Saturday, January 30, 2010

Hell and Annihilationism

Allow me to play a naïve role as devil’s advocate for a moment. It is a myth of Churchianity that reprobates or unrepentant sinners will be subjected to some unending, everlasting process of punishment. There is no shortage of evidence that, to the contrary, sinners will one day be punished and eventually cease to exist.

1. Suffixes

For starters, are you not misunderstanding the word “punishment” as used in the New Testament when you point to the likes of Matthew 25.46 to argue that people will suffer forever? The word is “punishment,” not “punishing.” Sinners will be subjected to everlasting punish-ment, meaning the result of having been punished; for this is what the word means. If Christ had said “punishing” then traditional teaching about hell would be correct, but look and observe that he did not say this.

2. Measurement

You are not much better off appealing to Matthew 25.41 to argue that people will suffer forever. Sure, the word “everlasting” is used there, but the adjective in question differs from the adverb “forever” pretty much only in terms of grammatical function, and thus not in terms of meaning. As it so happens, you forget the words of Exodus 21.6:

Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.
So how long is forever here? Clearly, it is until death. So “forever” does not always mean forever properly speaking or forever in the naive sense of the word.

3. Destruction

It is also clear that the Bible teaches that evil people will cease to exist, for it plainly tells us that evil people will be destroyed. Read:

But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off (Psalm 37.38).

When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; [it is] that they shall be destroyed for ever: (Psalm 92.7)

7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 8 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; (2 Thessalonians 1.7-9)

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10.28).
4. Consumption

Not only will evildoers be thrown to the fire, but fire will consume them--they will be no more:
But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD [shall be] as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away (Psalm 37.20).

And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners [shall be] together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed (Isaiah 1.28).
5. Cessation and Vanishing

Again, evildoers or sinners will be annihilated. There is just no question about it. But do not take my word for it; see what the Scriptures have to say about the matter. Observe:
As the whirlwind passeth, so [is] the wicked no [more]: but the righteous [is] an everlasting foundation (Proverbs 10.25).

11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish. 12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, [even] them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought (Isaiah 41.11-12).

All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never [shalt] thou [be] any more (Ezekiel 28.19).

*********************

It is not hard to find such a line of arguments on the Internet or in Seventh-Day Adventist tracts. This is the best case that annihilationists can make short of revisionist translations of the Scriptures.

The first argument goes too far to assert that “punishment” means result of having been punished. To be sure, the suffix -ment can conventionally convey a meaning of results, but sure enough it also variably carries a meaning of act or process. Moreover, the kind of meaning that annihilationists would favor in Matthew 25.46 would make no sense in that verse. It would make no sense to say “These shall go away to an everlasting result of having been punished” when the result is annihilation. After all, the state, condition, or property of having been annihilated--as it were--cannot be predicated of any object that does not exist. Again, you cannot both be a nonexistent sinner and now have any kind of result to which you have gone away. So the naive interpretation of Matthew 25.46 is correct.

With the second argument, even if we were to concede that certain persons will cease to be servants of other people, all the while it cannot be denied that the basic function of the word “forever” is to convey connotations of a thing’s persisting across all futurate moments. The word is subject to occasional use of hyperbole and sharp delimitations of semantic purview--you get held up in a traffic jam on your way home from work, and you later say, “It took forever to get home!”--as are other words, but the basic use of the word is known to everyone. Accordingly, the onus or responsibility of proving one’s favorite translation of the word in New Testament texts is on the annihilationists here.

The third argument is ridiculous, for it is audacious enough to go beyond biblical hermeneutics and into raw metaphysics to counterintuitively equate destruction with annihilation, as if there were no difference between the latter two things. One should make up his mind, from the outset, that an object can undergo radical changes in structure and still survive. If I take my wristwatch to a repair shop, and the repairman disassembles the watch such that parts are laid here and there while he conducts repairs, you don’t want to say that my watch has ceased to exist while he conducted repairs. Likewise, if I take my car to a repair shop and tires are removed and moved to different axles, you don’t want to say that my car ceased to exist while it underwent radical structural changes. Accordingly, it is not clear that a violent act of causing contiguous parts to move apart--more or less destruction--necessarily causes an object to cease to exist. In any case, we need not appeal to intuition to decide whether every act of destruction is an act of annihilation. We can consult a dictionary for the meanings of the word “destroy,” and we can even compare the following:

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth (Genesis 6:13).

And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth (Genesis 9:11).
Meanwhile, the fourth argument is made with the assumption that an object’s being consumed--or perhaps its being consumed specifically by fire--necessarily results in its ceasing to exist. You start to figure out that there is something wrong with this idea when you come across Jeremiah 16.4 and 44.12 where people are consumed by the sword as opposed to fire:

4 They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; [but] they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.

12 And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed, [and] fall in the land of Egypt; they shall [even] be consumed by the sword [and] by the famine: they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be an execration, [and] an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.
Meanwhile, others have in fact survived consumption, as in Psalm 90:7, Jeremiah 5:3, and Jeremiah 10:25.

Finally, the fifth argument would commit its proponents to the idea that Enoch long ago ceased to exist, for it is written:

And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him (Genesis 5:23-24).
In the Scriptures nonexistence, as it were, apparently can be metaphorical of a thing’s being gone from sight or gone from the face of the earth.

9 comments:

Kwame E. said...

I see that Blogger is back to ruining HTML formatting and to giving false previews of posts. Lovely.

D.B. said...

I agree with your beginning statement, that it does seem that folks will be punished differently according to their deeds here. The duration seems the same, though...forever.

It seems a simple connection if their are different crowns in heaven, then it is at least possible from the text that there would be different punishments.

D.

Cross Reference said...

Since man cannot ever die, in the sense that he is a spiritual being, then it must become a matter of understanding where he will reside if he is not reconciled to God in the time allotted by God for him to do so. Having said that and believing God is love, then the absence of His presence can only be understood to mean the absence of any kind of compassion or Love of any sort which will permit hatred to reign to such an extreme man has never known. Where that is can only be called Hell. The beginning of such a ones' eternal death will be experienced as extreme isolation, buried alive in a sarcophagus comes quickly to mind. The end of it all will see this isolationism cast into an "everlasting fire where the worm dies not?

I believe there is more than sufficient scripture to support that view.

Ken

Rick Lannoye said...

Excellent points to show there can be no Hell, not in the sense of God being the cause of suffering or looking the other way when he could stop it, but chooses not to.

Any objective reading of Jesus' original teachings clearly shows he did not condone the teaching of Hell; he couldn't have!

I've actually written an entire book on this topic--Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There's No Such Place As Hell, (for anyone interested, you can get a free ecopy of Did Jesus Believe in Hell?, one of the most compelling chapters in my book at www.thereisnohell.com), but if I may, allow me to add to yours one of the many points I make in my book to explain why.

If one is willing to look, there's substantial evidence contained in the gospels to show that Jesus opposed the idea of Hell. For example, in Luke 9:51-56, is a story about his great disappointment with his disciples when they actually suggested imploring God to rain FIRE on a village just because they had rejected him. His response: "You don't know what spirit is inspiring this kind of talk!" Presumably, it was NOT the Holy Spirit. He went on, trying to explain how he had come to save, heal and relieve suffering, not be the CAUSE of it.

So it only stands to reason that this same Jesus, who was appalled at the very idea of burning a few people, for a few horrific minutes until they were dead, could never, ever burn BILLIONS of people for an ETERNITY!

True, there are a few statements that made their way into the copies of copies of copies of the gospel texts which place “Hell” on Jesus’ lips, but these adulterations came along many decades after his death, most likely due to the Church filling up with Greeks who imported their belief in Hades with them when they converted.

Bear in mind that the historical Protestant doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures applies only to the original autographs, not the copies. But sadly, the interpolations that made their way into those copies have provided a convenient excuse for a lot of people to get around following Jesus’ real message.

Kwame E. said...

Ken wrote:

<<Since man cannot ever die, in the sense that he is a spiritual being, then it must become a matter of understanding where he will reside if he is not reconciled to God in the time allotted by God for him to do so.>>

Hello Ken. Anyway, no need to get fancy or innovative here: man dies and has been dying since the fall of Adam, period. The idea is perfectly compatible with substance dualism and the plain, non-figurative, and non-metonymic manner in which substance dualists (such as me) talk about people's dying.

Ken also wrote:

<<Having said that and believing God is love, then the absence of His presence can only be understood to mean the absence of any kind of compassion or Love of any sort which will permit hatred to reign to such an extreme man has never known. Where that is can only be called Hell. The beginning of such a ones' eternal death will be experienced as extreme isolation, buried alive in a sarcophagus comes quickly to mind. The end of it all will see this isolationism cast into an "everlasting fire where the worm dies not?

I believe there is more than sufficient scripture to support that view.>>

If I read those comments correctly, you're saying that hell amounts to more or less of an existential condition (or a place having this condition) in which good things like love, kindness, compassion aren't exercised by anyone--but also where interpersonal hatred is given free reign.

I disagree. I guess I'll have to address this and related ideas in my next post. :)

Kwame E. said...

Rick wrote:

<<Excellent points to show there can be no Hell, not in the sense of God being the cause of suffering or looking the other way when he could stop it, but chooses not to.>>

Certainly not points that I made. I'm fully convinced that the God who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay" will indeed repay people's evil deeds on the coming day of judgment in which those who thumbed their nose at the awesome, holy, omnipotent Creator and Sustainer of the Universe will be beaten to a pulp, as they actually deserve. And the suffering of these vessels of wrath will not be an ephemeral or short-term thing.

So, as I was saying in my response to Ken's comments, I'll have to address this and related ideas in my next post. In the meantime, I have absolutely no reason to believe that Christ did not teach that hell's a-coming or that God is somehow too nice to send people to the cosmic trash heap that we call hell. Perhaps I'll get your website in the near future though.

Cross Reference said...

Kwame wrote:

"If I read those comments correctly, you're saying that hell amounts to more or less of an existential condition (or a place having this condition) in which good things like love, kindness, compassion aren't exercised by anyone--but also where interpersonal hatred is given free reign."

Free? Interpersonal? Try believing that Hell will be the most alone experience ever possible to the spirit of one who winds up there. In addition, amplified hatred and aloneness won’t be from any kind of freedom given but of the consequence of a man’s rejection of God. There is no other inclination available whereby those in Hell can do anything but to hate and curse God, being that the whole of their dispositions is given over to a finality entirely predicated upon the wrong choice in life, i.e, rejection of God. That one statement should be enough to convince anyone that Hell is on Earth. In other words, no matter how bad things can get on Earth due to mans' irrational behavior, God's presence can still be observed. Only a reprobate would say otherwise. Ergo, being in Hell is to exist in death. Death and terror reign where God isn't. That is just one more reason Jesus resurrected. Death could not hold Him.

God is also “Light”. “In Him there is no darkness”. In Hell there is permanent darkness.

Keep in mind, man cannot die in the sense his spirit lives forever and must reside somewhere upon leaving this life upon Earth. “And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” “then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Ecclesiastes 12:7 (NASB77) Acts 7:59 (KJV) See also: Job 34:14; Ecc.3:21 and Luke 23:46. Having said that, I hasten to add that if it is NOT reconciled by the Blood of Jesus Christ, the spirit of a man CANNOT return to God. Therefore, it has no other place to go but to Hell, a place that was never intended for man, to await the resurrection unto the second death whereby Death and Hell will be cast into the everlasting lake of fire. . . where the worm never dies.

Cross

Kwame E. said...

I, Kwame wrote:

<<So, as I was saying in my response to Ken's comments, I'll have to address this and related ideas in my next post. In the meantime, I have absolutely no reason to believe that Christ did not teach that hell's a-coming or that God is somehow too nice to send people to the cosmic trash heap that we call hell. Perhaps I'll get [to] your website in the near future though.>>

Upon further reading, my contingent obligations to respond to Ken and Rick in the form of blog posts have ended. Ken has clarified a matter. And further reading of Rick's work reminds me that I have no time to reinvent the wheel, and the buggy, and the automobile.

Cross Reference said...

"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, . . . ."
Revelation 14:11 (KJV)