Eternal Conscious Torment

The Recent Debate Over Eternal Conscious Torment and Annihilationism

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. With me are Michael Durham, David Gasson, Andrew Hudson, and.

I'm Dylan Hamilton. Tonight we will be discussing eternal conscience, conscious formant. It has been a topic of discussion in the church recently. You are hearing this about early to mid-December, or we're recording it early to mid-December, and Kirk Cameron has been in the social media news, if you will, over his discussion with his son on the topic.

And Michael, if you would, start.

What Annihilationism and Conditional Immortality Claim

Us off on eternal conscience formant. Right, or ECT for short, because as theologians like to do, let's abbreviate this. And it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing. No one really wants to talk about hell.

And, you know, it's kind of hard to blame them. And doing a little bit of research for this particular podcast, I came across a, I don't know, like a 12-minute clip of James White answering a question about annihilationism and trying to give a very brief answer to his caller about the matter.

And he said, first of all, I don't want to be the apologist for hell. Like, who wants that job? And no one really wants to delve deep into the particulars. So it's a hard thing to look at. But given that, there are ramifications of what we believe and how we are receiving the testimony of the Scriptures.

So although this is a recent hot topic in regards to Kirk Cameron's video with his son and the amount of material that came out of that as everyone begins to respond and try to answer these objections.

And then you read the comments below the videos as the debates start sparking between those who call themselves annihilationists or those who are called traditionalists, or ECT, Eternal Conscious Torment, versus those who call themselves conditionalists.

So on the one side, the annihilationists or the conditionalists are, it's a way of saying it negatively and positively. Say it negatively, they say the wicked will not continue to endure in torment, but they will be annihilated.

Now I can understand them wanting to get a different term, because if you're walking around saying, I'm an annihilationist, who you're trying to annihilate, right? That's kind of a negative term. So they have another term, conditionalist.

And what they mean by that is the eternality of the soul is conditional upon belief in Jesus Christ, upon salvation. Only the saved, only the redeemed are those who will live eternally. But those who do not believe in Christ and are not saved, they will not live eternally.

So eternal life or eternality of the soul is conditional. And so that's a more, I think, more positive way of trying to state their position. And the dividing line regarding this particular debate will follow along three axes.

First of all is the testimony of scripture. So there are some passages of scripture which sound like the wicked after death will be annihilated. For example, Jesus says, do not fear man who can only destroy the body, but fear God who can destroy both the body and soul in hell.

And then we have to, what does the word destroy mean? How is it used in other contexts? And so on. But on first reading, it sounds like you get annihilated. And I can understand somebody walking away with that point of view.

However, there are other passages in scripture which indicate eternal ongoing punishment. So that in, you know, Math 25, the righteous have an eternal reward and the wicked have an eternal punishment, right?

So they're going to be eternally punished. And the descriptions of that in Revelation are pretty clear. The lake of fire that burns forever and the Satan and the dragon, you know, the beast and the false prophet are tortured forever, tormented forever without rest, and also the wicked with them.

They have no rest. Smoke goes up forever, forever and ever. Revelation 14, Revelation 20, so on. So the fire prepared for the devil and his angels, into this the wicked go, and they also have the same experience there.

And so the conditionalist is going to read those things and say, this is what these terms mean. Yes, the fire is eternal, but not the suffering. It'll burn forever, but that doesn't mean you're going to experience it forever.

Yes, it's a forever judgment, but because it's so final. And so they have a sense in which they have a way of reading it. And they say, we think we can be consistent in reading it this way internally with the scriptures.

And the ECT, eternal conscious torment, or the traditionalist is going to say, no, I think we're consistent in the way that we read the scriptures. Because when you point out passages that say, the destroy the body and soul in hell, we can show you that that word destroy doesn't mean a non-existence.

And you can see it being used in these various contexts of just ruination, right? And it doesn't mean that this goes out of existence, but that it's just totally ruined. So back and forth on the scriptures, that's one axis of disagreement.

And I think the most important one is that we got to read the scriptures and see what the scriptures say, one way or the other. And like James White said, I would like to be an annihilationist. I think I would like to have that position.

And for him, yes, the scriptures matter, but also there is the theological axis.

JS Lewis actually said something very similar. He said that there was one doctrine that I could take out, it'd be this doctrine of hell, but I can't escape it because the scriptures are pretty clear on it.

Yes. And so that has to be examined. And now you could probably study the position for a good 30 minutes or an hour and walk away as an annihilationist. I don't think it would hold up under a lot more extensive study.

For some people it does. And there's some theological concerns. The theological concerns are about the nature of God, right? For the traditionalist, God is proven as wholly good and just and right because of eternal conscious torment.

It only makes sense being that the eternality of God, the immensity of God, the infinite nature of God being offended, that the fitting punishment for the crime is eternal punishment. For the other side of it, they say this would make God unjust and they don't want to have an unjust God.

And I think they'll be inconsistent with the Bible. And we would say, well, if God was proven to be unjust, then you've done something wrong with your theology, obviously. And so they would say, well, it's a lifetime of sin.

So there should be an appropriate amount of punishment, not an infinite, you know, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, or it should be an appropriate amount of punishment for this sin, not infinity. And so they're concerned about what does this say about justice?

What does this say about God, that if we believe in eternal conscious torment? And then I would say that the so there's doctrinal concerns and they can go broader than that. But there's the particular texts that both sides would look at and say, no, this proves my position, no, this proves my position.

And then there's the doctrinal concerns about what does it say about God. And then the third part is more of the emotional slash pastoral disagreement. So on the one side, it says, you know, this is an awful thing for us to dream up, you know, eternal conscious torment.

This wickedness and being punished, but with immense cruelty forever and ever. I can't fathom it, imagine it. This is a horrific thing to ponder. It's a terrible thing to believe in. And it's seeing that I say it's not biblical and it makes God be out a monster.

I don't think we should hold to this because it's a terrible thing and it disturbs me, disturbs others, and it doesn't say anything about love, so on. And the other side saying, well, you're making light of sin.

You're all of a sudden turning, treating sin is not as important because you don't think there's an infinite punishment in hell. And what are we doing out there preaching the gospel and saying, if you don't turn to Christ, you'll cease to exist and not suffer anymore after a while.

You know, pretty good deal, you know, for some people.

Yeah, atheists are already good with not existing, right?

Yeah, exactly. And so we're just protracting a little bit, but other than that, not much different from the atheist. And the other side said, you know, you're basically trying to bolster your evangelism by this heinous idea of eternal conscious torment, trying to scare people into Christendom or Christianity.

And so that's the third axis of the emotional pastoral side of it. You know, what are you doing to people? You know, what is it doing to us? And so I think that those are basically the three areas where the disagreements usually are discussed.

There may be others. What do you all think? Why?

We said, so those three aren't necessarily the origins of annihilationism, but that's the support that current annihilationists or conditional immortalityists, I don't know what you would call them, those who believe in conditional immortality.

Yeah. Does it make sense biblically? Does it make sense doctrinally? Does it make sense emotionally?

So I know the impetus of our discussion is because it just happens to be in the news and people are discussing it. But this is not a new topic. This is something that's been around for a while. What are the origins surrounding it?

I mean, I did a little bit of research. I know that some early church fathers may or may not have taught it depending on who you read. But this is something that has come up before. And even some prominent leaders in the past, in the 20th century, 21st century, have espoused this.

So this is not just some dark corner of the interwebs. This is something that seems to creep up every so often. What's the history behind this?

Historical Roots, Church Fathers, and Modern Proponents

So as usual, the church fathers may always be called upon to support any.

Position.

Oh, the tug of war.

Yeah. You can always find something said to try to support your position from the church fathers. So, but yeah, this is not a recent thing. It's been visited again and again. For example, John Stott was a very important theologian, pastor.

Knowing God.

Great book.

Well, that's J .I. Packer.

I'm sorry, that's J .I. Packer.

But John Stott wrote...

Oh, it's another modern classic.

The Cross of Christ, I think.

Thank you.

I think it's the Cross of Christ. So huge defender of the substitutionary atonement. Huge defender, and yet also proponent of annihilationism. And this was greatly disturbing to those who were like, you're supposed to be a solid guy as far as to lean on, you know.

But later on, so, but J .I. Packer, who wrote Knowing God, and John Stott, who wrote The Cross of Christ, both of them fell onto the wrong side of the ECT, Evangelicals and Catholics together. So they had some late game compromises that were issues.

I blame that on their Anglicanism.

Yeah.

Speaking as a former Anglican myself, I can make those jokes.

Yeah. So, well, I mean, I'm looking at you suspiciously.

I like the 39 articles. I do.

So annihilationism was an issue even back, I just was referencing James P. Boyce's abstract of theology. And his final pages in his abstract are dealing with those issues about what you would say the final state of the righteous and the wicked, one's personal eschatology.

Not meaning I have an eschatology that I made up all myself. Okay. But no, it's the question of what happens to me when I die. And even as there's a lot of discussion about cosmic eschatology, how does everything end up?

This touches on where do I end up? How do I end up? What happens to me when I die? What happens to me at the resurrection? What happens to me after the great day of judgment? These are very personal questions.

And trying to understand that there are a lot of, there's a lot of confusion that is tied up to that. And so people are looking for answers. And it would seem to be kind of refreshing to come across a video where, you know, the friendly face and chipper voice of Kirk Cameron is explaining that this whole eternal conscious torment thing that he used to talk about on the streets doing way of the master evangelism, turns out that, you know, he says, it's, oh, it was, it's not really biblical.

It was influenced by Greek philosophy. And it's, it's not the real teaching of Jesus. And so we don't have to hold it anymore. Or at least, you know, that's the position that it sounded like on the video.

And it, I think it could be received by people as, oh, thank goodness. Yeah, this is a, an.

Attempt to make Christianity a little bit more palatable. If maybe we explained it this way, then we're no longer the hellfire brimstone preachers. That we know is, is that should be relegated to the dustbin of, of history.

So. I know what.

Why the Argument Cannot Be Settled by Feelings or Cultural Palatability

Else is offensive. I think, I think we're about to read this. The sending of one's son to take upon the sins of the world. A lot of people would call that cosmic child abuse. Yeah. Many people have. So if we open up our theological aperture to accept those things, which are only palatable to our, our sensibilities, even if our sensibilities change over time, it's capricious.

So it's arbitrary. So that's why sticking to the text is very important. Yeah. So I'd.

Say we, you know, to, to address the issue, we've got to think about the key passages in scripture, talk about the key issues in doctrine. And I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters how, how we feel.

I think it does matter how we would engage with people in the name of Christ regarding the doctrine of hell and that there is a, an appropriate pastoral way to do that. But that shouldn't be the primary concern.

We shouldn't say this doesn't make sense that God would be this way or do that. Therefore that can't work. Right. We shouldn't begin there. And I'm not saying that Kirk Cameron and others have, and I'm, and they're willing to say that there is a hell and they're willing to say that there is only one way of salvation.

And he's, you know, you know, at least he's willing to say that. Now, I don't know about the other sources he's relying on. When I read papers written for annihilationism, they quote guys like Pinnock and Fudge.

Now, Pinnock is an open theist and he's denied the faith. And Fudge is just a really unfortunate name for a theologian who departs from orthodoxy or perhaps it's providential.

I think he talked about a sermon with regard to God giving names specifically for.

Reason. So you can. Nominal determinism, it is what it's called.

Nominal determinism. I love it.

Yeah. That was a, your Isaiah study. You know, that's right. Thank God showing that he knows the future and then naming people that God is actually, you know, in control. And we get doctrines like that by reading the text and drawing our knowledge from it.

So I think that we can refute the emotional arguments just by reading the text, like how you feel, you know, is important but largely irrelevant for what isn't and is not true. God, and then you talk about some of the theological and doctrinal concerns, you know, God defines what justice is.

I think that the people who come to a annihilationist perspective, so that the proper punishment for sin is this kind of torment or you passed out of existence, you know, that the righteous go into heaven and they're fully connected to, you know, to God.

Those who are not with God, well, obviously, you know, they just will go away. So, but they're reading the same texts that we are. So when you come to a text and I just pull it, so it is 2 Thessalonians 1 .9.

So 2 Thessalonians 1 .9 talking about those who do not know God, those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

So we read that and I come away with the conclusion that they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of God and the glory of his might. I mean, it seems pretty clear.

How would someone who believes in conditional immortality or annihilationism read that verse and come away with something totally different?

Eternal Destruction, Matthew 25, and Revelation’s Lake of Fire

Yeah, very easily. In fact, the idea of everlasting destruction, everlasting being taken in the sense of forever and there's no recourse, no coming back. And then the destruction meaning, you know, you go out of existence is their idea of that destruction from the presence of the Lord is the most robust part of that verse for their position to say, since God is omnipresent, the only way you can be away from his presence is to be non-existent.

So for them reading through it, this is going to be one of their main verses. They're going to be like, oh yeah, that's totally supports annihilationism.

Which is interesting because you're never away from the presence of the Lord. They're in the presence of his wrath. They're not in the presence of his love and fellowship, but you are in the presence of his wrath.

But all they have right here is just presence of the Lord.

And you said away from the presence of the Lord, but the text.

It's got from, so it's in the Greek, it's the ablative, it's away from. That's the idea. So punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. So that's not the everlasting destruction flowing from the presence of the Lord.

They wouldn't be reading that. They'd be reading it that the everlasting destruction is apart from the presence of the Lord. So how could you possibly be apart from the presence of him who is omnipresent?

If you don't exist anymore, right? And it's final, therefore it's everlasting. There's no recourse. So that's how annihilationists would read that and come away with like, man, that's common sense right there in the text.

So, I mean, especially if they could, they start with Jesus' words, right? Do not fear those who can kill the body. Fear God who can kill the body and soul, destroy the body and the soul in hell.

Right?

So they're just going to go boom, boom, like, man, this is easy. I mean, I'm changing my position.

Like why?

All right. How?

Yeah, exactly. It's like boom, boom.

How would they respond to Jesus' own words when he says, you know, where the fire does not die, the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

Yes, exactly.

Christ.

Yeah, he says it three times. Now you may laugh at this for the semantics that it is, but they point out, we don't, we're not talking about whether or not the worm dies, we're not talking about whether the fire goes out, we're saying that God being eternal, yes, of course, his holiness, yes, of course.

His goodness, his righteousness goes on and on and on. It doesn't, there's nothing here that says that we go on and on and on, which you kind of look at that, well, it doesn't make any sense for Jesus to bring up the never ending torment part of it and to emphasize the eternality of the punishment only to sneak in the back door and say, but you're not going to feel it the whole.

Time.

That seems a little silly, but they don't see any necessary contradiction from those passages, you see. So they're saying we're not inconsistent here. In fact, Jesus himself is the one who says that we get destroyed.

The body and the soul get destroyed. How, what are the means by which God destroys them? Well, he uses these means. He uses these, we're not saying the hell is pleasant. We're not saying that hell is a wonderful place to be.

Okay.

All right.

And they're going to point to passages in the old Testament that talk about the smoke coming up from Edom forever and ever without ceasing. And they're going to say, pretty sure it's not smoking still now that you check the satellite, still not smoking.

The Levitical priesthood was called everlasting.

Right.

So they're going to look at some language like that and they're going to say, okay, what does this mean? And they're going to, because we're going to be doing the same thing with the language of destroy the body and soul in hell, Apollo me in the Greek.

What does that mean? What context does it use? And they're going to do the same thing and say, Hey, look, we've got to be careful with what lexical definition we're allowing here and see the flexibility of the term where we find it.

And so, to me, the issue is that those key passages I think are usually in Revelation.

Okay.

Wherein it very clearly states, whether we're in Revelation 14, Revelation 20, so on and so forth, that the fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, that it is an eternal fire, that the serpent of the beast and the false prophet are tormented forever and ever.

And that there is, there's no end to that.

Okay.

Now, if you, now, depending on how you interpret Revelation, okay.

Right.

Well, these mythical metaphors will suffer forever, but that's not human beings.

Okay.

Well, depending on how you interpret Revelation, that's a big question mark. But it also says that the wicked enter that very same fire and that they have no rest and they have no rest day or night and that the smoke of their torment goes up before the face of God, before the lamb, for the angels forever and ever.

Okay.

So how do they, how do they read those? And they will be the first to say, these are very tough passages for us. Nevertheless, given the weight of what we read elsewhere, we're going to interpret it this way and say, yes, as they are being punished, they have no rest, yes, the fires of God's holiness is forever, but the eternality of it is the finality of it.

It's not that they're consciously being tormented forever without end. Because once again, they go back to this, this same bastion, shall we say, the doctrinal bastion of that would be unjust of God. God defines his justice in the Bible for us, right?

It's a fitting punishment for the crime. And of course, someone who believes in eternal conscious torment is going to say, yeah, a crime against an infinite God means an eternality of judgment. And they're going to immediately say that that's not the, that's not the one-to-one ratio here.

It's our sins against God as a human. We're not, we're not infinite beings sinning against an infinite God. We are limited beings sinning against an infinite God. And this infinite God will judge us for our limited sinfulness.

So are they, are they using the standard of the Old Testament law in order to come up with the standard of punishment and the eternal state?

Is that what they would mean?

They would say that the Old Testament law reveals the principle of justice that God reveals, that God reveals God's justice in principle. Not to say that we're under Old Testament law in hell, but to say that it reveals something about the, the justice of God that should be, that God would be consistent, wouldn't he?

He would be consistent in everything he does. He wouldn't contradict himself.

But that law was for earthly leaders to, to exact upon earthly creatures.

And bear the sword against them.

Yeah, it's not, it's not the same analogy, correct? Like that, that'd be a little different, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

I would say, I would say it would be different in terms of like, here, here's how the magistrates ought to treat their, but they would also, but they would say, look, yeah, we agree, but it's also a principle.

So here's, so I would say that that would be for man though, right?

Like it, that's really the, they're, they're trying to bring God down to the It seems like in that situation, rather than, and it does.

Smell like theology from below.

Okay.

So, so what I mean by that is that when you, where I say, when you do theology, we're supposed to do theology from above, from the God's, God's point of view. How does he see things and say things? And we have to be careful about theology from below, where we begin to import an analogy from our point of view to try to impose something upon God.

I know what love is, and since God is love, therefore my understanding of love defines who God is.

And you hear Kirk Cameron do this, you hear him do this inadvertently. He's not meaning to, but he did it inadvertently where he said, you know, in our justice system, I mean, when we, we have the death penalty, I mean, we have, you know, lethal injection and we, we have this process that we go through.

And we're saying that God is going to, you know, eternally, consciously torment people forever, or I mean, that doesn't make any sense. I mean, what is he doing there? He's doing a theology from below.

Like, it can't be possible that we are more just and merciful than God. So he must be more merciful and just than we are. But that little do-si-do, that little judo move, it doesn't compute biblically for a number of reasons.

So does this generally just boil down to a question of duration? Duration of torment?

I would say in some ways it does.

Yes.

I think possibly some versions of it are that way, but there are other versions they just pass out of existence. The worst thing that it'd be is to be separated from God and all these people go into heaven and those people who warred against him, they're no longer, no longer an issue.

There'll never be a problem. Justice, the death penalty has been done and they've been wiped from existence. But to them, that is a fitting punishment for their crime.

Yes.

And they also focus. So it's interesting. There is a, I noticed when I was reading annihilationist positions, from what I've read, and these are the ones that people were like, you know, we're back to the Bible, we're depending on the scriptures for this.

They tended to read certain things the way that dispensationalists read things.

Okay.

They would even talk about the beam of sea. They're bringing up things that are pretty unique to futurist, pre-mill type of readings of the scripture. And also that hermeneutic that is so telling and classic for a dispensationalist.

That the first time you encounter a word, the definition is fixed.

Right.

So some of that comes into play as well. And there seems to be a selective literalistic hermeneutic where sometimes destroy where destroy has to mean, you know, completely utter non-existence, but eternal might mean something less concrete than right.

So there's the, there's the selective literalistic hermeneutic that also happens that is very similar to dispensationalism. So I would say that it hinges around, what is the definition of death? And the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely die.

God says to Adam and Eve, what happens in the day that they ate of it? They did die.

Indeed.

But did they go out of existence?

No.

What happened? Did God lie? No, Satan was liar.

Were they really living?

Right. They, they didn't cease to live on the earth. They ceased to live on the earth. They were, they were there, but something tragic happened. Something awful happened in their exile from God, separation from God.

And this is, so in the very beginning, in the fall, Satan says, you will not surely die, and God says, you will die. Well, who was, who was the liar? Satan's liar. So God was true. In what way did Adam and Eve die?

All of a sudden they're full of shame. They're blaming each other. Their relationship is, is, is, is ruined towards each other and to God, to the, to the creation around them, made in God's image, they were loved God supremely, love each other rightly, steward of the creation faithfully, and all three of those relationships were in tatters because of sin.

So in this sense, they died. There was a, there was a ruining that occurred.

It's a ruination.

That's a ruination. That's a ruination. And this is the way that the word Apollo me gets used. It's the ruination of a horse, the, the ruination of a, of a body in battle. Homer would use that. The term in Greek is, is some sort of ruination.

Okay.

And if we can imagine a, a wretched creature who was made to be full of the glory of God unto great happiness, the opposite of that would be its ruination and that's hell, full of the wrath of God and in utter misery, that would be ruination.

And so, yeah, how many people do we know whose body is in ruination, but their soul is bright and they are full of the joy of the Lord. Jesus says, don't fear those who could ruin the body, fear God who could ruin the body and the soul in hell.

We even use the term like colloquially for careers, like my job's dead or his career's dead, you know, we've had all, yeah, it just means it's ruined.

And so non-existence is, is not the, the biblical meaning of death. Jesus talks about death in terms of sleep for the saints, but also says that the righteous and the unrighteous will be raised from the dead by his voice.

He's going to raise them both from the dead. And we have the idea of, of course, separation with the idea of death, be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord for the same. So death is what, when the soul is absent from the body,.

Conscious Torment, Hades, and the Intermediate State

Hey, look, there's a separation that wasn't a non-existence who we were just talking about this before we got on. But what group in the Bible thought there was nothing after death?

Sadducees.

Sadducees, right. And Jesus...

They're sad, you see.

Yeah, exactly. And Jesus corrected the Sadducees on that matter. Now the annihilationist would say, well, he's talking about the saints, that there is life after death for the saints. So the point I think that needs to be made against the annihilationist position is not that, Hey, you bunch of annihilationists were against you.

We want to annihilate the annihilation. No, it's that you need to be biblically consistent. Where in the scriptures do we see that sinners go on existing after death? After their body is laid in the ground, they turn back to dust, they've experienced death and death is indeed the wages of sin, but they die.

What passages in the Bible tell us that they keep existing after they die and they keep existing after they die in a form of punishment by a holy God awaiting a day for a resurrection in which they will stand before God in resurrected bodies that have been prepared for the lake of fire.

Okay, well, this is the testimony of the scriptures. Now that last part, of course, is Revelation 20, but we also have it in Matthew 25, we also have it in John 5, that God will raise the wicked and the righteous at the very same time.

They all stand before God.

They all stand before God to give an answer.

They all have to give an answer. And so it's very consistent. So it's John 5, it's the parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, it's Matthew 25, it's Revelation 20, it's everywhere. And so we have the resurrection of the wicked and the righteous at the same.