Separation From God Does Not Negate Annihilationism

Even if hell is separation from God, that does not mean that evangelical conditionalism is false. It’s not even a meaningful argument against it.

It should be relatively straightforward as to why this is. God is the creator of all life, apart from his own life of course, and he is the sustainer of it all. No one lives, in any sense, apart from him sustaining them.

That really is the main point of it all.

The fact that God is the creator and sustainer of all life comes up in places like Matthew 10:29-31 and Acts 17:25-28, but it is brought up not so much as new knowledge but moreso as a reminder for a purpose (such as reassuring believers or appealing to unbelievers about how the way to reach the unknown creator God is through Christ). ¹ I believe that fellow contributor William Tanksley is on to something when he suggested to me that vv. 27-28 indicates Paul expected that his pagan audience would already understand that God being near is why any of us live, move, and have our being – implying that were God far from anyone, they would cease all of those. It is Christianity 101. You don’t need to be an annihilationist to affirm this.

But if God is the creator and sustainer of all life, then to be cut off from him would naturally lead to losing life. It would be like being on life support in a hospital and then being pulled from it. The outcome may include conscious misery, but only for a very short time.

Is Separation From God What Hell Entails?

For me, I actually do not think that separation from God is a substantial part of what the Bible teaches about hell, I believe that the final destruction of the wicked is more active, like an execution, and not merely cutting someone off from the source of life to passively die. Even when there is some element of separation, such as Jesus telling the damned in Matthew 25:41 to depart from him, it isn’t separation for separation’s sake. In Matthew 25:41, he tells the wicked to depart “…into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” And Jude 7 shows us, through the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, what “eternal fire” really means and does. ² For more on this, see “What the Bible Actually Says about ‘Eternal Fire'”, Part 1 and Part 2.

Jesus telling the wicked to depart from him sounds to me much more like a king or judge telling a condemned murderer “depart from me, to the guillotine for your execution!” ³ The same applies to Matthew 7:23. Jesus does not include the part about then going to the place of destruction, but it is implied (in no small part because Jesus makes no mention of where the wicked are to depart to at all). The mention of separation is more for rhetorical purposes than the actual cause of death. The cause of death is the raging fire that God has prepared to rid the world of all who continue to bring evil into it (e.g. Matthew 25:41 cf. Jude 7, Matthew 13:40-42, Hebrews 10:26-27).

Now, if eternal torment is true, then things get a bit more complicated. Matthew 7:23 and 25:41 have Jesus telling people to depart from him, which at face value at least sounds like the place they would spend eternity is also apart from his presence. Of course, Revelation 14:9-11 basically indicates the exact opposite. The fiery, physical torment (done in God’s unmixed wrath) that is the entire basis of this passage teaching eternal torment takes place in the presence of the Lamb and the holy angels. Because this dilemma is only hypothetical for the annihilationist, for now I will leave it to traditionalists to present the model that they think makes everything fit together.

Whatever the case, for argument’s sake we will grant that separation from God is affirmed as a key part of what hell is. For the annihilationist, it poses no broad concern. ⁴ Any issue would just be specific texts that don’t address the viability of annihilationism and instead just serve as evidence it is not caused by separation.

How Separation From God Plays Out If Annihilationism Is True

For the most part, the idea that separation from God would entail conscious experience and misery in that state is assumed. But it does come up as a more affirmative argument from time to time. For example, consider Douglas Moo, when discussing 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (more on that passage below):

It makes little sense to describe people who have been annihilated as being separate from the presence of God. ⁵ Douglas J. Moo, “Paul on Hell,” Hell under Fire, eds. Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson, (Zondervan, 2004), 108). See also Robert Peterson, “Fallacies In The Annihilationism Debate? A Response To Glenn Peoples,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 27 no. 4 (June 2007) 349–355, https://etsjets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/files_JETS-PDFs_50_50-2_JETS_50-2_349-355_Peterson.pdf (accessed June 28, 2026).

The rebuttal to this was touched upon in the introduction, but essentially, even assuming tbat separation is a key part of damnation, it isn’t a matter of whether or not people who have been annihilated can be said to also be separated from God. Rather, the separation from God would be the cause of their annihilation. ⁶ In this scenario, it would be more of a death and dissolution than what we might normally think of as annihilation. But the key thing that puts the “annihilation” in annihilationism is a permanent end to conscious existence. The end state for the unsaved person is the same either way. That said, a more passive but equally complete death and end of conscious existence is perhaps better served by the alternative name of conditional immortality or conditionalism (which is the basis of the term used at Rethinking Hell, evangelical conditionalism).

Another point to add to the mix is God’s omnipresence. Where can one even flee too where God is not present? Isn’t that the whole point of Psalm 139? How exactly is there a part of creation without God’s presence?

For this reason, it is not uncommon for traditionalists to say that sinners are cut off from God’s blessings, but that he is ultimately still present in hell. Consider the words of Michael Horton in the straightforwardly-titled article “Hell Is Not Separation From God”:

These verses [2 Thessalonians 1:9 and Revelation 14:9-11] are best reconciled, in my view, by recognizing that judgment consists in being excluded from God’s presence as the source of all blessedness, but not from God’s omnipresent lordship. ⁷ Michael Horton, “Hell Is Not Separation From God”, The Gospel Coalition, July 31, 2019, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/hell-not-separation-god/ (accessed June 28, 2026).

Of course, for the annihilationist, this idea makes perfect sense too. God removes all of his blessings – and that includes the removal of life in every sense of the word.

Any way you slice it, any thought or idea that involves separation from God can fit with annihilationism. If God somehow truly cuts himself off from the wicked, then they die because he is the source of all life. Without his blessings, there is no blessing of life in any sense or definition. And if God’s omnipotence means that he can’t really be absent from any place or state, then the only way one actually could be cut off from his presence is if they no longer exist at all as conscious beings. ⁸ Inert matter that could remain after a wicked person is destroyed, ashes or the like, would technically still be in the presence of an omnipresent God. But in no model of hell does that matter at all. You cannot torment ashes.

2 Thessalonians 1:9 And Separation From God

In no scenario does 2 Thessalonians 1:9 pose a serious challenge to annihilationism. ⁹ For an introductory look at this passage and its application to annihilationism, see “Introduction To Evangelical Conditionalism: 2 Thessalonians 1:9“. For a more in-depth discussion see Peter Grice “Annihilation in 2 Thessalonians 1:9”, Annihilation in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (Part 1): Destroyed by the Glory of His Manifest Presence and Annihilation in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (Part 2): Separation or Obliteration?—The Present Controversy by Ronnie Demler and William Tanksley Jr. As you might imagine, annihilationists are quite comfortable with the idea of hell being eternal destruction.

Rather, the significance of this passage here lies in the ways that different translations can affect its application to the separation question.

Translators are split as to whether the underlying Greek suggests a sense of separation. As a result, some will interpret the Greek preposition apo to include references to separation while others do not. For example:

These people will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power (New American Standard Bible, emphasis added). ¹⁰ See also the New English Translation, the Berean Literal Translation, and the Legacy Standard Bible.

These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power (New King James Version, emphasis added). ¹¹See also the King James Version, American Standard Version, and the Christian Standard Bible (formerly the Holman Christian Standard Bible).

Furthermore, the English Standard Version says “away from” like the NASB does, but also includes a note that it could also be translated as “destruction that comes from” (i.e. “…destruction that comes from the presence of the Lord…”) in a footnote. Linguistically, it is up in the air.

Now, I myself am much more sympathetic to the simpler and more word-for-word rendering of “…from the presence of the Lord” with no explicit sense of separation. This is largely because the context of vv. 6-10 is about Jesus coming in flames and fury, bringing retribution toward those who persecuted believers. The idea of the destruction coming from Christ as its source, perhaps as flames of fire, would fit the context best.

Nevertheless, it ultimately doesn’t matter. It could be that the wicked suffer their everlasting destruction “away from the presence of the Lord” by dying as a result of being cut off. It would be like when Adam and Eve suffered their earthly death away from the presence of the Lord when they were cut off from the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24), or like someone who dies “away from the presence of” their ventilator when they cannot breathe on their own.

The “Away From” Need Not Even Indicate Causality

And even then, this is assuming that the separation has some sort of causal relationship with the destruction in the first place. We already have the model of Matthew 25:41 to show us people departing from Jesus and being sent to the place that delivers the real pain of hell – in this case, the pain of death, of course. We also already have the earthly analogy noted above of a king who condemns a criminal to death and tells them to depart from their royal court to their place of execution. The separation from the king need not even be the ultimate cause of their demise, but just brought up rhetorically to emphasize the king’s righteous sense of disgust.

Another possibility is that the destruction is the means of separation, not the other way around. Glenn Peoples proposes such a model:

Literally the verse says that the wicked “will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord,” making the destruction either come from the presence of the Lord, or it is the thing that removes the lost from His presence. The events are one and the same. ¹² Glenn Peoples, “Thoughts on Robert Peterson’s Reply,” 6, Academia.edu, n.d, https://www.academia.edu/3882395/On_Petersons_reply (accessed June 28, 2026).

There really is no issue from the annihilationist side, when it comes to potential separation in this passage, so long as no one adds key words that are not in the Greek that change the meaning dramatically.

The NIV Interpretation (Not Translation) of 2 Thessalonians 1:9

The New International Version (NIV) adds key words that are not in the Greek that change the meaning dramatically.

The NIV is not always a very literal translation, and instead goes by the philosophy of dynamic equivalence. It puts more emphasis on getting the intended meaning across than it does on translating word-for-word. Whatever the merits or drawbacks on this philosophy, it ends up turning 2 Thessalonians 1:9 from a translation into a theological interpretation by adding the words “and shut out,” which are not in the Greek at all: ¹³ Ibid: see also biblehub.com for the Greek text; “2 Thessalonians 1:9,” Bible Hub, n.d., https://biblehub.com/text/2_thessalonians/1-9.htm (accessed June 28, 2026).

They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (NIV, emphasis added).

Those three small words make all the difference in the world, because they do not merely add an element of separation the way that turning “from” into “away from” does. By adding the three words “and shut out,” they turn everlasting destruction and being shut our from the presence of the Lord into two distinct events. This gives more merit to Moo’s objection to annihilationism, because it indicates that those who have been punished “with everlasting destruction” are then additionally cut out from the Lord’s presence.

The fact that literal and even moderately literal translations don’t take this similar approach is quite telling. It already takes a level of theological interpretation to take the linguistically ambiguous preposition apo and making it “away from” instead of just “from.” Making the shutting out and the destruction two different events takes this even further.

They are not translating it anymore; they are telling you what they think the passage teaches more broadly than what the text itself necessarily says.

Seeing as how this isn’t the only time that the NIV makes theological assumptions in its translation choices that make the traditionalist case look stronger than it is – they turn “unquenchable fire” (NASB) into “where fire that never goes out” in Mark 9:43 – it is a good reminder that one should never base a doctrinal argument on a the wording of a single translation (especially a non-literal translation like the NIV). ¹⁴ The NIV’s unfortunate treatment of Mark 9:43 is noted in my introductory article on Mark 9:48, “Introduction to Evangelical Conditionalism – Mark 9:48“.

Conclusion

Christians all know and acknowledge that we owe our very being to God. That alone should make it clear why being separated from him would end you, not just send you to a place of torment. We live because God chooses to make us live. We have security in our eternal life because of God’s promise, not because of our own innate ability to stay alive. But those who remain turned against God and who spurn his gracious and unearned love do not get this promise. As early church annihilationist Irenaeus of Lyons once said: “…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.” ¹⁵ Irenaeus of Lyons, “Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 34,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume 1, eds. Roberts, Alexander, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Christian Literature, 1885), 412.

The fact that we are finite, created beings and yet can live forever is remarkable and should be the sort of thing that blows our minds. Our existence is not by default. That fact that we live and can think and feel is not by default like it is for God. The fact that we have this opportunity means that we have a God who loves us enough to sustain us for ever and ever, and who has such power that we never have to worry that he could fail. It is important that we not lose sight of this.

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