Theology in the Raw - 632: Chris Date - Conditional Immortality, Terminal Punishment and Annihilation

Episode Date: January 30, 2018

The Rethinking Hell Conference is taking place March 9–10, at The Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, Texas. Preston will be there with Chris doing a podcast live! You can find out more at rethinkinghellconference.com. Today on the Podcast Preston is talking with Chris Date from the Rethinking Hell Podcast.  Chris is diving into the topic of Annihilation or Conditional Immortality. Why call it Conditional Immortality rather than Annihilation? What biblical support is there for Conditionalism? When did Chris stop looking at the Bible and determine to base his theology of Hell on emotions? (tongue in cheek)  Chris is the a host and contributor of the Rethinking Hell Podcast and Blog. Chris seeks to take the Bible seriously and promote rigorous study of the scriptures.  You can find the Chris's podcast at rethinkinghell.com. You can find Chris's debate with Al Mohler here.  The song at the end is Breakfast by Newsboys.  Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Follow him on Twitter @PrestonSprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Whatever range of meanings death might have, in what sense did Jesus die as our substitute? When we say Jesus died for our sins, we don't typically mean that he was separated from God for our sins. No, we mean he literally died. Greetings and welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. And I am here with my special guest and a person who's become a friend over the years. And we're going to get into some specifics about how we became friends. But just a quick introduction, my guest is Christopher Date, Chris Date. And some of you may know the name Chris Date. He is a blogger, a podcaster. He's the co-editor of two books, Rethinking Hell and Consuming Passion. And most of you, if you do know the name Chris Date, you probably know

him either through the Rethinking Hell website, or I would say project. It's not just a website. It's like a whole, I would even say movement. And when I turn it over to you, Chris, I'll let you kind of expand on that. But Chris has been an evangelical thinker on the issue of hell, specifically rethinking hell in terms of the debate between the nature of hell. Is it eternal conscious torment? Is it so-called annihilation? Or is it universalism where people will be rescued out of hell? And I've talked about this so many times on the podcast already, so I'll stop there without getting all the explanations and caveats. But Chris, thank you so much for being on the show. The pleasure and honor is all mine.

So, um, we first met, uh, you reached out to me after I wrote, co-wrote Erasing Hell. This is summer of 2011. And I think it was maybe three months or so after I,

uh, we published that book. I believe it was like maybe August or September, if my memory serves me correctly, but you reached out and said, Hey, you know, I'd love to have a dialogue with you about hell. And I said, yeah, sure, no problem. I didn't, I wasn't aware of even Rethinking Hell or your name. And I said, yeah, sure. You know, I'd love to talk. And I remember going into that conversation. I kind of waltzed into the conversation and didn't really prepare. I

didn't really think through stuff, but I had already begun to, if I can say, soften a bit toward the annihilation or conditionalist position. We could tease out the names in a second, but I remember I was already soft to the position in the sense that I was very much open to hear it, but I was still holding onto a traditional view. But I remember after that, I think 45 minutes, if I can say rather embarrassing conversation on my end, because you threw at me in a very gentle and gracious and Christian way, but a forthright one nonetheless, exegetical argument after exegetical argument. And you said, well, what about this? What about that? I don't remember the specifics. I remember sitting there and in almost everything that you threw at me, I knew I didn't have a good response to.

And it was after that. I don't know if I ever told you this, Chris, but it was after that conversation when I really said, oh, my gosh, maybe I really need to revisit this. Because if, you know, I mean, you don't even have like a graduate degree in theology, right? I mean, you're. No, I'm working on that now. Okay, good. Yeah. And it was like i'm like oh my

gosh here i am phd and everything and if i haven't even considered the power of somebody's arguments and what else am i missing and so i really left there going back to the drawing board a bit more and says i need to really consider it so that was the initial nudge and um there was another conversation i had with a a guy named jeff cook who now is also a good friend of mine that nudged me even further. But yeah, ever since then, Chris and I have been in great dialogue. Chris, do you have any reflections on that initial conversation? Do you remember that? Well, I do.

A couple of things. First of all, when you say met, I think of the time I actually first met you in person, which was up here in, what was it, Vancouver, Washington? Or somewhere thereabouts? Olympia. Olympia, that's right. That was very near me, and it was enjoyable coming to meet you in person. But no, you're right, that first time we interacted, I actually think that you had been dialoguing with Ronnie Demler, a friend of mine.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, because he actually, although he disagreed with the conclusions that you and Francis came to in Erasing Hell, he nevertheless had a lot of really good things to say about your book. We were all very appreciative of the tone and the way that you guys handled our view. And so I think it was knowing that you were already kind and gracious in your interactions with us. I knew going into it that that was going to be the kind of interaction we would have. And having already been primed by Ronnie, I don't think I – if I did have any part in tipping you over the fence as it were or something like that, I'm happy to have done it. But I really do think it was Ronnie who had sort of primed the pump a little bit before I got around to it.

And it was – I'm pretty sure it was Jeff Cook's, he had several blogs kind of critiquing Erasing Hell. And, you know, I jumped on that, read it, and I was like, wasn't convinced, but I was, I'm sorry, he was, you know, yeah, critiquing the book and also promoting Annihilation's position. And even there, I was like, man, he's raising some arguments that I haven't really thought about and engaging him and other people on the comments. It was really, the more I engaged it,

the more I was like, man, there's so much more here than I realized. If I'm going to hold to a traditional view, I need to be able to respond to these, you know, dozens and dozens of arguments and pushbacks. And just to be clear, you weren't argumentative at all. You were asking genuine questions like, what about this?

And what about that? And, you know, what about the beast and the false prophet? You know, and how does that inform this and that? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Well, if I wasn't argumentative, you caught me on a good day. And yeah, so I've mentioned some things you've done. You've also debated quite a few people. And the one that I often point people towards is a debate with Al Mohler. Now, whatever my audience thinks about Al Mohler, I think anybody who listens to him and reads him knows he is an absolute genius.

I mean, I think he reads one or two books a day and remembers, like, everything. And he is just – he absorbs so much, which is why when he debated you, I think he was – I think – I don't know anything about the background, but I think he kind of waltzed into it kind of like I did, like very unprepared. And, you know, he's a pretty good speaker and knows how to get himself out of, you know, when he's kind of in a rock,

between a rock and a hard place rhetorically, he knows kind of how to get out of it. But, man, just to be blatantly honest, I thought it was embarrassing. I really do. And you weren't trying to embarrass him, but the sheer exegetical weight of your argument and the lack of exegesis on his side. I mean, he kind of kept coming back to tradition, tradition.

And you just kept coming to the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. And he really didn't have response to almost hardly anything you threw at him. But you've debated several people, right? I mean who are some other people you've debated on this topic? Well, I mean I've debated a bunch of bloggers and podcasters, a guy named Len Pettis from a podcast called The Bible-Thumping Wingnut. He and I debated in person. I debated – a few years ago, I debated an apologist from up here in the Pacific Northwest named Phil Fernandez, and that was another in-person debate. Most of my debates have been on the radio or podcasts or whatever, and they've all been, again, bloggers and podcasters, philosophers.

I debated a Catholic once on the topic. I won't ever do that again. But yeah, so I mean nobody huge apart from Al Mohler and Phil Fernandez, but a variety of lesser known people. If anybody listens to this and would like to see debates with more well-known, more scholarly people, please try to set something up. everybody I could possibly think of inviting them to dialogue or debate, you know, Robert Peterson, Chris Morgan, Doug Moo, D.A. Carson, John Piper, you know, and nobody seems to want to really deal with this topic. I've even, we're going to be probably talking a little bit about Stand to Reason here shortly. I'm a huge, enormous fan of that ministry. I'm a big fan of Greg Kokel and Tim Barnett and J. Warner Wallace. And these are people with whom I tried to dialogue on this topic, and just nobody is willing to have a meaningful dialogue or debate. They just want to put together these articles burning down straw men.

And I'd like to see the quality of the dialogue improved. So hopefully people will try to set something up. I want to hear your story and when you came to deny hell and hate Jesus and everything. Unfortunately, that's almost word for word how it's sometimes framed. But before we do that, we have to talk about the conference really quick. We'll talk about it now and then at the end we'll talk about it. Can you give us a 30-second plug for the Rethinking Hell conference in March? Yeah, so I think it's March 9th and 10th. If people want details, they can go to RethinkingHealthConference.com. Again, March 9th and 10th. It's a

Friday and a Saturday in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, fairly near the DFW airport there. And it's not going to be only conditionalists or annihilationist again you said we'll talk about the name shortly we're also going to have Greg Allison who's a professor and historical theologian from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary he's a traditionalist and his plenary presentation I think will be a historical survey intended to say that the doctrine of eternal torment has been the historical doctrine of the church and then we've got scholar Craig Evans from Houston Baptist University, who, if I understand correctly, is kind of on the fence,

or at least has been. And so it'll be interesting to see where he comes down. And then, of course, you're going to be speaking and me as well. And the theme of this year's conference, which is the fifth of our annual conferences, by the way, we were in Houston in 2014, Pasadena the next year, London the year after that, and last year we were in Auckland, New Zealand. This year we're going to be talking about the atonement. So the theme of the conference is called Crushed for Our Iniquities, Hell and the Atoning Work of Christ. And so all of the plenary presentations and breakout sessions will, in one way, shape, or form, or another, be sort of related to the doctrine of atonement. In particular, I will be arguing from the atoning work of Christ that conditional immortality or annihilationism is the only position that's consistent with the atoning work of Christ.

And so, yeah, it's going to be really great, and plenty of tickets still available. It's at a good price. I know there are a lot of theology conferences where you can pay over $100 to get in. This is $50. Oh, and also ask us questions and stuff like that, it'll be a great opportunity for them to do that. So listeners, when you go to Rethinking Hell conference to purchase your tickets, make sure to add to that ticket as you're checking out this catered lunch. So anyway, yeah, I'll stop talking about it. Yeah, I'm so excited about it because it's a fairly intimate gathering. Is that right? I mean, maybe you've had 100, 150, probably 200 max. I mean, so you get a chance to really talk with people, interact, and build relationships.

So, I mean, it's not just this big, huge auditorium. We just listen to a monologue. I mean, there's going to be a lot of interaction at this conference. That's right. And one last thing I'll say about it is that one of the breakout sessions will be sort of a, again, whatever we want to call it, a conditionalism 101, where I will sort of give a very short, basic level overview of this position and field questions that people have so for listeners that may have heard you talk about it here and there or me talk about it here and there but still feel really new to it all and would like to learn more about it um this is a great opportunity to do so

it'll be very uh lay level and oriented to people that you know haven't been steeped in this debate like i have for years that's great that's great so yeah i encourage you guys seriously i mean this uh i'm not a big conference kind of fan, like people that go from conference to conference, you know, every month and every year after a while, it gets kind of wearing, but I really think this one is going to be, is different. It is going to be very different. It's going to be, you know, uh, academic and rigorous, but not over your head. You know, it's not gonna be people just sitting, reading a boring paper, but it's going to be more than just kind of a fluffy pep talk, you know? I mean, it's going to be more than just kind of a fluffy pep talk. I mean, it's going to be digging in rigorously and honestly with the text, what the

text has to say about a very important topic. So yeah, Rethinking Hell Conference, go to the Rethinking Hell website and check it out. All right, let's go back to your personal narrative, Chris. When did you stop reading the Bible and embrace this emotionally driven view of hell? It's funny that you put it that way. You know, I started doing my own personal podcast a couple of years before Rethinking Hell. And I got to the point where I was having various guests onto the show and I was interviewing them on topics. And at this point, I had no familiarity at all with alternatives to the traditional view of hell. I accepted the tradition. I had no

objections to it, moral or philosophical or even emotional. I wasn't drawn to try to find some way to think differently. But I had a guest on my show at the recommendation of some people named Edward Fudge, who recently passed away and who we'll be tributing at the conference as well. I had him on the show, first of all, to talk about the Churches of Christ, which is a movement that has various strands within it, some of which are much more problematic than others. But after we recorded that, I asked him also to come back on for a second show to talk about his book, which he had recently published a third edition of called The Fire That Consumes. And in the process of reading his book to prepare for that interview and in the process of conducting

it, I found myself squarely on the fence between the view he was presenting and the view that I had held, the doctrine of eternal torment. Because again, I didn't go in looking for, I didn't have any emotional reasons not to believe in the eternal torment, but I am very committed to the authority and reliability of God's Word, and I'm going to follow it where I'm convinced that it leads, even when it does so at my own peril, if you will. And so, for example, being somebody that's extremely conservative and reformed like I am, I knew going into this conversation with him and in the months that followed that if I eventually embraced the view that he was presenting, it would make it a lot of doors to ministry and education would close to me. There'd be churches I could no longer attend,

schools I could no longer attend or teach at and so forth. And so everything in me emotionally was desperately trying to get me to remain a believer in the traditional view of hell. But in the course of interviewing Edward Fudge, I could not find a good argument biblically against his view, and all of his biblical arguments, or at least many of them, seemed very powerful. And so after that interview, I spent several more months digesting every book and sermon and podcast and everything that I could on the topic. I interviewed a person on my podcast that holds to the traditional view. His name is Larry Dixon. He's the author of The Other Side of the Good News. And as somebody that was still not even convinced of Edward Fudge's view, I found and a lot of listeners found that I was far, you know, Larry Dixon just wasn't able to really deal with any of the arguments that I was presenting as somebody not even yet convinced.

And so, you know, basically, it was not long after that sometime in early the following year that I said, I'm really convinced. And since then, you know, I've become a part of this Rethinking Hell project, as you put it. And in terms of what convinced me there were two things more than any other, I won't mention specific passages just yet. We'll do that in a moment. But what convinced me most of all were two things. had ever heard historically cited in support of the doctrine of eternal torment proved upon closer examination to be better support for the view that you and I now hold, or at least that I hold and you're almost convinced of. And so there are doctrines like the Trinity or like Calvinism or whatever, where there are some passages here and there that have to be sort of

harmonized with what we think the rest of the Bible is saying. But I have not found that to be the case on this view. I found that even the texts most often cited against the view I hold actually proved to be better support for it. That was the first thing that convinced me more than any other. And then the second one was just that for some reason, I don't know why this is, the best scholars and theologians, the most respected exegetes on this, you know, in any other topic, when it comes to this one, their arguments just become really, really bad. They end up violating their own standards of hermeneutics that they would apply in any other context. And so for these two reasons, number one, the proof text for eternal torment proved to be better support from my view.

And number two, the really bad arguments that otherwise very stalwart, you know, very excellent scholars resort to in this debate, they ended up convincing me. And, you know, we'll probably talk about some of those specifics as we continue the conversation. Yeah, why don't you, do you have any examples of those off the top of your head now? Or do you want to just jump in? Sure. So for example, one of the most commonly cited texts for eternal torment is Matthew 25, 41 to 46. There, Jesus says, he gives a story about the sheep and the goats and their judgment by the king. And he says that the king is going to separate the sheep from the goats, and he's going to send the goats into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. And then he says, you know, these will go away into eternal life, but these will go away into

eternal punishment. And when most people read that, there's something that happens, I think, in the back of their minds where they read eternal punishment and think what they're reading is eternal punishing. And so they automatically think, well, gosh, if the process of punishing goes on for, or sorry, if life goes on forever, then so must the process of punishing. But a couple of things, when you take a closer look at this passage, end up landing it squarely in favor of our view, I think. Number one, this phrase eternal fire that Jesus uses in verse 41, it's not the first time that he had used that phrase. He used that phrase earlier in Matthew 18, verses 8 and 9, where he sets it in parallel to Gehenna, which, as you know, is the sort of Greek transliteration of the Old Testament Valley of the Son of Hinnom. And the Valley of the Son of Hinnom in places like Jeremiah

7.33 was promised, God promised it would become the Valley of Slaughter, and the corpses of God's slain enemies would be sort of strewn about on the ground, left unburied because there's no room to bury them all, and scavenging beasts and birds will come and eat the corpses up so that there won't be anything that remains. That's what Jesus sets in parallel to the phrase eternal fire, which is consistent with the other place where that phrase is used, eternal fire, which is in Jude 7, where that phrase is used by Jude to describe the fire that came down from heaven and slayed, or slew, whatever the past tense of slay is, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so this phrase eternal fire elsewhere outside of Matthew 25, it talks about fire

that completely destroys and devours, not keeps people alive in torment forever. And then in verse 46, where he contrasts eternal life and eternal punishment, right off the bat, the fact that eternal life is promised only to the righteous there should make us question whether the punishment awaiting the lost is also some form of everlasting life, which is in fact the traditional view. If you go back through church history and even today, you'll find defenders of the traditional view saying that when the lost are resurrected, their bodies will be made immortal just like ours will be. Their bodies will be made immortal and they will live forever in physical and spiritual torment for eternity. And so in the traditional view, everyone gets eternal

life, not just the saved. In fact, it's not uncommon to hear people say things like, everybody gets eternal life. The question is, where will you live it? And so right off the bat, when we look at this phrase, eternal life or eternal punishment, we should automatically acknowledge the fact that there's a contrast here between these two fates. The unrighteous will not get eternal life, which suggests that their punishment will be everlasting death, not eternal life. question becomes, is eternal punishment an everlasting process of punishing people that also are eternally alive? Probably not. Chances are better that it refers to the punishment of death, the deprivation of life, and a deprivation of life that will last forever. And then this Greek word, I think it's kolosis, translated punishment, is used elsewhere in the Old Testament in some cases to refer to painful punishments, but also to refer to capital punishment. And when we talk about capital punishment, if that punishment of death lasts forever,

that is an eternal punishment. And that fits the context better than the idea that the lost also get eternal life. So that's one of, you know, there's really only like five or six really good texts that people will cite in favor of the tradition, and that's just one of them. And they all prove to be better support for our view. Yeah, that's the big one that keeps coming up. And even early on when I was still on the traditional side, and by the way, you can absolutely refer to me as an, I'm at the point now where I want to say I'm an annihilationist, unless the other view can be proven to be more superior based on arguments that I haven't yet,

which is kind of, I mean, we all hold our views with some level of open-handedness that, yeah, I'm willing to be proven, you know, that this is wrong otherwise. But to me, and I've said this many times, that, you know, if you just add all the evidence, you know, to me, the sheer volume of biblical evidence far outnumbers, you knowumbers support for, far outweighs support for annihilation than the traditional view, even if you were to acknowledge, okay, this passage, or maybe that passage. But I'm with you. I mean, I don't, I used to say, yeah, annihilation is probably more superior, but Matthew 25 is a tough one. But again, I mean, to me, the simple question is when it says, yeah, eternal life, eternal punishment, people make the logical leap that, you know, the punishment is being burned

forever and ever and ever. And then they say, therefore, it must be eternal whatever, rather than asking a question, what is the punishment? Well, given the weight of just a basic biblical theological answer to that question, the punishment, the wages of sin is death. The punishment is death. So how long does death last for? How long does the punishment last for? Well, it's for death by definition. I mean, unless it's reversed through another resurrection or something, which it obviously isn't, death is forever. So yeah, I think this is where, you know, when people say, do you believe in eternal punishment? You know, I love to say, yeah, absolutely I do. I mean, that's what the Bible says. That's right. But one thing I do want to chime in and say, though, just I want to

caution us both, not that this was, not that you would disagree with this or anything, but, you know, when people will say something which is true, which is that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of texts, you know, I might be slightly exaggerating there, but not much, not by much, hundreds of texts that support conditionalism or annihilationism, and there is only a few that could be argued to teach eternal torment. You know, interpreting Scripture isn't a numbers game. All of Scripture is God breathed, not just a sum of it. And so if there were a single text, even just a single one, where if we read it in its context, the clear meaning of the text is some sort of eternal torment, then I think we would be forced if we're, you know, true to our

commitment to the word of God, to interpret all those other hundreds in light of the one. I just don't, I just, I think you and I would agree, none of them meet that level, that bar of quality, right? Let's, so a lot of traditionalists are going to, and right now, there's probably a lot of people saying, no, what about this? Oh, no, doesn't mean that. And we don't just poof out of existence. So let's do a few things here just to kind of maybe answer some questions that some people are having. So can you clarify what we mean by annihilation? And maybe even this is where the terminology, we can stop, maybe clarify some terminology. But I often hear people say, well, we're not just going to poof out of existence, you know, this kind of like,

you know, you're just, you know, like vaporized or something, and they kind of have a problem with that. So can you clarify what you mean by annihilation? And maybe why you prefer conditionalism? Yeah, so the reason why I don't like annihilate the word annihilation is because it's precisely for the reason that you're describing, which is that most people think that when we use the word annihilate in this context, we're talking about sort of the metaphysical cessation of existence as if God snaps his fingers and the wicked vanish into the proverbial ether or something like that. But that's not, first of all, the only way in which the word annihilation is used even today. You know, I mean, if we said that army annihilated the enemy, we just mean they slayed them all really powerfully, you know, really victoriously. It was a very powerful and decisive victory. We don't mean that they literally caused them to disappear. And that's what the word annihilation has meant.

You see, we annihilationists or conditionalists, and I'll get to the language of conditionalism in a second. We think that the wages of sin is death, Romans 6.23, that the privation of life, you know, when a person is capitally punished, they're killed. Their body is dead. They're still dead. They don't have any life, but the body's still there. But that's, of course, not hell. Hell is a place where living people go, according to the tradition. hell is a place where living people go according to the tradition. So we just want to use a language of death, of not being alive any longer. But the problem is because traditionalists are convinced of eternal torment for what they think are biblical reasons, and so they feel forced to understand death differently than we do. And so we can't simply use the language of death or of destruction because they think that language supports their view. And so we can't simply use the language of death or of destruction because they think that language supports their view. And so we have to use a word that they're not equally comfortable using to describe their own view, and that's where something more decisive than kill was used, like annihilation. It's a way of describing a complete and total end to the person's life rather than some sort of special code language for the language of death like eternal torment advocates want to give it so that's the language of annihilation it just means they're going to be totally destroyed totally

killed they will no longer live again but i'll tell you why why i prefer the the phrase conditional immortality is because um again the traditional view maintains that when the saved and the lost are resurrected when they're raised from the dead, their bodies will come back to life, and they think that both the saved and the lost will be made immortal so that they can live bodily forever in torment. Whereas we annihilationists think that immortality is conditioned. It's conditional. It's only given to those people who meet the condition of saving faith. And so I like conditional immortality because, first of all, it captures the point, which is that it's about who receives immortality in eternal life, but also it shows that this is

bigger than simply a question of what happens to the lost. You know, when I became a conditionalist, You know, when I became a conditionalist, I suddenly realized I have a much – I value life more than I ever did before. Life is so much more precious to me now, and my views, you know, my opposition to abortion and to euthanasia takes on such greater meaning. It's so much more consistent with how I understand life and death now. And so the point I'm getting at is conditional immortality not only better expresses what we're talking about, I think, but I think it also captures the point that this debate is bigger than merely the fate awaiting the lost. Now, as you know, there is one other phrase that is catching on, at least in a few people nowadays, which is the phrase terminal punishment. That's the view that, that's the word I think the phrase terminal punishment. That's the view that, that's the word I think Douglas Jacoby likes. It's the language that John Stackhouse used in the book that you edited for Zondervan. And it's, I think it's language that you are, tend to lean toward

as well. The reason I personally don't like it is because when, when we talk about something that's terminal, we tend to use it to mean something that comes to an end. And as soon as you call something terminal punishment, the critic of our view is going to say, well, wait a minute, you know, Jesus calls it eternal punishment, not terminal punishment. You know, when we talk about a terminal sickness, for example, or a terminal disease, we mean not only that the sickness or disease will kill you, but that the sickness or disease comes to an end because it comes to an end when you die. But you and I are saying the punishment never comes to an end.

The punishment is death. It lasts forever. And so I avoid terminal punishment for that reason. And so faced with these three alternatives, annihilation, which communicates to people something I don't think accurately captures my view, or terminal punishment, which I think communicates to people something I don't think is accurate about my view, or conditional immortality, which both captures it accurately and communicates that this is a bigger debate than merely what happens to the lost, I end up going with that one for those reasons. Yeah, then that's fair. And I liked terminal punishment kind of for a period of time,

but I agree with everything you're saying there, that it could give the impression that it's kind of like there is ongoing punishment that just happens to come to an end, which I know some annihilationists would hold to that view. But yeah, let me push back. Let me play devil's advocate. That's probably a bad metaphor. Yeah. So with conditional immortality, someone could say that immortality or eternal life is not just about the ongoing duration, but has a certain quality to it.

In other words, if you're not living forever with God in the presence of God, you actually don't have immortality and eternal life. So that somebody could, if you assume that kind of meaning of immortality, eternal life, somebody could, in theory, still be existing forever and ever and ever in eternal conscious torment and yet not have the sort of quality of immortality or eternal life. What would you say to that? Well, regards the word immortality, I would point to places like 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul uses two or three different Greek words to communicate not just the concept of some sort of quality of life, but to communicate

unending life. You know, the whole point of 1 Corinthians 15 is that these perishable, corruptible bodies that we enjoy now will and must be replaced with or transformed into immortal, imperishable, incorruptible bodies that will never die if we're going to inherit the kingdom of God. And so the very language of Scripture uses incorruptibility and imperishable, incorruptible bodies that will never die if we're going to inherit the kingdom of God. And so the very language of scripture uses incorruptibility and imperishability and immortality to refer to not dying. In fact, one of those Greek words is the Greek word athanasia, which literally means not dying. You know, it's not about quality, it's about quantity. And I would also add, by the way, that throughout church history, traditionalists have had no problem admitting that they think that the lost will be made immortal. And so if somebody

wants to sort of veer away from using that language, like my friend Phil Fernandez did, whom I mentioned earlier that I debated, I'll point out, okay, well, that's fine, but now you're doing something as novel as you think I'm doing, because all of your forebears admitted that they think the lost will be made immortal. As for the language of eternal life, here, traditionalists have at least a very small biblical foot to stand on because it will point to John 17.3, I think it is, where Jesus says, knowing God and Jesus Christ, or this is eternal life, knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ whom he sent. The problem is, as even Don Carson points out in his book Exegetical Fallacies, the Greek verb translated is, in that passage, it's the Greek word ami. We sometimes

call it the copula in grammar. That word doesn't only communicate the meaning of identity. You know, when I say I am Chris, that's identity. But as Don Carson points out, there's this fallacy that he calls illegitimate restriction of the semantic field, meaning you take a word that has a broad number of different meanings and you assume that it only has one. And that's what people are doing with John 17.3 is saying Jesus is identifying eternal life as knowing God and Jesus whom he sent. But the problem is that the word often means something else, like cause. Don Carson points to a passage in Romans, for example, where, gosh, I'm forgetting, I got to bring up the notes here. Are you going to be able to edit some of this out? Sure, yeah. My producer will. This is Theology Narada, though. We might just keep this for the whole thing. We'll see. Well, I'll just finish my thought.

So there are two other places in John where Jesus uses this Greek verb, is, to connect something with life. In one place, he says that the commandment of the Father is eternal life. And in another place, he says the words that I speak to you are life and spirit. words that I speak to you are life and spirit. Now, nobody thinks that when Jesus says the commandment of the Father is eternal life, that what he's saying is that eternal life is defined as the commandment of the Father, nor would they say that Jesus' words are defined as eternal life. No, what both of those passages are saying, what Jesus is saying in those places is that obeying the commandment of the Father results or causes eternal life. And obeying Jesus' words results in or causes eternal life. And so in the same way, when Jesus says that knowing God and Jesus Christ whom he sent is

eternal life, he's saying knowing God and Jesus Christ whom he sent results in, causes or produces eternal life. And if we insist that it must mean identity, well, then I think we're going to run into a lot of problems. Interesting. On a related note, let's talk about the idea of death, because I feel like this almost always comes up in these debates where traditionalists are going to say, well, you know, death isn't, they usually say, you don't just poof out of existence. You know, you're separated from God. Your death is to be apart from God. I mean, just think of like Ephesians 2 or even Genesis 2 and 3, when people sin, they're kind of the walking dead. They're separated from God, no relationship with God. They're dead in their

trespasses and sins, but that doesn't mean they are poofing out of existence or, you know, obviously kind of playing into their kind of overstatement. But how would you, yeah, how would you respond to that? The idea that traditionalists want to maintain with the idea of death saying, well, yeah, death doesn't mean cease to exist. It means to be separated from God. Yeah, well, I mean, I would say a few things. First of all, when you look at the various words that communicate death throughout scripture,

the vast majority of the time, they're used to describe just that, death, not some sort of living separation from God or anything. There are a handful of possible counterexamples. examples, the language of death is being used as a metaphor for something or as prolepsis, which is sort of like what happens when, you know, a criminal is being walked to the electric chair and you hear people crying out, dead man walking. You know, he's not literally dead, but he's about to be. And that's often what happens in Scripture as well when this language is used. So, for example, when Paul says, you know, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, I can understand that in a way that's consistent with how the language of death is used throughout the rest of scripture by simply saying that

I was as good as dead in my trespasses and sins. I was destined for death if I didn't repent. Or I could use it, that would be prolepsis, or I could use it as metaphor. And I could say that the meaning of death as a cessation of activity, a cessation of life, of lifelessness, I could use that as a metaphor for a life lived apart from the source of life, which is God himself, or as a life lived in disobedience to him or whatever. So there are metaphorical and proleptic ways of using death that don't at all require that we read the entirety of the death language throughout scripture through the narrow lens of these few places where it might mean something else. I think the bigger question, though, is what do we do with a passage like Genesis 2 in which God promises or warns Adam that on the day that you eat of the fruit, you shall surely die? As traditionalists are quick to point out, Adam and Eve don't immediately fall dead the day that they eat the fruit.

And so they will say, well, therefore, it must refer to some sort of spiritual death. Well, no, there are a number of problems with that. First of all, the Hebrew idiom translated on the day, it's an idiom meaning something like when, and in fact, the New English translation, the NET, translates it when in, I think, that very verse. And if I were to say to you, when you eat too much, you get fat, I'm not saying that the instant that you overeat, you're going to swell up and bloat up. I'm saying that the one leads inevitably to the other. So all I'm saying is that when you eat from the fruit, you're going to surely die. And what do we find out in the next chapter in Genesis 3 when God pronounces the judgment that he had warned Adam about? Well, number one, he says toward the beginning of that chapter that to dust you shall return. And then not long thereafter, he said he kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden

explicitly for the purpose so that they will not receive, so they will not live forever. Right. And so by kicking Adam and Eve from the garden, they no longer had access to the tree of life that would have kept them alive. And sure enough, they eventually died. Exactly like when you eat from the fruit, you shall surely die, would communicate. And here's the most interesting thing, and then I'll get off the soapbox. That tree of life reappears in another place in the Bible. It's why I've often said now that conditional immortality is literally taught from cover to cover in Scripture. Because in the front cover, you've got this passage in Genesis where the tree of life would have given Adam and Eve enduring life if they hadn't been kicked out of the garden.

And then that tree of life reappears at the other end of the Bible in the closing chapters of the book of Revelation, where only the saved enjoy the fruit of the tree in the new Jerusalem. Well, if the tree of life gives life, and if people separated from it won't live, then one would think that anybody who doesn't have access to that tree likewise won't live forever. So I think the language of death is far better, far more consistent with our understanding than with the traditional view. Yeah, that's good. And even then, like when people say, well, death doesn't always mean, boom, you just cease to exist or cease to live right then. It has this other deeper meaning.

you know, cease to exist or cease to live right then. It has this other deeper meaning. It means, it can mean separated from God. Even if, I can say yes to all that and still say, but where does death mean to be tortured forever and ever and ever? Like that still is an assumption brought in from elsewhere. But when you keep pushing the question back and back and back, again, you're left with, you know, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Well, where does that mean to be punished forever and ever? And if you keep pushing that, you end up with, you know, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Well, where does that mean to be punished

forever and ever? And if you keep pushing that, you end up with, I think that the traditionalist is left with two feet planted in midair where there really isn't any clear text. I mean, I guess we haven't talked about Revelation 14 yet, but there keeps being this assumption that, well, on the other side for the wicked, it's torture forever and ever. So death must be able to include that. Well, and there's one other further thing we could say, which is whatever range of meanings death might have, in what sense did Jesus die as our substitute? You know, that's going to be the focus of my talk at the conference. When we say Jesus died for our sins, we don't typically mean that he was separated from God for our sins. No, we mean he

literally died. He ceased to live, he lost life, and he was buried. If Jesus is our substitute, if the fate that we deserve was born by him in our place so that we won't have to, well, then that fate isn't life forever in torment, it's death. And anybody who either, because if we're Calvinists and we think that he only died for the elect, or if we're Arminians and we say that in order to appropriate his saving work to yourself, you have to believe it by faith. Either way, if you haven't, if you're not covered by his substitutionary death, then you've got to die yourself. And however we understand that death has got to be consistent with the death that he suffered. And that death was a privation of embodied life, a deprivation of psychosomatic life, which is the very thing that the wicked will never be deprived of,

according to the traditional view. So I think that that's another thing that puts the language of death in our favor. What would be the, would you say, the strongest pushback to that? Because to me, that seems so clear that Jesus, I mean, if you're Protestant, you know, despite Mel Gibson's, you know, very compelling movie, but, you know, it was Jesus's death, not some sort of torment that paid for our penalty. I mean, do people say, well, between the death and resurrection, he sort of was still alive and preaching in hell or something? I mean, what's the, is there a strong pushback or what? Maybe you'd say no, but what's the strongest pushback you've heard to what you said? Well, I mean, in fact, there is a strong pushback. In fact, I would

argue that for some traditionalists, this is a more severe error on our part than anything else. Because what they're, the pushback that we often get when we turn to this argument is that Jesus surely wasn't annihilated on the cross. I mean, even if we put aside the fact that his body continued to exist buried in the tomb, somebody like Robert Peterson is going to say, well, okay, you know, God, Jesus is God and human. He's got both a divine and a human nature. If only the human nature was annihilated on the cross,

well, then the hypostatic union between Jesus' divine and human natures was broken for three days, which is, we can't countenance that. Or if both human and divine natures were annihilated, well, then the Trinity was turned into a binity for three days. And either of those things would be absolutely intolerable. We can't countenance that without doing, I think, undue damage to the rest of our theology. That's the pushback. Do you want to know how I respond to that pushback? Go ahead. I'm free to let my audience weigh the compellingness of that. But yeah, go ahead.

Well, I mean, again, I hear what you're saying, and this is why I think it's so important that what we're saying is not that the punishment for sin is cessation of existence. We're saying that the punishment for sin is death. Jesus died. He ceased to have embodied life, and that's the same thing that we're saying is the punishment awaiting the risen wicked. They will cease to have embodied life. It's the exact same punishment. Now, if human beings have immaterial souls that continue to exist beyond death, and if Jesus' human soul existed for three days between death and resurrection, but the souls of the wicked will not in hell when they're destroyed, that doesn't mean that he suffered a fundamentally different punishment from ours. In both cases, the punishment was death, the probation of life. But, you know, as many philosophers have argued, or I should say, not as they have argued,

but they do often argue that in order for people to be, in order for resurrection to be truly possible, there must be some sort of connection, some continuation of a person between death and resurrection, or else it would be more like a copy or a clone of the original person. And so, I would argue that if dualism, if this idea that human beings have souls that survive death, if it's true, then Jesus' soul lived on after death so that he could one day be raised. And the same thing happens to the souls of the saved and the wicked in the first death. But in the second death, when the wicked are killed, there will be no resurrection after that. And so their souls

can be destroyed with their bodies, even though Jesus' soul wasn't destroyed. And yet in both cases, again, I want to reiterate, the punishment is death, the probation of life. So when we understand what we're saying, that the punishment is death, not ceasing to exist, then those arguments that I just represented against our view of the atonement, they just don't work. Wow. That's so good, Chris. Thank you for that. That's, yeah, well said. I fully agree with that. I wanted to get through to this stand to reason kind of two-part critique that you kind of alluded to earlier. But why don't we do this? Why don't we come back for another podcast and do that?

Because we're already getting close to an hour here. And I really want to spend some time working through some of those arguments and responses. working through some of those arguments and responses. But before we go on this one, can you just give some of your top passages that we've kind of responded to some of the critiques and relooked at some passages that people think support the traditional view. But what are some passages that for you were kind of aha moments where like, oh my gosh, this passage seems to say, you know, annihilation or that death is the punishment. I mean, you know, Matthew 10, 28, and those kinds of passages. Can you just, maybe three, four, five of the big ones for you, just to give people a concrete picture of passages that seem to positively teach what

you're talking about? Well, yeah, I will. Just to reiterate though, the ones that I think do positively teach our view are the very ones that are sometimes leveled against us as challenges. And that was, for me, the big thing that convinced me. But I can do the ones that maybe on the surface are even stronger support for our view. And you mentioned one of them, Matthew 10, 28, where Jesus says, don't fear a man who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear God who will destroy or can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. You know, the word translated destroy there, the Greek word apolomy, and I don't want to get into all the technical details about grammar and

syntax and stuff like that, but there are certain ways in which Greek words are used. They can be active or they can be passive, they can be transitive or intransitive. And whenever this word translated destroy in Matthew 10, 28 is used in the act of voice and translatively to describe what one person does to another, everywhere it's used in that way in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it means something like slay or kill. And so you have, for example, the Pharisees trying to apolomy Jesus. They weren't trying to separate him. You know, they weren't trying to torment him. They weren't trying to do any of those things.

They were trying to kill him, and that's the way that Jesus means it there in Matthew 10.28. And so the picture is men kill people, but that's all they can do to you. God can slay your entire being, body and soul, forever. And I think that's pretty clear. 2 Thessalonians 1.9, which is a passage we'll get into a little bit more detail next time in Part 2 when we go through this Stand to Reason article. You know, there Paul says the, you know, let me back up for a second. We mentioned that in Matthew 25.46, Jesus doesn't explicitly say what the nature of the punishment is. He only says how long it will last, which is forever. But Paul does say what the nature of that punishment is in 2 Thessalonians 1.9. He

says the wicked will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord. Now, we'll get into some of the nitty-gritty details about why that verse is leveled back against us as a challenge when we go through this article next time. But what's worth observing is that some of the language Paul uses here, flaming fire, inflicting vengeance, these are combinations of terms used in one other place in all of Scripture, which is Isaiah 66, 15, where God's enemies are slain, and their bodies, you know, their bodies are left out to be consumed by fire and by maggots. And so this eternal destruction language doesn't mean, you know, forever separated. It means to be forever killed. So that's another example. I already mentioned the tree of life. I find that to be very compelling. Revelation 20, 15, 14, I think it is,

John interprets the imagery that we'll discuss next time where you've got a lake of fire and things being tormented in it. He interprets that imagery, and so does God in the next chapter, as symbolizing the second death. And what's really important is that when biblical figures interpret the meaning of imagery, like Joseph with Pharaoh or Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar, when they interpret this imagery, their interpretation is always plain and straightforward language. And so the second death means exactly what it sounds like. The wicked will literally die a second time. But what eternal torment has to do is flip it on its, switch that around and say, well, actually, second death is the metaphor or the figure, and torment forever in the lake of fire is the thing

to be taken literally. But that turns this dynamic of imagery and interpretation on its head. And so I guess those are three examples among many that I would point to. There's a host of dozens and dozens and dozens of places in the Old Testament where the punishment that has promised sinners is death and vanishing and being gone and no longer being remembered or being remembered forever in shame and in contempt. Just on and on it goes. Jesus says in Matthew 13, 30, that the wicked will be burned up like chaff. The Greek word katakayo literally meaning to burn up completely. And on and on it goes. And like I said, the ones that convinced me most were the ones that are typically raised against us as challenges,

and we'll be discussing some of those next time. The one for me too, 2 Peter 2.6. Oh, yeah. That one's fun because it's so incredibly blatant. When I just read this verse in the context of talking about hell and, you know, which view, and even in a crowd that's pretty much all traditionalists, usually the guard kind of comes down or like, oh, I got to cry uncle at some point. Because, I mean, some of these verses are just, I mean, 2 Peter 2.6 says,

if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, Like, all right, I got to cry uncle at some point. Because I mean, some of these verses are just, I mean, 2 Peter 2, 6 says, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction. You know, there's some translation there, but clearly, sorry, translation differences there. But we know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, exactly what Peter says. It condemned them to ashes, leveled it, gone, boom, no torment, no torture, no whipping, no anything. It was just, it was, you know, a comprehensive death. And then he says, making them an example of what is going to happen due to the ungodly. So he goes back to the Sodom and Gomorrah and says, what happened then? Which is, you know, okay, maybe annihilation, whatever you want to call it, but something that's a comprehensive

ceasing to exist. That is what's going to happen to the ungodly. Like there is, he just, I mean, a traditionalist has to say that God reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, condemning them to extinction, making them an example of what's not going to happen to the ungodly. I mean, you have to almost read that completely around. going to happen to the ungodly. I mean, you have to almost read that completely around. Yeah, I mean, in their defense, I think that what they're going to say is that the reduction of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes is sort of like a type or a prefiguration of the wrath that God will show the wicked in the end. But the problem is types, you know, types and shadows and prefigures and things like that, they communicate, there's a continuity between the type

and the anti-type. And so, let's talk really briefly about what the nature of that punishment was. It was quick, it was fiery, and it slayed or slew, again, I don't know which is past tense, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, what's interesting is that none of those three things are true of the traditional view of hell. It will not be quick. It will be everlasting, ongoing process forever. It will not involve literal fire. Increasingly few people believe in literal fire like most people have throughout church history. They think it's going to be some sort of separation or whatever. So the fiery connection isn't there. And they'll be made immortal and will never die, unlike the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah who died. So literally there is no point of connection at all between the reduction of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and the fate that the traditionalists think will await the finally lost, except for the bare fact that there will be wrath. But the thing is, is that that would make Sodom and Gomorrah utterly non-unique. Any exhibition of God's wrath could be used as an example. But Peter here specifically calls them out because their punishment is a picture, an example of what's going to happen to the ungodly. So I just don't think that the traditional view makes sense of

that passage. And throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, the two kind of major Old Testament stories that give the type, or I would say give even the shape and inform final judgment the most are the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. And in both cases, there is a massive comprehensive ending of life and no continuity with that person afterwards, which I think is really, I think Fudge and obviously others keep going back to that, saying these are the kind of primary stories

that are informing what final judgment's going to be. And we can keep going on and on, Chris. I know there's a ton of other passages, but let's go ahead and close this out. And once again, just a reminder, go to RethinkingHell.com and there's a ton of other passages, but let's go ahead and close this out. And once again, just a reminder, go to RethinkInHell.com. And there's a conference page. You can register for the Rethink In Hell conference on March 9th through 10th. And I encourage you, people ask me, hey, I want to study this more and I want to learn

more about annihilation. What books should I read? And part of me is a little hesitant giving them fudge. It's a massive book and it's obviously one of the most definitive works, but I often just point them to your page. I mean, I love that your website, which has tons of podcasts, lots of short articles and blogs, and really you can spend, I mean, hours, hours, days there and really find both quick and accessible answers to a lot of questions and also some really thorough treatment. So, yeah, I would definitely point my audience to the Rethinking Hell website as well.

Anything else to add before we go out, Chris? Well, just that if your listeners can only remember one website at all, I'd really like them to remember RethinkingHellConference.com just because that's where they're going to most easily go to people to register for the conference. But yes, if they remember RethinkingHell.com, they can find it there as well. But if you know you're going to want to go to the conference, if you can make it to Dallas in early March to come out here, RethinkingHellConference.com, it's going to be great. All right, Chris, we've got to do this again. Maybe in the next few days or week or so, we'll get back on, but we'll work through that Stand to Reason article. I look forward to it very much.

All right, take care, man. You too. Hold the milk, put back the sugar. I look forward to it very much. All right. Take care, man. You too. Hold the milk, put back the sugar. The apparel's too concerned. We're gathered here to sprinkle ashes from our late free cereal bowl.

Breakfast club has said the motto that he taught us to repeat. You rollers in your gym clothes. If you wait till noon to eat. Back when the chess club said our eggs were soft

Every Monday it said Grayson, hold our juice aloft Anonymous knew his checkout time would come so soon But before his brain stopped waving, he composed this tune When the toast is burned and all the milk has turned And Captain Crunch is waving farewell When the big one finds you, may the song remind you That they don't serve breakfast in hell Breakfast clubbers drop the hankies That are somehow famous on

That day he bought those kind pajamas He's chick as good as God Those here without the Lord, how do you cope? For this morning we don't mouran like those who have no hope Our lives are poop-loop lovers, sing out sweet and low Whispers held high, we'd be out for the cheerio When the toast is burned and all the milk has turned And Captain Crunch is waving farewell

When the big one finds you May the song remind you That they don't serve breakfast in hell សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី When the toast is burning, all the milk has turned And Captain Crunch is waving farewell When the pig will find you May the song remind you That they don't serve breakfast in hell When the toast is burning

All the milk has turned And Captain Crunch is waving farewell When the pig one finds you May the song remind you That they don't serve breakfast in hell When the toast is burned And all the milk has turned And Captain Crunch is waiting farewell

When the big one finds you May the song remind you That they don't have breakfast in hell