Yes, Trent Horn, Hell Is Real and it Is Eternal – Part 1/3

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Trent’s article: Yes, Hell Is Real and It Is Eternal | Catholic Answers Magazine

Introduction
It is my sincere conviction that conditional immortality is a silver bullet against the Roman Catholic church’s professed infallibility on matters of doctrine, considering just how clearly this doctrine is taught in Scripture from cover to cover, as well as in the writings of a number of significant ante-Nicene Christian writings. “What is conditional immortality?”, you might be asking yourself. Simply put, as the name strongly suggests, it is the belief that immortality is not universally granted to the righteous and the unrighteous alike but that it is a gift given only to those who meet the condition of being in Christ. The punishment awaiting the unrighteous at the resurrection of judgment, then, is death; the whole person—body and soul (Mt. 10:28)—will be destroyed and never live again. I mean no disrespect to Trent Horn when I say this, but his article does nothing but confirm and reinforce my conviction; Rome, like everyone else, has no good answer to conditional immortality.

Just Getting Warmed Up
Trent begins by rightly representing what we conditionalists believe, saying that our view is “the view that God destroys the damned in hell instead of allowing them to experience eternal torment.” Firstly, it is at least interesting to note that to describe our view, Trent says that God destroys the damned, which seems to indicate that when he is not seeking to reconcile the Bible’s language of destruction with other texts that he understands to be teaching eternal torment, he implicitly acknowledges that such language communicates what our view teaches. When interpreting a verse like 2 Thessalonians 1:9, however, Trent is forced to oppose the evident meaning of the word. Secondly, in contrast to our view, God “allowing them to experience eternal torment” assumes immortality for all. Indeed, in response to a woman who called into the Catholic Answers Live radio program to ask why people will be tormented forever in Hell, Trent begins his response by saying: “We as human beings have immortal souls, and God has revealed to us that not only will our souls survive death, but we will be reunited with our bodies and we will live forever”¹The quote is taken from a video called “Trent Horn – Why is the punishment of Hell eternal?” on the Catholic Answers YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-x6iSGc6LQ&t=80s at 1:01. (emphasis mine). To put it bluntly, this is rubbish. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul teaches that “[God] alone has immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16), meaning that God alone is inherently immortal, and that God alone can confer it. But to whom does he confer it? In his second letter to Timothy, Paul is no less clear when he teaches that “life and immortality” are conferred “through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). In Paul’s mind, immortality is something human beings “seek” (Rom. 2:7), not something “we as human beings have.” After all, our Lord said: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever… not like the bread the fathers ate, and died.” (John 6:51, 58). Those who do not eat of this bread will not live forever, contrary to Trent’s assertion.

Shortly thereafter, he goes on to say that it “seems like a good time to remind the faithful… of the reality of hell as an eternal punishment for the condemned,” and then says that this belief is “unequivocally upheld in Catholic doctrine.” As will be explicated further into this article, we conditionalists do not dispute that the punishment is eternal, hence my title agreeing with Trent that Hell is eternal, assuming that “Hell” in the title of his article is shorthand for the punishment meted out therein. To show that the Catholic church upholds eternal punishment as true, he cites paragraph 1035 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a paragraph I will address in a future article dedicated to correcting the Catechism’s mistaken teachings on the topic of hell. (To dispel potential confusion, the paragraph’s mistake does not lie in affirming the eternity of hell, but something else). That said, since Trent did not quote it to argue that Roman Catholics are right to hold eternal torment as true, I see no need to comment on it here.

Conditionalism Was Quenched, Eternal Torment Was Stoked, and the Rest Is History
Directly on the heels of this, Trent follows up by saying that “annihilationism… is a minority position in Church history,” and that “John Stackhouse Jr. admits that when it comes to the nature of hell, ‘There is no doubt where the weight of the tradition lies, and it doesn’t lie here,’ that is, in favor of annihilationism.” As Trent rightly states, John Stackhouse Jr. is a defender of annihilationism, and if Trent had wanted to cite more annihilationists who have made the same concession, he surely would have met no shortage of them—and I readily add myself to the list here. We have no problem admitting that this is the case. If our position has any weak spot, it is this. Yet, this weak spot is by no means a death blow. Critically—setting aside for now the fact that the biblical data strongly favours conditional immortality—if we limit the scope to the first two hundred years of the church, the weight of the tradition most certainly also favours our view. In a video entitled “#452 – The Church father Protestants fear the most . . .”, posted on his cleverly named YouTube channel, The Counsel of Trent, Trent says: “When you have early church fathers, who witness to distinctly Catholic doctrines, then it becomes much harder to say that these doctrines are merely the traditions of men and not actually what the apostles taught because we are getting much closer.”²https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1i2Aji49ig at 4:21. Of course, I can only hope that if Trent reads this article, he will exercise enough intellectual honesty to reason this way about the doctrine of conditional immortality. Though a more exhaustive case could easily be made, for the sake of brevity, I will only appeal to three important witnesses: Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch (the church father Protestants fear the most according to Trent’s video), and Irenaeus of Lyons.

**Whenever words or phrases are italicized for emphasis inside a quote from these three men, the emphasis is mine**

Clement of Rome (ca. A.D. 96)
Our first witness, Clement, shows no sign of believing in eternal torment but rather every sign of believing in conditional immortality. In his only authentic letter (1 Clement), which he wrote to the Corinthians, we read: “How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality… Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts” (ch. 35). According to Clement, life in immortality is a gift of God for which one needs to earnestly strive; it is not unconditionally granted to every human being.

Indeed, this fits neatly with Clement teaching that only the righteous will rise. After offering the phoenix bird as an emblem of our resurrection, he asks whether we “deem it any great and wonderful thing for the Maker of all things to raise up again those that have piously served Him in the assurance of a good faith” (ch. 26). At this juncture, one may argue that saying, “God will raise those that have piously served Him” is not necessarily to say, “God will raise only those that have piously served Him.” While it is true that Clement’s statement does not necessarily imply that the wicked will not rise, it seems most natural to take it as though he thinks of rising as something reserved specifically for those who have piously served Him in the assurance of a good faith, and thus does intend to imply that the wicked will not rise. In fact, later (ch. 50), he writes: “All the generations from Adam… have passed away; but those who, through the grace of God, have been made perfect in love… shall be made manifest at the revelation of the kingdom of Christ. For it is written, ‘…I will remember a propitious day, and will raise you up out of your graves.’” Notice, Clement does not merely identify those whom God will raise as those who have been perfected in love, but he specifically identifies God raising them from their graves as the way they will be made manifest; that is, as the way they will be distinguished from the unrighteous. 

Of course, we at Rethinking Hell do not deny that the unrighteous will rise to judgment, and I do not think that Clement does either. What Clement means, I think, is that only the righteous will rise indefinitely. It is reminiscent of Jesus who, despite teaching that both the righteous and the unrighteous will rise from the dead (John 5:28-29), also spoke of “those who are considered worthy to attain to… the resurrection from the dead” (Luke 20:35), as if not everybody takes part in the resurrection. It is also reminiscent of Paul who, despite saying “that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15), also said: “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them rubbish, in order that I may… be found in Him… having a righteousness… which comes through faith in Christ… that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:8-11), as though he could fail to be counted among those who will be raised. That is because Jesus, Paul, and Clement all specifically have in mind the “resurrection of life” (Jn 5:29); the resurrection whose beneficiaries “cannot die anymore, because they… are sons of God” (Luke 20:36). Those who are not sons of God can still die, and will indeed die a second time at the resurrection of judgment (Rev. 20:14; 21:8). 

In line with this, we also read from Clement that those “who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death” (ch. 41). Earlier, he exhorted his readers to “yield obedience to His excellent and glorious will” and to “turn and have recourse to His compassions, imploring His mercy and loving-kindness” while they “forsake all fruitless labours and strife, and envy, which leads to death” (ch. 9). Immediately following this exhortation, he gives an example: “Let us take (for instance) Enoch, who, being found righteous in obedience, was translated, and death was never known to happen to him.” No one disputes the sort of death Enoch escaped; it was death as normally understood. In light of this, to suggest that Clement might mean something else by the word “death” just a few strokes prior would be nothing short of absurd. Two chapters later (ch. 11), to establish that the Lord punishes the ungodly, he reminds his readers that Sodom “was punished by means of fire and brimstone,” which, in the words of 2 Peter 2:6, resulted in its inhabitants being turned to ashes and condemned to extinction. He also mentions Lot’s wife, who “was made an example of, so as to be a pillar of salt… that all might know that those who are of a double mind, and distrust the power of God, bring down judgment on themselves…” In a later exhortation, describing the fate of those who fail to share in the gift of immortality,  Clement writes: “Consider now these things, you who forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be none to deliver. The sacrifice of praise will glorify Me, and a way is there by which I will show him the salvation of God” (ch. 35).

Lastly, Clement teaches that “[Christ’s] soul was delivered to death… and He bore the sins of many, and for their sins He was delivered,” (ch. 16) and that “Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for (ὑπὲρ) us by the will of God; His flesh for (ὑπὲρ) our flesh, and His soul for (ὑπὲρ) our souls” (ch. 49). The language here unambiguously means that Jesus died in our stead, meaning that death is the punishment awaiting those who reject the Substitute, not life forever in torment. The way Clement speaks of Christ’s death resembles how he speaks of many kings and princes who “have given themselves up to death, in order that by their own blood they might deliver their fellow citizens [from destruction]” (ch. 55). Ringing in one’s ears ought to be John 11:49-51: “Caiaphas… said to them, ‘…it is better for you that one man should die for (ὑπὲρ) the people, not that the whole nation should perish.’ He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for (ὑπὲρ) the nation…” 

From calling immortality a gift for which one needs to strive, to identifying rising from the grave as a distinction marker between the righteous and the unrighteous, to establishing that God punishes evildoers with death, to teaching that Christ died in the place of those who belong to Him so that they don’t have to die themselves, Clement has left us no reason to conclude anything other than that he held to the doctrine of conditional immortality.

Ignatius of Antioch (ca. A.D. 110)
In Ignatius’ letters, we find the same four pillars of conditional immortality that we find in 1 Clement, which I just highlighted in the concluding paragraph. To Polycarp, he says: “Be sober as an athlete of God: the prize set before you is immortality and eternal life” (Poly 2.3). The implication of immortality and eternal life being prizes, of course, is that they are not distributed to every human being. To the Ephesians, Ignatius writes that the bread we break is “the medicine of immortality and the antidote that we should not die but live for ever in Jesus Christ” (20.2), and to the Philadelphians, he writes that though the prophets pointed to Christ, “the Gospel is the completion of immortality” (9.2). Without the medicine of immortality, one is bound to die, lacking the antidote provided by the Gospel that allows one to live forever. 

Indeed, according to Ignatius, speaking of those who “abstain from the Lord’s supper because they do not confess [the bread] to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Smyr 7.1)—which follows from them “not confessing that He was a bearer of flesh” (Smyr 5.2)— he says that ”it would be better for them to treat [the Lord’s supper] with respect that they also might rise again” (Smyr 7.1). These people, according to Ignatius, are “advocates of death rather than of the truth” (Smyr 5.1). His thinking is clear: If one abstains from the medicine of immortality, one will not rise again; that is, he will not rise indefinitely. This, of course, stands in direct opposition to the Catechism: “What is ‘rising’?… God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies…Who will rise? All the dead will rise, ‘those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment’” (paras. 997-998).

Wherever Ignatius states what does await those who deny Christ, it is consistent with what we have just seen him say does not await them. To the Magnesians, he is unequivocal:  “Let us not, therefore, be insensible toward His kindness, for if He were insensible toward us, we would cease to be” (Mag 10.1). His kindness, of course, refers to His willingness to suffer death “in order that by believing in His death, you may escape death” (Trallians 2.1). To those who are insensible toward His death, it will be as though Christ were insensible toward them—for to turn down His kindness is to make it as though it had not been shown—leaving them to face the death of their whole being, at which point they will “cease to be.” For “how shall we be able to live without Him” (Mag 9.2) seeing that He is the one through whom “our life also arose [on the Lord’s day]” (Mag 9.1)? In the end, “these two things are simultaneously set before us — death and life; and every one shall go unto his own place” (Mag 5.1). 

Finally, to the Romans (6.1), Ignatius writes: “Him I seek, who died on our behalf (ὑπὲρ); Him I long for, who rose again for our sake.” Just as it is no mystery what Paul means when he says, “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of (ὑπὲρ) my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh,” it is no mystery what Ignatius means here: “Him I seek, who offered us to step aside so that He could suffer death in our place, the punishment that otherwise would have been ours to bear.” 

Just like in the case of Clement, we are offered by Ignatius a multi-faceted, coherent picture of what awaits the ungodly.

Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. A.D. 180)
Of all three witnesses, though Clement and Ignatius are by no means unclear, Irenaeus is, without a doubt, the one who expresses his belief in conditional immortality in most detail. To begin, in his largest work called “Against Heresies,” Irenaeus devotes a section (1.10.1) to writing down what is known as a “rule of faith,” which is a set of core doctrines considered both definitional and foundational to the Christian faith. A rule of faith was used to establish and maintain doctrinal orthodoxy within the early Christian community, serving as a standard against which all teachings and beliefs were measured to ensure they aligned with what had been handed down by the apostles. Setting the stage for the list of foundational doctrines, Irenaeus starts off by writing, “The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith:…” Toward the end of the list, we read, “and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send ‘spiritual wickednesses,’ and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love…”

In other words, the faith that the Church received from the apostles, according to Irenaeus, includes conditional immortality! Immortality is conferred in the exercise of God’s grace to those in Christ; it is not conferred to those who, by contrast, are sent into eternal fire. Indeed, as we ought to expect based on Irenaeus’ words here, this is how he interprets Matthew 18:8-9 where Jesus uses the term “eternal fire”: “And just as then, those who led vicious lives, and put other people astray, were condemned and cast out, so also even now the offending eye is plucked out, and the foot and the hand, lest the rest of the body perish in like manner” (4.27.4). The threat is clear: it is better to live crippled than to die whole in the eternal fire. Later, quoting Matthew 25:41 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9 respectively, Irenaeus writes: “the Lord Himself declares, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire…’ And the apostle in like manner says [of them], ‘Who shall be punished with everlasting death from the face of the Lord…’” (4.33.11) It only makes sense that everlasting death would be the punishment awaiting those to whom immortality is not conferred. Remember what I said in the beginning, namely that “to describe our view, Trent says that God destroys the damned, which seems to indicate that when he is not seeking to reconcile the Bible’s language of destruction with other texts that he understands to be teaching eternal torment, he implicitly acknowledges that such language communicates what our view teaches.” Well, apparently, so clearly does language of destruction communicate our view that Irenaeus, when quoting what Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, did not quote it verbatim but replaced “everlasting destruction” with “everlasting death.” Elsewhere, he puts it this way: “to scoffers, and to those not subject to God… has He assigned everlasting destruction by cutting them off from life” (4.11.4). Death is not counter-intuitive code language for everlasting life in misery; it is to be deprived of life—and in this case, forever.

More to the point, an honest reading of Irenaeus’ work demands that we understand his expression about being cut off from life to entail being cut off from existence. In 4.20.7, he says that God has revealed himself to man through many dispensations “lest man, falling away from God altogether, should cease to exist, for the glory of God is a living man,” clearly contrasting ceasing to exist with living. He directly connects immortality with existence as well, speaking of “the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existence upon [those who are in subjection to God]” which, with only one sentence in between, he follows by saying that “being in subjection to God is continuance in immortality” (4.38.3). 

Next, just like Clement and Ignatius, we find Irenaeus teaching that resurrection is only for one group: believers. In 5.27.1, we read, “Has the Word come for the ruin and for the resurrection of many? For the ruin, certainly, of those who do not believe Him… but for the resurrection of believers, and those who do the will of His Father in heaven.” Unlike Clement and Ignatius, though, he also plainly says that God will “raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that… He should execute just judgment towards all” (1.10.1), which I only mention to vindicate them; their denial that the unrighteous will rise is, as I have already argued, merely a denial that they would rise indefinitely. Only the righteous receive the resurrection of life. Lastly, though more passages could be quoted, this last passage (2.34.3), quoted in its entirety, ought to be enough to tie a bow on this treatment of Irenaeus:

For as the heaven which is above us, the firmament, the sun, the moon, the rest of the stars, and all their grandeur, although they had no previous existence, were called into being, and continue throughout a long course of time according to the will of God, so also any one who thinks thus respecting souls and spirits, and, in fact, respecting all created things, will not by any means go far astray, inasmuch as all things that have been made had a beginning when they were formed, but endure as long as God wills that they should have an existence and continuance. The prophetic Spirit bears testimony to these opinions, when He declares, “For He spake, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created: He hath established them for ever, yea, forever and ever.” And again, He thus speaks respecting the salvation of man: “He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him length of days for ever and ever;” indicating that it is the Father of all who imparts continuance for ever and ever on those who are saved. For life does not arise from us, nor from our own nature; but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. And therefore he who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to Him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days for ever and ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created, and has not recognised Him who bestowed [the gift upon him], deprives himself of [the privilege of] continuance for ever and ever. And, for this reason, the Lord declared to those who showed themselves ungrateful towards Him: “If ye have not been faithful in that which is little, who will give you that which is great?” indicating that those who, in this brief temporal life, have shown themselves ungrateful to Him who bestowed it, shall justly not receive from Him length of days for ever and ever.

That’s Enough for Now
Although a number of other witnesses dating between the late first century A.D. and the early second century A.D. taught conditional immortality—like the Didache (ca. 100 A.D.), the Epistle of Barnabas (ca. 100 A.D.), the Odes of Solomon (ca. 125 A.D.), Polycarp of Smyrna (ca. 125 A.D.), and others—this article is not meant to offer a comprehensive treatment of the first two centuries. Now, having gone over three important early witnesses, even if one were still reluctant to grant that the weight of the tradition of the first two centuries lies on the side of conditional immortality, one would at least have to admit that the eternal torment view by no means enjoyed the position of dominance that it has enjoyed following the time of Augustine. To quote Edward Fudge,

[Augustine’s] influence on Western Christianity is immeasurable. Traditionalist author Harry Buis says that Augustine’s advocacy of the position that hell will be a place of unending conscious torment “tended to cause it to become the accepted doctrine of the church for the centuries that followed.” Edward B. Pusey, a leading traditionalist of the nineteenth century, acknowledged that Augustine “has, more than any other, formed the mind of our Western Christendom.”³Edward William Fudge & Robert A. Peterson, Two Views of Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue, (InterVarsity Press, 2000), 189.

Notably, even in Augustine’s day, by the man’s own admission, “very many” rejected the eternal torment view. In his Enchiridion (ch. 112), Augustine wrote:

It is in vain, then, that some, indeed very many, make moan over the eternal punishment, and perpetual, unintermitted torments of the lost, and say they do not believe it shall be so; not, indeed, that they directly oppose themselves to Holy Scripture, but, at the suggestion of their own feelings, they soften down everything that seems hard, and give a milder turn to statements which they think are rather designed to terrify than to be received as literally true.⁴Augustine of Hippo, “Enchiridion,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3, ed. Phillip Schaff (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), 273.

Whether Augustine here fairly represents those who opposed eternal torment in his day is neither here nor there. I think he knew better than to essentially suggest that they were just soft sentimentalists, but hey… rhetoric. I can’t help but wonder if he would have directly accused our three witnesses of being such. Anyways, the point is that though more than a millennia and a half of tradition is weighty, weightier is the witness of the earliest Christians. Which view actually deserves to be called the traditional view?

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