October 8, 2019 Show with Dr. Tony Costa and Chris Date Debating “Eternal Conscious Punishment vs. Conditional Immortality” (Part 1)

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions and now here's your host

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this eighth day of October 2019 and I'm thrilled to have another debate being conducted here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Anybody who knows me knows that I love arranging live public moderated debates not only between those that are defenders of the

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Christian faith in adherence to the true gospel against those that are in false religions or who are apostates but also between brothers in Christ who disagree on areas, in -house debates if you will, collegiate debates where an area may be very important over which they disagree but not serious enough to cause them to label their opponent a non -believer.

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So today we have such a debate. We have a debate between two brothers in Christ and the theme is going to be

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Eternal Conscious Punishment versus Conditional Immortality. This is a two -day debate.

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It begins today and ends tomorrow at 6 p .m. Eastern Time Tuesday and Wednesday October 8th and 9th and those that are involved in this debate are first of all

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Dr. Tony Costa who is an advocate of Eternal Conscious Punishment.

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He is Professor of Apologetics in Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Toronto, Canada.

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He's also an author and a dear friend who has been involved in many speaking engagements that I have arranged and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Tony Costa. It's a great pleasure to be back with you again, Chris. Amen.

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And we have also on the program who is a Conditional Immortality advocate.

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His name is Chris Date. He is the host of the Theopologetics podcast and co -editor of Rethinking Hell and A Consuming Passion.

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He and I have been wanting to bring this debate to fruition for years and finally it has fallen into place and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Chris Date.

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The honor and privilege is all mine. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. And the actual theme, the subtitle if you will, of the main heading, the actual theme of our debate today is,

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Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved? And defending that position or affirming it is

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Chris Date and opposing it is Dr. Tony Costa. And right now, Chris Date is going to begin with his opening remarks and if you will begin now.

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In asking the question, Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved? We are not asking about the immortality of the soul.

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In our debate today, the real dividing line between both sides is the immortality of the resurrection body.

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You see, both sides affirm with scripture that one day everyone who has died will be raised from the dead to be judged and that those who are by faith covered in the blood of Christ will be given immortal bodies and will live embodied forever in the presence of God and in the community of his people.

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But when it comes to what sorts of bodies will be given to the risen lost, that is where the doctrines of eternal torment and conditional immortality part ways.

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According to eternal torment believers throughout church history, the resurrected lost will also be given immortal bodies and will live embodied forever, albeit in hell.

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This goes as far back as around 175 AD to the church father Tatian, who said we to whom it now easily happens to die afterwards receive the immortal with enjoyment or the painful with immortality.

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A couple of centuries later, Augustine says that just as the soul is immortal, so too will immortality be in the bodies of the damned.

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Jonathan Edwards, John Gill, George Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon, C .S. Lewis, John MacArthur, John Piper, Robert Peterson, Wayne Grudem, they all, along with virtually all other eternal torment believers, say the resurrected bodies of the lost will be made immortal and that the risen lost will live forever in hell.

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But before Augustine popularized this view, the church fathers Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 100

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AD, along with Arnobius, Irenaeus, and Athanasius after them, all indicate that immortality is a gift received by those who rise in Christ.

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As important as these traditional voices are, Dr. Costa, Chris, and I are all

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Protestants, and we believe the Bible is our final authority. I also believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible, as I think that Dr.

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Costa and Chris do as well. So the question that we really need to ask today is, whose resurrection bodies does the

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Bible say will be immortal and capable of living forever? The doctrine of eternal torment says that everybody's will be, including those of the lost.

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I will here argue that the Bible indicates instead that only the resurrected bodies of the saved will be made immortal.

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This truth is taught in Scripture literally from cover to cover. At one end, in Genesis 3, 22, and 23, after Adam and Eve have sinned,

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God kicks them out of the garden for a very specific and explicit purpose. Quote, Lest man reach out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, dot, dot, dot.

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Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden. So without access to the tree of life, the bodies of human beings are mortal and will certainly eventually die.

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And the tree of life reappears at the other end of Scripture. Like I said, it's from cover to cover.

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It appears in Revelation 22, where only the saved have access to its fruit, symbolizing that only they will be immortal and live forever.

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Thus, Paul says explicitly in Romans 2, 6, and 7, that immortality must be sought, and that it will be received only by some.

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God, Paul says, will render to each one according to his works, to those who by patience and well -doing seek for glory and honor and immortality,

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God will give eternal life. So immortality must be sought and will be received, but only by some.

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Who? Those who embrace the Gospel. As Paul says in 2 Timothy 1, 10,

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Christ Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the

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Gospel. The promise of resurrection unto immortality is largely veiled in the

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Old Testament, but Paul is here saying that that promise has been unveiled, brought to light through the

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Gospel. Paul elaborates in 1 Corinthians 15, he says in verses 42 -44, with the resurrection of the dead, what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.

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It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory, it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

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Obviously, Paul is here speaking only about believers. Those, he said, back in verse 23 of 1

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Corinthians 15, belong to Christ. Those whose risen bodies, he says here in verses 42 -44, will be glorious and powerful and imperishable.

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And he goes on in verse 50 to say, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

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See, resurrection, immortality, is meant for the purpose of making believers fit to inherit the kingdom of God.

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Thus, Paul says in verses 52 and 53, when we are raised from the dead, we shall be changed.

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For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

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As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 -4, while we are still in this tent, that is, this present mortal body, we groan being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

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This is why Paul says in Romans 6 -23 that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. We know that Paul has ordinary life and death in view here for at least two reasons.

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First, in the very next verses, which begin chapter 7, Paul says a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.

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So, Paul is just here talking about life and death as ordinarily understood. Second, Romans 6 -23 is essentially the same thing

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Paul had said a chapter earlier in Romans 5, 14, and 17. Sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses.

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Because of one man's trespass, death reigns through that one man, and much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. You see, Paul is saying that even though there was no law between Adam and Moses, the fact that everyone died is proof that they sinned in Adam.

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So, every descendant of Adam dies, but the free gift of eternal life is available through faith in Jesus Christ.

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This is Paul's consistent message, resurrection, immortality, and eternal life for only the risen saved.

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And he didn't come up with this on his own. It comes straight from the teachings of Jesus. In John 5, 28 and 29,

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Jesus says an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

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So, the resurrection of the evil ones must not ultimately result in life. Therefore, Jesus says in Luke 20, 35 -36, those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

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According to our Lord then, those so counted worthy will be unable to die again, implying that the unworthy, that is the unsaved, will be able to die again.

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In fact, this is the message of the most famous verse in the Bible. In John 3, 16, Jesus, or perhaps

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John, says God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

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So, eternal life is given only to those who believe in Jesus. In the two verses that immediately precede this one,

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Jesus likens himself to the bronze serpent that Moses had made back in Numbers 21, 9. Anyone who had been fatally bitten by venomous snakes was to look at that bronze serpent, and in so doing, they would live.

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So, by comparing himself to Moses' bronze snake, Jesus is saying in John 3, 16, that he literally saved the lives of those who look upon him.

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Now, before I wrap up, I want to offer one theological argument as well to sort of supplement the exegetical case

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I'm trying to offer. The Bible teaches that God is perfectly, if not infinitely, holy, and that he is unwilling, therefore, to tolerate evil forever.

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But consider that the doctrine of eternal torment says God will not only tolerate evil forever, he will ensure and secure the everlasting existence of evil by making immortal those who go on doing it in hell.

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By contrast, and consistent with what we have just seen from Scripture, my view is that one day God will eradicate all evil from the cosmos, because those who persist in it and refuse to repent will not be made immortal when they are raised to be judged.

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They will remain able to die, and they will die never to live and sin ever again.

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So, let me close by reminding you that the question we are debating today is not about the immortality of the soul.

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It is about the immortality of the future resurrection bodies of the unsaved.

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The doctrine of eternal torment says the resurrection bodies of the unsaved will be every bit as immortal and imperishable as the resurrection bodies of the saved, capable, therefore, of living embodied forever in hell.

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But Scripture teaches otherwise, and from cover to cover. From the tree of life in Genesis and Revelation to the resurrection teaching of Paul and Jesus himself, the consistent testimony of the

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Bible is that only the resurrection bodies of the saved will be made immortal and imperishable, so that God's people will be fit to inherit his kingdom.

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The resurrection bodies of the lost must, therefore, remain mortal and perishable, and they will die, and all evil will therefore cease to exist, and God's cosmos will be perfect and all in all, in God, forever throughout all eternity.

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Thank you. Thank you, Chris. And now, Dr. Tony Costa, who opposes the thesis that only the saved are given immortality.

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He will now have 10 minutes as well for an opening statement. Dr. Costa? Well, thank you so much,

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Chris Arntgen, and also I want to thank Chris Bate for the time that he's offered up for us to engage in this important debate, and it is definitely a privilege to engage with Chris, someone that I've recently come to know and appreciated as your friend in Christ as well.

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So I'm going to be arguing that immortality, the question, is immortality only given to the saved?

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I'm going to argue that that is not the case. Now, I want to make clear that from the outset,

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I'm a traditionalist, in that I believe that man is composed of both a soul and a body.

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I take the dichotomous view that humans are not just material, they're not just physical, which is the view of physicalism, that human beings are bodies, and that they are souls, and that they are organically one, and that when they die, they simply cease to exist.

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And therefore, as someone who holds to a dichotomous view, I'm not constrained to argue that immortality, in this case, is only referring to the resurrected bodies of the saved.

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I'm implying by this that this term can also be broadened and refer to others, including other beings other than God.

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So, the word immortality is a word in English, of course, that means not mortal, not liable to die, and it comes from the

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Greek word athanasia, which is a feminine noun which literally means deathlessness.

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And this word appears only three times in the Greek New Testament. It appears in 1 Timothy 6 -8, and also in 1

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Corinthians 15, verses 53 -54. The other passages that use the word immortality in the

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English translation, such as Romans 2 -7 and 2 Timothy 1 -10, use a different word, and that's the word atharsia.

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The Greek word atharsia means incorruption, incorruptible, imperishable.

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What many translations will give it the meaning of immortality, because that which is immortal, of course, is not incorruptible.

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So, the word, then, for immortality in Greek appears three times. Now, the passage in 1

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Timothy 6, verses 15 -16, which is a doxology, the Apostle Paul points out there in verse 15, which

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God will display at the proper time. Now, it's important to realize that from this text, only

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God possesses inherent or intrinsic immortality. And what that means is that God is the only being who has no beginning and no ending.

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He is what we would call in philosophy a necessary being, a being that does not depend on anything for its existence.

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He alone has deathlessness par excellence. This would also apply, logically, to the

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Triune God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have inherent and intrinsic immortality, since they are the one

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God. This is one of the incommunicable attributes of God. He is immortal. And immortal in the strictest sense of the word.

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And the scripture also points out in John 1, verse 4, that in him, that is the word, was life, and that life was the life of men.

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So, life itself is inherent in God. God is the only being without beginning, without end.

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He's also the only sovereign, according to this passage. But certainly, this passage doesn't mean that there aren't other sovereigns.

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The difference is that God is the unique sovereign, whereas all other sovereigns are derivative in their authority.

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God is the king, but he is also king of kings. In other words, all other kings have a derived legal authority.

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He's also called the Lord of lords. While there are other lords or masters, they have a derived rulership, as Paul points out in Romans 13, that all authority comes from God, and that rulers rule with a derived authority.

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God, we're told in 1 Timothy 6 .15, dwells in unapproachable lands. But we can approach

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God through Christ. No one has ever seen him, we're told, and nor can they see him.

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But certainly, this does not mean that no one will ever see God, because believers will see God, Jesus said, what would other pure in heart, for they shall see

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God. Those who are in Christ have the assurance that they will see God. So 1

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Timothy 6 .15 -16 speaks of God as unique. There's no one like him who possesses these incommunicable attributes that are not shared by his creatures.

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Now, we must unequivocally condemn the Platonic understanding of the immortality of the soul.

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Many have mistaken Plato's view of the soul with the traditional Christian view of the soul. Plato believed that human souls were inherently immortal.

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Christians never have and do not believe that. Rather, Christians understood the soul to survive death, because as image bearers of God, human souls continue to exist beyond death, not because we are inherently immortal, but because God has permitted the human soul to survive death.

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Thus Acts 17 .28, the Apostle Paul points out, for in him we live and move and have our being.

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The Bible, of course, does not use the phrase the immortality of the soul. But that the soul once created by God continues to exist into eternity is so to imply by Scripture.

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God also created a host of heavenly beings, such as the angels. We are told in Scripture that God has selected not only humans for salvation,

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Ephesians 1, but God has also elected angels, 1 Timothy 5 .21,

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in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without pre -judging, doing nothing from partiality.

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These elect angels obviously are not human, and therefore they are not resurrected angels. But they do implicitly possess immortality, as they do not die.

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But their implied immortality, again, is not inherent in them as part of their nature, but rather is derived graciously from God who sustains them.

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Angels are not saved or redeemed beings, as Christ did not die for angels, as Hebrews 2 points out, but Christ only died for the seed of Abraham, for humans.

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Thus angels who are not saved beings possess immortality. Jesus said that in the resurrection, resurrected humans cannot die anymore, which means dachosnes, immortality, because he says they are equal to angels.

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And so in Luke 20, 34 -36, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.

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They cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels, and our sons of God being sons of the resurrection.

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Of course, the angels are not immortal, as God is immortal, that would be equivocation. But because they, like humans, are contingent beings and their ongoing existence is derived from God, the word immortal can be used to describe their continued existence, not their beginninglessness, but their beginning and their sustenance by the

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Creator. The word immortal is never used of angels, but it is clearly implied in Scripture.

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In the case of humans, we're not inherently immortal. We, like angels, are creatures and are contingent beings that always depend on God.

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Humans, as the image of God, I believe, continue to exist after death, either in the presence of God or away from his presence.

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Many passages in Scripture point this out, and this has been the view of the Church throughout history.

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Those who denied this, like Origen, who denied eternal punishment, lapsed into universalism, while others, like Hernobius, who died in 330

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AD, charged Christians with adopting Platonism, which, in effect, was equivocation.

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He misunderstood what Christians meant by the continued existence of the soul. Hernobius also lapsed into heresy, saying that Christ was not equal to the

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Father. Now, it's important to note that Christ, as the federal head of believers, demonstrated that reality of life after death.

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He surrendered his spirit to the Father at death, just like Stephen did in Acts 7, 59 -60.

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As the God -man, Jesus Christ was truly God -man, one person with two natures. At death, there was a separation between his spirit and body.

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The person of God the Son never ceased to exist. Some early Christian Fathers believed that in the intermediate period between Christ's death and resurrection, he went to Hades, to Sheol, to declare his victory for the spirit in prison, as set out in 1

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Peter 3, 18 -20, which, of course, is a disputed passage, and it is also a passage that is quite controversial.

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Jesus demonstrated the reality of his existence after death in raising himself from the dead, as he prophesied in John 2, 18 -22, and also in John 10, 17 -18, where he claimed to have the authority to lay down his life and take it up again.

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But the word resurrection itself is used in the context of believers in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 53 -54, so that in the

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New Testament, there is no doubt about the fact that I affirmed this as well, that the word athanasia and atharsia are applied here to the bodies of the resurrected believers.

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But that is not to say that the immortality of the angelic beings, in the sense that they are derived beings who continue to exist by the grace of God, and that human beings continue to exist following death, that does not mean that this necessarily implies that the souls of people die with their bodies.

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And so, while the word immortality is used of Christian believers, it does refer, whenever it's used, to the resurrection body, and I definitely grant that.

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Which is the resurrection, putting on, of course, immortality. Mortality will put on immortality, the cross will put on impossibility, and our bodies are to be conformed and changed like that.

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In fact, Dr. Tony Kossly, you're out of time. Yes, I just finished. Okay. Well, we're going to our first commercial break.

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When we return, we will have both of our debaters give rebuttals to those opening statements that you just heard.

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They will be seven minutes apiece, and then we're going to go to our midway break and continue with the debate after that with the cross -examination sessions, which are always my favorite.

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I don't think that you can have a proper debate without cross -examinations, although some have tried to insist that we have debates in the past without cross -examinations.

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I always refuse those requests, because those are, I think, the most fascinating and most important aspect of the debates.

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But we're going to our initial break right now, and don't go away, God willing, we're going to be back after these messages from our sponsors with more of the debate between Chris Date and Tony Costa.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, today is day one of a two -day debate between Dr.

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Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and Chris Date, who is host of the

35:00

Theapologetics podcast and co -editor of Rethinking Hell and a

35:05

Consuming Passion. The theme of the debate is Eternal Conscious Punishment versus Conditional Immortality.

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Dr. Tony Costa is an advocate of Eternal Conscious Punishment, and Chris Date is an advocate of Conditional Immortality.

35:22

This first day of the debate involves a sub -theme under that main heading,

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Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved?, where our guest Chris Date is defending that position, that immortality is only given to the saved, and Dr.

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Tony Costa is opposing that thesis. Now it is time for our rebuttal session, where each debater will have seven minutes to rebut the opening statements that were given before the station break.

35:52

And we begin with Chris Date, with your seven -minute rebuttal. I want to clarify one thing before I get started in my rebuttal proper.

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I'm not saying that I expect this not to counteract my time, but I just wanted to explain that when I said we're debating the immortality of the body and not the immortality of the soul,

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I didn't mean to argue that human beings don't have souls that remain conscious in death. If human beings are conscious in death while awaiting resurrection, including

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Jesus, between his death and resurrection, it in no way follows from that that the resurrection bodies of the lost will be made immortal.

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That's the point I was making by emphasizing that our debate today is about the resurrection bodies of the lost.

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You see, if the doctrine of eternal torment maintained that the wicked would suffer in hell forever as disembodied souls, well then the immortality of the soul might be more relevant to our discussion today.

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And in fact, we'd be having a very different discussion. But no, the doctrine of eternal torment maintains that the lost will be resurrected and that their bodies will be made immortal and incorruptible as well.

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Now, with that clarification out of the way, it seems to me, and I really enjoyed getting to know

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Dr. Costa on the phone recently, and I do count him as a friend and as a dear brother in Christ, and I'm grateful that he feels the same way about me.

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And so in what I'm about to say, I mean no disrespect, but so far as I can tell, the large majority of Dr.

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Costa's opening really didn't make a case at all for denying our debate question, that is, denying that immortality is given only to the saved.

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So far as I can tell, the following comprise the bulk of Dr. Costa's case.

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First of all, that only God is innately immortal, but that that doesn't preclude creatures from receiving a derived immortality from God.

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I totally agree, and the listeners will note that I didn't mention 1 Timothy 6 .16 in my opening case, because I'm not arguing, we're not talking, we're not debating about innate immortality, we're talking about whether immortality will be given to the saved only, as I affirm, or to the resurrected lost as well, as Dr.

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Costa affirms. Secondly, he argued that Christian traditionalists throughout history, that is, believers in eternal torment, don't believe in the

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Platonic doctrine of the innate immortality of the soul or in the innate immortality of angels, it's all derived from God.

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I guess that falls under the category of the first set of arguments that I mentioned that Dr. Costa made, and again, that's perfectly fine,

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I accept that. I'm not arguing that the doctrine of eternal torment entails an innate immortality of the soul or of resurrection bodies.

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I'm just arguing that whereas the doctrine of eternal torment says that immortality will be given to the resurrected bodies of the lost, the

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Bible teaches otherwise. Dr. Costa also pointed out that Arnobius appears to have slipped into heresy, and I am not disputing that.

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But even if that's true, Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyon, and even Athanasius the

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Great, Athanasius contramundum, Athanasius against the world, the stalwart defender of Trinitarian orthodoxy between the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the 4th century, he—all of these people—taught that immortality is something that will be given only to the resurrection bodies of the saved.

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So what about Arnobius? We still have other Church Fathers, both before and after Arnobius, who taught differently from what has become the dominant tradition since the time of Augustine.

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And then finally, the one other argument that Dr. Costa made that I think is fairly irrelevant to our discussion today is the intermediate conscious state of Jesus, that he didn't cease to exist between death and resurrection.

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Again, I'm not disputing otherwise—I'm not claiming otherwise. If humans have souls, including

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Jesus, that are conscious between death and resurrection, it in no way follows from that that their resurrection bodies will also be made immortal.

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So the vast majority, as far as I can tell, of my friend Dr. Costa's opening case really didn't have anything at all to do with denying our debate question today.

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Only one very brief argument, as far as I can tell, did attempt to deny our debate question today, and that was

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Dr. Costa's appeal to the same text I appealed to, Luke 20, around verse 33.

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Dr. Costa said—and this is pretty close to a quote, if not an outright quote—resurrected humans cannot die anymore because they're equal to angels.

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Now, if you have Bible in front of you, listeners, go check out Luke verses 34—not 33—verses 34 and following, because it doesn't say resurrected humans cannot die anymore.

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As I read it, as I quoted it as saying in my opening, Jesus here says, the sons of this age,

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Mary and her given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age into the resurrection from the dead.

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It is they who Jesus says cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, because they are sons of the resurrection.

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So Luke 20 and 33 doesn't at all support Dr. Costa's denial of the debate question today.

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It says what I've said, that only—it indicates, at least, what I have said, that only the resurrected saved will be unable to die any longer.

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And as for the fact that Jesus here says that the resurrected saved will be—or are—equal to angels, it's important to note that in the parallel passages, including

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Matthew 22 verses 29 to 33—it's the same story told by Matthew that we just read from the pen of Luke—Jesus doesn't just say angels, but he says the angels in heaven.

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He says in verse 30, in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

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So you see, the angels who are immortal, to whom Jesus is comparing the resurrected people who will be unable to die anymore, are the angels in heaven.

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Now, to what extent that's relevant to this debate is something we can discuss in cross -examination, but the point that I'm getting at is that in this passage, which is the only one that I can tell is something

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Dr. Costa offered in support of his denial of the debate question today, only the saved are said to be unable to die anymore when they are resurrected.

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The implication is that those who are not counted worthy to attain to that age will still be able to die anymore.

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And this is consistent with the rest of my case, and I'll remind you what that was. First of all, the tree of life—access to it was revoked in Genesis 3 from Adam and Eve with the explicit purpose that they would not be able to live forever.

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And that tree of life reappears in the closing chapters of Revelation, where only the saved have access to its fruit, indicating that only the saved will be made immortal and capable of living forever.

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Paul says that immortality has to be sought and will be received only by some, he says that it's meant to make believers fit to inherit the kingdom of God in 1

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Corinthians 15, and Jesus himself says that God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.

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Eternal life is only for believers. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. And now we're going to have

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Dr. Tony Costa provide his seven -minute rebuttal to Chris Date's opening statement.

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Thank you so much. My rebuttal period, I want to mention the fact that the title of today's debate is

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Immortality Only Given to the Saved. So, in that title, we're not necessarily dealing only with the resurrection.

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By the way, Dr. Costa, I have to interrupt you briefly. Could you get closer to whatever phone or device you're using, because you seem very distant.

43:29

How does this sound? That much better. Please continue to do the debate. Okay. Okay, very good.

43:36

So, as I was pointing out in my rebuttal period, I just want to point out the topic of our debate today is

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Immortality Only Given to the Saved? So, we're not strictly dealing with just the resurrected body.

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The question is, is immortality only given to the saved? This doesn't necessarily have to do only with the soul, or with the body, and so forth.

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It's the question of immortality itself, and that's why I included the arguments for the soul. The reason why, historically, the

44:08

Church has understood the idea that the damned continue to exist in the body for all eternity is because of passages in Scripture, like Matthew 25, 46, that the damned go into eternal punishment, the righteous go into eternal life.

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In Matthew 10, 28, Jesus says, do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.

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And so there, the wicked are described as being in resurrected bodies.

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Obviously, it's referring to the time of the resurrection. Daniel 12, talks about those who rise to everlasting contempt.

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And so the reason why many of the Church Fathers and the

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Reformers held to this view is because it speaks of the souls of the damned and the bodies of the damned being brought together in resurrection, and that they would exist into eternity.

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Now, Chris may mention of Genesis 3 and the Tree of Life, but what he doesn't mention is the fact that Genesis 2, 17 points out that Adam and Eve did die on the day that they took up the forbidden fruit.

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The Lord warned them that in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. And they were spiritually dead already, they were severed from God, and then in due time they would physically die as well.

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They were exiled, obviously, from the Garden of Eden because their relationship with God had been severed through sin.

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So that death, if you will, spiritual death, is separation from God, just as physical death is separation of the soul or the spirit from the body.

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Now, in terms of Romans 2, 7 and 2 Timothy 1, 10, of course, Paul is dealing in context there particularly only with believers, as he does as well in 1

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Corinthians 15, 53, and 54. But the Apostle Paul, of course, in the Book of Acts also mentions that there will be a resurrection of the just and the unjust.

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Now, it's true that the Scriptures do not specifically say what the nature of the resurrected bodies of the damned will be, but the fact that they are described, and this will be our topic tomorrow, but the fact that they are described as suffering eternal punishment away from the presence of the

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Lord implies that their bodies and their souls going together continue to exist into eternity.

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Now, in terms of Romans 6, 23, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God in eternal life through our

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Lord Jesus Christ, Christ then goes on to take that to mean, of course, that death means, from what

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I'm understanding, cessation of existence. I don't hold to that view. I think death implies a separation of spirit or soul from the body.

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And then he tries to link it with Romans 7, 1. However, the context of Romans 7, 1 shows very clearly that the context there is talking about the relationship of the believer to the law.

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He's talking about how the law has died, and that we are now married to a new husband, that is

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Jesus Christ. And then Paul talks about the struggle that we face in the flesh, though I think the context of Romans 7 is clearly one of the relationship of the believer to the law and how they live now to Christ, not to their old taskmaster or their old husband, the law.

47:16

John 3, 16, Chris points out that God's love the world, that whoever believes on the

47:23

Son of God will not perish, but have everlasting life. But again, Chris takes that word perish as a conditional immortality advocate.

47:31

He takes that word perish to mean to be destroyed or to cease to exist. I do not take it that way. I don't believe that there's any word in the

47:38

Greek New Testament that communicates the idea of annihilation. The word perish means to be lost, to be rendered useless, it means to be wasted, and so forth.

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And of course, the idea of eternal life, the consistent use of that word eternal life, is a qualitative life.

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It's a life that only believers share in because they are in relationship with God. Those who are not in relationship with God do not, and are not described as having eternal life, which is this qualitative, redemptive relationship that we have with God through the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so, I think it's important for us to understand that we don't necessarily confuse eternal life with the idea of immortality.

48:25

It has a qualitative sense to it. Now, in Luke 20, verse 36, my whole point in mentioning Luke 20, verse 36, was to point out there that, and Chris said that in his rebuttal parody, he said, and I quote, angels who are immortal, close quote.

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And so, angelic beings are immortal. Now, that doesn't mean that they are innately immortal, but that they derive their immortality from God.

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And so, my whole point is to show that while God is uniquely and innately immortal, in the sense that he has no beginning and no ending, the heavenly beings, like the angels who are also said to be elect, they are immortal.

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And that's why Jesus compares those who are raised on the day of resurrection, he compares them as being equal to the angels.

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And of course, he says that they die no more. As resurrected beings, they do not experience physical death.

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That's the point. There are a number of deaths that the Bible speaks of. We can talk about that perhaps tomorrow.

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There's physical death, spiritual death, there's something called the second death in the book of Revelation. And so, I think it's important that we understand here that the reason why historically the

49:38

Church has understood the damned to exist in the resurrected bodies, in Gehenna, in eternal punishment, away from the presence of God, is that the word that they employed, like immortality, was to refer to the fact that the bodies of the damned continue.

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They're not ultimately destroyed, but they're not ultimately annihilated. And so, I hope that that helps bring some light to our discourse today.

50:06

Well, thank you, Dr. Tony Costa. And we're going to be going to our midway break right now. The midway break is always a longer than normal break that we have.

50:15

That is because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program twice a day, in the morning drive, 8 to 10 a .m.,

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and also 8 to 10 p .m., in a pre -recorded fashion, they require of us this midway break because, according to FCC regulations, they have to localize

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida, and therefore they use this time in the middle of our show to air their own public service announcements and local content.

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So, please, while they air their local public service announcements and local content, we are going to be airing our globally heard commercials.

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And please use this time wisely. Don't just go to sleep or necessarily take a bathroom break or whatever.

51:05

Of course, you may have to. But please use this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers, because remember, folks, we depend upon our advertisers to exist as a program.

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The financial support their advertising campaigns provide enable Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to continue to broadcast.

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Therefore, the more you patronize our advertisers, it is logical that the more likely they will remain on the air as our advertisers for a longer period of time, which obviously subsequently means that we will remain on the air due to the fact that they are supporting us financially.

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So, please, write down as much of the information as you can write down and listen to and further ensure that you will be successful in your attempts to patronize them.

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Also, use this time to write down questions, because at the end of the debate, we're going to be given five minutes or more,

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God willing, for listener questions. And we hope that they are evenly divided between those that are either neutral on the issue or who either support immortality only being given to the saved or that they are given to all of humanity, either for eternal life with Christ or eternal damnation and torment.

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So, write down those questions and you can send them to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -S -E -N at gmail .com,

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Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors with more of the debate.

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And before we return to our debate, just have a few announcements to make. First of all, the

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I am going to be, God willing, once again at the Foundations Conference in New York City. And what better place, what better time of the year than to be in New York City than during the

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G3 Conference. The G3 Conference stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory, and this January's theme is

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Worship Matters. They always have an absolutely phenomenal lineup of speakers, and this

01:06:11

January is no exception. They have, again, Dr. Stephen J. Lawson speaking there.

01:06:17

They have Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of John MacArthur's ministry, Grace to You. They have

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Radio, Derek Thomas, a world -renowned

01:06:28

Presbyterian author, pastor, and conference speaker, and many more, and John MacArthur himself has been added to the lineup.

01:06:35

I can't wait to be there, and I hope you join me there. That's Thursday, January 16th through Saturday, January 18th, 2020, at the

01:06:43

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia. To register, go to g3conference .com,

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01:07:09

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01:08:00

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01:09:01

That's also the email address where you can send in questions for Dr. Tony Costa and Chris Date on our theme today,

01:09:08

Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved? This is a debate between a conditional immortality advocate, which is

01:09:16

Chris Date, and Dr. Tony Costa, who is an opponent of that who believes in eternal conscious punishment.

01:09:23

Now is the best time of the debate. We have our cross -examinations coming up, and each of our participants, each of our debaters, will be given 10 minutes to cross -examine the other debater.

01:09:36

And keep in mind that during these cross -examination periods, we have one debater who is only going to be asking questions, not giving speeches, and the other debater is only going to be answering questions, not asking questions of his own, unless they're just clarifying questions like, what did you mean by that?

01:09:57

And the one answering questions is also not to give speeches as well.

01:10:02

And we open up now with Chris Date cross -examining Dr. Tony Costa for 10 minutes, and you can begin now,

01:10:09

Chris Date. Thank you, Chris, for including cross -examination in this debate.

01:10:14

I agree with you and with somebody I'm a huge fan of, Dr. James White, that cross -examination is the most important part of a debate.

01:10:22

Sadly, I don't think I'm very good at cross -examination, so we'll see how well the following 20 minutes go.

01:10:28

And Dr. Costa, thank you so much as well for participating in this and for your kindness and the love and respect that you showed me both so far today as well as in the interview that you gave on the radio show a few weeks ago.

01:10:42

I'm looking forward to getting to know you better. So with all of that out of the way, you said in your rebuttal, right toward the end of it, you said that the bodies of the lost are, quote, not ultimately destroyed, unquote.

01:10:54

Is that right? Would you agree with that? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Earlier in your rebuttal, you quoted

01:11:01

Matthew 1028. How did you quote it? What was it you said Matthew 1028 says? Yeah, I didn't have the text in front of me, so I may have been paraphrasing part of it.

01:11:10

What I said was, do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.

01:11:19

So would you say that the word that translates the underlying Greek word, would you say that the

01:11:25

Greek word means something different than what you meant when you said that the bodies of the lost aren't ultimately destroyed?

01:11:32

No, it doesn't mean something different. I should have qualified that by saying that I don't think destroy means to annihilate.

01:11:38

I don't think it means to cause something to go into non -existence. So something can be destroyed but still exist.

01:11:46

So just a quick, if I can just continue to answer that question, a tornado rips through my house, it's destroyed my house, but the house of course has not been annihilated.

01:11:56

So I didn't make the argument that destroy means annihilated, and I'll respond in my rebuttal to the analogy that you gave of the tornado in the house.

01:12:04

But the question I'm asking is, you said in your rebuttal that the bodies of the lost aren't ultimately destroyed.

01:12:11

And then in answering my question, you said you do think the word, the Greek word translated here, destroy, means what you meant when you said the bodies of the lost aren't ultimately destroyed.

01:12:21

So doesn't it, it sounds to me, would you just say that Matthew 10, 28 is wrong, or I'm not sure?

01:12:29

No, no, I wouldn't say that. What I meant in my initial comment about it being destroyed, is not being destroyed as opposed to being destroyed, is that most people take, at least in the conditionally mortality capitals

01:12:44

I've been reading, like Edward Fudge and others, take the word destroy as to mean to be annihilated out of existence.

01:12:53

And so I take the word apollumi in Matthew 10, 28, it can mean destroy, it has other meanings as well, depending on the semantic range of the word that's used in context, but I'm using it more in the context of most conditionally mortality advocates who claim that destroy equals annihilation.

01:13:15

Okay, so just to make sure I understand, you're saying that the risen bodies of the lost won't ultimately be destroyed in the sense that they won't be annihilated, and Matthew 10, 28 says the bodies of the lost will be destroyed, but he means something,

01:13:31

Jesus means something different there than annihilate. Correct, correct. Okay, good.

01:13:36

The word used there in Matthew 10, 28 does mean destroy, but it doesn't imply this idea of annihilation.

01:13:44

Great, and I agree with you, I don't think that it does, but I do think it means something that goes contrary to your view, because, and here's a preliminary question, you said, you are affirming that the resurrected bodies of the lost will be made immortal and that the risen lost will live forever in hell, correct?

01:14:02

Yes, I am saying that, correct. Okay, good. So the question I have for you is, the word

01:14:09

Apollomi there, translated destroy, it also appears in a number of other places in the

01:14:15

Synoptic Gospels in the same Greek voice, that is, the active voice, and with the same transitivity between one agent and another, you know, one person destroying another.

01:14:24

And I'll give you a few examples, and I'd like to know how you understand what the word means. I'm going to replace the

01:14:30

English translation with the Greek word, and I'd like to know what you think it is saying. In Matthew 2, 13,

01:14:38

Joseph is told in a dream, rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to Apollomi him.

01:14:48

What do you think is meant there? It could be translated to kill, to destroy, so either kill or destroy,

01:14:58

I think most translations opt for either one of those two. Okay, but what is meant by destroy there?

01:15:03

Something like an emphatic killing, right? Like a slay, that kind of thing? Yeah, to slay the child, yeah, to slay the child.

01:15:10

Okay, Matthew 12, 14 says the Pharisees went out and conspired against Jesus how to Apollomi him.

01:15:17

What would you say Apollo means here? It could also mean, it could mean either destroy, to kill.

01:15:25

Okay, I would say either one of those two. Okay, Matthew 21, 41, the

01:15:32

Jews say to Jesus after he tells a parable about the vineyard owner and the tenants, they say he will put those wretches to a miserable

01:15:41

Apollomi and let out the vineyard to the other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons. What do you think Apollomi means there?

01:15:48

Again, it could mean either destroy or to kill. Okay, would it surprise you or would you deny that everywhere the

01:15:56

Greek word Apollomi is used in the Synoptic Gospels, that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, to describe what one personal agent does to another in the act of voice.

01:16:06

Can you think of any examples where Apollomi meets those criteria in the Synoptic Gospels and doesn't mean something like, as you pointed out in these passages

01:16:14

I've asked you about, slay or kill or, you know, destroy, and that kind of fatic killing? Yeah, not to my knowledge, no.

01:16:21

Okay, I appreciate that. You also mentioned in discussing Genesis 3 and the

01:16:27

Tree of Life, you mentioned that in Genesis 2, 17, Adam is told that on the day you eat of the fruit, you will surely die, and you interpreted that to mean that Adam and Eve literally but spiritually died when they ate of the fruit.

01:16:38

And I'm not disputing that here, but the question I have for you is when, later in Genesis 3, when

01:16:44

God says, lest man reach out his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live forever, and then the

01:16:52

Genesis author says, therefore Yahweh sent him out of the Garden of Eden, would you agree that this is an indication that if Adam and Eve had been permitted to continue eating from the

01:17:01

Tree of Life, they would have gone on living? Well, I think that the eating of the

01:17:07

Tree of Life, I think we have to take it at a deeper level, that the eating of the Tree of Life meant fellowship with God as well, an intimate fellowship with God, and I think what it's showing us there is that man had not only spiritually died, but that he was barred from that Tree of Life, that he would face exile from God's presence.

01:17:26

And so I take the reference to eating of the Tree of Life to refer to participating in that eternal life that Jesus later talks about.

01:17:36

And so I think the thrust of the passage is to show us that Adam and Eve had been exiled from the

01:17:44

Garden, from the Temple of God on the earth, and that that relationship that they had with God had been completely severed.

01:17:52

And so they were cast out of that redemptive relationship that they had with God in the

01:17:59

Garden. Okay, just because I've only got two minutes, I'm going to try and be a little bit more aggressive, and I apologize in advance.

01:18:06

No, please go ahead. Okay, but just going back to what the text is in verse 22, God says, in order that Adam will not reach out his hand and take also of the

01:18:15

Tree of Life and eat and live forever, and then it says he sent him out of the Garden. So how do you understand live forever there?

01:18:21

Would you say that means something other than physically live forever? I think it means both spiritual and physical.

01:18:27

I think it's referring to that qualitative life I mentioned earlier. Okay, but you said both.

01:18:34

Okay, but you said both. He would have lived both spiritually and physically, because he would have been in fellowship with God.

01:18:41

The expulsion from the Garden demonstrates that he lost that fellowship. Okay, but then in Revelation 22, where the

01:18:48

Tree of Life reappears, you would say that there it only has the spiritual aspect, not the physical aspect? It's both.

01:18:54

It's both, because it's resurrected, redeemed people that inhabit the New Heaven and the New Earth and the

01:18:59

New Jerusalem. Okay, let me rephrase the question. Would the lost who lack access to the

01:19:05

Tree of Life in that picture, they will live forever physically as well, even though they lack the access to the Tree of Life that imparted it?

01:19:11

Yeah, they don't have fellowship with God. They are outside the city. The dogs and those who commit lies and so forth, they're outside the city gates.

01:19:19

They're not annihilated. They're outside the city gates, and they don't have access to the Tree of Life. Okay, but their physical life forever is secured by some other means besides the

01:19:29

Tree of Life? It is, but it's not a fellowship with God. That's fine.

01:19:35

I'm not suggesting... I've only got 30 seconds left, so let me push a little bit on one other thing. You quoted

01:19:41

Luke 23, and I mentioned in my rebuttal that in your opening, you selectively quoted it as though it were talking about humans in general, and then it sounded like you did the same thing in your rebuttal.

01:19:55

Just to clarify, when Jesus says in verse 35 that those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection of the dead and they'll be sons of God and equal to angels, you would agree that that's referring specifically to the saved, correct?

01:20:07

Yes. Okay, I think that's my time. Well, thank you very much,

01:20:13

Chris and Tony. Now it's time for Tony Costa to cross -examine

01:20:19

Chris Date for 10 minutes, and you may begin now, Dr. Costa. Okay, thank you again,

01:20:25

Chris, again for your amicable spirit, and I really appreciate our discussion that we're having.

01:20:33

So, Chris, do you believe that angels, some of the angels, have been elected by God?

01:20:40

Yes. And do you believe that angels are redeemed or saved?

01:20:48

Not good angels. I don't think they have anything to be saved from. Okay. Are angels immortal?

01:20:58

The elect angels, I think, are. Okay. Is there any passage in Scripture that uses the word athanasia or atharsia in relation to the angels?

01:21:10

Not that I'm aware of, but just to be clear, my argument has been not specifically about the word athanasia or the word atharsia, but also about the language of living forever versus not dying.

01:21:21

And you do, in fact, have the parallel, as I mentioned in my rebuttal, the parallel to Luke 20 in verse

01:21:26

Matthew 22, in which it specifically refers to the angels in heaven. And so it seems as though Jesus has only the elect angels in mind when he says that the sons of God will be made equal to them and therefore unable to die.

01:21:37

And then you also have the psalm, I don't remember which psalm it is off the top of my head, but it's one famous for picturing this divine council in which

01:21:45

God is pronouncing condemnation on these godly beings, and he says that they will die like men.

01:21:53

So you actually do have, I think, a number of places in Scripture which indicate that the fallen angels will, in fact, die.

01:22:02

Okay, so then you do believe that the angels are immortal, even though the word immortality or the word immortal is never used in relation to the angels, you believe that the idea can still be implicit without the actual word being attached to angels.

01:22:19

I wouldn't say it's implicit. I would say that's what immortality means, is living forever.

01:22:25

And so a verse is not living forever, and we have texts in Scripture that say angels will live forever, elect ones, and we have texts which seem to indicate that the non -elect angels will not.

01:22:36

So yes, I am comfortable using the word immortality to describe the state of living forever. Okay, so what

01:22:42

I'm trying to get at is we don't necessarily need the word immortal or immortality to be present for the idea or the concept to be communicated in other language.

01:22:53

Correct. Okay, so the title of today's debate is, Is Immortality Only Given to the

01:23:00

Safe? Where do the angels derive their immortality? Where did they get their immortality from? The same place that we elect will,

01:23:08

God. And so let me ask you the question again. Is immortality only given to the safe?

01:23:16

Okay, well, just to be clear, I will answer your question with a simple yes or no in a moment, but just to be clear, the debate today is not merely encapsulated by the title of the debate.

01:23:25

It's in the larger context that Chris Arnzen has multiple times now laid out for the listening audience, which is that we're debating two positions, the position of conditional immortality and the position of eternal torment.

01:23:37

And although the question of today's debate applies immortality specifically to the safe, the larger question is, will the safe be immortal or will the lost be as well?

01:23:48

And so going back to your question, do I agree that immortality is only given to the safe? In the context of this debate, yes, but I agree that outside of this debate, we can affirm that, yes, immortality is something the elect angels have as well.

01:24:03

Okay, so the reason why I asked that, Chris, is because the question asks, is immortality only given to the safe?

01:24:10

And so I think you would agree with the thesis that I've been arguing, that immortality is also given to the angels, who are not humans.

01:24:19

I would agree with that, but again, the context of this two -day debate we're having isn't about the angels, it's about human beings, it's about the lost.

01:24:28

And the question is whether they will be immortal, as the doctrine of eternal torment has historically affirmed, or will it be only the risen saved?

01:24:36

Right, okay. So we are agreed, though, that angels also share immortality as well.

01:24:42

Elect angels, I would agree, yes. Right, right, the elect angels. Another question I had, Chris, is just,

01:24:48

I'm just a bit confused about our discussion about the soul, the intermediate. I've used your debate with Dr.

01:24:54

Tokunen in 2013, I don't know if you've changed some positions, that was six years ago, but in that debate, you made the following statement, and I'm quoting,

01:25:11

I do, but I wasn't arguing for conditional immortality then, I was answering a question about a different belief that I have, which is called, as you pointed out, physicalism.

01:25:21

But physicalism is not the view of all conditionalists, it's the view of the one you're talking to, but it's not the view of Irenaeus of Lyon, who was a conditionalist, and it's not the view of many within the conditionalist community today.

01:25:32

So when I ask, the reason I ask this question is because Chris is our federal head, of course, he's our representative. So do you believe that God the

01:25:39

Son, who took on flesh, do you believe that when he died on the cross of Calvary, do you believe that the second person of the

01:25:47

Trinity went out of existence? No. Okay, can you explain that, can you maybe clarify that, because there's a measure of confusion here.

01:25:58

Sure, so how did he survive? Sure, well, so first of all,

01:26:03

I want to reiterate that the question of the consciousness of the soul between death and resurrection, although related to this debate, is not the topic of this debate, and as I've already pointed out, there are conditionalists on both sides of the question.

01:26:17

So you happen to be talking to one conditionalist who holds to a physicalist view of human nature, but if you were debating

01:26:22

Irenaeus of Lyon or Peter Grice or any number of modern John Stott, probably you'd be getting different answers, and that's fine.

01:26:29

But more to your question, how could he not have ceased to exist if he ceased to be conscious?

01:26:35

Well, I don't think that death means cessation of existence or cessation of consciousness. I understand that you think that that's what people like Fudge and others have said, but that's not what

01:26:43

I'm arguing, and I don't, frankly, think it's what they were arguing. We believe death is a cessation of life, so I think that Jesus died on the cross, that's what death means, to cease to live, and I think that human beings, when they're dead, are not conscious.

01:26:56

But Jesus is, of course, not only human, he's also divine. So the divine nature of Christ did not die, even though in his human body he did, and this is particularly not problematic if we embrace the historic view of divine timelessness.

01:27:14

Because if the divine nature exists outside of time, then by definition, what happens to the Son in time can't affect the nature of God outside of time.

01:27:23

Okay, so you do assert that God the Son, that person of the Trinity, was conscious, spiritually speaking, after the death of the body.

01:27:34

Well, I tentatively hold to the doctrine of the right hand. It's just that you're saying you're a physicalist. That's where I'm getting confused,

01:27:39

Chris, because you're saying you're a physicalist, but yet you're maintaining that the divine person, in your debate with Dr.

01:27:46

Fernandez, you said that he was unconscious while he was dead. The person, you didn't necessarily speak of his humanity there, but the divine person.

01:27:53

And that's why I'm confused. Are you saying that God the Son was unconscious, or are you saying that that only applied to his humanity?

01:28:01

As I explained in my recent debate with Unitarian Dale Tuggy, and this debate will be coming out in a book form pretty soon,

01:28:09

I hold to a divine timelessness view, which means I believe that the person of the Son exists timelessly in his divine nature, but in time he exists in his human nature.

01:28:20

And so when the Son of God in time died and ceased to be conscious, as all humans do, in my view, that doesn't affect the timeless, eternal, divine person of the

01:28:31

Son outside of time, because by definition, what's outside of time can't be impacted by what takes place in time.

01:28:37

Now how do you reconcile that with your physicalist view? I think

01:28:43

I just did. Jesus, the Son of God, in time, is a human being.

01:28:49

As I explained in my debate with Dale Tuggy, I believe that the person of the Son exists, that there's a hypostatic union between the divine and human natures in the person of Christ.

01:28:58

That divine nature is timeless, and the human nature is timeful. So, Jesus was a human in time.

01:29:05

He was also divine timelessly. But his human death in time, and his ceasing to be conscious of the human being in time, has no effect on his consciousness outside of time as the divine

01:29:15

Son. Okay, so the divine person of the Son of God was still conscious after his physical death?

01:29:25

Well, we have to be careful with language like still and after when we're contrasting what happens in time with what happens outside of time.

01:29:33

Yes, I agree. Do you believe he was God in the flesh? He was fully God -filling then, even in the Incarnation? Yeah, but I don't think the divine nature exists in time.

01:29:42

So, I don't think the divine nature entered into time and joined itself to a human nature.

01:29:48

I think that the divine person, who has a divine nature outside of time, became a human in time.

01:29:55

Okay. So, in co -options to not—and I'm not trying to get off -topic, it's just a crisis in our figurehead.

01:30:02

I agree. We die with Him, we buried with Him, we rise with Him, we're seated with Him. So, I think this is really important to our discussion about immortality and the

01:30:10

Saints and so forth. So, are you saying that in the Incarnation, it was really

01:30:17

God the Son who walked among us? As a human, yes. Are you saying He was not—that somehow

01:30:23

He was distinct from that human nature? No, I'm saying the person that is the

01:30:30

Son, who subsists in His divine nature outside of time, began to subsist in a human nature in time in the

01:30:37

Incarnation. And we are out of time for this session, and we're going to be going to our final break right now, and then we will resume our debate with the final rebuttal statements by each debater, and then we'll have audience questions with as much time as we have left after that.

01:30:58

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Visit CitizenPriest .com today. Welcome back, and this is the concluding segment of Part 1 of the debate that we are having.

01:41:01

Part 2 will be held tomorrow, God willing, same time, on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, on the theme is

01:41:08

Conscious Torment of the Damned Eternal. But now we're going to have our rebuttal statements for today's theme,

01:41:17

Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved? And Chris Date has 7 minutes to give his final rebuttal statement of the day.

01:41:27

Thanks again, Chris and Dr. Costa. I just want to start my rebuttal by reiterating that the debate that we are having today is about what will happen to resurrected human beings.

01:41:41

In this part of the debate, the one we're having today, we're discussing whether they will be made immortal. In tomorrow's debate, we'll be discussing whether they will be tormented forever.

01:41:49

Even though the title of this debate says Only to the Saved, the context of our debate has nothing to do with angels, or even for that matter, really, souls.

01:42:01

Now, Dr. Costa spent the bulk of his cross -examination pressing me on the consciousness of human souls between death and resurrection, particularly the soul of Jesus.

01:42:11

But at best, Dr. Costa's questions only challenge my in physicalism. They don't at all challenge the doctrine that we're debating here today, namely the doctrine of conditional immortality.

01:42:22

Because many conditionalists throughout Church history believe and have believed, including the Church Father Irenaeus, that human souls do remain conscious between death and resurrection, but will be destroyed with the body in hell.

01:42:34

Now, I'd be happy to debate Dr. Costa on physicalism sometime, whether on this show or somewhere else, but I would really be grateful if for the remainder of this debate, including our two hours tomorrow, we can stick to the topic at hand, which is the topic of conditional immortality versus eternal torment, that is, whether the risen and lost will be made bodily immortal just as the saved are.

01:42:55

Now, speaking, as I did a moment ago, about the soul being destroyed with the body in hell, even if it remains conscious between death and resurrection, again, that would only challenge my physicalism.

01:43:05

It would not challenge the doctrine of conditional immortality. Dr. Costa quoted Matthew 10 -28 in his rebuttal, as if it supports his answer to our debate question.

01:43:14

And yet, even though Dr. Costa explicitly affirmed that the risen bodies of the lost will not be destroyed, Jesus says in Matthew 10 -28 that God will destroy both soul and body in hell.

01:43:25

Now, Dr. Costa said that the word apollone here doesn't mean annihilate, and I agree. I never said that it does. But what it does mean is slay or kill.

01:43:34

Dr. Costa argued that the Greek word can mean ruin or waste or lost, and that's true when it's used in what grammarians or linguists call the passive Greek voice, or when they use it intransitively, in other words, not to describe what one person does to another, or when the

01:43:50

Greek word is used to describe non -humans like coins or sheep and oil. But when used in the active

01:43:57

Greek voice, and when used transitively to describe what one personal agent does to another, in the

01:44:03

Synoptic Gospels, it consistently means slay or kill. I went through three examples in cross -examination with Dr.

01:44:10

Costa, Matthew 2 -13, in which Herod wants to apollone the baby Jesus, that is, slay him.

01:44:16

In Matthew 12 -14, the Pharisees conspired together about how they might apollone Jesus, that is, slay him.

01:44:23

In Matthew 21 -41, in the story of the wicked tenants, the vineyard owner apollones the wicked tenants, that is, slays them.

01:44:31

And there are many other passages in the Synoptic Gospels where the Greek word apollone appears in the active voice transitively to describe what one personal agent does to another.

01:44:39

Matthew 27 -20, the elders and chief priests urge the people to have Barabbas released and Jesus apollonied, slain.

01:44:47

In Mark 3 -6, the Pharisees plot to apollone Jesus, that is, slay him. Mark 9 -22, the parents of a boy with an unclean spirit tell

01:44:55

Jesus that the spirit often throws the boy into water or into a fire in order to apollone him, that is, slay him.

01:45:01

In Luke 6 -9, Jesus asks if it's lawful on the Sabbath to save life or to apollone, that is, to slay.

01:45:09

You see, the consistent use of the Greek word apollone in the Synoptic Gospels when it's used in the active

01:45:15

Greek voice transitively to describe what one personal agent does to another, just as it's used in Matthew 10 -28 here, it consistently means to slay or kill.

01:45:24

And yet, it's precisely not being slain or killed that Dr. Costa believes is the fate of the resurrected wicked in hell, because they, rather than being slain or killed, will instead be made immortal and will live forever in hell.

01:45:39

Now, Dr. Costa also spent some time on Genesis 2 and 3, and he argued that Genesis 2 -17 indicates

01:45:44

Adam and Eve died spiritually on the day they ate of a fruit. Well, that may be the case, but according to Genesis 3,

01:45:51

I think it was 17, not 17, but later in Genesis 3, as we discussed in cross -examination, the

01:45:56

Tree of Life also maintained their physical life, and their exclusion, their access to it being revoked meant that they would eventually physically die.

01:46:06

And yet, despite the fact that the Tree of Life reappears in the Book of Revelation and only the saved have access to it,

01:46:11

Dr. Costa believes that there will be some other beings other than the Tree of Life by which the resurrected lost will be made alive and immortal forever.

01:46:20

Dr. Costa also argued that in Romans 6 -23, Paul isn't talking about the cessation of existence when he talked about death.

01:46:27

I agree, I didn't say that he was, but he is talking about the loss of life. The original text of Scripture, as Dr.

01:46:33

Costa well knows, did not have chapter and verse breaks, and Paul goes immediately from Romans 6 -23 into Romans 7 -1 and 2 and uses the same language of life and death to refer to ordinary life and death.

01:46:44

When a person's husband, when a woman's husband dies, she is free to remarry.

01:46:50

The idea that Paul changes the meaning of his verbiage in a matter of just from one verse to the next is extremely unlikely.

01:46:59

And, as I pointed out earlier, in Romans 5, the same idea, the wages of sin being death and the free gift of God being eternal life, is used again in the context of physical life and death, because everybody died from Adam to Moses, and Paul uses that as evidence that they sinned in Adam.

01:47:14

So, physical death is indeed what Paul is talking about in Romans 6 -23, and yet Dr. Costa believes that the risen lost will never physically die.

01:47:21

Dr. Costa made the same argument about perish in John 3 -16, but he didn't address the fact that in verses 14 and 15,

01:47:28

Jesus compares himself to the bronze statue that literally saved the physical lives of people who had been fatally bitten by venomous snakes.

01:47:37

So, none of Dr. Costa's arguments, so far as I can tell, hold up. The only arguments that he actually offered that challenged my position are his arguments from Matthew 25 -46, in which

01:47:47

Jesus says that the wicked will go into eternal punishment. Mind you, he says they won't get eternal life.

01:47:53

And Daniel 12 -2, in which the wicked are said to rise unto everlasting contempt. Again, Daniel says only the saved will rise to everlasting life.

01:48:02

Everlasting contempt does not describe the experience of the lost. Contempt is an emotion experienced by those looking at the contemptible lost.

01:48:10

The only other place it's used is in Isaiah 66 -24, to describe the corpses of God -slain enemies being contemptible and abhorrent to the righteous.

01:48:20

So, we'll get into these texts more tomorrow. The point is that literally none of Dr. Costa's case has held up.

01:48:26

Thank you. Okay, Dr. Costa, you now have seven minutes of your own for your final rebuttal of today.

01:48:32

Okay, thank you very much. My whole point in bringing up the whole issue earlier about the thesis title,

01:48:40

Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved?, is that yes, the context has to do, obviously, with Christian believers.

01:48:48

But the title itself is asked, Is Immortality Only Given to the Saved? Now, the reason why

01:48:54

I brought up 1 Timothy 5 -21 about the elect angels is because Chris agreed with me that immortality is something that angels have.

01:49:02

And obviously, it's not an innate immortality, but it is a derived immortality. They have immortality even though the texts nowhere say or use the word immortality in connection with the angels.

01:49:15

My whole point is this. We don't need the word immortality to be used to describe the fate of the bodies of the wicked.

01:49:22

And when I brought up Matthew 10 -28, and we could also reference that with Luke 12 -2, Jesus makes clear that, "...do

01:49:29

not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul," which implies that the soul cannot be killed by humans, but that it can be destroyed or slain by God in Gehenna.

01:49:39

But my point is this. The slaying and the destroying of the soul and body does not imply some sort of cessation of existence or an annihilation of some sort.

01:49:51

The person can still exist, but be in a destroyed state, which is one means of polemy as well.

01:49:59

The other point I wanted to make out as well is with Genesis 2 -3, with the Tree of Life, the

01:50:04

Tree of Life speaks of our relationship with God, which is communicated as having life, having eternal life.

01:50:11

And the wicked do not have eternal life. The Bible says, for example, in 1 John, that a murderer does not have eternal life, he is not in communion with God.

01:50:19

But that does not mean that they as individuals in their resurrected bodies simply come to an end at some point in the future.

01:50:29

They experience eternal loss or eternal misery away from the presence of God.

01:50:35

And so if you're paying close attention to what I said, what I was saying was that we're not saying here that the wicked have eternal life in the same way that the

01:50:46

Bible speaks of eternal life as a relationship, a salvific -redemptive relationship that we have with God through Jesus Christ.

01:50:53

Eternal life is a qualitative life that we have in regeneration. But that does not...you

01:51:00

cannot quote from there and therefore say, well, since the wicked are not set to have life or eternal life, then therefore they simply will terminate in their existence, they'll cease to exist.

01:51:09

That's not what the Scriptures teach. And I would say that historically speaking, even first century

01:51:16

Josephus would tell us that the Pharisees and the Athenians agreed with the view, of course, of the wicked experiencing eternal punishment and, of course, the survival of the soul after death, and something which

01:51:28

Jesus would have held to as well, since none of his debates with the Pharisees had to do with the question of the intermediate state, or he never debated them on these issues other than the

01:51:39

Sadducees, who denied the resurrection. And so in Genesis 2 and 3, the Tree of Life, of course, appears again in Revelation 21 -22, but the point is that those outside the city, who are they?

01:51:51

The dogs, the idolaters, the liars, the sexually immoral, they will have their place in the

01:51:57

Lake of Fire, which they will suffer endlessly. And so my point is this, they have no access to the

01:52:03

Tree of Life because they are not in communion with God. They're outside of the Lamb's Book of Life, and therefore, notice the

01:52:10

Book of Revelation doesn't say that they simply cease to exist, but that they continue outside the city.

01:52:18

When we looked at Romans 6 -23, the wages of sin is death. Yes, that's why we die.

01:52:23

I've never denied the fact that physical death, of course, is part of the Fall, as is spiritual death.

01:52:30

But death, this is something that Chris has not underscored and is extremely important, is that death communicates the concept of separation from God.

01:52:39

And so Adam and Eve died on the day they took the forbidden fruit, and they eventually, in time, died physically.

01:52:45

They were exiled from God's presence. The idea is to be sent away from God's presence, to be kicked out of Eden.

01:52:53

And so, this is what we will see in other passages, where Jesus commands the ghosts to, to, away from me, you cursed ones, into the everlasting fire, and he cast them out into the eternal fire.

01:53:05

These go off into eternal punishment. We'll discuss that tomorrow. But it's important to understand that the concept of death is not a concept of some sort of season to be, but that it communicates separation, both physically and spiritually.

01:53:22

Now, the bronze statue that Chris brought up in John 3, he says, well, Jesus mentioned the bronze serpent that Moses erected in the wilderness, and he said, well, they were healed from physical disease and so forth.

01:53:32

That's quite right. But I think what Chris is doing here is he's committing an executable fallacy here. By putting the carton from the horse, you don't interpret the

01:53:41

Old Testament by the Old Testament. Rather, as Jesus said, we interpret the Old Testament by the

01:53:47

New. What Jesus is doing is he's employing a rabbinic literary device called the Lesser to the

01:53:52

Greater. What he's pointing out is that just as Moses did this in the wilderness, so the

01:53:58

Son of Man will be raised up, and that he will draw all men to himself. In other words, what

01:54:04

Jesus is talking about is he's talking about he will bring spiritual healing and reconciliation to the world.

01:54:10

He's using the Lesser to the Greater argument. And so we don't interpret the New by the Old. It's the reverse.

01:54:17

We always interpret the Old Testament through the lenses of the New Testament. And so I hope tomorrow to discuss this at more length, and realizing, of course, that during the debate,

01:54:29

I did ask Chris, I asked him, do you believe that angels are immortal? He said yes. And so when I asked the question of our thesis that I've been arguing in my opening statement, is immortality only given to the saved?

01:54:42

Just that question alone, as it stands, we would agree that there are other beings, angelic beings and heavenly beings and so forth, that do fit this requirement, this description.

01:54:54

Now, he did cite Psalm 82, and let me very quickly say that Psalm 82 is, some scholars believe it's referring to the children of Israel.

01:55:03

Other scholars, like Dr. Michael Heitzer, take the view that these are the sons of God, these are heavenly beings, but these heavenly beings are under judgment, and they're being judged by God.

01:55:12

God stands in the counsel of the gods, and he brings an accusation against them. And so Psalm 82 is not really relevant to my argument about the elect angels, because as we've both agreed, the elect angels are immortal by nature.

01:55:27

Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Costa, and let's go to our audience questions now.

01:55:32

We only have time for two. We have Anthony in Smithtown, Long Island, New York.

01:55:38

This would be primarily, it seems, a question for Chris Date, and we'll have Chris answer it and Tony respond to Chris's answer.

01:55:47

Since hell is a place where one can never stop sinning, as we see in Romans 8, 7 through 8, and Revelation 21, 8 and 22, 14 through 15, will they not experience perpetual punishment?

01:56:03

Yeah, so I am Reformed. I don't believe that the wicked in hell will have been regenerated and therefore stop sinning.

01:56:10

I totally agree. The debate that we're having is not over the duration of the punishment, it's over the nature of the punishment.

01:56:18

If the nature of the punishment is torment, then if somebody goes, you know, is continually sinning in hell, then yes, they're going to continuously accrue more and more and more torment that has to be paid off by more and more punitive torment.

01:56:32

But if the wages of sin is death, then capital punishment can account for every sin committed all the way up until the executed criminal bereaves his last.

01:56:41

Imagine, for example, a criminal being walked down the Green Mile, you know, and the other prisoners are yelling through the bars of their cells, dead man walking, and as he's being marched to the electric chair, he's punching the guards and kicking them, and he's causing them physical harm.

01:56:56

That would be illegal. They've just committed more crimes, and yet the criminal isn't dragged back to the cell to go suffer more prison time.

01:57:03

No, his death accounts for all those additional crimes committed while he's being marched to the chair.

01:57:08

So my view is that yes, the wicked will continue to sin and have sinful characters as they're being destroyed, but that doesn't mean that they can't be destroyed.

01:57:18

Their destruction can account for the sins they're committing, even in hell. Dr. Costa? Yes, I believe that those in hell continue to sin, and it's a self -perpetuating crime, because they keep sinning against God.

01:57:31

But capital punishment does not explain, of course, that capital punishment takes someone's life away, but the way

01:57:38

Jesus described this state was that of eternal punishment, that they go away into eternal punishment. And so in that case, the penalty there is clearly said to be eternal, and not something that has a terminus point in mind.

01:57:54

We're going to withhold other questions for tomorrow, because we're running out of time, and I think that our debaters would probably like me to give them a brief moment to let our listeners know how they can be contacted, and we'll add an extra question for Dr.

01:58:08

Costa tomorrow. Chris Date, how can our listeners get a hold of you? They can email me at chrisdate at rethinkinghell .com,

01:58:17

or they can easily find me on facebook .com slash chris date and send me a friend request and a message, and I'd be happy to discuss things further.

01:58:25

And Dr. Costa? Yes, they can contact me at tmcos at rogers .com,

01:58:34

and they could also follow me on twitter at tmcos underscore tony.

01:58:42

Great. Well, I have an idea. I will invite both of our debaters back after tomorrow, which is the part two of the debate.

01:58:50

Perhaps we can have a third program where all you two do is answer questions from our audience.

01:58:57

I think that that would be a great way for all of those who will be frustrated that we won't have time for their questions to have their questions asked and answered as many as possible, at least.

01:59:07

So I'll discuss that with you when we get off the air. But I want to thank both of you. This has been an excellent debate.

01:59:13

You both were extremely well behaved. There was no ad hominem remarks. There was no talking over one another.

01:59:20

Everybody kept to their time or even discontinued their messages before their time was over.

01:59:30

So I just want to thank you both. I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:38

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to you joining us tomorrow for day number two of the debate on the theme,

01:59:46

Is Conscious Torment of the Damned Eternal? We look forward to hearing from you tomorrow.