Uncategorized Archives — Rethinking Hell

Even the Best and Brightest Can Be Shockingly Ignorant (About Diabetes And Hell)

Based on the title, you may be wondering what connection diabetes has to the doctrine of hell. Diabetes is no fun, but it certainly isn’t *that* bad.

The connection between the two is one that I am able to make based on my own personal experience, and it is one that can be surprisingly helpful in addressing a concern that can certainly arise if the evangelical conditionalist view of hell (i.e. annihilationism) turns out to be true. ¹ The term “evangelical conditionalism” was coined at Rethinking Hell to describe the doctrine of conditional immortality/conditionalism when held from a biblically conservative, evangelical standpoint. Some evangelical conditionalists, like myself, often just call it “annihilationism” because it is easier and more widely used.

A Difficult Truth If Evangelical Conditionalism Is Correct

If annihilationism is true, then one of the implications is that a lot of very wise and godly people – even the majority of Christians for most of church history (definitely after Augustine) – have gotten a major doctrine wrong. Furthermore, I have noticed a trend that has accelerated since early on in my annihilationism journey (2008 for all intents and purposes). This trend is conditionalist apologists, especially in Rethinking Hell spheres and unabashedly including myself, emphatically calling out the often exceptionally poor argumentation, exegesis, and reasoning of those who defend the traditional view of eternal conscious hell.

The claim that so many Christians throughout history have so badly failed to correctly understand the Bible’s teachings on hell is an audacious one. Not that annihilationism is a new view, or that everyone has gotten it wrong until recently, but the false view of eternal conscious hell has nevertheless been very dominant. ² For more on Christians denying eternal conscious hell in the early church, see “Introduction to Evangelical Conditionalism: The Doctrine of Eternal Torment Was Not Universal in the Early Church“. For a detailed look at one major example, Irenaeus of Lyon, see. Chris Date, “Deprived of continuance: Irenaeus the conditionalist“. See also William Tanksley, “Irenaeus and Continuance” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. There are Christians who, when presented with the case for the evangelical conditionalist view, really struggle with this element of it.

Church History Is Not Just A Point of Discomfort For Annihilationists

Now, I will just say that this is going to be something you’re going to run into even if you don’t accept annihilationism. If you’ve been around Rethinking Hell for a bit, then you how know I (and others) feel about forms of eternal conscious hell that eliminate fire, physical torture, etc. Think C.S. Lewis and hell as separation from God, or the modern Eastern Orthodox view where heaven and hell are both God’s presence and hell is the experience of God’s love by those who hate him. These views are historically novel and really have no leg to stand on by any measure – as has been addressed here before. ³ For more on why the fireless, tortureless view of hell is especially week, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“. For a critical look at how those who hold such a view can dismiss their own tradition, see “The Cop-Out of Calling Eternal, Fiery Torture a “Caricature” of Eternal Conscious Hell“.

More broadly, if you’re a Protestant like me, then we must acknowledge that our worldview requires a lot of people to have been wrong as well. This is especially true for the more evangelical/Baptist strain of Protestantism. And it’s not as though church history has been nearly as unified on theological particulars as Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists would try to have us believe either. Along these lines, I highly recommend reading our ongoing church history series, “The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side?” (currently up to Part 5). Many Catholic and Orthodox apologists hold to forms of the softened, fireless view I mentioned above, and so the fact that they so wantonly depart from church history when it comes to hell serves to de-legitimize their claims that they are the one true church because they don’t depart from church history.

Getting Back To The Point At Hand

With that in mind, the main that way we demonstrate that so many great Christians really have misunderstood the truth about hell is to show what the Bible teaches about hell. We also will frequently address many of the arguments for eternal conscious hell head-on and show that they are false. Gravitas and authority can only carry so much weight for someone who cares about truth – which needs to be every Christian. Let God be true and all men be honestly mistaken.

But if so many people got it wrong, then sometimes we also need to look at things in a more big picture sort of way. Co-contributor Glenn Peoples famously and quite capably did so in 2011 with his essay titled “An Open Letter to My Traditionalist Friends.” ⁴ The essay can be found at: https://www.rightreason.org/2011/an-open-letter-to-my-traditionalist-friends/. Glenn also appeared on the Rethinking Hell podcast, Episode 8 to discuss it. Here, I am looking to do so as well.

Why My Diabetes Experience Highlights How Geniuses Can Lack Knowledge

In a nutshell, I have a less common variation of a very common chronic illness, and even top tier doctors seem to have shockingly little knowledge of it if they are not specialists who deal with it regularly.

I have type 1 diabetes. Unlike most type 1 diabetics, I did not develop it as a child. I was misdiagnosed as type 2 in 2024, and was properly diagnosed earlier this year (shortly after I turned 37).

Now, I wouldn’t normally get into much detail at all, but this will become important later. Technically, my formal diagnosis is a slower-developing form of type 1 diabetes called latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (or LADA for short). I will note that it’s a bit of a gray area in my case, because it’s not like testing for a virus where there is a specific LADA virus and a specific traditional type 1 virus. It’s a judgment call based on the same series of tests, as well as considering age and how long it took to go from the first signs of diabetes to being insulin-dependent (which we don’t know in my case because I didn’t get annual check-ups for a while – don’t be like me, get your annual check-ups – and I was already pretty sick and in need of insulin when I was first misdiagnosed as type 2). The words of the endocrinologist who looked over my bloodwork were “you’re type 1…or LADA at least.” But that isn’t the important part, either for annihilationism or my own health journey. ⁵ LADA and regular type 1 diabetes are fundamentally the same in that they are autoimmune diseases in which the immune system attacks the parts of the pancreas that produce insulin. That’s why I will never, ever use the colloquialism of calling it “type 1.5 diabetes.”

Theories differ as to what causes it to onset slowly for some adults, rapidly for other adults, and typically really rapidly in children – as well as what differences do or not exist at the cellular level. Both LADA and regular type 1 ultimately have the same outcome: total or near-total inability of the pancreas to produce insulin. As dire as this all sounds, type 1 diabetes has gone from being a death sentence before the creation of injectable insulin in 1923 to being a daily hassle that people like US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor have managed to live with for 60+ years.

The important part, and the reason I even bring up the LADA element to this at all, is because multiple doctors I saw did not know what LADA was.

Multiple doctors did not know what LADA was.

I learned about it from Google and Reddit, which is how I was able to bring it up with my primary care physician (PCP) and get the ball rolling. ⁶ A PCP is just what we call a family doctor or general practitioner (GP) in the United States. They’re the ones who do physical exams and have a more general medical skillset than a specialist.

Yes, it is not as widely known as regular type 1 or type 2 diabetes, but it’s hardly an obscure disease. Not only did a primary care doctor not know what it was, but neither did an ophthalmologist. Not an optometrist, but an ophthalmologist, a licensed medical doctor (MD) who specializes in eye care. And in this case, this was one with decades of experience who specializes in retinopathy, which means she sees a lot of diabetic patients.

It is more popular now than at probably any time in the last 100 years to rag on doctors and modern medicine, but to be a licensed doctor in the United States is still an incredibly arduous task. You have to forget more about natural sciences, especially human biology, than I will have ever learned. And I am blessed to be in a region with some of the top rated doctors and medical institutions in the country. These doctors went to the best medical schools and win awards. They are bona fide geniuses.

And to my PCP’s credit, she was not the archetypal villain doctor who poo-pooed my suggestion that my type 2 diabetes that wasn’t getting better could actually be this form of type 1 that I found online. Once I brought up the idea, she looked it up on doctor-Google and ordered the tests.

And that’s probably because she is among the top tier of medical professionals. Part of real intelligence is knowing that you don’t know everything. On the other hand, I know some adult type 1s who have been told by nurses and even primary care doctors that they are not type 1 because only kids get type 1. For a layperson, I totally understand not knowing much about the different kinds of diabetes (there are actually several more than the two most people think of). I hear that all the time. But knowing that people hear this from licensed medical professionals takes it to a whole different level of absurdity and makes my eyes melt out of my skull.

And that is part of it as well. Many who were diagnosed with type 1/LADA as adults have had similar experiences to my own and often much worse ones at that. In my relatively short but impactful time in the type 1 community, it is something of a trope that if you are 20 or older, it feels like you’re practically guaranteed to be misdiagnosed with type 2 at first because you’re not a kid, and type 1 diabetes is for kids (silly rabbit).

How Annihilationism And My Diabetes Connect

On the one hand, this whole thing is wild to me, especially because my doctors are among the best of the best.

But on the other hand, having been an annihilationist for so long, and having been so intimately involved in studying the doctrine of hell, I largely can understand it.

Really, my experience forms a sort of synergy. We see both doctors of medicine and doctors of the church having shocking blind spots. Once you have seen it happen with one, it becomes far less surprising when you see it with the other. And that second time makes the first time all the less surprising than it once was.

Put another way, when you’re used to having to explain to theologians with Ph.Ds that the English word “quench” means to extinguish, and that therefore a fire that dies out because it has consumed all of the available fuel has not been “quenched,” you get used to that sort of thing in the medical field – and vice versa. ⁷ Nothing in the Hebrew of Isaiah 66:24 or Greek of Mark 9:48 indicates anything different, of course. And examples in the Old Testament of fires that were not to be quenched in Hebrew and are not still burning – such as Ezekiel 20:47 and Jeremiah 17:27 – drive this point home further.

Ultimately, there is only so much that a person can learn and retain. The smartest among us can learn more than the rest, but they too are limited. And while this doesn’t explain why the small number of traditionalists who specialize in studying hell have still believed in eternal torment, it does help make the broader picture make sense. Most theologians don’t specialize in hell. Not that it is anyone’s only point of focus (I would certainly hope it isn’t), but just as it was only an endocrinologist who specialized in diabetes care that saw “GAD65” on my bloodwork and knew that it was a game-changer, so too those who specialize in studying a given doctrine of their religion will tend to have a better understanding of it than a generalist will.

Now, I will of course highlight that annihilationism is not *only* something you can determine after extensive study. Most of the Bible, even at a shallow, face-level reading, would indicate annihilationism if you didn’t already take eternal conscious hell for granted. ⁸ For more on this, see “A Face-Value Introduction To The Biblical Case For Evangelical Conditionalism“. Most of the extensive study is just done to demonstrate that numerous passages stating that the wicked suffer death, are destroyed, are incinerated by God, etc., do actually mean what they sounded like the first time.

I have virtually no doubt that someone who has never read the Bible before, and who also lived under a rock and didn’t know that eternal torment was the assumed view for Christianity, would think that the Bible taught annihilationism until they hit the book of Revelation. At that point, they would be confused. Perhaps they would think Revelation 20:10 (and maybe 14:9-11) taught eternal torment and so this book contradicted everything they just read. Maybe they would think the book contradicted itself because of the death references (both “second death” and mass slaughter scenes at the hands of angels and Christ himself). Maybe they’d think that three beings are tormented forever while the lake of fire kills everyone else. Of course, they might then wonder how an abstract entity like death could literally be killed or literally tormented forever.

They would certainly not think that the Bible consistently and systematically taught eternal conscious hell, and would instead think that those 1-2 passages from Revelation were the outlier. ⁹ Even the main eternal torment texts outside of Revelation really don’t even sound like eternal torment if you don’t have eternal torment in mind. Mark 9:48 is just weird. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 and its reference to “eternal destruction” sounds like…destruction. Maybe Matthew 25:46 sounds a bit like eternal torment, although at face value “eternal punishment” is juxtaposed with “eternal life” so they probably would just scratch their heads again.

Therefore, it’s not a perfect analogy. There still is something about this particular doctrine that really can make things go off the rails. Glenn Peoples’s open letter is still as true as ever.

But when your health struggles show you first-hand the limits of people who are far more knowledgeable than you, not just as one bad experience but as a widespread and systemic issue, then the idea that a lot of theologians missed the boat on hell becomes an easier pill to swallow.

 [+]

References
￪1	The term “evangelical conditionalism” was coined at Rethinking Hell to describe the doctrine of conditional immortality/conditionalism when held from a biblically conservative, evangelical standpoint. Some evangelical conditionalists, like myself, often just call it “annihilationism” because it is easier and more widely used.
￪2	For more on Christians denying eternal conscious hell in the early church, see “Introduction to Evangelical Conditionalism: The Doctrine of Eternal Torment Was Not Universal in the Early Church“. For a detailed look at one major example, Irenaeus of Lyon, see. Chris Date, “Deprived of continuance: Irenaeus the conditionalist“. See also William Tanksley, “Irenaeus and Continuance” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
￪3	For more on why the fireless, tortureless view of hell is especially week, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“. For a critical look at how those who hold such a view can dismiss their own tradition, see “The Cop-Out of Calling Eternal, Fiery Torture a “Caricature” of Eternal Conscious Hell“.
￪4	The essay can be found at: https://www.rightreason.org/2011/an-open-letter-to-my-traditionalist-friends/. Glenn also appeared on the Rethinking Hell podcast, Episode 8 to discuss it.
￪5	LADA and regular type 1 diabetes are fundamentally the same in that they are autoimmune diseases in which the immune system attacks the parts of the pancreas that produce insulin. That’s why I will never, ever use the colloquialism of calling it “type 1.5 diabetes.” Theories differ as to what causes it to onset slowly for some adults, rapidly for other adults, and typically really rapidly in children – as well as what differences do or not exist at the cellular level. Both LADA and regular type 1 ultimately have the same outcome: total or near-total inability of the pancreas to produce insulin. As dire as this all sounds, type 1 diabetes has gone from being a death sentence before the creation of injectable insulin in 1923 to being a daily hassle that people like US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor have managed to live with for 60+ years.
￪6	A PCP is just what we call a family doctor or general practitioner (GP) in the United States. They’re the ones who do physical exams and have a more general medical skillset than a specialist.
￪7	Nothing in the Hebrew of Isaiah 66:24 or Greek of Mark 9:48 indicates anything different, of course. And examples in the Old Testament of fires that were not to be quenched in Hebrew and are not still burning – such as Ezekiel 20:47 and Jeremiah 17:27 – drive this point home further.
￪8	For more on this, see “A Face-Value Introduction To The Biblical Case For Evangelical Conditionalism“.
￪9	Even the main eternal torment texts outside of Revelation really don’t even sound like eternal torment if you don’t have eternal torment in mind. Mark 9:48 is just weird. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 and its reference to “eternal destruction” sounds like…destruction. Maybe Matthew 25:46 sounds a bit like eternal torment, although at face value “eternal punishment” is juxtaposed with “eternal life” so they probably would just scratch their heads again.

Atonement, Darren Clark, Uncategorized

William Lane Craig on penal substitution and annihilationism Part 1: The illusion of explanatory depth

Introduction:

In a recent Q&A response on his webpage called Annihilation and Atonement, William Lane Craig answers questions relating to whether annihilationism is logically incompatible with Jesus’ substitutionary atonement on the cross. The main premise of the argument against annihilationism leveled by the inquirer is if the true wage of sin is annihilation (ceasing to exist), then Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross would require Him to be annihilated to pay that price. This assumes a silent premise that the first and second deaths are to be regarded as being the same in every way. The idea is to draw attention to a logical conflict for conditionalists, for if it is logically impossible for God the Son to cease to exist—even temporarily—the penalty paid on the cross cannot be annihilation; it must be separation from God.

The silent premise behind Craig’s perspective

There is a silent premise behind Craig’s discussion on whether annihilation can be integrated with the doctrine of PSA. He is committed to the belief that Christ’s soul survived the death of the body. If the final punishment for sin is the death of the soul and body (Craig would say the annihilation of the person) then Christ’s death could not possibly be the death that the sinner will die at the final judgment. Matthew 10:28 is useful in navigating this subject.

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

The first part of this verse indicates that the soul survives the death of the body. However, the second part of this verse states that the body and soul suffer the exact same fate in Gehenna.¹The English word ‘hell’ translates the Greek word that means γέεννα (geenna). The dominant position held by traditionalists throughout the entire history of traditionalism is that those who end up in Gehenna (hell) are there in an embodied state.²There is a novel and outlier position within traditional ranks that the body is destroyed in hell at the final judgment, leaving those in hell in a disembodied state. As it is an outlier position, it can hardly be representative of historical traditionalism. This means that under traditionalism, the second death cannot be exactly the same as the first death. It is immediately apparent that the silent premise in the question posed to Craig, and his response to it, are false.

Perhaps this is why Craig de-emphasizes death when discussing the punishment that Christ suffered on behalf of sinful humans.

It is not enough to say merely that Christ died for our sins. Human death is not extinction but simply the separation of the soul from the body. Christ’s experiencing a human death is far from adequate as a punishment for the sins of all mankind. Annihilationists themselves recognize that the damned do not deserve merely to die, but to be annihilated. So how can Christ, who cannot be annihilated, bear our just desert and so satisfy divine justice?

His insistence on the inadequacy of Christ’s death as a punishment for the sins of all humans turns on his particular view of human death as mere separation of the soul from the body. Craig leverages this understanding of human death through the notion that the soul survives the death of the body as if the death of the soul and body cannot be considered the death of the whole person. But if the first death is the separation of the body from the soul, then he cannot say that Christ’s death itself was the punishment due sinners in hell, because as a traditionalist he holds to the belief that those in hell will be in an embodied state. So, his own silent premise pushes him to imply that the punishment Jesus bore on behalf of sinners was not his death, but his alienation from God (see also Death and Punishment).

On another note, Craig inaccurately represents Evangelical conditionalists by stating they recognize “the damned do not deserve merely to die, but to be annihilated.” While recognizing there is a difference between the first and second death, they simply point to Matthew 10:28. Referring to this verse, Chris Date (3:06:24 minute mark) has expressed how this is viewed under a conditionalism plus dualism model.

Jesus says there’s a difference between the first and the second death and the difference is that the death extends to the whole person and not just the body in the second death

Even conditionalists who are physicalists will simply say that Matthew 10:28 refers to people being killed in Gehenna. What all conditionalists share is the conviction that God will slay the person at the last judgment. Any pushback from the likes of Craig on this question misses how conditionalists arrive at the conclusion that the result of the whole person being slain is that there is no surviving remnant of that person. We are committed to the proposition that the Bible teaches the final punishment is the actual death of the person. With the whole person being killed then that person (including the soul) would be inert, inactive, insensate, and inanimate. The person no longer has conscious existence, even if there could be fragments of that person’s soul or body remaining after death. So, conditionalists are not committed to affirming the final punishment is annihilation per se. We are committed to affirming that punishment has to do with the actual death of the person. If Craig is dissatisfied with this statement then I would ask him what he thinks would happen if a person’s soul is killed along with the body?

Does Jesus’s death pose a problem for conditionalists?

Craig devotes a significant portion of his response to describing how he thinks Jesus’s death poses a problem for annihilationists if Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is shown to be true. The thrust of his argument mirrors that noted in the introduction of this article:

Christ did not cease to exist when he died; indeed, it is impossible for him to cease to exist, for he is a divine person, the second person of the Trinity, and therefore necessarily existent and eternal. Therefore, he cannot be annihilated. Therefore, he cannot suffer the punishment that I deserved for my sin.

At first blush, this may appear to the reader to be a significant problem for conditionalists. However, if we deny the hidden premise in Craig’s argument, as I have above, then any conditionalist who also holds to dualism can point to Matthew 10:28 to show that Craig is mistaken to think that Jesus must have ceased to exist when he died. Chris Date has published an article in which he answers the very objection leveled by Craig.³Christopher M. Date, ‘The Righteous for the Unrighteous: Conditional Immortality and the Substitutionary Death of Jesus’, in MJTM 18 (2016–2017) 69-92. You can find a link to Date’s article here. Date argues for the position known as “holistic dualism,” the view that a human person is a psychosomatic unity. That is, the body and soul of a human are a unified whole. Date explains further,

Assuming, therefore, an anthropological dualism in which human souls exist and remain conscious after death, humans are alive only if they are embodied and their bodies continue to breathe. Conditionalists see death—whether temporal or eternal—as the privation of this psychosomatic life.⁴Ibid, 83.

Though the first and second deaths are not exactly identical in every way (i.e. in the first death the soul survives the death of the body), both do involve the privation of human psychosomatic life. This means Christ’s human death can be considered to be the same as that inflicted on sinners at the last judgment: in both cases the punishment is the privation of life. So, conditionalists can hold to PSA without having the burden of having to address the question of Christ ceasing to exist when he died.

But, Craig primarily has physicalists in mind in his response. Glenn Peoples plots a way that Christ can be thought of as being annihilated without falling into heresy.⁵Glenn Andrew Peoples, ‘The Mortal God: Materialism and Christology’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, ed. Joshua R. Farris & Charles Taliaferro, Kindle ed. (Ashgate Publishing: 2015), 331-344. Some aspects of his view involve avoiding thinking the Logos became material in the incarnation. Rather, the Logos “entered a relationship with something that was fully human,”⁶Ibid., 332. while the Logos is timeless. Peoples adopts the classical view of divine timelessness. The Logos’s existence is not divided up through time, so He has all his existence. So, what happened to Christ in time does not affect the Logos. Under this particular physicalist point of view, though no remnant of Christ’s person remained when he died in time, this could not affect the timeless Logos. In my mind, this appears to be a plausible account of how Christ could die while the Logos remains immortal. I see no reason why we could not also say the person of Christ ceased to exist for those three days between his death and resurrection. So, there are at least two ways in which conditionalists can escape Craig’s argument.

Both of these views will have their critics, but both do offer a plausible way forward using premises regularly accepted within Christianity. Craig is known for arguing that a posited view only needs to be plausible to defeat an argument against that view. Yet Craig does not seem to even know that Date and Peoples have put forward separate plausible models that account for the very problem he thinks rules out annihilationism. In fact, his admission that “I have yet to see them offer a plausible solution” to the question of how we account for Christ’s death if annihilationism is true comes across as a cavalier dismissal of a view he barely seems to understand. In effect his lack of knowledge of conditionalists own views on the very subject he is discussing creates the illusion of explanatory depth. Craig does not know what he does not know about conditionalism, so has mistakenly argued there is an insurmountable problem for conditionalists.

When I started writing this blog article I did not intend to include more than a few pages of information. Yet as I came to understand Craig’s view with more depth I found that there are many more problems with his reasoning for rejecting annihilationism than I previously thought. I have split the article into smaller sections.

Stand by for part 2.

 [+]

References
￪1	The English word ‘hell’ translates the Greek word that means γέεννα (geenna).
￪2	There is a novel and outlier position within traditional ranks that the body is destroyed in hell at the final judgment, leaving those in hell in a disembodied state. As it is an outlier position, it can hardly be representative of historical traditionalism.
￪3	Christopher M. Date, ‘The Righteous for the Unrighteous: Conditional Immortality and the Substitutionary Death of Jesus’, in MJTM 18 (2016–2017) 69-92. You can find a link to Date’s article here.
￪4	Ibid, 83.
￪5	Glenn Andrew Peoples, ‘The Mortal God: Materialism and Christology’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, ed. Joshua R. Farris & Charles Taliaferro, Kindle ed. (Ashgate Publishing: 2015), 331-344.
￪6	Ibid., 332.

Biblical Exegesis, Darren Clark, Uncategorized

How the ECT lens of G.K. Beale distorts his interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 1:9

Introduction:

G.K. Beale is renowned for his scholarship in the area of NT exegesis, especially his work on Revelation. I regularly consult his literature on the NT when investigating the finer points of NT Greek. In his commentary on the Thessalonian letters, Beale gives some space to discuss the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 1:9. Much of his discussion is aimed at answering the question of whether Paul meant to convey that unbelievers will be ‘annihilated at the final judgement’ or suffer an ‘everlasting, conscious suffering’.¹G.K. Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, (InterVarsity Press: 2003), 187. Beale concludes Paul was teaching the separation view of ECT (eternal conscious torment) in this verse. This article aims to evaluate his reasons for that conclusion.

The meaning of ὄλεθρος (olethros):

Interestingly, Beale finds that Paul’s use of ὄλεθρος in other passages is not determinative for understanding the use of the noun in 2 Thessalonians 1:9.²1 Cor 5:5; 1 Thess 5:3; 1 Tim 6:9 He mentions that ὄλεθρος can refer to physical death,³LXX 1 Kings 13:34; Ezek 14:16–18; 3 Macc 6:30, 34 and the defeat of one nation by another.⁴Jer 48:3; 51:55; Obad 1:13 He gives more attention to the use of the phrase ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (‘eternal destruction’) in 4 Maccabees 10:15:

By the blessed death of my brothers and the eternal destruction of the tyrant (τὸν αἰώνιον τοῦ τυράννου ὄλεθρον) and the praiseworthy life of piety, I will not renounce my noble brotherhood.⁵Unless otherwise indicated quotations from the LXX will be from The Lexham English Septuagint.

Beale appeals to other statements in 4 Maccabees to show that ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (‘eternal destruction’) ‘is defined by the context not as annihilation but as unending suffering.’⁶Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188. To support this claim, he highlights that Antiochus is said to ‘endure, by divine justice, eternal torture by fire’ (4 Macc 9:9),⁷Unless otherwise indicated, the English translation of the LXX will be from LES. and ‘perpetually endure tortures’ (4 Macc 10:11). The tyrant is told that God has ‘reserved divine justice for you, constant and eternal fire and tortures’ (4 Macc 12:12).⁸Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188.

Rethinking Hell contributor, James Harding, has published an article on 4 Maccabees here. Harding presents a case for the perspective that 4 Maccabees does not offer support for traditionalism. This is a challenge to Beale’s position. A full evaluation of Harding’s work is beyond the scope of this article so I will leave it to the reader to evaluate Harding’s work. For the purposes of this article I would like to focus on Beale’s methodology employed in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians. Ironically, his appeal to the context of 4 Maccabees 10:15 to clarify the meaning of ‘eternal destruction’ is a tacit admission that the phrase itself is ambiguous. That is, Beale knew he could not simply assert that the mere use of the phrase ‘eternal destruction’ justifies a traditionalist reading of 4 Maccabees 10:15. He knew that he had to cite other statements made by the same author to establish the meaning of that phrase. The problem is Paul does not use similar language anywhere in his literature. So, even if the reader remains unconvinced by James Harding’s article on 4 Maccabees, Beale still has a burden to show that Paul used ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (‘eternal destruction’) in the same way as the author of 4 Maccabee.

Beale is also mistaken that 4 Maccabees 10:15 is the only relevant example that could illustrate what Paul meant by ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (‘eternal destruction’). He overlooks a key entry in BDAG, which lists Testament of Reuben as a text using a combination of these words in the larger phrase ὄλεθρον Βελίαρ καὶ ὄνειδος αἰώνιον (‘the eternal destruction of Beliar and an eternal disgrace’).⁹BGAD, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.” For the critical-text that has this variant see Robert Henry Chalrles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, (Oxford University Press: 1960), 12. BDAG juxtaposes the citation to the Testament of Reuben 6:3 with 2 Thessalonians 1:9. The gloss given is ‘eternal death’. Αἰώνιος (aiōnios) is taken to modify ὄλεθρος even though it falls at the end of the sentence. The phrase can be taken as an example of the two words being used to refer to eternal destruction. The Testament of Reuben is part of the larger body of work called the Twelve Testaments of the Patriarchs. The authorship of the Testaments is debated. The corpus itself contains interpolations from Christians and (like the Bible) there are more than one versions of the Greek text of the Testaments. Nevertheless, it is possible to obtain a general understanding of what is meant by ‘eternal destruction’.

Whereas 4 Maccabees contains language that does prima facie refer to eternal torture, the same is not the case with the Twelves Tetaments. The only verse that comes close is Testament of Asher 5:6, which refers to souls being harassed after people have died. The Greek word used here is βασανίζω, which can refer to torture; however, the text lacks an explicit statement regarding the duration of this harassment. In contrast, there are statements that the righteous will enter into eternal life (Testament of Asher 5:6). Obtaining eternal life is how ‘one wards off death’ (Testament of Asher 5:2). Meanwhile, the people of Sodom are said to have ‘perished forever’ (Testament of Asher 7:1). The verb here is ἀπόλλυμι (apollumi), which is used throughout the testaments to refer to the killing of people. Finally, Treatment of Benjamin 7 describes the fate of Cain after he slew his brother Abel. Cain is punished with 7 punishments, the last of which is being ‘deprived of life’ (7:4). In the Testaments the righteous obtain eternal life so forever ward of death, while the unrighteous are deprived of life.

Beale may not have been aware of the use of ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον in the Testament of Reuben when he wrote his commentary on the Thessalonian letters, but it was not at all difficult to locate, given BDAG explicitly refers to it in its entry on ὄλεθρος. Beale could have located this text with a basic search of the lexica available to him. His failure to acknowledge this text mirrors his tendency elsewhere in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians 1:9 to gravitate towards evidence that supports a traditionalist reading of that verse.

In order to support his reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Beale discusses a connection to LXX Isaiah 66.

This understanding of everlasting destruction is supported also by noting that Paul derives the phrase “in a blazing fire, giving vengeance” (en pyri phlogos didontos ekdikēsin; in blazing fire.… He will punish in NIV) from Isaiah 66:15: “the Lord will render his vengeance … in a flame of fire” (apodounai … ekdikēsin … en phlogi pyros), the only place in the Old Testament where this combination of terms is found. This is noteworthy because only nine verses later comes the well-known depiction of those who have been judged—“their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched” (Is 66:24)—a clear reference to an unending punishment of conscious beings.¹⁰Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 189.

While Beale correctly notes that LXX Isaiah 66:15 is a relevant OT source text for the language of 2 Thessalonians 1:8, he fails to mention that the context of the source text explicitly has to do with the death of God’s enemies. To illustrate this, we can follow Beale’s method when discussing LXX 4 Maccabees 10:15 and read LXX Isaiah 66:15 in its immediate context of LXX Isaiah 66:15-17, 23-24:

For look, the Lord will come like a fire, and his chariots will come like a storm, to render his vengeance in wrath and his utter rejection in a flame of fire. For the whole earth will be judged by the fire of the Lord, and all flesh will be judged by his sword; there will be many casualties by the Lord. “Those who cleanse and purify themselves for the gardens and who eat swine’s flesh and abominable things and the mouse in the doorways will be destroyed all at once,” said the Lord.

And this will happen: All flesh will come to bow down before me month after month and Sabbath after Sabbath in Jerusalem,” said the Lord. “And they will go out and see the corpses of the humans who transgressed against me, for their worm does not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and they will become a spectacle for all flesh.”

Note the emphasis on the casualties. They are slain. Their corpses are left unburied, and open the elements. This is not a context in which the survival of those being punished is in view. Yet Beale ignores this completely. His assertion that the statement ‘their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched’ is ‘a clear reference to an unending punishment of conscious beings’ flies in the face of the evidence. Beale is inconsistent in how he appeals to the literary context of LXX 4 Maccabees 10:15 to clarify its meaning while ignoring entirely the literary context of LXX Isaiah 55:15 and 24. He follows sound exegetical practice when discussing a verse that can be seen as support for ECT but fails to apply the same process when discussing passages that do not support his view of hell.

Punishment as separation?

Beale thinks that 2 Thessalonians 1:9 teaches the final punishment of unbelievers is their eternal separation from God.

In 1:9 Paul defines this ongoing punishment as being separated from close relationship with God, “destruction in the sense of deprivation of the Lord’s presence” (Williams 1992:116). Unbelievers do not cease to exist because of God’s final judgment, but they are banned from ever existing in his presence (Richard 1995:308 rightly observes that the double use of from highlights not extinction of existence but a “ruin” that is defined as continued existence separate from Christ and lasting forever). If Paul had intended to convey a notion of annihilation, he could have merely said, they will be punished with everlasting destruction, without mentioning that those judged would be excluded from God’s presence. Thus, the punishment “fits the crime,” in that those who refuse to know God (1:8) and want to be separate from him in this life will be punished by being separated from God in the next life.¹¹Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188–189.

Ὄλεθρος does not mean ‘separation’ or ‘deprivation’ in any other context in ancient Greek literature.¹²I have consulted the major lexica I own, including BGAD, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; BrillDAG, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; Louw-Nida, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; LSJ, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; and, CGL, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.” The noun certainly does not take this meaning in the three other instances Paul uses it, and it does not take on this meaning in the LXX. If Paul were to have used ὄλεθρος to denote a sense of destruction as separation or deprivation, then it would be a sui generis use of the word. This would demand the provision of indisputable evidence that Paul used this noun in a novel way.

Beale quotes David Williams and Earle Richard as support for his assertion. Neither of them offer a compelling reason to support Beale’s position. Their position that exclusion is in view is based on several lines of arguments. Williams points to Ephesians 2:12 (‘remember that you were at that time separated from Christ’) as evidence of a theme of separation from Christ in Paul’s theology. However, that is a different context entirely. It does not follow that since Paul described people as being separated from Christ before their salvation that he used ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (‘eternal destruction’) to refer to the eternal separation of those suffering the final punishment. Besides, in Ephesians 2:12 Paul uses the word χωρίς (chōris), a word that usually denotes the notion of separation . This word is not used in either of the Thessalonian epistles. Instead, the preposition ἀπό (apo) does all the work for the traditionalist reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9.

Williams also uncritically appeals to ἀπό as if it can only possibly mean ‘away from’ in this context and approvingly of the NIVs unjustifiable rendering of ἀπό as ‘shut out from’. Richard does cite Isaiah 2:10, which is commonly thought to be an OT source text for Paul’s language in 2 Thessalonians 1:9. Isaiah 2:10 reads as,

Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty.

Richard fails to explain how Isaiah 2:10 supports a separation version of ECT. The implied argument is since the people are told to hide into caves then the idea of being in a place that is entirely removed from God justifies NIV’s rendering of ἀπό as ‘shut out from’ and the separation interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 generally. The LXX renders Isaiah 2:10 as ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ φόβου κυρίου (‘from the presence of the fear of the Lord’). To be sure, the preposition ἀπό is well capably of denoting the notion of separation of a person from another person. Yet, all of the major translations of the LXX refrain from rendering LXX Isaiah 2:10 in a way that comports with the notion of ‘shut out from’.

LEH

And now, enter into the rocks and hide in the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the glory of his strength, when he rises to shatter the earth.

NETS

And now enter into the rocks, and hide in the earth, from before the fear of the Lord and from the glory of his strength, when he rises to crush the earth.

Brenton

Now therefore enter ye into the rocks, and hide yourselves in the earth, for fear of the Lord, and by reason of the glory of his might, when he shall arise to strike terribly the earth.

Rethinking Hell contributors Ronnie Demler and William Tanksley have discussed Paul’s use of ἀπό in an article here. They have shown how traditionalists misread Isaiah 2:10 by pointing out that people depicted there ‘are not hiding in a place separated away from their terror; they are hiding because of the presence of their terror.’ Demler and Tanksley are not alone in recognizing this.¹³See Graham S. Ogden and Jan Sterk, A Handbook on Isaiah, (United Bible Societies: 2011), 95; Gary V. Smith, Isaiah 1–39, (B & H Publishing Group: 2007), 139; Geoffrey W. Grogan, “Isaiah,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, (Zondervan Publishing House: 1986), 37.

Finally, it is worth noting Richard Ottley’s comments on the meaning of ἀπὸ προσώπου:

ἀπὸ προσώπου] A literal rendering of Heb. מפני, which is used almost as a simple preposition, sometimes meaning little more than ‘because of’: here the original meaning is hardly lost.¹⁴Richard R. Ottley, The Book of Isaiah according to the Septuagint, (Cambridge University Press: 1906), 113.

This supports Demler and Tanksley’s reading of Isaiah 2:10. The focus is on hiding because of fear of God’s punishment. One cannot be separated from their own emotions in a locative way. This being so, the mere fact that Isaiah 2:10 is the source for Paul’s language in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is insufficient grounds for concluding that his use of ἀπὸ there should be regarded as denoting separation.

Beale’s favorable quotations of Williams and Richard without critical discussion suggests a willingness to only gather evidence that support the separative ECT reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9. An example of this is seen in how Beale states that:

Richard … rightly observes that the double use of from highlights not extinction of existence but a “ruin” that is defined as continued existence separate from Christ and lasting forever.¹⁵Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188–189.

Neither Beale nor Richard explain why the double use of ἀπὸ denotes a ‘continued existence separate from Christ’. There is no provision of examples from undisputed texts showing how the dual use of ἀπὸ was a typical way separation was expressed using that preposition. It is merely asserted. This is not a compelling reason to adopt Beale’s reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9. I contend that he cites this argument because of his intention to show that the ECT reading of this verse has merit. That Beale can state ‘Isaiah’s phrase underscores that idolaters will be forced to separate themselves from God’s presence at the time of judgment’¹⁶Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 189. just after discussing Isaiah 66 where the corpses of God’s slain enemies speak to a mindset of an intention to marshal only the evidence that supports his view of hell.

Conclusion:

The case has been made that Beale does not follow the evidence when interpreting a verse like 2 Thessalonians 1:9. He is a traditionalist who wears his ECT lens when discussing this verse. It shows through in the way he omits even discussing aspects of Isaiah 66 that clearly mitigates against his view of hell. It shows through even as he uncritically cites other authors who share his view of hell. Beale has earned his reputation as a top NT scholar. Unfortunately, when it comes to a hell proof text like 2 Thessalonians 1:9, his ECT glasses lead him into eisegesis of that verse.

 [+]

References
￪1	G.K. Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, (InterVarsity Press: 2003), 187.
￪2	1 Cor 5:5; 1 Thess 5:3; 1 Tim 6:9
￪3	LXX 1 Kings 13:34; Ezek 14:16–18; 3 Macc 6:30, 34
￪4	Jer 48:3; 51:55; Obad 1:13
￪5	Unless otherwise indicated quotations from the LXX will be from The Lexham English Septuagint.
￪6	Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188.
￪7	Unless otherwise indicated, the English translation of the LXX will be from LES.
￪8	Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188.
￪9	BGAD, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.” For the critical-text that has this variant see Robert Henry Chalrles, The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, (Oxford University Press: 1960), 12.
￪10	Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 189.
￪11	Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188–189.
￪12	I have consulted the major lexica I own, including BGAD, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; BrillDAG, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; Louw-Nida, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; LSJ, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.”; and, CGL, s.v. “ὄλεθρος.” The noun certainly does not take this meaning in the three other instances Paul uses it, and it does not take on this meaning in the LXX.
￪13	See Graham S. Ogden and Jan Sterk, A Handbook on Isaiah, (United Bible Societies: 2011), 95; Gary V. Smith, Isaiah 1–39, (B & H Publishing Group: 2007), 139; Geoffrey W. Grogan, “Isaiah,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, (Zondervan Publishing House: 1986), 37.
￪14	Richard R. Ottley, The Book of Isaiah according to the Septuagint, (Cambridge University Press: 1906), 113.
￪15	Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 188–189.
￪16	Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians, 189.

Uncategorized

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.

Continue reading “Separation From God Does Not Negate Annihilationism” →

Uncategorized

Why Eternal Conscious Hell Diminishes God’s Holy Hatred Of Sin

It has long been a common argument against evangelical conditionalism (i.e. annihilationism), and for eternal conscious hell, that the former diminishes God’s holiness by making sin less serious. This has come up all the more since Kirk Cameron first publicly announced his sympathies for the annihilationist view.

This argument for eternal torment is not only ineffective, but counterproductive. It backfires. Not only is it an extrabiblical argument, the kind of argument that is often called out as inappropriate when made by conditionalists (including Kirk Cameron), but it also highlights a major weakness of the traditional view:

Eternal conscious hell is the only view of hell in which God keeps sin as part of his creation for all eternity.

Continue reading “Why Eternal Conscious Hell Diminishes God’s Holy Hatred Of Sin” →

Uncategorized

Death Does Not Mean Separation In The Bible – Part 2

In Part 1, we went over the meat of why we should deny the claim that death means separation in the Bible. Not that there is never a connection between death and separation, and not that death is never used metaphorically, but that this whole model has both specific problems and a lack of any actual biblical basis to begin with.

The following three passages are the most likely to establish a biblical basis, and so we will look at why they fail to do so.

Continue reading “Death Does Not Mean Separation In The Bible – Part 2” →

Uncategorized

Death Does Not Mean Separation In The Bible – Part 1

Death does not mean the separation of two things. It does not mean this in the Bible or anywhere else. The claim that it does mean separation in the Bible is a cliche in Christian theological circles, but one built on neither the biblical text nor, for that matter, the normal and literal meaning of words.

That is not to say that there is never a relationship between separation and death. Even on Earth, regarding physical death, if someone on life support was separated from the machinery that kept their body alive while they healed, they would die. But even then, the death is not just another name for the separation that occurs. Both entities are equally separated, but only one of them dies because in situations like that, separation causes death. It is not the death itself.

The Bible has examples like that, as well as other instances of death that are assumed to be about separation that just aren’t.

Continue reading “Death Does Not Mean Separation In The Bible – Part 1” →

Uncategorized

The Cop-Out of Calling Eternal, Fiery Torture a “Caricature” of Eternal Conscious Hell

Some may wonder why I have such a bone to pick with what I sometimes call the modern, metaphorical view of eternal conscious hell. ¹ What I refer to as the modern, metaphorical view of eternal conscious hell is the general view of eternal conscious hell that denies literal fire of any sort, denies that God is actively torturing the wicked, and instead mainly sees hell as the natural, internal turmoil that occurs within the heart of a wicked person when they are cut off from God (who they hate anyway). Some variations, like what has become popular in Eastern Orthodox circles, say that the torment is from the opposite of separation from God, and is the internal turmoil of sinners who have to spend eternity in the loving (not wrathful) presence of the God they hate. For our purposes these views are substantially equivalent. After all, what is so bad about this view? Isn’t it a better view to hold than the actually-traditional view of hell as a divine torture chamber, where God burns the wicked alive forever and fills their bodies and souls with torment beyond measure out of his unending and untamable wrath? It certainly is much more philosophically and theologically justifiable, right?

Continue reading “The Cop-Out of Calling Eternal, Fiery Torture a “Caricature” of Eternal Conscious Hell” →

 [+]

References
￪1	What I refer to as the modern, metaphorical view of eternal conscious hell is the general view of eternal conscious hell that denies literal fire of any sort, denies that God is actively torturing the wicked, and instead mainly sees hell as the natural, internal turmoil that occurs within the heart of a wicked person when they are cut off from God (who they hate anyway). Some variations, like what has become popular in Eastern Orthodox circles, say that the torment is from the opposite of separation from God, and is the internal turmoil of sinners who have to spend eternity in the loving (not wrathful) presence of the God they hate. For our purposes these views are substantially equivalent.

Uncategorized

The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side? – Part 5

As we have seen in the previous parts of this series, the modern, metaphorical view of hell has a weak historical pedigree. Of course, it also has no biblical leg to stand on. ¹ For more on the profound weaknesses of the modern, metaphorical view, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“. But church history is the strongest argument that the doctrine of eternal conscious hell has. Therefore, the more it can be shown that the historical view of eternal conscious hell entailed physical torture in (typically) literal fire and God’s retributive wrath and vengeance, across the centuries and across the various traditions within Christendom, the more that any foundation for the more palatable forms of eternal conscious hell lose any appeal whatsoever.

At least annihilationism – and universalism, to be fair – have some notable early church presence. And at least annihilationists don’t pretend to be part of the dominant tradition in the first place.
Continue reading “The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side? – Part 5” →

 [+]

References
￪1	For more on the profound weaknesses of the modern, metaphorical view, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“.

Uncategorized

The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side? (Part 4)

It has been a while since I initially published Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the series “The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side?” I intentionally structured it such that Parts 1-3 made a full, complete narrative, and yet it could also be expanded upon later. Not surprisingly, this topic has only become more relevant as time has gone by.

I began this series in order to tackle the modern, metaphorical view of eternal conscious hell, i.e. the variations that attempt to remove the most uncomfortable elements of the traditional view of hell without sacrificing its eternal, conscious nature. I have no good things to say about this collection of views (see notes below for more on that). ¹ For a detailed case against the modern, metaphorical view, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“. For more on the version increasingly held in Eastern Orthodox circles, where both righteous and wicked are in heaven with God and his love (“love” used very loosely) torments the wicked because they hate him, see Part 3 of this series. See also “The Modern Eastern Orthodox View and the Hellfire of God’s Love“. None whatsoever.

Continue reading “The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side? (Part 4)” →

 [+]

References
￪1	For a detailed case against the modern, metaphorical view, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“. For more on the version increasingly held in Eastern Orthodox circles, where both righteous and wicked are in heaven with God and his love (“love” used very loosely) torments the wicked because they hate him, see Part 3 of this series. See also “The Modern Eastern Orthodox View and the Hellfire of God’s Love“.