Their Worm Does Not Die, and the Fire Is Not Quenched
Returning (finally) to Trent’s article, speaking of eternal torment, he writes: “It’s no wonder the traditional reading of scripture favors this view, given that Jesus said in Mark 9:48 that hell is a place ‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” Forgive me for being pedantic, but doesn’t Trent’s statement essentially mean, “It’s no wonder the eternal torment interpretation favors the eternal torment view”? I assume he meant something like, “It’s no wonder the traditional way people have understood scripture is what it is, given that…” Pedantry over.
A bit later, referring back to Mark 9:48, he asks: “Moreover, if the ultimate fate of the wicked is their destruction, then why did Jesus say they will be cast into unquenchable fire or be consumed by worms that never die?” So much to say here. Firstly, before I answer the question, let me tweak your question and throw it back to you, Trent: If the ultimate fate of the wicked is not their destruction, then why did Jesus say to fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna (Matt. 10:28)? And why did Paul say that they will be punished with eternal destruction (2 Thess. 1:9)? Secondly, ever since I’ve become a conditionalist, I’ve often wanted to slap myself upside the head for not having realized sooner how nonsensical it is to think of the term “unquenchable fire” as obvious support for eternal torment. Trent even italicized the word “unquenchable” to make sure we don’t miss it. Suppose a firefighter called you while you were at work and said, “We’re terribly sorry, sir. We’re calling to tell you that your neighbour alerted us that your house is on fire, so we’re on site now, but the fire is unquenchable.” Upon hearing the word “unquenchable,” what would you expect to find upon arriving at the scene? No more house. It is precisely the fact of being told that the fire is unquenchable that would make you expect to find nothing but a pile of rubble. So, far from being support for eternal torment, even a surface-level reading of the text lends itself better to our view.
But what if we go deeper? Well, the phrase, “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” is taken from Isaiah 66:24, according to which it is dead bodies that will be subject to these things after the wicked have been slain (cf. Isa. 66:15-16), not immortal people. The worm (or maggot) that “does not die” (not “never dies” as Trent writes in italics) and the fire that “is not quenched” are consuming agents (Job 24:20; Isaiah 30:33), not everlasting torture devices. They are like the birds of the air and beasts of the earth of Jeremiah 7:31-33 whom “none will frighten away,” such that they will not fail to consume the dead bodies of God’s slaughtered enemies. In 2 Samuel 21:10, Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, after her two sons were hanged, “did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day, or the beasts of the field by night” because it was dishonoring for a dead body to not be given a proper burial but instead be consumed in the open for anyone to see. So, stated clearly, all it means for the worm to not die and the fire to not be quenched is that neither of them will be prevented by those things from consuming the corpses; it doesn’t mean the worm will never die, or that the fire will never go out. In Proverbs 23:13-14, the same Hebrew phrase (לֹא מוּת) translated “does not die” in Isaiah 66:24 is used this way: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die (לֹא מוּת). If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.” Obviously, this does not mean that the child will never die, but simply that he will not do so prematurely. Returning to fire that is “not quenched,” Scripture’s use of this term fits perfectly with the house example; it refers to fire that is not prevented from consuming that which it burns (Jer. 17:27; Ezek. 20:47; Matt. 3:12).
Unquenchable Fire in Ignatius’ Letter to the Ephesians
Before moving on, I want to allot a few words to a particular quote from Ignatius that I purposely did not mention earlier because I thought it would be better to do so here. On the Catholic Answers website (the website on which Trent’s article is published), in an article entitled What the Early Church Believed: Hell, Ignatius is presented as though he believed in eternal torment on the basis of a single quote: “Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if those who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupts by evil teaching the faith of God for which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him” (Eph 16.1-2).
For one to look at this quote and automatically conclude that Ignatius believed in eternal torment is for one to reveal that he is completely unfamiliar with the terrain of the debate. Unquenchable fire is a term taken straight from Scripture, and both annihilationists and traditionalists think that Scripture uses this term to communicate their respective views, so the mere use of a term like this on Ignatius’ part should not be considered support for either side. To know how Ignatius understands the term, we need to see if Ignatius elaborates on his view either in the immediate context, or in the rest of his writings. Let’s take a closer look at the quote: “if those who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupts… the faith of God… A man so foul will depart into unquenchable fire…” Considering the flow of thought, the following paraphrase seems like the most appropriate interpretation of the quote: “Seeing that corrupters of families suffer death as a consequence, how much more deservedly will corrupters of the faith of God suffer death by means of unquenchable fire.” This reading not only fits better with the immediate context, but with everything else we have read from Ignatius.
… but the righteous into eternal life
Still intimating that the traditional view is the obvious teaching of Scripture, Trent writes that Jesus “also declared that after the Last Judgment the wicked, ‘will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’” Again, I can hardly believe I didn’t realize sooner how silly the traditional reading of this text really is. Trent continues: “But annihilationists say we are hastily assuming that Jesus is talking about the traditional concept of hell. They contend that the word “eternal” (Greek aionion) in Matthew 25:46 refers to ‘the age to come.’” Though that is indeed the contention of some annihilationists, it is not that of us at Rethinking Hell. We simply contend that aionion means “unending,” both when it qualifies “punishment” and when it qualifies “life.”
With that in mind, consider that “eternal punishment” is directly contrasted with “eternal life.” Eternal life, by the way, is exactly what it sounds like: living forever. Jesus is pretty clear about this in John 6, where instead of “eternal life” he sometimes says “live forever” (vv. 51 and 58) or “not die” (v. 50).1John 17:3 is sometimes cited as evidence that eternal life more specifically refers not merely to living forever, but to living forever while knowing God and Jesus Christ in the relational sense. But this is to misunderstand “this IS eternal life, that…” as using an “is” of identity, rather than an “is” of result. In reality, what Jesus means here is that to know God and Jesus Christ results in eternal life. In John 12:50, he speaks the same way, saying that “[the Father’s] commandment IS eternal life,” by which he means that the Father’s commandment results in eternal life. Whatever the punishment is, it cannot include the reward with which the punishment is contrasted, namely life, leaving no room for the punishment to be anything other than death. Not only does life being contrasted with death make more sense than life being contrasted with a punishment that necessarily includes life, but in Romans 6:23, the punishment that Paul explicitly contrasts with eternal life is, in fact, death. The same is true of John 3:16, which contrasts eternal life with perishing. I mean, seriously, how can it be any clearer? The punishment is death; the unrighteous will never be brought back to life; ergo, the punishment is unending. Very simple. The word “punishment” (κόλασις) in Matthew 25:46 is just a generic word for punishment that can, in fact, refer to the death penalty, as it does in places like 2 Maccabees 4:38, 3 Maccabees 7:10, 14, and Wisdom of Solomon 19:4-5. Now, I do not mean this disrespectfully, but what Trent goes on to write is poorly articulated and thought out. For ease of reference, here’s the relevant section:
But annihilationists say we are hastily assuming that Jesus is talking about the traditional concept of hell. They contend that the word “eternal” (Greek aionion) in Matthew 25:46 refers to “the age to come.” It can refer to unending duration of life, like in John 10:28, when Jesus says, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” But it can also refer to actions that have eternal effects even though the actions no longer continue, as in Hebrews 9:11-12, in which Paul says we will have “eternal redemption” even though Christ redeeming death on the cross is complete. According to Basil Atkinson, “The lost will not be passing through a process of punishment forever but will be punished once and for all with eternal results.”
To say something’s destruction has “eternal results,” however, stretches the meaning of “eternal” and “results” beyond their breaking point. What people fear from punishment is not its results but the punishment itself.
Considering that Trent never pushes back on the contention of some annihilationists that “aionion punishment” means “punishment of the age to come,” it is difficult to understand why he even mentions it. Almost as if he never mentioned it, he just moves on to introduce a wholly distinct annihilationist argument: the Hebrews 9:12 argument. This argument, then, is the one I will now address.
In Matthew 25:46, we say that the word punishment refers to the punishment itself (i.e., what the punishment is), not to the punishing (i.e., the infliction of the punishment), and that it is the former that is unending, not the latter. As a linguistically analogous instance, we point out that in Hebrews 9:12 (among other verses), the word “redemption” in the phrase “eternal redemption,” in like manner, refers to the redemption itself, not to the process of redeeming, and that while the former is unending, the latter is not. Similarly, the gold standard of Greek lexicons, BDAG, understands the phrase “eternal judgment” in Hebrews 6:2 to refer to a “judgment whose decision is valid eternally,”2William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 567. not to an eternal process of judging.
None of this, mind you, necessitates that we speak of “eternal results” (though some annihilationists do); we can simply say, as I said before, that the punishment is death, and that since this death will never be reversed, the punishment is everlasting. That said, I want to defend those who do speak of “eternal results” by clearing up what they mean, and by addressing what Trent says about this way of articulating our view. The quote from Basil Atkinson, reworded, simply means, as should be clear by now, that though the punishing process will be finite, the punishment inflicted during that finite punishing process will endure forever.
In response to Atkinson, Trent says that “to say something’s destruction has eternal results… stretches the meaning of ‘eternal’ and ‘results’ beyond their breaking point.” Really? Kind of like how traditionalists stretch the meanings of “death,” “perish” and “destruction” beyond their breaking points? No, because unlike those examples, the words “eternal” and “results” are not being stretched at all. If God destroys the unrighteous and they forever remain gone, then God’s process of destroying does, in fact, have eternal results. Trent tries to substantiate his claim by saying: “What people fear from punishment is not its results but the punishment itself.” Okay, so if a rapist is sentenced to castration, fear of never being able to enjoy sex again is off the table? Ludicrous. Besides, even if I were to grant the point, “the punishment itself” (death), as Trent puts it, is precisely what Atkinson means by “results”; death is the eternal result of the punishing process (God destroying), so Trent has totally missed the point. Now, how does Trent support the idea that the word ‘eternal’ is being stretched? By saying that this “interpretation also doesn’t make sense of the parallelism that Jesus is clearly employing to contrast the rewards for the sheep with the punishments for the goats.” To explain this, he quotes Augustine in his City of God (21.23.1):
If both destinies are “eternal,” then we must either understand both as long-continued but at last terminating, or both as endless. For they are correlative—on the one hand, punishment eternal, on the other hand, life eternal. And to say in one and the same sense, life eternal shall be endless, punishment eternal shall come to an end, is the height of absurdity. Wherefore, as the eternal life of the saints shall be endless, so too the eternal punishment of those who are doomed to it shall have no end.3Augustine of Hippo, “The City of God,” in St. Augustin’s City of God and Christian Doctrine, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 469.
Funny enough, this argument is precisely one of the arguments that we at Rethinking Hell are fond of using to argue against universalism. Well put, Augustine! However, as I have said multiple times now, we believe that the punishment is death, and that this death will never be reversed, and therefore that the punishment is eternal. Nothing about the word “eternal” is being stretched—whether we say that the punishment itself is eternal, or that the result of the punishing process is eternal, the word refers to an endless duration. So, not only does Trent’s appeal to Augustine’s argument miserably fail, but Augustine himself would not have used this argument (or, at least, I doubt he would have) to argue against conditional immortality. The quote is taken from a section in which Augustine is specifically arguing against universalism, not annihilationism. In fact, earlier in the very same book (21.11.1), Augustine asks this question concerning the punishment of death:
Then as to the award of death for any great crime, do the laws reckon the punishment to consist in the brief moment in which death is inflicted, or in this, that the offender is eternally banished from the society of the living?4Ibid., 463.
Put in the form of a statement, Augustine is here affirming that laws, in fact, reckon the death penalty to consist in the fact that the offender is eternally banished from the society of the living, meaning that the man to whom Trent turned for support is of no help to him at all. Instead, he only confirms that we are correct in understanding death to be an eternal punishment. Trent is a very intelligent man; the weakness of his argumentation is either a testament to the strength of the case for conditional immortality, or evidence that he did not take the task seriously.
| ￪1 | John 17:3 is sometimes cited as evidence that eternal life more specifically refers not merely to living forever, but to living forever while knowing God and Jesus Christ in the relational sense. But this is to misunderstand “this IS eternal life, that…” as using an “is” of identity, rather than an “is” of result. In reality, what Jesus means here is that to know God and Jesus Christ results in eternal life. In John 12:50, he speaks the same way, saying that “[the Father’s] commandment IS eternal life,” by which he means that the Father’s commandment results in eternal life. |
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| ￪2 | William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 567. |
| ￪3 | Augustine of Hippo, “The City of God,” in St. Augustin’s City of God and Christian Doctrine, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 469. |
| ￪4 | Ibid., 463. |
