The entire essay is available here.
Do you know what you believe about hell? Why do you believe it? Could you defend it?
If you’re like most of us, you’ve been taught that we all will live eternally in one of two places. There are two choices we can make, and two destinies available to us: Eternity with God in heaven, or eternity in hell under God’s judgment. Those who believe in Christ will experience the blessings of heaven. Those who live in rebellion against God will suffer God’s judgment in hell. Hell, we are told, is the place of eternal, conscious torment where sinners experience just punishment for their sins.
But what if we’re wrong?
Recent scholarship has resurfaced an alternate view of hell, one historically known as “Annihilationism.” In this view, the damned are not subject to eternal suffering, but rather experience an eternal death—that is, they cease to exist for all eternity. Eternal damnation in hell is not unending conscious torment (as the traditional view holds). Rather, the fires of hell consume the sinner, and he is annihilated.
This is also called “Conditional Immortality.” God grants immortality (eternal life) upon a condition—faith. Those who believe live forever in God’s presence; those who rebel die in hell. Hell is the place where they are “annihilated,” eternally ceasing to exist. This view is gaining a significant amount of traction in parts of our Anabaptist movement. It’s not going away without a fight, and we need to know how to think about it.
Hell is not as common in our conversation as it was 500 years ago, 300 years ago, or even 60 years ago. Because we don’t talk about it, many of us don’t understand it as we should. When we hear new ideas about hell, we tend to ignore them (not knowing what to say) or give a knee-jerk response that reveals our ignorance more than it does any biblical grounding. We haven’t been as faithful as we ought to have been guarding the theological door, and it’s starting to show.
As I said, “Conditional Immortality” is gaining traction with our people. The first question I have is, “Why?” Why is our movement, which purports to be built upon Scripture, so confounded by the claims of Conditional Immortality? We’re found with our proverbial pants on the floor, unprepared for this resurgence and uncertain how to respond.
A main cause, in my opinion, is that we’ve neglected Scripture to favor tradition. Rather than searching Scripture ourselves to discover the truth, we’re content to hide within the body of faith and practice established by those before us. We have adopted the faith of past generations but have not busied ourselves to understand the biblical truths that undergird that faith. We have an exoskeleton, but that without a living organism inside. Please understand that I do believe the exoskeleton of Anabaptism to be valuable, in many ways biblical, and worth preserving. Yet it does nothing for us if we do not ourselves understand why we do what we do and why we believe what we believe. Hell is just one of the issues where we have been compromised by our lack of biblical understanding. We can only recover the truth by studying God’s word. Things that slide into the periphery are brought back to their proper center through Scripture.
In this essay I will attempt to deal with Conditional Immortality somewhat comprehensively. There will always more to say than can be said, but I will emphasize the main points, including: What is hell? What is Conditional Immortality? What are the biblical arguments for and against it? How should we respond to it as Bible-conscious believers? What are the consequences of believing Conditional Immortality?
But first, some more words on our approach. First, when analyzing some new idea, we need to make sure our response is based on Scripture. To be sure, most ideas that are new are not true. Yet we shouldn’t just reject an idea because it’s novel to us. Rather, we need to examine Scripture to see what God says about it. When a new idea surfaces (or an old one resurfaces), we do not need to be afraid of it. The truth can defend itself. Do we trust that the Bible can bear the weight of these assaults? We need not fear the truth. Let us judge these claims in the light of Scripture. It is sufficient to lead us to the truth; it is sufficient to defend the truth.
We also should acknowledge that part of the reason we don’t talk about hell is that it is a difficult belief. Hell as Scripture depicts it is horrible. It is a place of pain, anguish, suffering, separated from God’s blessings. It should grip our souls that sinners will suffer there. Yet we shouldn’t turn in anger at God for executing such judgment. Rather, we grieve the choices of the sinner that earn him God’s judgment. What Jesus said about His executioners is many times true of the sinner: “They do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). We should not rejoice in the reality of hell. It is a sober reality, difficult to accept if we truly understand it.
In fact, if you find hell easy to believe you may not truly understand it. Recognizing the severity of hell both leads us to be grateful to God for His mercy and to yearn all the more for the salvation of lost sinners. Hell is what we all deserve. We all would experience hell if God gave us justice. God in His grace offers us salvation through Christ, rescuing us from hell’s fiery judgment.
We must also recognize that hell is not a rod we use to beat up unbelievers (or each other). We don’t mock those who are heaping up destruction for themselves. We must certainly avoid all self-righteousness. If we think that we have escaped hell by our own merits, our wise choices, our superior obedience, or anything else that includes “me” or “I,” we are gravely mistaken. Recognizing the grim reality of hell leads us to humble worship and sacrificial love.
Three Historical Views
There are three prevailing views of hell that have been held by the church historically. The traditional view (held by most of the western church) is that sinners will suffer eternally and consciously in hell. The annihilationist view (which includes Conditional Immortality) is that sinners are consumed in hell and cease to exist. The third view is universalism, which holds that all men will eventually be reconciled to God (e.g. Rob Bell, “Love Wins”). This third view has been roundly rejected by all orthodox believers. The annihilationist view has been held by notable figures in church history, as well as a number of quasi-orthodox scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries (N.T. Wright being a foremost example). The traditional view is the most common, so prevalent among evangelicals (including Anabaptists) that most people are only vaguely aware that other views of hell even exist.
What is Hell?
Before we explore the claims of Conditional Immortality, we should get a grasp of the biblical descriptions of what hell is. The what of hell is distinct from the eternality of hell, which we will get to later. To get our minds headed in that direction, it will be helpful to consider what the Bible teaches about the hell itself. The New Testament primarily uses two words to describe the place where the wicked suffer: hades and geenna (Gehenna). Hades is used of the temporary dwelling of all of the dead, both of the believing and the unbelieving. Though we’re not given much detail about it, it seems that it includes both a region of blessing (Abraham’s bosom, paradise) and a region of suffering (cf. the parable of the rich man and Lazarus). Hades is ultimately destroyed in the lake of fire in Revelation.
Geenna (more popularly, Gehenna) is a transliteration of the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, that is, the valley of Hinnom. This valley was located southwest of the old city of Jerusalem. Tophet in the valley of Hinnom was at one point a place of child sacrifice to Molech (cf. Jeremiah 7:31, 32:35). It was desecrated when idolatry was stamped out during Intertestamental Judaism. It became a place of refuse where waste, dead animals, and unburied criminals were thrown. By the time of Christ it had become synonymous with the place where the wicked would be judged. Eleven of the twelve uses of geenna in the New Testament are from the lips of Jesus.
Revelation also speaks of the “lake of fire” and the “lake of fire and brimstone.” This seems to be one and the same as Geenna. Death and Hades (sometimes mistranslated “hell”) are thrown into the lake of fire, signifying the death and the grave being eternally conquered. But we do not read of Geenna being thrown in. Thus it seems that Geenna is one and the same as the lake of fire spoken of in Revelation.
What of the sufferings of hell? The Bible speaks variously about this. The sufferings are described as: punishment, judgment, death, destruction, and fire. It is a place where the worm is (maggot), a place of darkness, where sinners experience indignation, wrath, tribulation, and anguish, and where they live in agony, weeping and gnashing their teeth. It is outside the presence of Christ (“depart from me, you cursed” – Matt. 25:41). It is perhaps less important to describe the full detail of hell[1] than it is to recognize that hell is a place of excruciating agony. The various sufferings described in Scripture communicate the awful reality of hell.
Hell is spoken of as a judgment (Gk. krisis) and a punishment (Gk. kolasis). It is the place where sinners experience the just consequences for their sin. It is thus the deserved consequence for rebellion against God. None will suffer in hell beyond what they have “heaped up” for themselves during their time on earth. God’s justice is perfect, and He will judge according to what is fair, just, and good. Yet it is important for us to understand that sins against an infinite God, the thrice-holy One, are liable to infinite punishment. It is not our place to decide what justice is. Rather, we seek to understand from God’s word what justice is. Hell is the just judgment God executes on sinners as a consequence for their sins.
[1] For example, defining the fire of hell as a “dark fire” to harmonize the descriptions of fire, which gives light, and of darkness.