what happens there. Is its fire one that torments forever? Or does it purify? Or is it a fire that consumes? Here's one answer from the Lord himself. "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul," the Savior admonishes, "but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell" (Matthew 10:28).
It seems straightforward enough, doesn't it? Both God and man can be intimidating. But we need not fear man, Jesus explains, for his reach is limited by comparison with God's. Men can kill the body but they cannot kill the soul. God, on the other hand, is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.
And in case someone is tempted to give "destroy" some novel meaning in that sentence, Jesus makes it plain that he is using "destroy" here to mean what "kill" meant in the earlier part of the sentence. And "kill" means the same thing here when used of body or of soul.
If any different shade of meaning is intended, the way Jesus uses the words "kill" and "destroy" here strongly suggests that "destroy" is the weightier word of the two. "Destroy" clearly is intended to include all that the previous clause meant to include in "kill." While it might mean more than "kill" in the usual sense of that word, it certainly means no less!
23 WHY CAN'T WORDS MEAN WHAT THEY SAY?
To someone of a different opinion, the folks who argue for unending conscious torment seem to have a strange habit with the meanings of words. Here's the complaint. When the biblical authors talk about final punishment, they use some words and phrases so often and so regularly that those words and phrases can rightly be called "key words." But whenever the good people who argue for the majority view talk about biblical texts that contain those key words, they find it impossible to let these words mean what they most naturally seem to say.
For example, the word translated "destroy" in Matthew 10:28 is the same Greek word that is translated "perish" in John 3:16. And, along with the words "die" and "death," these two words "perish" and "destroy" are the words New Testament writers use most often to tell what will finally happen to the unredeemed.
But when the advocates of the traditional Hell read John 3:16 and hear Jesus say that believers (in contrast to rejecters) will not perish but have eternal life, or when they read Jesus' warning in Matthew 10:28 to fear God who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell, they automatically go into their define-with-opposite-meanings mode.
"Perish" does not mean "perish" here, they say; "destroy" surely cannot mean "destroy." In fact, when these words are used to describe what will become of the wicked in Hell, they mean that the wicked will never "perish" as that word is commonly used, and they will never be "destroyed" in the ordinary sense of that word.
So instead of letting simple words have their usual simple meanings (which is the simplest way of doing things), the scholars who teach everlasting torment go looking for other texts of Scripture that use "perish" and "destroy" in a figurative sense. Two such passages are Matthew 9:17, which speaks of "ruined" wineskins (using the same Greek word translated "perish" and "destroy"), and John 6:12, that talks about "spoiled" food (for the same Greek adjective translated "perish" and "destroy").
Jesus does not mean that God will really "destroy" the soul, the unending-torment defenders argue. He does not mean that rejecters really "perish." What Jesus is trying to tell us, they explain, is that people who are not saved will be "ruined" (like old wineskins). They will "spoil" like bad food. And what those words are trying to communicate, the defenders of the traditional view explain, is that those who finally go to Hell will actually be kept alive forever for the single purpose of being tormented without end.
But does that explanation really make sense? If that is what Jesus is thinking, he needs only to say that believers "will not live forever in torment but have eternal life." And wouldn't it have been much simpler to have said "fear God who is able never to kill soul and body but instead to keep them alive and torment them forever"—IF that is really what he wanted us to understand?
24 SURPRISE: Perish and destroy can mean just that
But isn't it possible that words like "perish" and "destroy" sometimes have figurative meanings, and that we should think of those meanings when the Bible says that the unredeemed finally perish and are destroyed? It goes without saying that "perish" and "destroy," like most other words, can be used in a figurative sense. Of course the New Testament sometimes uses the word translated "perish" and "destroy" in a secondary sense with a non-literal meaning. But we should also remember that the only reason words can have secondary meanings is because they have primary meanings first.
To say it another way, if we say that someone perishes, we usually mean that they die or that they are destroyed. That is the primary, literal meaning of the word perish. If we want to say that food goes bad, we can say that, or we can use perish in a secondary or figurative sense and say the food perished. But the only reason perish has a secondary meaning is because it had a primary meaning first.
Because almost every advocate of eternal torment makes this "figurative meaning" argument about perish and destroy every time the Bible says the wicked will finally perish and be destroyed, someone might go away thinking that the words perish and destroy usually mean something other than their simple meaning as we all understand it.
That is not the reality, however. And because it is so very much not the reality, it might be helpful if we take a moment to notice how New Testament writers use perish and destroy most often. Or, in other words, we need to be sure we understand the common, usual, regular, ordinary, literal, primary meaning of those two words (and of the Greek word behind them both in the New Testament).
So here goes! Whatever word any particular translation or version of the New Testament might use, the original Greek verb in each of these passages is the same word translated perish in John 3:16, and destroy in Matthew 10:28. As you read each sentence, ask yourself the original, ordinary, plain meaning of each main verb.
1. The disciples are about to perish in a storm (Matt 8:25).
2. The Pharisees seek to destroy Jesus (Matt 12:14).
3. Someone loses their life trying to save it (Matt 16:25).
4. A vineyard owner executes the murderous tenants (Matt 21:41).
5. A king sends his troops to destroy murderers (Matt 22:7).
6. Someone perishes by the sword (Matt 26:52).
7. The crowd asks to destroy Jesus (Matt 27:20).
8. The high priest says it is better that one man die, than for a whole nation to perish (John 11:50).
9. An insurrectionist/false messiah perished at the hands of Rome (Acts 5:37).
10. Many Israelites perished in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:9-10), or were destroyed there (Jude 5).
11. Some people perished in the rebellion of Korah (Jude 11).
It's quite obvious that the authors of these eleven sentences expect us to read these verbs of destruction with their basic, face-value meaning, isn't it? Why should we not understand "perish" and "destroy" equally literally in John 3:16 and in Matthew 10:28?
25 SURPRISE: Teeth gnashing means anger, not pain
But what about all those expressions Jesus uses to describe people who go to Hell? For example, who has not heard of the gnashing (grinding) of teeth? And can't you just picture the scene? There's the poor guy in Hell, in terrible agony, suffering in silence, grinding his teeth in pain that never goes away.
Well, yes, I can visualize that if I try, but why try to imagine a scene that has absolutely no support anywhere in the Bible? Before you write me off as hopelessly ignorant, let me quickly explain. The expression "weeping and gnashing of teeth" certainly comes from the Bible . . . to be more specific, from the Gospels . . . indeed (as with the word Gehenna) from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ himself and from him alone. There is no dispute about that.
But if we presently think that teeth-gnashing in Jesus' comments indicates pain, and if we will allow the Bible to explain its own symbols, we are about to discover another surprise. Two surprises, in fact. First, that when Jesus mentions gnashing of teeth, pain is not the point. Second, that when the Bible speaks of someone gnashing teeth, it means that person is very, very angry.
When I was growing up in the Deep South long ago, a preacher supposedly was explaining the gnashing of teeth when one of his listeners called out, "What will they do when the man grinds his teeth completely away?" To which the preacher replied, "Well, the Lord does not say specifically, but I suppose he will just give the poor fellow another set of teeth."
Let us look closely at the seven stories in which Jesus describes people grinding their teeth. In each situation, the teeth-gnasher has been tossed out of a previous location. Not only that, he has been evicted into circumstances far less pleasant than the ones he recently enjoyed. One teethgnasher is expelled from the kingdom (Luke13:28), another one from an unnamed place (Matthew 24:50-51).
Three times the destination is described as "outer darkness" (Matthew 8:11-12; 22:13; 25:30). To let that imagery sink in, just imagine a party at night in a brightly-lit house. Suddenly the host points to a particular guest, nods to the official "bouncer," and the burly fellow unceremoniously tosses the unwanted chap into the darkness outside, where we later hear that he is still gnashing his teeth.
Twice he is expelled to a furnace of fire (Matthew 13:40-42, 49-50). Do we think it curious that five of the seven teeth-gnashers are in fire-free stories? These seven situations involve nothing inherently painful—other than the two furnaces, and Jesus does not relate the teeth-gnashing there to high temperature. Someone asks about the weeping. It is a natural point of curiosity, but one with many reasonable explanations other than pain.
For one of the clearest examples of the meaning of teeth-gnashing, we turn to Acts 7:52-54, where the holy martyr Stephen is about to be rushed by a blood-thirsty mob and stoned to death. Stephen accuses them of killing Jesus, God's "righteous one." Enraged, the mobsters grind their teeth at Stephen. It is clear that they are not in pain; they are crazed with anger.
Similarly, Psalm 112:1-9 describes the rewards and blessings the righteous inherit. Verse 10 says the wicked see it and are vexed—angry; no, make that furious. The wicked man gnashes his teeth (not in pain but in anger—he is vexed, remember?)
But notice this—all that teeth-gnashing finally is for nothing! The rest of the verse contains the kicker: even as he gnashes, the wicked man vanishes away. Is that a surprise, or what? (Every time I read this verse, I get a mental image of the Wicked Witch in Oz, who likewise "vanishes away" as Dorothy, Toto, and their fellow-pilgrims watch in amazement.) A satisfying surprise, indeed!
26 SURPRISE: Talking not the same as doing
One of the biggest surprises I have encountered during the thirty-plus years of studying this subject is the gap between profession and practice regarding the final authority of Scripture. Who can believe that a Protestant theologian, much beloved and respected by a particular segment of evangelicalism even today, would ever admit:
I have had but one object in my professional career and as a writer, and that is to state and to vindicate the doctrines of the Church. I have never advanced a new idea, and have never aimed to improve on the doctrines of our fathers. Having become satisfied that the system of doctrines taught in the symbols of the Churches is taught in the Bible, I have endeavored to sustain it, and am willing to believe even where I cannot understand.12
It is not uncommon for a traditionalist author to praise Scripture's teaching as the written word of God, then, when Scripture seems to contradict the traditionalist view, to dismiss the argument as contrary to what most theologians have always believed.
This inconsistent behavior is not new. It has been going on for about 1,600 years since St. Augustine. Earlier writers such as the unknown author of the Didache, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, and others taught the fire that consumes, the view throughout Scripture. Athenagoras and Tertullian urged the fire that torments. Clement of Alexandria, and especially his successor Origen, favored the fire that purifies.
In Book 21 of his massive work, The City of God, Augustine endorsed Tertullian's explanation of Hell as the fire that torments forever. With Augustine in Tertullian's corner, Hell could now be placed on a shelf of subjects needing no further Bible study. Everybody knew that it was no longer an open question, but was now an issue that had been settled once for all.
A thousand years later, the Reformers Luther and Calvin would draw some clear marks in the sand to help tell who was on which side. One identifying difference between the Reformers and the Reform-Resisters concerned their attitudes toward authority. Did the decision of a church council settle a doctrinal issue forever after, or were church councils themselves subject to future testing by the teaching of Scripture? The Catholics adopted the first view; the Reformers defended the second view.
It was no surprise to me when Peter, at the time a bishop in an Eastern Orthodox Church, told me that the nature of hell's fire had been decided centuries ago and that nothing useful remained to be said. Nor was I particularly disturbed when my friend John, a Roman Catholic monk, explained to me that what happens in Hell is not an open question, since a church council settled the matter long ago. Both Peter and John were responding in a manner true to their convictions, and in keeping with Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic beliefs about authority.
What did set me back on my heels, however, was when two of the most highly respected evangelical leaders in America called 450 theologians to a four-day meeting in 1989 to discuss, vote on, and decide what evangelicals could believe on a variety of Bible subjects including the nature of Hell. After some very heated speeches, a motion to condemn all views of Hell except everlasting torment was voted down, but only barely.
Some of these evangelical Protestants, who had hoped to settle the Hell controversy Catholic-style by the decision of a council, were disappointed. But in time they recovered and continued their careers, taking every opportunity to declare their "high view" of Scripture. And when anyone challenged the traditional view of Hell by appealing to the Bible, they simply reminded the troublemaker of "what evangelicals have always taught," and turned out the lights.
For many of us, however, studying these matters afresh is a worthy goal, and so we flip the light switch to "ON" again and continue to read our Bibles seeking new illumination.
27 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT
Pretend for a moment that your mind is totally blank on the subject of this book—say you had never read one word from the Bible about Hell. But today you walk into a room you have never entered before. There, spread out before your curious eyes, is a copy of every statement Jesus ever uttered about final judgment.
Your eyes dance from one text to the next. A pair of contrasting clauses grabs your attention: "These will go away into eternal punishment," you read, "but the righteous into life eternal" (Matthew 25:46). This is Jesus speaking—Bible study is not going to get more authoritative than that. Eternal life and eternal punishment are surely easy concepts, clearly expressed—no danger of misunderstanding these words. It's all right here in black-and-white, and from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself.
The words are the punch-line of one of Jesus' most famous teachings about final judgment—the Parable of the Sheep and Goats. At the end of the age, Jesus appears and judges the nations. The issue is whether folks helped or ignored others who were in need—"the least of these, my brothers and sisters," Jesus calls them.
Jesus separates the nations into two groups, then pronounces their final fates: for the sheep, eternal life; for the goats, eternal punishment. The first thing that jumps out at us in both cases is that adjective eternal. "Eternal." It is right there . . . up front . . . on both sides of the equation. Jesus says both destinies are eternal. But what does that tell us about either?13 When the dust settles, this adjective eternal adds two special colors to the otherwise black-and-white words life and punishment.
First, the adjective colors both life and punishment as belonging to the age to come and not to the present age. As New Testament writers see it (taking their cue from Jesus himself ), the age to come has already begun to make its appearance—when Jesus died, rose again, ascended to his seat of honor in Heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. But it has only begun to appear.
There are elements of God's activities, both good and bad, that will be fully known and experienced only during the fullness of the age to come. Judgment, for example, that results in redemption and salvation, on the one hand, and in punishment and destruction, on the other hand. When New Testament authors wish to speak of those elements in their connection with the age to come, they sometimes add the adjective "eternal" to indicate that perspective.
We read of eternal salvation (Hebrews 5:6), eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:1), eternal judgment (Hebrews 6:2), eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46), and eternal destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9). When Jesus speaks of eternal life and eternal punishment, he colors the life and the punishment "eternal," identifying them as belonging to the age to come.
The adjective "eternal" also leaves a second color on life and punishment. That is the color of permanence. Eternal life with God will never end. We will forever be with the Lord, clothed in immortality with bodies that can never die. Eternal punishment will also be permanent. But there is something very interesting about the permanence of the five realities mentioned in the paragraph just above this one.
Did you notice that all five of these things—salvation, redemption, judgment, punishment, and destruction—have something else in common? They all result from some action or process. Salvation is the result of saving. Redemption results from redeeming. Judgment is the result of judging. Punishment and destruction are results of punishing and destroying.
Now look with me one step farther. In each case above, the thing that is "eternal," the thing that the adjective "eternal" colors "permanent," is the result of the action, not the action that produces the result. Let's look at the five words one by one.
What is permanent in eternal salvation? The thing that continues forever is the salvation that results, not the process of saving that produces that result. In the same way, eternal redemption results from redeeming that stops. Eternal judgment is the result of judging that ends. Eternal punishment results from punishing that stops, and destroying will not continue without end, but the destruction that results will be everlasting.
28 ETERNAL (CAPITAL) PUNISHMENT
But we need to inquire more. What is the punishment that Jesus here calls eternal? The word "punishment" by itself tells us something about the character of the thing, but it does not give any hint or clue concerning what the thing consists of. What is "punishment?" It is simply the penal consequence of wrongdoing, imposed under the law by a person with judicial authority.
But of what does that penal consequence consist? In the United States, a state criminal code defines crimes recognized within the jurisdiction and identifies the punishment imposed by state law on anyone who commits that crime. The punishment might be a fine or time in jail. It could be one or more years of confinement in a penitentiary. It might even be life in prison. And, when the worst crimes are committed, the punishment for those crimes can be "capital" punishment—the death penalty—execution—forfeiture of life itself.
But none of that is in the word punishment standing alone. When Jesus speaks of eternal punishment, we know he is talking about penal consequences for wrongdoing. The adjective eternal tells us that these consequences belong to the age to come and that their result is unending. From what we have learned about Gehenna already, we know that eternal punishment is the same as God destroying soul and body.
In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul tells what eternal punishment will involve. When Jesus comes again, Paul writes, he will punish the wicked with eternal destruction (v. 9). Eternal punishment consists of eternal destruction. Once punished—in this case, once destroyed—the result is everlasting. The wicked will never be seen again. This is eternal capital punishment. The everlasting death penalty. The second death.
The Bible suggests that there will be different degrees of suffering by the lost, as perhaps in Jesus' statement that some will receive "few stripes" and others "many stripes" (Luke12:47-48). We usually relate that to physical, psychological, or spiritual pains of some type or another, more or less intense, and longer or shorter in length of time endured. If those are the variables involved, the scenario we have suggested allows plenty of opportunity for that. The destructive process can accommodate any combination of elements of suffering that God might see fit to inflict— whether duration, intensity, or type of conscious pain.
The punishment suffered in Hell is capital punishment. Or, to say it another way, eternal punishment is eternal destruction. "But wait a minute," someone objects. "If evildoers are totally destroyed, they do not suffer any pain after that. And surely it will not take very long for anyone to be destroyed. How can that possibly be called eternal punishment?"
"Delighted that you ask!" I respond. "And for your answer, we turn to the wisdom of St. Augustine, the very man we have credited (or blamed) for making eternal torment the standard orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church. The great church father rejected what I consider to be the biblical understanding of Hell as the fire that consumes. Ironically, in reading the writings of scholars from throughout centuries of church history, I have found no one else who answers the question we are posing better than St. Augustine does.
Just to remind you, the question before us is this: "If people are totally destroyed, they no longer exist and therefore feel no pain. If hell's fire really does consume entirely and forever, how can that be called eternal punishment?"
Although he did not realize it at the time, St. Augustine answered that question beautifully in the following words: "Where a very serious crime is punished by death and the execution of the sentence takes only a minute, no laws consider that minute as the measure of the punishment, but rather the fact that the criminal is forever removed from the community of the living."
Ironically, if we apply St. Augustine's statement to Hell, it reminds us that the punishment of the wicked consists not only of dying the second death itself and experiencing every pain suffered in the process of dying, but also the loss of every good blessing, every godly companion, and of every moment that might otherwise have been enjoyed in a new heavens and a new earth forever without end.
29 SURPRISE: Eternal fire destroys forever
Although many of Jesus' teachings about the end of the wicked do not include any reference to fire at all, whoever comes to this subject still enters territory that can only be called a serious "fire zone."
That becomes obvious to any New Testament reader who pays close attention to the text, which is full of fire from beginning to end. We meet the fire of judgment at the front door. John the Baptist shouts to the "snakes" in charge of religion that the wildfire they fear cannot be extinguished to save them.
We hear Jesus' teaching that mentions the place-name Gehenna, then we hear more from Jesus about unnamed fire that is equally ominous. And when we arrive at the back door of the New Testament, the fire is there also. Revelation, the last book of the Bible, ends with the lake of fire—which for humans, John always explains, "is the second death."
Surrounded by this context of fire, no one seems surprised to hear Jesus, while giving the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, mention in passing "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41). And precisely what, we wonder, is eternal fire? As it happens, we have answered the question already—at least in principle—but the phrase "eternal fire" is so often misused that it seems only right to give it special attention by itself.
By calling this fire "eternal," Jesus tells us two things about it. First, this fire belongs to the age to come. We are familiar with fire already in the present age. The fire we now use, and work with, and put out when it threatens to burn something we wish to preserve, can be very destructive. A bolt of lightning at night in a deserted forest can ignite a fire that consumes thousands of acres of timber. A cigarette carelessly tossed from an automobile can start a blaze that wipes out a whole town.
Present-age fire can even kill a living person and destroy that person's physical body—as when a martyr is burned at the stake. But the fire of the present age is limited in what it can destroy. It cannot kill or destroy the soul—the person considered in her wholeness, intended for life with God in the age to come. To accomplish that result—the destruction, killing, burning up, of a whole person entirely and forever—one must have access to fire of the age to come. And, in a word, the fire of the age to come is eternal fire.
The word eternal tells us a second thing also about the judgment fire awaiting those who go to Hell. In some sense, this fire has an unending quality about it. On this point, we are not required to guess. The Bible itself explains why the fire of the age to come is called eternal fire in this second sense of "eternal." That explanation is found in the tiny book of Jude, in a statement looking back to the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We have read Jude's words before, when we discussed Sodom as a prototype of divine judgment. The comment is at verse seven in Jude's single-chapter epistle. It says that "Sodom and Gomorrah . . . are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire."
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was so sensational, so thorough, so permanent that its story alone contributed much of the language of judgment found in the rest of the Bible. The classic picture language of fire and brimstone comes from Sodom's story. This expression is the way older English translations speak of the burning sulfur that "rained" down, volcano-like, from the sky and turned that moment for Sodom into the end of the world.
The figure of ascending smoke in connection with divine judgment also comes from Sodom's story—where, like the image of a mushroom-shaped cloud today, it symbolizes a judgment completed, life now extinguished in a place only yesterday abuzz with activity. When this word-picture in the Bible is accompanied by a comment that the smoke ascends "forever," the additional word "forever" adds the meaning that the thing burned up will never be rebuilt (Isaiah 34:10).
We can now add another judgment phrase to our list of phrases from Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude says in verse seven that God has made those cities an exhibit of his judgment against sin. More specifically, Jude says that Sodom and Gomorrah serve as an example—a model, a sample, a prototype—"in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire."
Do we want to know what "eternal fire" looks like? We need only look at God's example of Sodom and Gomorrah. We can look back at Sodom in the past and from its fate understand the meaning of the "eternal fire" that awaits the unredeemed at the end of the world.
The fire that annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah is not still burning. It burned up the cities and everything in them. Then it went out. That fire is called eternal fire. It is not "eternal" because it burns forever, for it does not burn forever. It is called "eternal" fire because it destroys forever. That is what Sodom's fire did. It is what the fire of Hell will do. That is the Bible's own definition of the phrase "eternal fire."
30 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS (1)
Blame it on the King James Version if you wish. The dangling fruit was so beautiful and far too close to resist. Imagine that you are a preacher and you have been requested to present a sermon on hell—"for the young folks," the requester explains. "Not blaming you, of course, but some members of their generation have never heard an old-fashioned, true-blue, fire-and-brimstone sermon on Hell."
You flip through your favorite reading Bible. The Old Testament does not mention final Hell, you remember. Wherever the word "Hell" creeps into the English Old Testament, it always translates sheol, the Hebrew word for the unseen realm of the dead. It has nothing to do with punishment in the Old Testament—good and bad people all finally land there. The Old Testament never mentions Hell as the place where the ungodly will suffer eternal punishment.14
The New Testament presents its own set of problems. Your concordance of Greek words reminds you that Gehenna, the word for "Hell" as final punishment, appears only twelve times in the whole New Testament. One of those is in James, where it is not talking about final punishment at all. The other eleven usages are all in the Gospels. All are spoken by Jesus to Jews who live in or around Jerusalem. As odd as it seems to us, if the New Testament reflects a typical picture of the word's usage, most of the early church might never have heard the word for "Hell" at all.
Then it happens! As you skim through the Gospel of Luke, your eyes strike a word here, a phrase there. Soon you are too entangled to go anywhere else. It is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The beggar Lazarus is laid at the gate of the rich man, who ignores him—while he himself banquets daily. This is how the story opens, as told in the King James Version.
19There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: 20And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, 21And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
Then both men die and their positions somehow reverse.
2And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; 23And in Hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and sees Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
Finally the rich man asks Abraham for a favor.
24And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
There you have it. Jesus says that the rich man dies, is in Hell, and is in torment. The rich man seeks mercy because he is tormented in a flame. How could it be more obvious? With all this to work from, a sermon is not long in coming. When bad people die, the audience is assured, they go to Hell where they are tormented in fire forever. And our authority is no less than Jesus himself.
But perhaps this conclusion is a bit hasty. For closer investigation reveals some interesting facts, as we will now observe.
31 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS (2)
Let's think through four details about this story Jesus told and be sure we are not about to misuse it ourselves. Those four details concern its form (parable, not history), its purpose (the context concerns subjects not related to final judgment and Hell), its setting (here and now), and its intended mode (figurative or literal).
Parable, not factual narrative
The story of the rich man and Lazarus is not a factual narrative, but a borrowed parable. Parables usually teach one over-all lesson, sometimes two. The fact that Jesus used the parable does not mean that he endorsed all its details. Some object that this story cannot be a parable because it begins with the words "there was a certain rich man" and "there was a certain beggar."
In fact, it is just as likely that the quoted words mark the story as a parable. Two chapters later, Luke introduces another story with the words: "Now he told them a parable," leaving no doubt about the literary character of the story (Luke 18:1). Jesus then continues with the same kind of specific identification he uses in our story. "In a certain city there was a judge . . . and there was a widow in that city" (Luke 18:1-3). It is clear that mere specificity of detail does not mean a story is not a parable or that it is actually true.
In this case, the parable probably is not original with Jesus, but is one Jesus has borrowed from the rabbis. According to a 1966 doctoral dissertation, at least seven versions of this parable have been found in literature of the period.15 Jesus simply borrows a tale from his surroundings, changing some details to make his point. This fact caused Robert A. Morey, a strong defender of the traditional view of Hell, to conclude that this story does not provide us literal details of the world to come.16
Context concerns different subjects
Perhaps more important, if we read the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in its context, we will see that the story's themes have nothing to do with Hell or with the nature of final punishment. In Luke 16:1-13, Jesus teaches about the importance of stewardship. The Pharisees, who are covetous, mock Jesus and his teaching (Luke 16:14). Jesus warns the Pharisees that God sees the hearts and views people differently from their fellow mortals. He cautions that the times are critical and that people should not waste opportunity to obey God (Luke 16:15-18). Then Jesus tells this parable that illustrates all his points.
It is a story of a covetous man who ignores his responsibilities toward Lazarus as a steward of God's wealth. He is honored by people but God has a different view. And, after dying, the covetous man realizes too late that he has wasted his opportunity to obey God. The parable fits the context precisely and the themes they share in common reveal Jesus' purposes in telling this story.
Here and now, not future eternity
Besides all that, the details of this story occur here and now, not in eternity beyond the present age. While the rich man is agonizing in hades, his five brothers are still living on earth. I would like to say "living it up," but the text does not say that. However, the dead man seems to assume that his brothers view their possessions, as he also had done, in terms of self and not as God's possessions, entrusted to them to manage on God's behalf. It is all about stewardship.
Not only are the brothers still living during the present age, they live before Jesus' resurrection and while Moses and the prophets are God's latest word (Luke 16:29-31). This is important to the parable itself, because it sets up the story for its punch-line.
The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers. Abraham denies the request, saying they should listen to Moses and the prophets. The rich man replies that they would listen to someone who returned back from the dead. Abraham disagrees. If they ignore Moses and the prophets in Scriptures read weekly in synagogue, they will ignore someone back from the dead (Luke 16:27-31). Abraham proves to be correct. For Jesus himself will soon be killed, then rise from the dead, and the Pharisees who mock his teaching now will have the same attitude toward Jesus still.
But our eyes are on something different. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the action takes place now, not after judgment at the end of this age. People do not go to Hell before they are judged. Final judgment happens after Jesus' final coming. The rich man in this story is not in Gehenna, the place of final punishment. He is in hades, the unseen realm of the dead, the place called sheol in the Old Testament.
In fact, the "Hell" in this story in the King James Version, the "Hell" that has caught so many eyes and captured so many imaginations through the centuries, is not the Hell of final punishment at all. It is simply hades, sheol, gravedom, the unseen realm of the dead. If the parable proved anything about post-mortem circumstances, it would still say nothing about final punishment in Hell or Gehenna.
Not literal
Finally, the parable should not be read literally, as if a literal reading contained Jesus' intended message. That would require one to believe:
• That Abraham receives the godly dead and remains with them;
• That angels transport the godly dead from earth to Abraham;
• That the godly and ungodly, though apart, are both audible and visible to each other;
• That a single drop of water would relieve the pain of the lost;
• That the saved can theoretically travel to the unsaved, or even to earth.
In fact, I have never met, heard, or read anyone who consistently interpreted the story of the rich man and Lazarus literally in every detail. It is not hard to understand why. The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable, not historical narrative. The context shows its subject something other than Heaven and Hell. Its setting is a time during ongoing earthly history and before Jesus is raised from the dead. And even if that were otherwise, it is not intended to be taken literally.
This is a story of the sort named "parable." It is a teaching tool about the urgency of obeying God in caring for the poor and a reminder that opportunity for doing that is running out. It says nothing at all about Gehenna, the "Hell" of final punishment. At most, this story is set in hades, before the judgment, while life on earth continues with its usual covetous ways.
Everlasting Torment: Pillar 3
NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS FOLLOW JESUS
Traditionalists say that New Testament writers follow Jesus, and therefore they also teach conscious unending torment.
32 JAMES, THE BROTHER OF JESUS
After Jesus was conceived in her womb without a biological human father, Mary later had at least four sons by Joseph, one of whom was named James. James was highly respected by Jesus' earliest followers, who recognized him easily and early as an influential leader in the Jerusalem messianic community. James' short, practice-oriented epistle shares many points of similarity with Jesus' sayings in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and provides an example of the earliest Jewish Christian teaching.
James' little book also illustrates the danger posed by unfounded expectations. The book of James never hints at unending torment, and it says much that sounds like total extinction. It is fair to say that James stresses future punishment—devoting one-third of his closing chapter to the subject—and that he speaks in specifics, not in general thoughts.
But notice what happens when a very fine scholar, who has been taught to associate "Hell" with unending torment and never with total extinction, reads James. Not finding what he expected, and not expecting what he found, the very fine scholar goes away thinking that the book of James "does not put much stress on the doctrine of Hell, though it does offer some general thoughts concerning the future punishment of the wicked."17 How could the very fine scholar be so confused? The answer is simple. He was so busy listening for what James did not say that he failed to hear what James did say. It happens all the time.
According to James, the wicked are on a path to judgment and James describes its end five times. If the wicked continue in wickedness and refuse to repent, their destiny will be death (James 1:15) and destruction (4:12). Wealth that has been wrongfully acquired and sinfully hoarded will consume their flesh like fire (5:3). Too late they will realize that they have been fattened for the day of slaughter (5:5). Having gone full circle, James closes his book as he began: the end of the wicked is death (5:19).
33 WHERE DID HELL GO IN THE BOOK OF ACTS?
If any book of the Bible provides details about Hell and the end of the wicked, surely that book is Acts of the Apostles. After all, Acts is the book about evangelism in the early church. Surely we can turn to Acts and read exciting details of exactly how "the early Christian evangelists and preachers . . . warned of the sure reality of Hell and the eternal punishment of the unrepentant."18
That is what we would expect. Surprisingly, it is not what we find. We do find early Christian apostles, evangelists, and other disciples telling listeners across the Roman Empire about Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead, they say. Through Jesus, anyone—Jews, Romans, people from all nations—can enjoy forgiveness of sins, receive God's Spirit, become children of God. But the message that rings most distinctly, as Acts reports the gospel's movement across the Greco-Roman world, is the offer of life in Christ.
What about Gehenna, the "Hell" of final punishment? It is never mentioned in Acts. Maybe it's listed under "Lake of Fire"? Not so. Perhaps graphic warnings of eternal torment? Not even once. Warnings of torment but not so graphic? Sorry. Still completely missing. One begins to suspect that the apostles motivated people with something better than fear. But there it is—feel free to check it out for yourself.
Acts begins with ten dozen disciples—men and women, apostles and vagabonds—frightened, hiding out in Jerusalem for fear of Jesus' enemies, waiting to be filled with supernatural power and boldness from Heaven. The book ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome, eager to tell Caesar about Jesus, while from Jerusalem to Rome new Jesus-communities dot the landscape.
Does this mean that Peter and John and Paul ignored the alternative to eternal life? Were the earliest believers always silent about a day of judgment? Not at all. Such a conclusion is also unfounded. Here's the reality. In the whole book of Acts from start to finish, there are four clear references to final judgment or to the end of the wicked. Two texts reflect Peter's ministry and two reflect Paul's. We begin with Peter.
34 PETER'S PREACHING OF JUDGMENT
Acts of the Apostles reports two times when Peter specifically mentions either final judgment or final punishment. Once he is speaking to Gentiles and once to Jews.
A Gentile assembly
In Acts 10-11, Luke relates Peter's visit to Caesarea to preach the gospel at the household of a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Peter declares that God has set a day to judge the world. God has appointed Jesus Christ to act as judge in his stead and has confirmed the appointment by raising Jesus from the dead. This is the first specific mention in Acts of future judgment. Peter says nothing about the nature of final punishment here. His single reported comment on that subject had come much earlier, to an audience altogether different from the folks gathered at Cornelius' house.
A Jewish crowd
One day as Peter and John go to the Temple for afternoon prayers, they encounter a man lame from birth, whom God uses them to heal. A crowd quickly gathers, and Peter and John turn the conversation to Jesus, whom they credit for the healing. Jesus is the promised Messiah/Christ, the apostles say. He is also the prophet like Moses who was to come. And Moses himself prophesied that whoever does not listen to this prophet will be destroyed from among the people of God (Acts 3:22-23).
This is the only statement in Acts that describes or defines, even slightly, the nature of final punishment. And while the words destroy and destruction are among the most common words in the New Testament for the end of the unredeemed, in this text Luke uses a different Greek word for destroy, which appears only here in the New Testament. This is a very intense word that means "to destroy utterly" or "to root out."
But this word had a background—in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek Old Testament of the Jews, the "Bible" quoted most often by Jesus and the early church. There the same Greek word translated "destroyed" in Acts 3:23 is regularly used to describe the effect of the Flood on the human population. And it is the ordinary word used in connection with the laws of capital punishment.
Is that ever a surprise!
35 PAUL'S PREACHING OF JUDGMENT
Acts contains two stories that include Paul's mention of final judgment and final punishment. As we listen to the first story, imagine yourself sitting in the marketplace in Athens, Greece, at a table, perhaps enjoying a huge, fresh Greek salad. (I did that once, and remember it still!)
The curious Athenians
Paul is in Athens on this particular day and he introduces the curious Greeks to a new God (Acts 17:22-31). But Paul claims that his new God is really the original God who made the universe. And instead of needing a caregiver to "heal" him—say, if his stone chin gets chipped and needs patching—this God gives life-breath to humans everywhere.
According to Paul, God made the nations and set their horizons in both time and space. Although invisible, God is always near. He longs for humankind to search for him, as if he were a friend gone missing. Then Paul suggests that these super-religious Greeks already acknowledge this God anonymously.
Presumably, when the Athenians were still filling their city with shrines to the gods, somebody anticipated a potential problem. What if they accidentally overlooked a deity—and this deity happened to be intolerant of mortals who make honest mistakes. Anyone who has read classical mythology knows the wisdom of not getting at odds with fickle Greek gods.
So, just to be safe, they dedicated one shrine to AGNOSTO THEO—"A God Unknown." But today the God whom they did not know has sent his messenger Paul to tell them what they need to know. And Paul's message that day begins by saying that not knowing is no longer an excuse.
God demands a change in thinking, which is repentance, Paul says. He has set a day when he will judge the world in justice, through the man Jesus. God himself appointed Jesus, and to make that clear to everyone, God raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 17:30-31).
Everybody who heard Paul talk that day knew one thing for sure. His message was nothing like the usual Aeropagus philosophy and chatter. Paul's message had strange power and themes equally strange to Athenian minds. This Jew who was a Roman citizen and who also spoke Greek had said, for example . . .
God will judge the world. People are accountable. Actions have consequences and choices matter. Greek gods do not judge Greek people, much less the whole world. In most cases, the gods of the Greeks would never make it through judgment themselves.
God's judgment will be just. Each person will be held accountable for the response to God's light received and for the use of opportunities granted. Morality and justice will clearly be on the same side. Every punishment will fit the crime. Whatever happens in God's courtroom, all present will go away saying that the outcome was correct. Nobody will think that God's justice is unfair or that it needs defending.
God has appointed Jesus Christ to be judge. The more Paul says about his God and the message that God has given Paul to tell the nations, the clearer it becomes that everything is finally about Jesus Christ.
God raised Jesus from the dead. Paul's closing remarks about someone named "Jesus," obviously a non-Greek foreigner, likely a rural individual, held no appeal to most of the Athenians. But then matters got even worse. Raising someone from the dead? What a vulgar concept! Why would anyone want such a future as that? What will these Jews think up next?
The Athenians prefer the wisdom of Socrates, who lived and taught four centuries earlier, roughly contemporaneous with Paul's Hebrew prophet Malachi. Socrates did more than talk. He demonstrated by his own example how a truly wise philosopher welcomes death and the unshackling of the soul from the mortal, earth-bound body.
Socrates' disciple Plato constantly reminded his pupils that, although the mortal body dies and returns to dust, the psyche or soul is immortal and will live somewhere forever. What need does such beautiful philosophy have for the resurrection of the body?
Mixed-motive Felix
Our second story involving Paul takes place approximately six or seven years later. Paul has been arrested in Jerusalem and transferred to Caesarea to appear before the Roman governor Felix. Hoping for a bribe, Felix leaves Paul in prison for two years until he himself is replaced by Porcius Festus.
During this time, Felix "often" sends for Paul and argues with him about "justice and self-control and future judgment" (Acts 24:25-27). This text confirms that judgment was a topic of conversation, but it tells us nothing about Paul's description of judgment or of the nature of final punishment.
36 PAUL'S WRITINGS
In one sense, Paul says more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible. Rather remarkable, since he never uses the word "Hell" even once.
That raises an interesting question. If Paul does not use the word "Hell," yet still says the most about it, what kind of language does he use to talk about the final end of the wicked? Earlier, I mentioned that the three words used most often in the New Testament outside the Gospels are die, perish, and destroy.
The following paragraphs include a number of key words that Paul uses to describe the final destiny of the unredeemed. Although Paul does not use the word Gehenna (the "Hell" of final punishment), we can accurately say that these words listed below tell what Paul believed will happen to those who go to Hell.
Paul says the wicked will not inherit the kingdom. The point is so important that Paul mentions it in three different epistles (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:21; Ephesians 5:5). The redeemed will enjoy an everlasting paradise in new heavens and new earth. Those who go to Hell will never enjoy a single moment of God's eternal kingdom.
They will not have even one glimpse of the city of God, a city so beautiful it is described as having golden streets, jeweled walls, and gates of pearl. They will never taste the tree of life. They will suffer the loss of every good thing that is, and every beautiful thing that might have been.
The wicked will not enjoy any of God's blessings that the redeemed enjoy, because they will perish (Romans 2:12). They are anathema, which means marked for destruction (1 Corinthians 16:22; Galatians 1:8-9). This is not some theoretical statement that might really happen and might not. No, God will destroy them (Romans 2:12; 1 Corinthians 3:17). Paul says it every way he can say it. The wicked will suffer destruction (Galatians 5:20; 6:8; Philippians 1:28; 3:19). That destruction will be sudden when it comes (1 Thessalonians 5:3), and, once accomplished, it will be everlasting (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
But that does not mean the destruction will happen instantaneously. The destructive process will include distress (Romans 2:9), fury (Romans 2:8), tribulation (Romans 2:9) and God's wrath (Romans 2:8; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 5:9). No one should think that the wicked will simply go quietly asleep. This is not an easy demise. The second death is not a peaceful death.
These words that Paul commonly uses to describe the end of the wicked—words such as die and death, perish, and destroy and destruction— are some of the strongest, most vivid words available to Paul to tell his churches what will happen to the wicked.
It is strange beyond understanding how anyone can read these words in Paul's epistles and explain them to mean anything other than total extinction, unending cessation, and complete annihilation. Not only does Paul use such strong clear language, there is every reason to believe that he chose these very words because they are so strong.
When we read in the New Testament that the wicked finally die, perish, and are destroyed, we are reading these words in a context and often with a contrast. The context is a public conversation that had been going since about the time of Malachi—which also happened to be about the time of Socrates and Plato. After Socrates had drunk the poisonous hemlock and was waiting for it to take effect, he conversed with his friends and students about death and the attitude proper for a philosopher regarding death.
Plato later recreated or invented a dialogue that supposedly represented what Socrates and his companions said on that occasion, and that dialog later was published as the Phaedo. Some people in the conversation argued that when a man dies, his body and soul die, perish, and are destroyed. When they said this, they used the same Greek words that Paul and other New Testament writers used when they said that the wicked (but not the redeemed) will die, perish, and be destroyed.
Others in the conversation argued that when a man dies, his body dies, perishes, and is destroyed, but that his soul is immortal and cannot die, perish, or be destroyed. When they said this, they used the same Greek words that Paul and other New Testament writers used when they said that the wicked (but not the redeemed) will die, perish, and be destroyed.
It would make no sense at all to give the words die, perish, and be destroyed a meaning in the New Testament that they did not have in everyday conversation. These words belong to a context within an ongoing conversation.
The natural meaning of words such as die, perish, and be destroyed is strengthened even more when these words are used in contrasts with words that mean the opposite. For example, Paul writes to the Roman believers that the wages of sin is death. In contrast, he says the gift of God is eternal life.
The options are life and death. The contrast makes it clear that the death the wicked will experience in Hell is the opposite of life. It is non-life. It is death in the usual meaning of the word— now enlarged to its fullest capacity and packed with meaning. As Jesus warns, God can destroy both soul and body forever.
37 HEBREWS: Traitors beware
No one knows who wrote Hebrews or to whom, or when, or where, or exactly why. From what it says, we conclude that its original readers were second or third-generation believers. They are suffering a faith crisis, for which the text hints at a variety of possible causes. The list might include verbal abuse from associates, confiscation of property, and temporary imprisonment.
The author of Hebrews appeals to their best instincts as he urges them to remain faithful to Jesus. Most of all, he says, Jesus also suffered, but he endured even death and remained faithful to God. God then showed himself to be faithful to the one who is faithful to him. He raised Jesus from the dead and gave him the place of highest honor at his right hand in Heaven.
According to the unknown author of Hebrews, the person who has professed belief in Jesus and later abandons faith is a traitor who deserves severe punishment. Worse than physical death alone (2:2-3), the punishment appropriate to crass faithlessness is like the fate of barren ground that is cursed and burned (6:8). We are speaking of destruction (10:39), as if in a raging (10:27-31), consuming fire (12:29).
The author of Hebrews, like other biblical writers before him, speaks in symbols and figures of speech. We must take him seriously but not literally. Doing that, we ask again the question we have asked about other biblical authors. Reading everything that he has said, which kind of fire seems most consistent with the warnings in Hebrews? Is it the fire that torments endlessly, the fire that purifies, or is it the fire that consumes?
38 BEWARE OF COUNTERFEITS: 2 Peter & Jude
We visited the small books called 2 Peter and Jude already, when we considered the Flood and Sodom's annihilation as prototypes or examples of the punishment at the end of the world. The middle chapter (chapter 2) of 2 Peter and the single chapter in Jude are very much alike. Jude is a brother of James who also wrote a New Testament book and, like James, is a half-brother of Jesus. Second Peter presents itself as the work of Peter the apostle, who wrote 1 Peter.
Both 2 Peter 2 and Jude 1 are stern warnings against certain teachers who claimed to represent an advanced form of Christianity. Their "advanced" morality says that God's grace shines more brightly the more flagrantly believers sin. The natural result of such teaching is to encourage believers to sin more wildly to stir up more grace.
But Peter and Jude will have none of this "advanced" gospel. It is a perversion of grace, not an advanced form of grace (2 Peter 2:2; Jude 4). They also have no patience for those who teach it. Peter and Jude see these teachers as counterfeit Christians, fraudulent fakes, who will mislead God's people if they are not exposed first. The false teachers are hell-bound, according to both 2 Peter and Jude.
Second Peter says the bad teachers face "swift destruction" (2 Peter 2:1) and "condemnation" (2:3). If anyone does not think God judges evil, that person should remember the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham's day. These twin cities were turned into ashes, Peter says, when God made them an example of what will happen to the wicked at the end of the world (2:6). Jude comments that the cities are an example of the punishment of eternal fire (Jude 7).
Second Peter also points to fallen angels now imprisoned in gloomy darkness waiting for judgment (2:4). Some translations say these angels are in "Hell," but that is misleading. Second Peter says "Tartarus," a location in Homer's "Odyssey." It does not say Gehenna, the New Testament's "Hell" of final punishment. Even if this text said Gehenna, it would not add to our knowledge, because it concerns angels and not humans, at a time before the judgment and not after it.
Second Peter says the false teachers will "perish" like brute beasts that are caught and "destroyed" (2:12). This reminds us of James comparing the evil person's going to Hell to a fattened animal's "day of slaughter" (James 5:5).
Second Peter and Jude now move their gaze from the earth to the heavens. In the end, the wicked will experience what we call "black holes" in outer space (2:17; Jude 13). Both men describe it as "blackest darkness." Jude adds the detail of "wandering stars." Total darkness graphically symbolizes fading into non-existence, like some wayward star swallowed by a hyper-gravity black hole.
Second Peter points to the Flood as a preview of final punishment. Just as the old world and its people perished by water in the past, so wicked people will be destroyed by fire in the future (2:5-7). It is obvious what perish and destroy mean when describing the effects of the Flood. The meanings are no less plain when the same words are used about final punishment.
In closing, Jude admonishes his readers to care for each other. By God's love and mercy, the destiny of believers will be eternal life (Jude 21). But to arrive at that goal, some need to be rescued from time to time. Jude describes the act of rescuing as snatching someone from the fire (Jude 22). The imagery comes from Amos 4:11. There the prophet Amos compares a remnant of people returned home from exile to a stick pulled from a fire just before it bursts into flame and burns up.
39 JOHN: Life or death
It has been traditionally understood that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John, the epistles 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation. For our purposes here, we will assume that to be correct. If it is not, what we say below is still true, only of several authors instead of one.
Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks most often of the final state of the saved as "eternal life" (John 3:16). On the other hand, John repeatedly states that the unredeemed will die, perish, and be destroyed. Even now, the willful disbeliever lives under the shadow of divine wrath— as if covered constantly by the wings of a giant bird of prey (John 3:36).
John writes of a sin that results in "death" (1 John 5:16-17). We commonly speak of people who are killed in an accident or natural catastrophe as perishing. For that reason, we are not surprised when John speaks of the alternative to life as being to "perish" (John 3:16). The same end is in view when Revelation warns that God will "destroy" those who destroy the earth (Rev.11:18).
In fact, those three words—die, perish, and be destroyed—are the very words that New Testament writers use most often to describe the final end of the wicked. Isn't it interesting that most modern believers think they are sure that those who go to Hell will not die, will never perish, and certainly will never be destroyed.
40 THE LAKE OF FIRE INTRODUCED
Several times the Book of Revelation mentions the "lake of fire and brimstone" or "the fiery lake of burning sulfur." What does this symbolic scene with the puzzling name represent? We remember first that the visual image of "fire and brimstone" is a picture based on the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible does not specifically say that God destroyed these cities with volcanic eruptions. However, the description in Genesis sounds like that is exactly what happened. That is the image we see whenever we read the words "fire and brimstone."
Fiery river/lake
Now John sees a vision. In the vision he sees a lake. But the lake is not filled with water. It is filled with fire and burning sulfur. This horrible lake is not pictured anywhere in the Bible outside of the Book of Revelation. However, if we search diligently, we can find a vision in the Old Testament very much like this vision of John's.
That earlier vision is recorded in Daniel 7, where it is part of a larger story the prophet saw. Like John much later, Daniel sees an image of God's heavenly throne. The throne is central and the one sitting on it controls the whole universe. He did in Daniel's day. He still did in John's day. He remains in charge today.
Flowing out from the throne, Daniel sees a river of fire. Instead of a fiery river, John sees a lake of fire. These two sights are easily smaller views of the same larger scene. Just as the Jordan River flows into the sea called the Dead Sea where nothing lives, this river of fire flows into the lake of fire which is the second death and where nothing is alive.
Daniel's beastly narrative
Daniel sees four beasts, creatures representing world powers that oppose God's authority and his kingdom. But no matter how powerful these opponents of God might be, they are finally no match for God. That is the message in the video story written in symbols that God showed to Daniel.
In Daniel's vision, the first three beasts are stripped of authority and finally destroyed. The fourth beast, more powerful and terrible than the others, is killed. Its dead body is destroyed in the blazing fire. These opponents who once stood in God's way are defeated, destroyed, and finally gone. Beasts lose. God wins.
The details of the fourth beast's demise emphasize its destruction. There is no possibility that we will see it again later when we least expect to. This fourth beast will not suddenly reappear or revive or rise up alive, like something in a Hollywood horror movie. Daniel sees it killed. Its body is destroyed—tossed into the blazing fire. This beast is no more. It will never be a threat to anything or to anyone again.
John's beastly narrative In Revelation, John sees a vision much like Daniel's. John also sees strange beings and symbolic beasts that represent world powers in opposition to God's authority and his kingdom. The rebel leader is the devil (Satan). The devil's chief officer is called Beast. Beast symbolizes every human government that claims authority higher than God's, requires its citizens to agree with that, and persecutes (even kills) anyone who refuses.
From the first century onward, there have been governments that fit this description. First there was Imperial Rome. More recent centuries have seen such governments under Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and others.
Knowing these things, whenever any government begins to claim an authority higher than God's, believers do well to hear an alarm—a loudspeaker that shouts a single word of warning: Beast!
Beast's cohort is False Prophet. From earliest human history until today, governments have enjoyed having the support of religion. The ancient Babylonians built ziggurats with temples at the top for their gods to visit. The ancient Egyptians believed that their Pharaoh ("king" in Egyptian) was the son of the Sun-God Re.
But governments and religion are dangerous comrades. They have a strong tendency to believe in themselves above everything else. They have a habit of exalting themselves, then forcing others to exalt them also.
Knowing these things, whenever believers face a partnership that claims to represent both God and government, those believers do well to hear an alarm—a loudspeaker that shouts two words of warning: False Prophet!
But no matter how powerful these opponents of God might be, they are finally no match for God. As with Daniel, this is also the message in the video story written in symbols that God showed to John. In John's vision also, all the opponents who stood in God's way are defeated, destroyed, and finally gone. Rebels lose. God wins.
There is no possibility that we will see the rebel crowd again. These creatures will not suddenly reappear or revive when we least expect it. No. When John's vision ends, rebels are gone forever. Devil, Beast, and False Prophet are all in the lake of fire. They will never be a threat to anything or to anyone again.
41 UNHOLY TRIO MEET THE LAKE OF FIRE
Near the end of his symbol-filled vision, John hears a great triumphant chorus of voices from Heaven announcing God's victory and the vindication of his faithful people. Heaven is opened and John sees a heavenly army riding on white horses. Leading them on a majestic white horse is Jesus Christ, the King over all earthly kings (Rev. 19:11-21). At this point in the video, the narrative includes symbolic words and phrases taken from Old Testament prophecies—symbols that tell us that Jesus is coming to judge the nations.
But the rebel forces in apparent control of earth do not surrender quietly. In the video, John sees Beast and the kings of earth with their armies making preparation for one final counter-attack. Their efforts are futile. The battle is over as soon as it begins.
The forces of Heaven capture Beast and False Prophet, and throw them alive into the Lake of Fire. The rebel armies, now without their leader (Beast) and his cohort (False Prophet), are all slaughtered by the sword that comes out of Jesus' mouth (Rev.19:12-21). The war is over, although one battle still remains. Beast and False Prophet are in the Lake of Fire. We will see them once more.
The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel foretold the ultimate battle between God and rebel forces called "Gog" and "Magog" (Ezekiel 38-39). Satan's armies surround the camp of God's people for a final assault. The scene reminds us of the battle for Helm's Deep in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings—which, of course, Tolkien based on symbols in Ezekiel and in Revelation. But just as the rebels suppose that they have prevailed, fire comes down from Heaven and toasts them in their tracks (Rev. 20:7-10).
In John's video, Satan is pictured as thrown into the Lake of Fire, joining Beast and False Prophet. There the three rebel leaders—the unholy trinity—the mirror image of all that is good and just and true— will remain. In the video of symbols, these three "are tormented day and night forever and ever."
This is the only text in the whole Bible that speaks of anything being tormented forever. The statement applies to the devil, Beast, and False Prophet, neither of which is a human being. Scripture nowhere says that any human being will be tormented forever. Jesus does say the wicked will suffer "eternal punishment" (Matthew 25:46), which Paul explains to be "eternal destruction" (2 Thessalonians 1: 9).
Perhaps one knows best the intended meaning of Scripture who stands most nearly in the shoes of the person or people for whom it was first written. Hanns Lilje was one of several Christian pastors and authors imprisoned by Hitler's Gestapo—Dietrich Bonhoeffer is perhaps the best known. Just as John saw Beast close-up and encountered False Prophet, so did Lilje (and Bonhoeffer) nearly nineteen centuries later.
Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck say that in the symbol-language of that time even everlasting torment can symbolize everlasting, irreversible extinction.19 Lilje certainly would concur. On this passage in Revelation, he writes: "God's will has triumphed gloriously; the 'lake of fire' means no more than this."20
42 DEATH AND HADES ANNIHILATED
The lake of fire is not yet full. However, we are not yet out of candidates, either.
Death
Tossed next into the fire in John's symbol-language vision is Death itself (Rev. 20:14). This is death as we know it, death as humans have always known it. Death is not a living being, of course. It is the absence of life. Indeed, death is the exact opposite of life. These are the two final options for humans. It is either life (eternal life at that!) or death (the second, final, everlasting death).
It should be obvious that life and death cannot coexist. Someone is either dead or alive. The same person is not both dead and alive at the same time. These two final options are stated clearly in Romans 6:23, where the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
As we come to the close of the Book of Revelation, we meet these two final options again. At the end, we see humankind divided into two groups identified by these two words: life (represented by the Book of Life) and death (represented by the Lake of Fire).
Both the Old Testament (Isaiah 25:7-8) and the New Testament (1 Corinthians 15:54) look forward to a time when Death will no longer exist anywhere. During his visual trip into the future, John sees that time arrive.
Whatever they think about the end of human beings, scholars on all sides of the Hell debate agree concerning the meaning of the picture in Revelation 20:14, the video clip showing Death tossed into the Lake of Fire. No one disputes that this is symbol-language standing for the annihilation, the extinction, the very "death" of Death. The English poet John Donne was correct when he exclaimed: "Death shall be no more; Death, you shall die."21
Hades
When Death is thrown into the Lake of Fire, Hades is also thrown in. Hades is a Greek word that literally means the unseen realm. In the Old Testament, Hades is called by the name Sheol—pictured as the abode of the dead. Some writers have argued that Sheol is the same as Hell, the place of final punishment. Others claim that Sheol or Hades is the first stage of final Hell. Based on Old Testament comments about Sheol, the wisest way to understand Hades is simply as a symbol for the invisible realm of the dead. To say more than that becomes very troublesome when one recalls that Jesus is pictured as in Hades (or Sheol) between his death and his resurrection (Acts 2:27, 31).
When Death is gone, so will be the place or state of the dead. That is Hades or Sheol—which is also cast into the Lake of Fire (Rev.20:14). Again, all sides in the debate about Hell agree that the time will come when Hades also will become extinct, no longer in existence. For Hades to be thrown into the Lake of Fire simply means its total and everlasting destruction. It is annihilated. It will never be seen again.
43 THE LAKE OF FIRE IS HUMAN SECOND DEATH
John twice mentions human beings thrown into the Lake of Fire. Both times, he adds the explanatory words: "which is the second death." John begins by naming the symbol to be defined—"the Lake of Fire." He then defines that symbol by equating it with a different reality easy to be understood—"the second death." What is the Lake of Fire? It is the symbol of something, but what does it symbolize?
What it is, is . . .
The answer is not self-evident, so John explains. The Lake of Fire is the second death. The first death is the death we experience now in the present age. It is temporary—the redeemed will be raised from it to immortality and resurrection glory.
The second death is the death of the age to come, the death from which God rescues those who believe in Jesus. The second death is the death that is the wages of sin. It is the destruction and perishing promised to the unfaithful. It is the death from which there is no resurrection or return. It is the death of the whole person forever.
The second death is the reality, easily understood. It is represented by the more difficult symbol—the Lake of Fire. By defining his expression this way, John encourages and invites us to think of the reality when we encounter its symbol. So we see the name Lake of Fire (unclear symbol) and think the second death (clearer reality).
Because John defined the Lake of Fire as the second death, we are not free to reason the other direction. We do not have John's permission to explain the second death as the Lake of Fire, which would be moving from the simpler to the more difficult. We follow John, however, each time we define the symbol "Lake of Fire" as "the second death."
Registry of the living / Second death
The first reference to humans being tossed into the Lake of Fire identifies the lake as one of two final destinies. The other destiny is life in the City of God, symbolized as registration in the Book of Life. Every human being finally goes to one destiny or the other. Either one's name is written in the Book of Life or one is thrown into the Lake of Fire which is the second death (Rev. 20:15). The comparison is strong: life or death.
The images are vivid. The Book of Life is a registry of the living citizens in a particular city. When a resident dies, his or her name is removed from the city's book of living citizens. When a new baby is born to a resident family, a new name is written in the Book of Life. In Revelation, the Book of Life is the registry of those who live forever in the New Jerusalem.
The other option is the Lake of Fire. At this point in the text, this Lake has received Beast, False Prophet, Satan, Death, and Hades. Now the second reference to humans in the Lake of Fire describes the character of people who go there (Rev. 21:8). The traits begin with cowardly and faithless and they end with all liars.
Viewed together from a modest distance, these attributes and others named between them present the classic portrait of a traitor, a betrayer. This is someone who claims to be Jesus' disciple when times are good. But when opposition comes and pressure builds, he changes loyalties, flips sides, and denies the Lord and Savior.
These are the only two references in the Bible to human beings going into the Lake of Fire. Both times, John explains the meaning of the Lake of Fire by adding the words: "which is the second death."
Both Old and New Testaments picture new heavens and new earth, an eternal universe forever free of all sin, without temptation, where everything in creation praises and worships God (Isaiah 24:14-16; 2 Peter 3:13). It is impossible to harmonize that picture with another picture that shows most humans who ever lived, screaming and writhing day and night in a place of everlasting conscious torment as they suffer unspeakable pain forever.
Some today who argue that the damned will suffer pain forever now claim that language as used in the previous sentence misrepresents the tradition. These advocates say that the pains suffered by the lost are more intellectual and less physical than was previously thought.
To any who claim misrepresentation, I recommend a course of regular reading from the sermons of John Chrysostom, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and A. W. Pink.
It is also impossible to square the traditional doctrine of hell—which says that God will actively keep most of the entire human race alive forever for the sole purpose of tormenting them without end—with statements throughout the Bible that teach the final extinction of the wicked: the total, irreversible annihilation of the whole person.
Is one supposed to conclude that dozens, even scores and more of simple, declaratory statements throughout all of Scripture must finally be ignored because of fewer than five symbolic verses in Revelation? It makes far better sense to read these few apocalyptic statements written in symbolic language in light of the clear, repeated, consistent teaching from throughout all the rest of Scripture.
44 PERSONAL STRUGGLE
As mentioned earlier, I began my year-long research assignment by reading every book I could find in defense of the traditional view. Then I read the books that taught the extinction of the lost. Using Scripture references from all these books as starters, I worked through the entire Bible seeking the only inspired light we have on this subject.
I was amazed to find that the Old Testament, which traditionalists assured me held nothing of interest or value on the subject of final punishment, instead proved to be a treasure-house of information. The supposed silence of the Old Testament on this topic was the first pillar of traditionalism, and its total falsity left me feeling disappointed but also betrayed. Those same two feelings would become familiar callers throughout the course of my research.
One by one, the pillars of traditionalism crumbled at my touch, like paper burnt to ash just waiting to disintegrate. It is no exaggeration to say that much I expected to find in the Bible was not there, and most of what I did find in Scripture was a total surprise. This raised another question: If the traditional view is not found in the Bible, where did it come from? I found that answer in Tertullian and the supposed immortality of the soul.
One final question pounded my brain without mercy, intensifying the ongoing inward struggle. Should I write a book, bringing into the bright light of day all the biblical truths I personally had encountered in the form of earth-shaking, ground-breaking surprises? Could I write that book? Dare I write that book?
To this point in my life, I had always held to the traditional view of everlasting torment. I fully expected to hold it for the remainder of my life as well. Despite the questions that most sensitive believers sometimes ask, I had no passion to change views. All I wanted was to understand what God has revealed on the subject and to teach it to others to the glory of God. In terms of personal comfort, I had absolutely nothing to gain by changing. On the other hand, changing views on hell—especially publicly—carried considerable risk.
If I rejected the traditional view of everlasting torment, I would be going against the overwhelming majority of the Christian church for at least 1,600 years. It would place me at odds with my own Christian faith tradition in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. It would mean rejecting what my father had believed and taught. He had died about seven years before, but my love, respect, and near reverence for him continued as it does until this day.
I already had a reputation among the hard-liners on the fringes of our fellowship as an iconoclast. The thought of becoming permanently suspect or worse among the mainstream as well held very little appeal to a young preacher with a tenuous and unknown future.
Besides all that, to reject the traditional view in favor of "annihilationism" or "conditional immortality," as this other view was known, would mean agreeing with the Seventh-day Adventists on this issue. That fact alone was enough to condemn the view in the minds of many.
I had argued at length with the Adventists on this very topic when I took their Voice of Prophecy correspondence courses as a teenager— along with courses from the Knights of Columbus, the Rosicrucians, the Worldwide Church of God, our own Churches of Christ, and perhaps others as well. Critics would taunt that I had regressed in understanding rather than growing wiser.
But there was another consideration more substantial than all the others combined. It was a guiding principle that had characterized my parents and my mother's parents who devoted their lives to preaching the gospel in Africa. This was one of the earliest lessons I had learned from my father, and I pray it will go with me into eternity. One can state it many ways but the essence is the same: "If the Bible says it, it's true, no matter what any person may say."
By the grace of God, I had studied the Bible since childhood, and had attended Athens Bible School from grades one through twelve. I had a graduate degree in biblical languages. I was trained to analyze Scripture (a task called exegesis), to interpret it (hermeneutics), and to apply it to everyday life (homiletics). While preaching in St. Louis, I had read systematic and historical theology in two seminaries—one conservative (Covenant) and one liberal (Eden).
Might it be, I wondered, that God had been preparing me for this very time? I had done the research. I had used the tools and used them properly. Throughout it all, I had prayed for guidance. Christian brothers and sisters were praying for me every day of the research, at home in the Barn church and all around the world. What more could anyone do? Now I needed to trust the results. Despite the high risks and the potential costs, my course was clear. Straight ahead!
45 REFRESHING OUR MEMORIES
We have now explored our way through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation, asking one question of everyone we met. "What can you tell us about the final state of the unredeemed?" From beginning to end, the answer has come back loud and clear. "The wages of sin is death."
In the Old Testament, we learned from principles, previews and predictions. We discovered principles of divine justice—righteousness is rewarded, evil is punished. If it does not happen in this life, it will happen later. Rebellious sinners cannot escape God's justice. The psalmists describe what that will look like, using at least seventy similes and metaphors and at least fifty Hebrew verbs.
Two of the best-known stories in Genesis are in fact previews of divine judgment. The Flood in Noah's day and the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah were total devastations. In the first story, no breathing life remained outside the Ark; in the second story nothing was left but smoke. The New Testament says both events exemplify the fate awaiting the wicked at the end of the world.
Old Testament prophets also provide specific predictions of the wicked's end. They paint a variety of word pictures. But whether the picture features a sword, or smoke, or fire and maggots, the pictures all mean the same—death and total destruction.
As we move through the New Testament with our same question, we hear many voices. John the Baptist announces, Jesus tells parables, evangelists proclaim, apostles and others write epistles, and John sees mysterious and symbolic visions. Again, many methods but a single message: the time will come when the wicked will no longer exist.
When New Testament writers describe the future of those who throughout life reject God, the three words they use the most are die (or death), perish, and destroy (or destruction). Often these words are used in direct contrast to eternal life that awaits the saved. The final options could not be stated more plainly. The choices are life or death. The Bible never says that any human being will be kept alive forever to suffer everlasting conscious torment in Hell.
According to the New Testament, the wicked will not live forever for two reasons: one positive and one negative. The positive reason is expressed in the words of destruction noted above. The consequences of sin are to die, to perish, to be destroyed. The negative reason is grounded in the fact that human beings are totally dependent creatures who exist only because God made them, and who will continue to exist only if God enables them and gives them life.
Scripture is clear that only God possesses immortality (1 Timothy 6:16). He alone lives eternally and is his own source of life. God's life does not depend on anyone other than himself. That cannot be said of any creature in the universe, including us human beings. For us, immortality is God's free gift to the redeemed (Romans 2:6-8). We live in hope of "the promise of the life that is in Christ" (2 Timothy 1:1).
The Bible says nothing of immortal souls. Instead, it tells a story of God making man from dust of the earth. "Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Gen 2:7). The King James Version said that man became a "living soul," which modern versions improve with "living being" (the same Hebrew word is also used of the animals). And even in the King James Version, man was not given a "living soul" (like another "part"). He became a "living soul" or a holistic living being.
We humans are dependent creatures, having no life-source in our natural selves. We are wholly mortal, destined to die, and—unless God intervenes—to stay dead. But the Bible tells us that God will intervene. He will raise all the dead to be judged. God will transform the bodies of the redeemed and make them immortal (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).
The wicked also will be raised—not immortal, but to the resurrection of condemnation (John 5:28-29). They will face God, be condemned and banished to Hell, the lake of fire. There they will perish (John 3:16), be destroyed both soul and body (Matthew 10:28). In the process, they will suffer conscious pains precisely in keeping with divine justice—not more, not less. To say it another way, they suffer the second death (Rev. 21:8). They suffer the eternal punishment of eternal destruction (Matthew 25:46; 2 Thessalonians 1:9).
But this raises some other interesting questions. If the traditional view of everlasting torment does not originate in the Bible, where does it come from? And, if it is not the view set out in Scripture, how did it become so popular and why is it held by almost everyone even today?
46 TERTULLIAN: Plato joins the church
From the closing of the first century through the first three-quarters of the second century come the writings of those called the "apostolic fathers." When they speak of final punishment, they use the same biblical language of life and death that we saw throughout the Bible itself. Likely written for use as a manual for new believers, the Didache is unmistakable about final options. "There are two ways," it begins, "the way of life and the way of death." Ignatius of Antioch reminds the Magnesians, a church not mentioned in the New Testament, that "two things lie before us, life and death."
Tertullian
During the second and third centuries after Christ, a number of pagan philosophers became Christians and devoted their talents to reasoning with non-Christian thinkers. Chief among them was a man from Carthage, a fiery-tempered philosopher named Tertullian. He was a convert from the followers of Socrates and Plato, who believed that every human being had a mortal body and an immortal soul.
According to Socrates, his pupil Plato, and others after them, humans have two "parts"—a mortal body that dies and an immortal soul that by its very nature cannot die. Of the two, Socrates said, the soul is nobler and far more significant. It is eternal, existing before the body, and being immortal, it survives the body's death.
Tertullian was practically obsessed with thoughts of the soul. He wrote his longest book on the subject. For proof that the soul is immortal, the church father appealed to Plato. In a work titled "Resurrection of the Flesh," Tertullian wrote: "I may use, therefore, the opinion of Plato, when he declares, 'Every soul is immortal.'" Because the soul is immortal already, Tertullian reasoned, it does not need saving. Christ came to save only the body.
But most important to our inquiry is Tertullian's reasoning about the immortal soul and Hell. When Jesus warns that God can destroy the soul (Matthew 10:28), we should not think of destruction, said Tertullian, for immortal souls cannot be destroyed. Jesus really means that the soul will suffer conscious punishment in Hell. Through Tertullian's influence, we might say, pagan Plato joined the Christian church.
The assumption was wrong but the logic was straight and simple. If souls are truly "immortal," they cannot die, perish, or be destroyed—the three words used most often in the Bible to describe the final end of the wicked. And if they will never die but live forever, there are but two possibilities: either the souls of the wicked live forever in torment or they are eventually purified and graduate to Heaven. The church fathers were never consistent about the destructibility of the soul, always acknowledging that God is able to destroy whatever he creates, but reasoning about Hell as if that were not the case.
A few years later, Origen of Alexandria would propose universal "restoration," an explanation growing in popularity again today. But the overwhelming view of the church—the view that became orthodoxy for Catholics and Protestants alike—was everlasting conscious torment.
Scripture does speak of human immortality, to be sure. But when it does, three things are always true, and three things are never true. These details are set out graphically in the diagram below. Please review it carefully. I encourage you to take out your best concordance and look up every passage in the New Testament that uses the words "mortality" and "immortality" or "mortal" or "immortal." Test the statements in the diagram below by comparing them with every verse that uses any of those words.
HUMAN IMMORTALITY IN THE BIBLE
These truths are so important that if the church had always remembered them, the idea of everlasting conscious torment probably never would have arisen at all. If that idea had appeared in a church that remembered these three truths, the idea would have been soundly rejected.
Clement and Origen
Clement and Origen were successive headmasters of a famous school in Alexandria, Egypt, known for its allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. Both men are also known by their name with the added suffix, "of Alexandria." They lived into the third century. Clement and later Origen reasoned that God does everything for a reason. Hell's reason, they speculated, was to purify the soul and prepare the soul for Heaven. This theory they called the Apokatastasis or Restoration, and it added a third purpose for hell's fire in addition to the two we already have examined. According to Scripture, Hell will destroy completely and forever. According to Tertullian, Hell will torment forever. According to Origen, Hell will purify and restore.
Chrysostom (349-407) means "Golden-Mouth" in Greek and he was eloquent even when woefully wrong. For example, he preached that Jesus sent the apostles into the world "to bring to us the glad tidings of the soul's immortality, and the eternal life of the body." He preached about people in Hell "ever burning but not burnt up."
St. Augustine
Augustine (354-430), often called "St. Augustine," was a worldly and immoral man well into his adult years. A divine intervention was important in his conversion. Afterward, he became a chief theologian for defining and interpreting Christian doctrine. He devoted Book 21 of his massive City of God to a discussion of Hell, coming down in support of Tertullian's theory and rejecting Origen's view. Augustine's endorsement of everlasting torment practically guaranteed that Tertullian's interpretation would become Catholic orthodoxy, and it did.
Anselm
We move next to Anselm of Canterbury (died 1117). His contribution to the doctrine of Hell included a calculus of finitude and infinity. Because God is an infinite being and humans are finite, a sin against God by a human deserves infinite punishment. But, Anselm said, the only way a finite human can suffer infinite punishment is to suffer torment forever. Anselm's whole argument on this subject reflects the feudal law of his time, which measured degree of guilt and punishment by the relative standing of victim and perpetrator.
The whole theory was based on respect of persons, something forbidden by God in both Old and New Testaments. But even if Anselm's argument rested on solid principles, his conclusion would not necessarily follow, as a seventeenth century Reformed theologian named Herman Witsius later pointed out. If a finite human died in his or her entirety, so that nothing remained alive, and if that entire person died forever, Witsius said that would be infinite (which means "unlimited") punishment—just as surely as everlasting torment would be infinite punishment. Therefore, Anselm's argument does not require endless torment.22
Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) reconstructed Catholic doctrine on an Aristotelian philosophical base. Because the body follows the impulses of the soul, it bears less guilt for sin. Therefore it is proper for the soul to enter Hell upon death and begin to suffer, while the body waits for the resurrection to join the soul in Hell. This line of thought ignores the biblical picture of a general resurrection of all the dead, who do not go to reward or punishment until the resurrection and judgment have happened.
Reformation23
In the Reformation period, Martin Luther expressed himself often in terms of soul-sleeping and no conscious intermediate state, as well as questioning or denying the arguments for the immortality of the soul. Catholic Sir Thomas More took issue with Luther and William Tyndale came to his defense. Meanwhile, the Anabaptists were teaching no conscious intermediate state, natural human mortality, and the destruction of the wicked in Hell.
Calvin wrote his first religious book against the Anabaptists on these issues. Titled Psychopannychia, which means "the soul never sleeps but is awake the whole night long," the volume accused the Anabaptists of getting their doctrines from Hell, stated that their name alone is enough to damn anything they say, and many other intemperate and inflammatory statements.
When Luther recognized Calvin's vehemence on these points, he became quiet, leaving the Anabaptists standing alone in the world, and everyone else—Catholic, Reformed, and perhaps also Lutheran—hating and persecuting the Anabaptists.
Heinrich Bullinger wrote Calvin's ideas on these topics (which were Catholic orthodoxy) into the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566. That became a model for the Westminster theologians later in England.
The fundamentalist/modernist controversy occupied attention in America the first half of the twentieth century. The modernists denied Heaven and Hell altogether. The fundamentalists insisted that Heaven and Hell both are real. But the fundamentalists also insisted that Hell will be exactly like the traditional Hell of unending conscious torment. And they were so sure of themselves on this point that they looked with total suspicion on anyone who even raised a question about unending conscious torment, or who suggested that the Bible might actually teach something else.
The doctrine of everlasting torment was the direct descendant of the doctrine of immortal souls. Once the idea of everlasting torment was accepted and established, the church explained every Scripture to match the accepted doctrine, even when that meant creating an explanation that seemed to say the opposite of what the Scripture itself seemed to say. Many denominations, schools, and other institutions wrote unending torment into their doctrinal statements and confessions of faith.
Everlasting torment: Pillar 4
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Pillar Four of the traditionalist doctrine states that the immortality of the soul requires unending conscious torment unless those in Hell are restored to God and join him in Heaven.
47 CONNECTING THE DOTS
As late as 1886, W. G. T. Shedd expressed the common opinion, held almost unanimously for as many as eighteen centuries, when he wrote:
But irrepressible and universal as it is, the doctrine of man's immortality is an astonishing one, and difficult to entertain. For it means that every frail finite man is to be as long-enduring as the infinite and eternal God; that there will no more be an end to the existence of the man who died today than there will be of the Deity who made him. God is denominated "The Ancient of Days." But every immortal spirit that ever dwelt in a human body will also be an "ancient of days" . . . . Yes, man must exist. He has no option. Necessity is laid upon him. He cannot extinguish himself. He cannot cease to be.24
Today, teachers of Bible and theology in almost any accredited college or seminary know that the idea of immortal souls imprisoned in mortal bodies does not come from the Bible. Yet many fine people—professors, preachers, and pastors included—have not realized the pivotal role of that truth in the present rethinking of Hell.
These men and women have been taught that Hell will involve everlasting torment. Many of them do not know that the idea of everlasting torment was inferred from the false assumption that every human being has an immortal soul. Because they are unaware of that connection, they have not yet seen reason to abandon everlasting torment—even though they no longer believe in the immortality of the soul.
When they do make that connection, they are freed to speak of final options as the Bible does, in terms of life and death. When they do, they can let "death" mean death and not eternal life in misery.
Most of the historical details in this chapter were new to me as I "discovered" them during the year of research. However, it came as no surprise to me that the Bible does not teach the immortality of the soul, but teaches instead that human immortality is God's gift to the saved, given in the resurrection to them alone.
As it happened, while in graduate school I had read several "blockbuster" books that opened gates to new paths of theological understanding based on the Word of God. One of the most profound and influential books was Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, by Oscar Cullmann, published in 1958. In a mere sixty undersized pages, Cullmann convincingly shows that the concept of immortal souls is unbiblical and that it sprang from Greek philosophy and not from divine revelation.
Although that truth had hit me like a tornado when I read Cullmann a full decade earlier, when I was beginning the research project for Robert Brinsmead in the late 1970s, I still did not fully grasp its implication for the doctrine of Hell. That revelation waited for documentary evidence from Tertullian himself, proving that he based his new doctrine of unending conscious torment directly on his older belief that every person has an immortal soul.
That discovery, more than any other single surprise I encountered, became the Eureka! moment in my research project on final punishment. Actor Mackenzie Astin captures and recreates the sheer excitement of that moment in the 2012 feature film "Hell and Mr. Fudge."
48 PROVIDENTIAL— Press and more
Earlier I described some of the anxieties that attacked me when I began to consider writing a book to share the amazing things the research project was uncovering. I had used the proper scholarly tools in doing the research and had used them properly. But peace was not quick in coming. I felt as though I was wrestling with an invisible opponent. The dialogue was fierce and unremitting.
ME: I must share this with my brothers and sisters.
VOICE: But the church has always said otherwise!
ME: I have prayed for guidance.
VOICE: This is what Seventh-day Adventists teach.
ME: Might it be that God has been preparing me for this very task and time?
VOICE: Why should he use you?
ME: I have done the work properly. Now I need to trust the results.
VOICE: The whole evangelical world will turn against you.
ME: I risk God's displeasure if I remain silent.
In retrospect, now more than thirty years later, it appears that God's hand has been on this project from the very beginning until this day. The Fire That Consumes was released in 1982 by Verdict Publications, Brinsmead's publishing name. The first printing sold out in five months and Brinsmead wrote to say that he was giving me all publishing rights to my book. That was exceedingly generous on his part, because he had invested years of work and many thousands of dollars on the research and actual publication. His only request was that if I reprinted it, I would maintain the high quality of workmanship evident in his first printing. Of course, I was eager to do that very thing already. All I needed in order to go forward was $10,000.00. It had as well been a million, so far as I was concerned.
My family had recently moved to Houston, Texas, where I had been hired as founding editor of an interdenominational Christian newspaper called The Good Newspaper. We had also joined the Bering Drive Church of Christ, Now I sought counsel from the church elders—"asking for ideas, not money," I truthfully told them. If God had plans for this book, he would make a way.
After hearing me out, two of the elders commented that they were unfamiliar with the message of my book but they believed in Christian scholarship. On that basis, they offered to co-sign a note for me to borrow an amount that would cover the costs of a second printing. I thanked God, and also his two special agents whom, now thirty years later, I still consider my partners in this project.
After some thought, I decided to publish The Fire That Consumes under a publishing name of its own. Now I needed just the right name. One Sunday morning not long after, I was guest preacher at a church in southwest Houston, and my wife and I were talking about possible trade names as we drove to the church. Just then we passed a billboard sign advertising Providence Homes Builders. Almost immediately, we said together: "Providential Press." I filed the name in the Assumed Names offices of the state of Texas and of Harris County, and Providential Press became a reality. No entity ever had a name more appropriate!
Soon after, the Evangelical Book Club chose The Fire That Consumes as an Alternate Selection, which gave it tremendous exposure. The fact that it had a foreword by F. F. Bruce, one of the most highly-respected Bible scholars of the twentieth century, lent enormous credence to this unknown book and to its unknown author.
Canadian Baptist theologian Clark Pinnock, a dear brother who possessed a childlike trust in God and a keen intellectual creativity on a host of issues, wrote me to say how happy he was to have a non-Adventist book to recommend on this topic. And, from a somewhat different perspective, the Adventist folk were equally happy—and for the same reason.
Dr. Desmond Ford, another Australian theologian with two PhDs, one under F. F. Bruce, contacted me and offered to help make the book known. Ford was a Seventh-day Adventist whose ministerial credentials had been pulled because he challenged a unique doctrine of the denomination on biblical grounds. Unlike Brinsmead, Ford chose to remain in the denomination, where he continues to teach and preach as invited.
I wrote a four-page brochure about The Fire That Consumes, titled "A Loving Challenge to the Evangelical Church," and Ford's ministry "Good News Unlimited" printed and mailed it to three thousand members of the Evangelical Theological Society. Approximately three hundred members ordered the book from that mailing—a phenomenal response by direct mail advertising standards.
49 DOORS OPEN FOR THE WORD
Every year since its publication, The Fire That Consumes has been used by God to open doors for the message of life only in Christ. That is really the positive biblical message to which the final destruction of the wicked is the shadow side.
Acts of the Apostles reports how the apostles went everywhere telling the good news of Jesus Christ, whom God raised from the dead and in whom we may enjoy eternal life. Conditional immortality is about life. Death is the consequence of rejecting life.
With the publication of The Fire That Consumes came invitations to lecture at churches of all sorts, pastors' conferences, retreats, regional and national conferences, seminaries, and schools. These included both Fuller Theological Seminary in California and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, two of the top evangelical seminaries anywhere, both of which I highly respected and was honored to be associated with.
Invitations came from Saskatchewan and Ontario provinces in Canada; from Portland, Oregon to San Diego on the West Coast; from St. Simon Island, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee and states between. One weekend I spoke in Massachusetts on Friday night, in Central New Hampshire on Saturday, in Southern New Hampshire on Sunday morning, and Northern New Hampshire on Sunday night.
In August of 2000, my wife and I were invited to spend ten days in New Zealand, where our hosts had arranged for me to lecture, preach, and teach in two seminaries, a major state university, three churches representative of two denominations, and a Christian bookstore. The trip was rewarding for the joy of ministry, considerable sightseeing, making new friends, and—not insignificant—leaving Houston, Texas in August for a country where Christmas comes in the middle of summer and August can see snowfall.
Typically, reactions include a spectrum of agreement, neutrality, and disapproval. Several people almost always tell me they have been studying this subject for themselves and have concluded, as I did, that the wicked will be totally burned up. These folks appreciate the affirmation. Closely akin to these are the listeners to whom these ideas are new but instantly attractive. A well-known woman who hosts a major evangelical radio and television program looked me in the eye and said, "This certainly sounds more like God, doesn't it."
The largest category, in terms of reaction, is the group of people who express gratitude and interest regarding the stimulation, and who pledge to continue their study. And it is not uncommon for at least one person to exit a meeting with a hostile glare and a verbal reproof.
I cannot say how many people have told me, in person or by mail or email, how much this message blessed them personally after years of anxiety created by the traditional doctrine of unending torment. Usually their concern was for loved ones thought to be unsaved. These believers did not try to avoid hell's reality. They simply sought an understanding that sounded more just and fair than the majority tradition provided. Many of these brothers and sisters told me that The Fire That Consumes had saved their sanity, their faith—or, in some cases, their lives.
Others have related that the good news of life in Christ has revitalized their ministry. I had never known the extent to which the traditional doctrine of everlasting torment hinders the gospel, robs seekers of faith, and closes hearts to the real "good news" that Jesus gives life and has defeated death for those who belong to him.
As a basis for changing our minds, discussions about what helps or hinders evangelism do not belong at the front end of a book or a conference, but at the close. The first question is "What does the Bible say?" Only then can we legitimately talk about the desirable or undesirable effects of a doctrine on our work or that of other people. All comments in this book concerning the supposed practical effects of any viewpoint on the subject of final punishment should be read with that caveat in mind.
50 AN EVANGELICAL CLIMATE CHANGE
After being labeled "cultic" and "heretical" by traditionalists for hundreds of years, believers who question unending conscious torment are enjoying the prospect of an evangelical climate change attributable only to a work of grace. Winds of change were first spotted in 1975, the year that InterVarsity Press published The Goodness of God by John W. Wenham, a scholar-priest in Oxford. The book contained a chapter on Hell as a moral difficulty in Christianity as viewed by many. The problem is not Hell as such—retributive suffering is arguably not only moral but absolutely necessary for the maintenance of a peaceful and just society.
The problem is the traditional Hell of everlasting conscious torment, an idea many find inconsistent with both the love and justice of God. Wenham counseled restraint in abandoning the traditional doctrine of Hell, but he urged that every reader carefully consider the biblical evidence for conditional immortality. This was apparently the first book critical of the traditionalist Hell from a mainstream American evangelical publisher.
With the publication of Two Views of Hell (Fudge and Peterson, 2000), InterVarsity Press further acknowledged, by its even-handed language, that the question whether Hell involves everlasting torment or total destruction is open to discussion and disagreement among evangelical Christians. The publisher's description on the back cover identified the authors as "two evangelical theologians," stating that "some evangelicals" hold to everlasting torment, while "others" believe in total destruction. In the past, the traditionalist view would have been described as "the orthodox view" or some equivalent.
The conference of 450 evangelical theologians in 1989 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago, mentioned earlier, illustrates both sides of the broadening issue presently being hashed out. On the one hand, we can say that as recently as 1989, a group of theologians attempted to eliminate from the evangelical tent by definition all who reject the traditionalist view of conscious unending torment. On the other hand, we can say that as early as 1989, such an attempt was unsuccessful, if barely so.
In the providence of God, The Fire That Consumes has earned a place of respect and attention since 1982, and authors frequently interact with it at the highest scholarly levels. It is quoted, discussed, agreed with, and disagreed with in The New International Greek New Testament Commentary series and in The New International Commentary on the New Testament series, as well as The New Oxford Handbook on Eschatology.
As I write this book, The Fire That Consumes is on a senior theology reading list at The University of Saint Andrews, Scotland. At least two doctoral dissertations have been written on some aspect of the book, one at Oxford University.
Christianity Today calls The Fire That Consumes "the standard reference on annihilationism." In his foreword to the third edition of The Fire That Consumes, Richard Bauckham of Cambridge University predicts it "likely to remain a standard work to which everyone engaged with this issue will constantly return."
On a popular level, the story of Edward and Sara Faye (Locke), particularly in relation to the research project that led to writing The Fire That Consumes, has inspired a full-length feature dramatic movie set for release in 2012. Titled "Hell and Mr. Fudge," the film features Mackenzie Astin as the adult Edward and Keri Lynn Pratt as Sara Faye. For more information and to see a trailer, go to www.hellandmrfudge.com .
Gone are the days when no respectable evangelical scholar admitted to questioning the biblical basis of everlasting conscious torment. The three men who have contributed forewords to editions of The Fire That Consumes bring enough gravitas and moral authority to the table to legitimize the question, even if they were alone in the matter.
But they are far from alone. The same generation that produced such illustrious scholars as F. F. Bruce and John W. Wenham, also included Dale Moody, E. Earle Ellis, Homer Hailey, Philip E. Hughes, John Stott, Stephen Travis, Michael Green, and I. Howard Marshall. To a man, these all publicly rejected the traditional Hell and its unending conscious torment. The only man of international reputation from that generation who is widely known for his defense of the traditional view is J. I. Packer.
Dr. Packer is now retired from Regent College in Vancouver, where his successor is John Stackhouse, Jr., a recently declared conditionalist. Respected evangelical scholars from my own generation—that falls between Packer's and Stackhouse's—also rejected the traditional Hell because they did not find it in the Bible. Among these are Clark Pinnock, John McRay, Claude Mariottini, Christopher Marshall, Tom Robinson, Richard Bauckham, and N.T. Wright.
Already a younger generation of devout scholars are publishing their biblical reasons for rejecting the traditional view of eternal torment. In addition to John Stackhouse, Jr., this group includes J. Gregory Crofford, John R. Franke, and Gregory Boyd,
When wrestling with the "Voice" back in the late 1970s, I regarded it a fact beyond dispute that no one would read a five-hundred-page scholarly book on the subject of final punishment. No one had heard of me, so authorship was no appeal. I remembered those thoughts earlier this year when a national Christian newspaper ran two stories about me and my book. One story title identified me as "one of the world's foremost scholars on Hell," while a second headline promoted me to "Top Scholar on Hell."
Those kinds of voices can be fully as misleading and harmful as the first kind, I reflected. Better not to pay attention to either.
The bottom line, which I remind myself every day, is that this whole enterprise is not about me anyway. It is about God and his character and glory and praise. When we remember that, and act accordingly, there are no limits on what he can accomplish.
When I climbed the steps to the elevated pulpit in September 2011 to present a lecture sponsored by the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, my first sentence was a question: "Who would ever have thought that eight-hundred people would come out on a Saturday night to hear an hour-long lecture on Hell?" The second sentence said it all. "But by the grace of God, here we are, so let us proceed!"
Indeed . . . "by the grace of God." And whether he has us ministering to eight people or 80,000 people, let us always remember that everything is grace. And then, in that grace, let us proceed.
51 BY THE GREATER WEIGHT
For the moment, I remove the mantle of theology and assume the cloak of a lawyer, my other chosen profession. In that role, I offer these closing thoughts.
You have now heard the cases for conditional immortality and for everlasting conscious torment. If you have ever served on a jury, you are acquainted with the concept of a standard of proof.
You will recall that the standard of proof refers to that standard of evidence necessary for the jury to render a lawful verdict, and also the sufficient basis for an appellate court to sustain the verdict against legal challenge. No doubt you also remember that the standard of proof in civil court differs from the standard in criminal court in at least two important respects.
First, a criminal conviction requires the jurors to reach a unanimous decision, and to reach such decision "beyond a reasonable doubt." In other words, every juror must be convinced not only that the evidence supports the Defendant's guilt rather than innocence but, much more, each juror must believe that the evidence supports it so strongly that it cannot reasonably be interpreted any other way.
The standard of proof in a civil case is quite different. A verdict can be rendered without unanimous vote. More important, in a civil case, the judge instructs the jury to render a verdict based on "the greater weight and preponderance of the evidence." This means that the scales of justice need to be tilted only the slightest in favor of one party or the other.
Which of these jury standards do you normally use when deciding a disputed teaching? Do you insist that every relevant verse in the Bible on the subject must favor a particular point of view for you to accept that viewpoint as valid? Criminal-trial logic is not suitable for most doctrinal disputes or interpretations of Scripture. Few teachings in the Bible are that clear-cut or black-and-white. Usually there is some ambiguity. If we think about it for a moment, we realize that is why there is a dispute in the first place.
Now that you have read this book, it is time to ask which view of Hell is supported by the greater weight and preponderance of the evidence. Taking all the biblical evidence into account, do you consider one explanation of Hell to be more likely than the others? Which explanation makes the most sense? Does one seem more like God? Is it the view of Hell as a place of unending conscious torment? Is it Hell as a fire that purifies and reforms? Is it the understanding of Hell as the fire that consumes?
God has revealed what we need to know. Not necessarily enough to satisfy our curiosity or to answer all our questions. He reveals all we need to know to please him each new "today." As we live by his light, our lives progressively conform to his character. We are God's born-again children, destined to live with the Father now in unity, service, and praise. And, when mortality is replaced with immortality and all that is broken in this universe is redeemed as part of new heavens and earth, we will enjoy him forever, together, without end.
FOR FURTHER STUDY
For a thorough investigation of everything the Bible says about the destiny of the lost, you might wish to read The Fire That Consumes, the book that resulted from Edward's research project at the center of the story in this book. Exhaustive in scope and scholarly in approach, this book has helped to stir a worldwide rethinking of the doctrine of Hell among evangelical Christians and is now widely considered to be a classic in the field.
An Alternate Selection of the Evangelical Book Club in the first edition (reprint of original available from iUniverse.com), this landmark book is now brought up to date in a thoroughly revised third edition from wipfandstock.com or wherever books are sold. If you order from anyone other than wipfandstock.com be sure you specify the third edition, published by Cascade Books/Wipf and Stock, with foreword by Richard Bauckham.
If you want to consider both sides as presented by proponents of each, you will enjoy Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue, by Edward William Fudge (conditionalist view) and Robert A. Peterson (traditionalist view) from InterVarsity Press (2000). Each man presents the case for his own position, and each man responds to the other. Available at your favorite booksellers.
In September 2011, Edward presented a 69-minute lecture on the subject of final punishment, sponsored by the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas. In the lecture, he summarize the material discussed in depth in The Fire That Consumes. The lecture was professionally recorded, and the sponsoring library has made it available for viewing online at no charge, or for purchase on a DVD. Just go to www.LanierTheologicalLibrary.org and click under "Videos." Welcome to the conversation!
A MOST SURPRISING QUIZ ON HELL
The Bible warns about the judgment of God and banishment to Hell. But did you know that many popular ideas about Hell actually sprang from ancient pagan myths and not from the Word of God?
In the following quiz, see if you can spot the biblical truth and the traditions of men. After the quiz, you'll find the correct answers—and references to appropriate biblical passages for further study.
1. According to the Bible, the human being is:
a) a mortal body housing an immortal soul;
b) a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury;
c) a perishable creature wholly dependent on God for existence.
2. Two historical events which biblical writers use most often to illustrate God's final judgment against the wicked are:
a) expulsion from Eden and the collapse of the Tower of Babel;
b) the fall of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Spanish Armada;
c) the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
3. Based on an actual event, the Bible uses the expression "eternal fire" to signify:
a) fire that destroys forever (Sodom and Gomorrah);
b) fire that cannot destroy what is put in it (Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego);
c) fire that continues to burn indefinitely (the Burning Bush of Moses).
4. The "brimstone" in "fire and brimstone" is:
a) a symbol of terrible torture;
b) burning sulfur that suffocates and destroys;
c) a preserving agent that keeps someone alive forever.
5. Throughout the Bible, "gnashing of teeth" denotes: a) excruciating pain and agony;
b) gingivitis;
c) extreme anger and hostility.
6. When the Bible portrays "smoke rising" to warn of judgment, we should think of:
a) people suffering horrible pain;
b) a completed desolation or annihilation;
c) a closed arena when cigarettes were still allowed.
7. When Scripture speaks of smoke rising "forever," it signifies: a) a destruction that will be irreversible;
b) conscious torment that never ends;
c) a battery-powered rabbit that short circuited.
8. The "worm" in the expression "worm that dies not" is:
a) a maggot that feeds on something dead;
b) a symbol for a pained conscience;
c) a figure of speech standing for everlasting agony in torment.
9. Throughout the Bible, the expression "unquenchable fire" always signifies:
a) fire which burns forever but never burns up what is put in it; b) fire which comes from a volcano;
c) fire which is irresistible and therefore consumes entirely.
10. The Old Testament's final description of the end of sinners states that:
a) God will put fire and worms in their flesh and they will feel their pain forever;
b) they will be ashes under the soles of the feet of the righteous; c) neither of the above.
11. John the Baptist warned of "unquenchable fire," by which Jesus would:
a) burn up the "chaff";
b) torment the lost forever and never let them die;
c) purge sinners of all evil and then send them to Heaven.
12. Jesus compared the end of the wicked to:
a) someone burning chaff, dead trees or weeds;
b) a house destroyed by a hurricane or someone crushed under a boulder;
c) all the above.
13. Jesus personally described Gehenna (Hell) as a place where: a) God is able to destroy both soul and body;
b) God will perpetuate the soul in everlasting agony;
c) Satan reigns over his evil subjects and tortures damned humans.
14. The phrase "eternal punishment" signifies:
a) punishment which occurs in the Age to Come rather than during this life;
b) eternal life in horrible agony and pain;
c) punishment which has everlasting results;
d) (a) and (c) but not (b).
15. The context and "punch line" of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus talk about:
a) what happens to the wicked after resurrection and judgment;
b) the urgency of responding to God while there is opportunity;
c) details about the "intermediate state" between death and resurrection.
16. Throughout his writings, Paul says that the lost will:
a) go to Hell and burn alive forever;
b) die, perish, and be punished with eternal destruction; c) go to Heaven but hate every minute of it.
17. The New Testament uses the adjective "immortal" to describe:
a) the soul of every person, good or evil;
b) the resurrection bodies of the saved but not of the lost;
c) no human being now or hereafter.
18. The Jewish-Christian books of Hebrews and James contrast salvation with:
a) unending conscious pain;
b) inescapable destruction;
c) going "gently into that good night."
19. Peter's epistles say that the lost will:
a) be burned to ashes like Sodom and Gomorrah;
b) perish like brute beasts;
c) both the above.
20. John interprets his vision in Revelation of a "lake of fire" as:
a) a picture of indescribable, everlasting torture;
b) a place Eskimos might like to visit;
c) the second death.
CHECK YOUR ANSWERS BY THE BIBLE
1. I hope you marked (c). According to the Bible, the human being is a perishable creature wholly dependent on God for existence.
The notion that your mortal body houses some kind of immortal soul sprang from the pagan Greeks and was popularized by the philosophers Socrates and Plato. The "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury" line originated with Shakespeare's fictional Macbeth, not with the Word of God.
Genesis 2:7; Psalms 103:14-16; Romans 6:23; 1 Timothy 6:16.
2. Again the correct answer is (c). Biblical writers point back to the Flood and to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to illustrate the fate awaiting the lost.
Adam and Eve walked away alive after their expulsion from Eden, something no one cast into Hell will ever do, and the Bible does not say the Tower of Babel collapsed. Jerusalem's fall and the defeat of Spain's navy armada don't qualify here, either.
On the Flood, see Genesis 6-9 and 2 Peter 3:5-7. Concerning Sodom and Gomorrah, see Genesis 19:24-29 and 2 Peter 2:6 and Jude 7.
3. In the Bible, the expression "eternal fire" signifies choice (a), fire that destroys forever, as with Sodom and Gomorrah.
Popular tradition says Hell will be like Moses' Burning Bush which never went out, or like the non-consuming furnace into which their enemies threw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. However, the Bible warns that Hell is a consuming fire which destroys both body and soul.
Jude 7; Matthew 25:41; Matthew 10:28.
4. This time (b) is biblical. The "brimstone" in the expression "fire and brimstone" is burning sulfur that suffocates and destroys.
The figure comes from the destruction of Sodom, which was incinerated without a trace. God is love, not an eternal torturer. The Bible really means it when it says the wages of sin is death!
Genesis 19:24-25, 29; Deuteronomy 29:22-23; Psalms 11:6; Ezekiel 38:22; Revelation 14:10; Romans 6:23.
5. Surprise! Throughout the Bible, "gnashing of teeth" denotes (c) extreme anger and hostility.
The picture of people grinding their teeth in unending torment owes more to Dante's Inferno than it does to the Bible. We learn about gingivitis, of course, from a television commercial for a brand of mouthwash.
Job 16:9; Psalms 35:16; Psalms 37:12; Psalms 112:10; Lamentations 2:16; Acts 7:54; Matthew 13:43, 49-50; Matthew 22:13-14; Matthew 24:50-51; Matthew 25:30; Luke 13:28.
6. Again (b) is biblical. Smoke rising symbolizes a completed desolation or annihilation, if we let Scripture interpret itself.
This figure of speech also originates with the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and appears in both the Old and New Testaments afterward. Hell might well involve conscious pain, but conscious suffering will be according to God's perfect justice and will stop with the death of both body and soul in Hell. (You didn't guess the one about cigarettes anyway, did you
Genesis 19:27-28; Isaiah 34:10-15; Revelation 14:11; Revelation 18:17-18; Malachi 4:1-3.