I would answer that by saying that Matthew 3:12 doesn't say that the wicked will be torn like a piece of paper. It says that they will be burnt up like chaff.
And this agrees with the whole of scripture, Malachi 4:1 as one example of many:
"Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire," says the LORD Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them."
Nothing will be left of the wicked. They will not exist anymore. They will be "extinct".
This is according to the Bible.
believing that one definition of destruction or burning is suitable to every verse is a fallacy. The fallacy is called illegitimate totality transfer. Annihilationists know this word well because I learned it by reading blogs that were annihilationistic. Anyway here is one occasion where you are committing said fallacy:
It says that they will be burnt up like chaff.
And this agrees with the whole of scripture, Malachi 4:1 as one example of many:
even if something is burned to chaff, it is not "non existent=extinct" . Ash still exists for example. So this would be wrong to say this.
my car is at the auto wreckers and I drive by that yard every day. Is my car destroyed, extinct, non existent? No. It still exists it is just not suitable for it's intended use. So too destruction in any form is always, always able to be defined by such measures: "to render useless". Notice I say "able" and not "is" because I too do not want to commit said fallacy.
in fact here are some greek studies that agree...
RE: 2 Pet 3:5 wuest states:
“Perished” is apollumi (ἀπολλυμι
, “to ruin so that the thing ruined can no longer subserve the use for which it was designed.” - Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader (2 Pe 3:5). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
RE: Mark 22:2 wuest again states:
The Greek word apollumi (ἀπολλυμι…It means “to destroy, to render useless.” - Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader (Mk 2:22). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Wuest was a professor of New Testament Greek at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and published over a dozen books on the New Testament...Wuest is credited as one of the translators of the original New American Standard Bible (NASB). He later went on to produce his own English translation of the New Testament (the Wuest Expanded Translation – abbreviated WET) based on Nestle's critical text. In his translation of the New Testament, Wuest attempts to make the original Greek more accessible to the lay reader by drawing out (in translation) the full variety of possible meanings and translations of the underlying Greek words.- wikipedia
Now, In light of
wuests definitions (above) regarding the greek word for destroy (New testament word) Strongs as well, is too simplistic a definition: "to destroy utterly"(strongs #622). Especially in verses like 2 Pet 3:5, or Mark 2:22 where apollumi definitely does not mean to destroy utterly (extinction) but to render useless or to ruin. I would venture to say that nothing is annihilated.
Under no circumstances is something totally gone. Matter can exist in other forms, chemicals, or compositions (water, ice, and vapor). In Genesis 19:13 it mentions destroying “this place” and as a result there would be ash, and rubble. It still existed but in a different form (ash is chemically a different form of the fuel burned). The same can be said of energy: energy exists in other forms – i.e.
the first law of thermodynamics. The law of conservation of energy states that no energy can be destroyed, but can change form. Such is the energy of the soul. It is eternal in whatever form it takes, for eternal fire or eternal bliss. So to believe that utter annihilation is what is meant in the new testament is a contradiction in hermeneutics and also in logical science.
One of the most popular annihilationists today is Edward Fudge
Fudge argues the Old Testament teaches annihilation and therefore the New Testament must teach it as well. “When the Old Testament talks about the final end of the wicked, it uses language that sounds like total extinction.”- Edward Fudge “(more in depth discussion in link:
The Hermeneutics of Annilhilationism - by Robert A. Peterson), however this again is the fallacy of illegitimate totality transfer. Basically total extinction if you look it up means that something ceases to exist.
If anything, our definition is more legitimate (destroy: to render useless). That is if one wanted to make a generalized blanket assessment of the word destroy, and I am not saying that it SHOULD, do so (it's illegitimate totality transfer). My definition however, would match more occasions of the word destroy in both old and new testament. But One thing I will not do, is state that just because Destroy means one thing in one passage in Hebrew (old testament), that it therefore means the same thing in another language (greek) and in another testament (new testament). Edward fudge does this exact thing which is
an extraordinarily bad case of ITT (illegitimate totality transfer).
Fudge regarding sulphur in revelation 14:10 states that "In the Bible the symbol derives its meaning from the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah." (Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 296- 297) And then on next page states it “sounds out a message of extinction.” Note: some passages do have a message of destruction but not of extinction which indicates a lack of existence.
Fudge does this with a list of 70 words in his book which he declares "Without exception they portray destruction, extinction or extermination." For example there is the word “torn.” Fudge again commits illegitimate totality transfer with this word as he declares for example that a “torn” piece of paper doesn’t exist anymore. All because he uses this entire list to mean extinction, that is they don’t exist anymore on earth.
But extinction by definition doesn't exist in the Bible. Like I addressed above, nothing ceases to exist ever logically, scientifically, or Biblically either. One must believe the above and yet still declare that the soul is a special example of ‘ceasing to exist.’ I find this hard to believe.
Thank you for the post.
διασείσητε διασείσητε διασειώ concussion, use of force, do violence to, shake, rive; tear or be torn violently, break through, , disrupt, rupture
