If you have been researching the doctrine of hell for any significant amount of time, you are bound to have encountered the debate over the meaning of the biblical language of destruction. Conditionalists like ourselves argue that in contexts of final judgment, Greek words like apollymi (to destroy), apoleia (destruction), and olethros (destruction) consistently communicate that the wicked will actually be destroyed, or ended, by God.
Chris Woznicki joins Rethinking Hell contributor Chris Date at the Rethinking Hell 2019 Far West Chapter Symposium to discuss the theological reservations he has about conditional immortality and which prevent him from yet embracing it, despite what he acknowledges is its exegetical strength. This is part 2 of the recording; listen to part 1 with Zachary Seals in episode 118.
Zachary Seals joins Rethinking Hell contributor Chris Date at the Rethinking Hell 2019 Far West Chapter Symposium to discuss the theological reservations he has about conditional immortality and which prevent him from yet embracing it, despite what he acknowledges is its exegetical strength. Also, listen for an important announcement about the upcoming 2019 Rethinking Hell Conference!
Rethinking Hell contributor Chris Date responds to clips from a breakout presentation delivered at the 2015 Rethinking Hell Conference by his friend Lindsay Brooks, in which Brooks offers some criticism of conditional immortality on hermeneutical grounds. Also, listen for an important announcement about the upcoming 2019 Rethinking Hell Conference!
This is the second part of my response to an article by Tim Barnett and Greg Koukl (henceforth B&K) of the ministry Stand to Reason, called “Hell Interrupted – Part 2.” In their article, B&K attempt to critique the conditionalist reading of the Bible via three interpretive principles drawn from a textbook on hermeneutics by William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard. In the first part of my response I focused only on their first two principles of interpreting passages and words in their immediate contexts. I avoided addressing their third principle because I believe that technically it isn’t an interpretive principle. In this article I will address this principle in detail.
If you already had in mind the idea that hell is a place of everlasting conscious punishment, then it is understandable that when you hear someone say hell involves “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” you would imagine that phrase referring to the terrible torments in this place of everlasting conscious punishment. But if we want to look at what the Bible actually teaches about hell, we must not simply assume that that it teaches what we already believe. And when we look at it more closely, it becomes clear that the refrain that “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” does not so clearly mean what many initially think it means.
I consider myself an exegete. For seven or so years last decade during my dual degrees at Malyon College–a Baptist seminary in Brisbane, Australia–I developed a passion for biblical hermeneutics and exegesis that remains with me today. At the start of each semester, I would make sure I could fit every single exegetical subject into my schedule. I became capable enough in this area to be employed by the college as their first study skills tutor, a role in which I was responsible for teaching new students hermeneutical and exegetical principles. I point all this out simply to show that I am in a position to recognize when these principles may be incorrectly applied, or not even applied at all.
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