Conditional Immortality Supports Annihilationion, Refutes Eternal Conscious Torment and Universalism

[woobadooba]

Well the gospel of grace, which reveals much of Gods character interests me. But on these kind of websites, I find many focus on other subjects of lesser importance. They seem to struggle understanding the more important topic

But this is an important topic. Very important! What picture does the belief of everlasting torment paint of the character of God? Such a teaching is contrary to everything grace stands for.

 

[Mark Corbett]

Well the gospel of grace, which reveals much of Gods character interests me. But on these kind of websites, I find many focus on other subjects of lesser importance. They seem to struggle understanding the more important topic

Stuart, by the "gospel of grace" I think it is likely that you are referring to the Good News that even though we have all sinned, God still loves us, He sent His Son Jesus to dies for our sins, and by God's grace through faith in Christ our sins can be forgiven and we can receive God's gracious gift of eternal life. That's good news!

Everything the Bible teaches is important, but not everything is equally important. So I would heartily agree with you that the basic message of the "gospel of grace" is more important than the nature of Hell. Still, the Bible does teach us some about Hell and the fate of the ungodly, and these truths are not unrelated to the "gospel of grace".

I'm glad if you want to discuss the secondary issues (secondary, yet sill important) which are being discussed in this thread. If you don't, that's also fine. Either way, God bless you!

 

[stuart lawrence]

But this is an important topic. Very important! What picture does the belief of everlasting torment paint of the character of God? Such a teaching is contrary to everything grace stands for.

Well I've already given my opinion on that in my initial post

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

We can see from these examples that God, through His Word, conditions us to think of eternal life (immortality) not as something that all humans automatically have no matter what, but rather as a special gift from God which depends on us meeting a condition: namely faith in Jesus Christ.

Living people rarely go to Hell. In fact, I've never met a living person who ever had. You make the case that those who go to Hell are not granted everlasting life, which is true, and you construe it to mean that the soul of a dead man that will never be raised to life is somehow a living thing, even though it is quite clearly dead, and therefore it cannot exist if it is not granted everlasting life. By your understanding, even death isn't death. It seems to have a similar premise to the Gnostic heresy that believed that we are not raised to life after we die, but that we remain dead, in Heaven, forever. Who is it that returns with Christ to walk the Earth again? It is his church, his body of believers, who are raised to life. They don't return to haunt the place as a host of ghouls. By contrast, who isn't raised and will never walk the Earth again? Those who are in Hell will never walk the Earth again. They are dead, and they remain quite dead. There is no life in Hell.

I understand that some people can only accept a one-dimensional God, who seems to be extreme in every way except when it comes to wrath and judgment. They see him as a giant love-muffin. He is extreme in power, extreme in knowledge, extreme in his timelessness, extreme in wisdom, but downright finite when it comes to wrath. He must be totally baffled by human emotion, because he has no concept of negative emotion. Is this really the God you see when you read the Bible cover-to-cover? I don't.

Us ministers (I happen to be one)....

You just lost me. I never trust a minister.

 

[stuart lawrence]

Living people rarely go to Hell. In fact, I've never met a living person who ever had. You make the case that those who go to Hell are not granted everlasting life, which is true, and you construe it to mean that the soul of a dead man that will never be raised to life is somehow a living thing, even though it is quite clearly dead, and therefore it cannot exist if it is not granted everlasting life. By your understanding, even death isn't death. It seems to have a similar premise to the Gnostic heresy that believed that we are not raised to life after we die, but that we remain dead, in Heaven, forever. Who is it that returns with Christ to walk the Earth again? It is his church, his body of believers, who are raised to life. They don't return to haunt the place as a host of ghouls. By contrast, who isn't raised and will never walk the Earth again? Those who are in Hell will never walk the Earth again. They are dead, and they remain quite dead. There is no life in Hell.

I understand that some people can only accept a one-dimensional God, who seems to be extreme in every way except when it comes to wrath and judgment. They see him as a giant love-muffin. He is extreme in power, extreme in knowledge, extreme in his timelessness, extreme in wisdom, but downright finite when it comes to wrath. He must be totally baffled by human emotion, because he has no concept of negative emotion. Is this really the God you see when you read the Bible cover-to-cover? I don't.



You just lost me. I never trust a minister.

I don't trust that many either!

 

[Mark Corbett]

You just lost me. I never trust a minister.

I never asked you to trust me! In fact, where you quoted me mentioning that I'm a minister, here is what I said (from comment #44):

Us ministers (I happen to be one) say a lot of things. A minister saying something does not make it automatically true. We should be like the Bereans, who "examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11 CSB).
​

The above quote was in response to you mentioning something you heard from "a minister" said (in quote #33). In that comment, you seemed to be quoting someone you call a "minister" in a positive sense. So you're later comment that "I never trust a minister" seems a little odd.

While I don't ask you to trust me, that doesn't mean we can't talk. As Christians we have a source of truth we both should trust: The Bible. My OP and my arguments in general are all grounded in Scripture. You may interpret the Scriptures differently from me, and I'm glad to discuss that if you want.

 

[1stcenturylady]

Ok, but there is no weeping or gnashing or darkness in the story. Any other ideas?

Well, does the lake of fire mean darkness?

 

[1stcenturylady]

Revelation 21: NKJV

11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. 14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Right, the lake of fire will kill them forever.

 

[1stcenturylady]

Reading your post leads me to think you don't believe we have souls.

Perception is everything. We have body, soul and spirit.

 

[Chris Date]

I understand that some people can only accept a one-dimensional God, who seems to be extreme in every way except when it comes to wrath and judgment. They see him as a giant love-muffin. He is extreme in power, extreme in knowledge, extreme in his timelessness, extreme in wisdom, but downright finite when it comes to wrath. He must be totally baffled by human emotion, because he has no concept of negative emotion. Is this really the God you see when you read the Bible cover-to-cover? I don't.

Actually, we take God's wrath and judgment extremely seriously. In fact, some would say more seriously than you. For example, Augustine wrote that “the very fact of existing is by some natural spell so pleasant, that even the wretched are, for no other reason, unwilling to perish." He continued,

if any one should give [the utterly wretched] an immortality, in which their misery should be deathless, and should offer the alternative, that if they shrank from existing eternally in the same misery they might be annihilated, and exist nowhere at all, nor in any condition, on the instant they would joyfully, nay exultantly, make election to exist always, even in such a condition, rather than not exist at all.

According to William Barclay, first-century Greek historian Plutarch said, “‘The idea of annihilation was intolerable to the Greek mind.’ Faced . . . with the alternative of annihilation and a life of torment in Hades, the Greek would have chosen the torment rather than the annihilation. The Greek loved life and the Greek wanted to live." The Epicurean attempt to eradicate fear of annihilation fails, Plutarch wrote, because “insensibility, dissolution, and the conceit that what hath no sense is nothing to us, do not at all abate the fear of death, but rather help to confirm it; for this very thing is it that nature most dreads, to wit, the dissolution of the soul into what is without knowledge or sense."

Total destruction and the eternal, infinite punishment of everlasting death, is a terrible fate. With Augustine and Plutarch I agree that it is, in fact, more severe than eternal life in misery. I understand, of course, that you may disagree with Augustine, Plutarch, and me (and others), but I trust you can see that we're not at all trying to downplay the seriousness of God's wrath.

 

[Chris Date]

Not where people are sleeping then? It's getting complicated. The trip to hell has layovers. Why is that?

I'm sorry, @SkyWriting, but I don't understand your question. The doctrine of physical resurrection from Hades unto embodied life has been an essential of orthodox Christianity from the beginning, and the doctrine of hell concerns the nature of the judgment that follows that, not the nature of the intermediate state. And Christians who hold to my view of hell hold a variety of opinions concerning the nature of the intermediate state, including traditional dualism in which the disembodied souls of the dead consciously await resurrection.

 

[Chris Date]

Yet the parable @SkyWriting posted is an illustration of pre judgement day suffering of the wicked. Where is there an illustration by Christ in support of annihilation as final punishment?

Conditionalism does not entail dying the pre-judgment-day suffering of the wicked, so I do not understand the relevance of the parable to this discussion.

In answer to your question, there are many. As just one example we can discuss, in his parable of the weeds Jesus says the weeds will be gathered and burned up, the Greek word κατακαίω meaning to burn down completely (Matt 13:30). Then in interpreting the parable, he says that like those weeds which are burned up, so his angels will throw the wicked into a fiery furnace (vv. 40–42). In so doing, Jesus alludes to Malachi 4:1–3 in which God promises that the wicked will be reduced to ashes beneath the feet of the righteous.

Sure, the wicked will weep in sorrow and gnash their teeth in anger (Matt 13:42) upon realizing they have been excluded from God's kingdom and will not inherit eternal life, but nowhere is this weeping and gnashing said to go on forever.

 

[Darren J. Clark]

I am not an evangelical. And what Christians said in the past has just as much validity as what Christians say now if it is true.

I see. All good. One needs to be aware of how other view the relationship between tradition and Scripture as it affects how one can persuade others in a conversation. I respect your view. You probably won't persuade any Evangelical with the approach you are using.

 

[Der Alte]

... Sure, the wicked will weep in sorrow and gnash their teeth in anger (Matt 13:42) upon realizing they have been excluded from God's kingdom and will not inherit eternal life, but nowhere is this weeping and gnashing said to go on forever.

I wonder why Jesus neglected to mention that the wailing and gnashing of teeth would end at some point?

 

[Chris Date]

I wonder why Jesus neglected to mention that the wailing and gnashing of teeth would end at some point?

Why should he need to? He had just gotten done saying that their fate will be akin to weeds completely burned up in fire, alluding to Malachi in which the wicked are reduced to ashes beneath the feet of the righteous. What reason would one have for thinking that weeping and gnashing would go on forever?

 

[redleghunter]

Conditionalism does not entail dying the pre-judgment-day suffering of the wicked, so I do not understand the relevance of the parable to this discussion.

The relevance is the illustration Christ gives in the parable:

Luke 16: NKJV

19 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

24 “Then 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.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’

27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”

We can agree, most likely, Jesus is illustrating the pre Cross and pre judgement day state of the wicked (Hades) and righteous (bosum of Abraham). The story could be a revelation as we have an actual person named for the first and only time in a parable. However, we can discount Christ is using a Tolkien type fantasy novel to illustrate the "after death state."

The importance of this parable teaching a literal truth is that before judgment day, souls are either comforted or tormented. No mercy is given the rich man as he was judged based on his wicked deeds on earth.

The illustration given by Christ here in Luke 16 shows a conscious soul in torment looking for relief and not being offered help. This should inform us of the Justice God has for those who reject His Son Jesus Christ.

 

[redleghunter]

In answer to your question, there are many. As just one example we can discuss, in his parable of the weeds Jesus says the weeds will be gathered and burned up, the Greek word κατακαίω meaning to burn down completely (Matt 13:30). Then in interpreting the parable, he says that like those weeds which are burned up, so his angels will throw the wicked into a fiery furnace (vv. 40–42). In so doing, Jesus alludes to Malachi 4:1–3 in which God promises that the wicked will be reduced to ashes beneath the feet of the righteous.

Yet the illustration we have from Lazarus and the rich man shows the rich man tormented by flames, very thirsty but not consumed by the flames.

Burning, flames, melting etc. are indicative of Judment in the Bible. Burning down to ashes as in the tares reveals the works for what they are...of no substance or use to God. It does not have to mean total destruction or extinction as after the judgment the sentence is served.

 

[Chris Date]

The importance of this parable teaching a literal truth is that before judgment day, souls are either comforted or tormented. No mercy is given the rich man as he was judged based on his wicked deeds on earth.

The illustration given by Christ here in Luke 16 shows a conscious soul in torment looking for relief and not being offered help. This should inform us of the Justice God has for those who reject His Son Jesus Christ.

Again, the scene is in the intermediate state, a state from which all mankind will one day be raised. The fact that the unredeemed are in a state of torment awaiting resurrection (assuming we are to understand the story as teaching as much) does not, it seems to me, tell us what the nature of final punishment is. I certainly don't see it as a lens through which the myriad other texts in Scripture about final punishment should be read.

 

[Der Alte]

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Judaica and the Talmud, among the Jews in Israel before and during the time of Jesus was a belief in a place of everlasting torment of the wicked and they called it both sheol and gehinnom/Gehenna.

Jewish Encyclopedia, Gehenna
The place where children were sacrificed to the god Moloch … in the "valley of the son of Hinnom," to the south of Jerusalem (Josh. xv. 8, passim; II Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. ii. 23; vii. 31-32; xix. 6, 13-14). … the valley was deemed to be accursed, and "Gehenna" therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for "hell." Hell, like paradise, was created by God (Sotah 22a);​

Note, this is according to the ancient Jews, long before the Christian era, NOT any supposed bias of Christian translators.

(I)n general …sinners go to hell immediately after their death. The famous teacher Johanan b. Zakkai wept before his death because he did not know whether he would go to paradise or to hell (Ber. 28b). The pious go to paradise, and sinners to hell (B.M. 83b).
But as regards the heretics, etc., and Jeroboam, Nebat's son, hell shall pass away, but they shall not pass away" (R. H. 17a; comp. Shab. 33b). All that descend into Gehenna shall come up again, with the exception of three classes of men: those who have committed adultery, or shamed their neighbors, or vilified them (B. M. 58b).[/i]
… heretics and the Roman oppressors go to Gehenna, and the same fate awaits the Persians, the oppressors of the Babylonian Jews (Ber. 8b). When Nebuchadnezzar descended into hell, [ שׁאול /Sheol]] all its inhabitants were afraid that he was coming to rule over them (Shab. 149a; comp. Isa. xiv. 9-10). The Book of Enoch also says that it is chiefly the heathen who are to be cast into the fiery pool on the Day of Judgment (x. 6, xci. 9, et al). "The Lord, the Almighty, will punish them on the Day of Judgment by putting fire and worms into their flesh, so that they cry out with pain unto all eternity" (Judith xvi. 17). The sinners in Gehenna will be filled with pain when God puts back the souls into the dead bodies on the Day of Judgment, according to Isa. xxxiii. 11 (Sanh. 108b).

Link:Jewish Encyclopedia Online
Encyclopedia Judaica:
Gehinnom (Heb. גֵּי בֶן־הִנֹּם, גֵּי בְנֵי הִנֹּם, גֵּיא בֶן־הִנֹּם, גֵּיא הִנֹּם; Gr. Γέεννα; "Valley of Ben-Hinnom, Valley of [the Son (s) of] Hinnom," Gehenna), a valley south of Jerusalem on one of the borders between the territories of Judah and Benjamin, between the Valley of *Rephaim and *En-Rogel (Josh. 15:8; 18:16). It is identified with Wadi er-Rababi.

During the time of the Monarchy, Gehinnom, at a place called Topheth, was the site of a cult which involved the burning of children (II Kings 23:10; Jer. 7:31; 32:35 et al.; see *Moloch). Jeremiah repeatedly condemned this cult and predicted that on its account Topheth and the Valley of the Son of Hinnom would be called the Valley of the "Slaughter" (Jer. 19:5–6).
In Judaism the name Gehinnom is generally used as an appellation of the place of torment reserved for the wicked after death. The New Testament used the Greek form Gehenna in the same sense.
Gehinnom
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Talmud -Tractate Rosh Hashanah Chapter 1.
The school of Hillel says: . . . but as for Minim, [follower of Jesus] informers and disbelievers, who deny the Torah, or Resurrection, or separate themselves from the congregation, or who inspire their fellowmen with dread of them, or who sin and cause others to sin, as did Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his followers, they all descend to Gehenna, and are judged there from generation to generation, as it is said [Isa. lxvi. 24]: "And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men who have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched." Even when Gehenna will be destroyed, they will not be consumed, as it is written [Psalms, xlix. 15]: "And their forms wasteth away in the nether world," which the sages comment upon to mean that their forms shall endure even when the grave is no more. Concerning them Hannah says [I Sam. ii. 10]: "The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces."
Link:Tract Rosh Hashana: Chapter I. ​

When Jesus taught about,

• “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:” Matthew 25:41
• "these shall go away into eternal punishment, Matthew 25:46"
• "the fire of hell where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die, Mark 9:43-48"
• "cast into a fiery furnace where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth,” Matthew 13:42, Matthew 13:50
• “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6
• “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:23
• “woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. ” Matthew 26:24​

These teachings mirrored what many Jews believed and tacitly reaffirmed and sanctioned the existing Jewish view of eternal hell. In Matt. 18:6, 26:24, see above, Jesus teaches that there is a fate worse than death or nonexistence. A fate worse than death is also mentioned in Hebrews 10:28-31.

Heb 10:28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.​

Jesus is quoted as using the word death 17 times in the gospels, if He wanted to say eternal death in Matt 25:46, that is what He would have said but He didn’t, He said “eternal punishment.” The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, they knew that everybody died; rich, poor, young, old, good, bad, men, women, children, infants and knew that it had nothing to do with punishment and was permanent. When Jesus taught “eternal punishment” they would not have understood it as death, it would have meant something worse to them.
…..Jesus knew what the Jews, believed about hell. If the Jews were wrong, when Jesus taught about man’s eternal fate, such as eternal punishment, He would have corrected them. Jesus did not correct them, thus their teaching on hell must have been correct.
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The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on Psalm 27:13 (ca. A.D. 1200). He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Strack and Billerbeck state that there is neither archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources (Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, 5 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1922-56], 4:2:1030). Also a more recent author holds a similar view (Lloyd R. Bailey, "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell," Biblical Archeologist 49 [1986]: 189.
Source, Bibliotheca Sacra / July–September 1992
Scharen: Gehenna in the Synoptics Pt. 1​

Note there is no “archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, [that Gehenna was ever used as a garbage dump] in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources” If Gehenna was ever used as a garbage dump there should be broken pottery, tools, utensils, bones, etc. but there is no such evidence.

“Gehenna is presented as diametrically opposed to ‘life’: it is better to enter life than to go to Gehenna. . .It is common practice, both in scholarly and less technical works, to associate the description of Gehenna with the supposedly contemporary garbage dump in the valley of Hinnom. This association often leads scholars to emphasize the destructive aspects of the judgment here depicted: fire burns until the object is completely consumed. Two particular problems may be noted in connection with this approach. First, there is no convincing evidence in the primary sources for the existence of a fiery rubbish dump in this location (in any case, a thorough investigation would be appreciated). Secondly, the significant background to this passage more probably lies in Jesus’ allusion to Isaiah 66:24.”
(“The Duration of Divine Judgment in the New Testament” in The Reader Must Understand edited by K. Brower and M. W. Ellion, p. 223, emphasis mine)
G. R. Beasley-Murray in Jesus and the Kingdom of God:
“Ge-Hinnom (Aramaic Ge-hinnam, hence the Greek Geenna), ‘The Valley of Hinnom,’ lay south of Jerusalem, immediately outside its walls. The notion, still referred to by some commentators, that the city’s rubbish was burned in this valley, has no further basis than a statement by the Jewish scholar Kimchi (sic) made about A.D. 1200; it is not attested in any ancient source.” (p. 376n.92)
The Burning Garbage Dump of Gehenna is a myth - Archaeology, Biblical History & Textual Criticism ​

 

[Chris Date]

Yet the illustration we have from Lazarus and the rich man shows the rich man tormented by flames, very thirsty but not consumed by the flames.

In the intermediate state, awaiting resurrection. Where the Bible describes final punishment, on the other hand, fire completely destroys and consumes.

Burning, flames, melting etc. are indicative of Judment in the Bible. Burning down to ashes as in the tares reveals the works for what they are...of no substance or use to God. It does not have to mean total destruction or extinction as after the judgment the sentence is served.

They don't have to, no, but that's how they're used. Jude and Peter, for example, both cite the reduction of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes as an example of final punishment. Jesus' use of Gehenna recalled the OT valley of the Son of Hinnom, which in places like Jeremiah 7 was promised to one day become the "Valley of Slaughter" where scavenging beasts and birds won't be frightened away from the corpses upon which they feed.