Annihilationism is the Biblical Theology of Hell

Introduction

Several notable scholars have recently questioned the theology of Hell, including John Wenham, Stephen Travis, Clark Pinnock, John Stott, Philip Hughes, Michael Green and Edward Fudge. Fudge’s work has become definitive for the annihilationist argument, and although it has certain weaknesses, it presents a good overview of the arguments. The annihilationism (extinction) that they propose has been subjected to critical examination by traditionalists such as Robert Peterson, David McKay and recently, among others, Chris Morgan who hold to the conscious eternal punishment of the wicked and use the theology of Jonathan Edwards to answer the annihilationists. The key text is Matt 25:41,

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels…

This article unashamedly takes the position of annihilationism as a biblical one, and it will attempt, without repeating old arguments, to offer some fresh insights to the theological and hermeneutic methodologies that support this position. Before we precede any further let me emphatically state that annihilationism does not presuppose universalism with which it is often unjustifiably linked.

The Goodness and Severity of God

Annihilationists are often accused of using “emotive language” when presenting their case; of reflecting the liberal sentimentalism of the age and not allowing the Bible (however uncomfortable) to speak for itself.   The charge of using human values to dictate theology, would, if true, be a powerful counter argument, but it is palpably untrue .The Bible clearly teaches that divine mercy is out of all proportion to divine wrath:

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger forever. (Ps 103: 9)

For his anger endureth but a moment. (Ps 30: 5)

The Lord, The lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Exod 34: 7).

Whatever other ‘theological problems’ these verses bring to the debate they do emphasise the great gulf between divine mercy and divine justice – God’s mercy is “plenteous” and is kept for a thousand [generations] but his anger is limited to “four generations” and lasts “but a moment.” This is not the language of “everlasting unending conscious punishment” – in fact it is the opposite.

It is not “theological squeamishness” that disallows the traditional view but the revealed character of God himself.  We are however left with the anomaly that children are seemingly punished for the “sins of the fathers” but this charge was effectively countered by Ezekiel (18:19-32). The revelation of the divine attributes must be understood in the context of Gen 15:16,

In the fourth generation they [the Israelites] shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

The punishment that God stored up for the Amorites was postponed until the fourth generation [of Amorites] and when it came, it was truly terrible, for God commanded the cities to be “devoted” or sanctified to destruction – complete annihilation of animals, children, men and women – a horrific genocide capped by burning the cities to ash. If ever we have an example of God’s judgment and severity – a picture of “hell” then this is it.

Divine patience and “longsuffering” (cf. 2 Pet 3: 9) endured for four generations but to no avail, the Amorites did not repent; the words of Genesis are equally applicable here, “every imagination of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5); the Amorites and Canaanites were only fit for one thing – annihilation – except, it be noted, Rahab and her family, who had faith in the God of Israel.   Moreover, the destruction of the unrepentant Canaanite was necessary in order to prevent the (total) corruption of the Israelite nation, thereby making it impossible to keep covenant mercy for a [figurative?] thousand generations.

God takes no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked (Ezek 18: 23); why should he then take pleasure in the “eternal suffering” of the wicked?    Man is too insignificant to warrant conscious punishment for eternity, man can neither add nor detract from God’s righteousness by his actions (Job 35:6-8).

Apologists object that it is not contrary to God’s love to limit the period of mercy, to execute penal justice, or to allow human suffering. We have observed that all this is true—it is not contrary to divine love, but it is against God’s will, for it is not the divine intention that creation is subject to vanity. God’s justice is not man’s justice; in fact all human concepts of equity are overturned, the last will be first, those who work for one hour are given the same reward as the day-labourer, it is apparent that God’s redistributive justice and all-embracing mercy are different (and difficult) for human understanding—we cannot forgive once, never mind seventy times seven.

It is beneath divine dignity to punish man by making him suffer for eternity, God has already pronounced a punishment for sin: “the wages of sin is death”.  Death is the ‘great leveller’ like God himself death is no “respecter of persons” and is his final word on the worth of human nature—like the grass that perishes. It is fitting that the grave is a ‘one size fits all’ punishment; for it allows man no allusions about his significance or his intrinsic ‘goodness’—for all die whether “good”, “wicked”, “believer” or “unbeliever” – “dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”  All men stand under the same judgment and all men require God’s mercy.

Revelation 20

It surprises me that even in annihilationist circles the interpretation of Matt 25:41 is not contextually set within the context of Rev 20:10-15 where it belongs. The chapter unambiguously speaks of the end of death:

¹⁰ And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.¹¹And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. ¹²And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.¹³And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.¹⁴ And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.¹⁵And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Death and hell are cast into the lake of fire.  This is a hendiadys; death and hell are synonymous (cf. vv.13 the sea or abyss) and are both destroyed.  How do we understand this metaphorical language?  It is obvious that death can only be destroyed permanently when all mortal beings on earth (who have the nature of death) have either perished or been made immortal. When this occurs the earth will be populated with immortals and God can be truly be said to be all in all.   John wants us to understand that the last judgement known as the second death is the final consummation of the age. The last resurrection also coincides with a final confrontation with evil:

¹ And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.² And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,³And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. (Rev 20:1-3)

John’s eschatology envisions the millennium as an idyllic Eden and into this scene we have “that ancient serpent the devil” introduced. As in Eden the “serpent” functions as the tempter seducing the nations with the age-old lie that man can be like God.  Gog and Magog representing the nations are encouraged to attack the peaceful camp of the saints and are consumed by fire from heaven before their plan can be realised.  It is not coincidental however that the seducing spirit emerges from the bottomless pit. John wants us to understand that the second resurrection is the catalyst for the final confrontation, for he is paraphrasing Isaiah 24:

²¹And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.²² And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. (Isa 24:21-22)

The scene is clearly set—it is the second resurrection which introduces the serpent, those who are excluded from eternal life at the last judgement are also excluded from the kingdom—they act as agitators amongst the remaining population seducing them to attack the “camp of the saints.” They are like the generation that perished in the wilderness;

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you [yourselves] thrust out. (Luke 13: 28)

Weeping and gnashing of teeth denotes rage (not necessarily sorrow; cf. Acts 7: 54) at exclusion. In John’s imagery the tree of life is present in the “garden” and he wants us to understand that the protagonists are attempting a last grasp effort at the fruit of immortality.

Johannine theology complements our understanding of how God deals with men, even at the very last he allows mankind (the mortal population) the dignity of freewill and the ability to make a choice—choose life or death—like Adam and Eve. The rebellion that ensues sorts out the “wheat from the chaff” some to everlasting life others to everlasting condemnation.

The “torment” that is suffered by those rejected and expelled at the End is the certain knowledge that they will eventually be extinguished and will not enjoy the benefits of everlasting fellowship.  The punishment of the wicked is not so much about the vengeance of God as about the vindication of his Son and the saints. What then of the lake of fire that clearly exists at the commencement of the millennium and has been the resting place of the beast and the false prophet (and their adherents) in the intervening period?  The lake of fire is clearly not hell, nor can it be situated in hell, for hell itself is consumed therein.

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that John wants us to understand the lake of fire as a literal topographic feature formed during the cataclysmic events surrounding the Second Advent. These events certainly feature seismic activity, possibly even the shifting of the rift fault, which is volcanically active.

²¹ I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Sovereign Lord. Every man’s sword will be against his brother. ²² I will execute judgment upon him with plague and bloodshed; I will pour down torrents of rain, hailstones and burning sulphur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him. ²³ And so I will show my greatness and my holiness, and I will make myself known in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord. (Ezek 38: 21-23)

John is obviously drawing on various Old Testament prophecies:

On that day I will give Gog a burial place in Israel, in the valley of those who travel east toward the Sea. It will block the way of travellers, because Gog and all his hordes will be buried there. So it will be called the Valley of Hamon Gog. (Ezek 39:11)

The demise of Gog is a replay of the demise of the beast and false prophet, or possibly it is describing the same event or different events. In a similar fashion the defeat of those who aligned themselves against Hezekiah functions as a prototype:

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. (Isa.66: 24)

It is clear from these quotes that a memorial function is envisioned here, a sort of holocaust museum, a warning to future generations. This should be understood in the same aetiological manner as Gen 19:26 and hyper-literalism should not be pressed. Lot’s wife is “immortalised” as a pillar of salt; people stare at her “carcass” her “worm does not die” and she too had been killed with “unquenchable fire.”  The ancient Oriental mind would readily grasp such metaphors without applying the hyper-literalism of modernity. (Do we have immortal worms in hell?)  When we think of Lot’s wife we are reminded of Pompey preserved in its death throes.

We are clearly dealing with a profound and complex set of imagery and metaphor in Revelation – the “tree of life”—is it real?  Does it represent the cross? How does John understand the grasping after divinity? The tree obviously represents fellowship with God, which makes eternal life possible. This demonstrates the care we must take when interpreting Scripture. Whatever the “lake of fire” is – literal or figurative (or both?) it represents a finality that hell does not.  After all Jesus came back from hell, has the keys to the gates of hell, and promised that hell would not prevail against his church.  Hell and death have been conquered in the resurrection event by the firstborn of the dead and will be utterly and finally cut off at the end of the age.

Conclusion

Annihilationists suggest that the doctrine of the immortal soul is of Greek, Platonic origin and contend that God alone possesses immortality (1 Tim 6: 16) and that it is only received at the resurrection of believers. Immortality is therefore conditional. Scholars such as Fudge, Pinnock, Dunn, White and Wenham among others argue for the annihilation of Jesus at death. R. A. Peterson comments:

The systematic implications of holding that Jesus was annihilated when he died are enormous. Nothing less than orthodox Christology is at stake.[1]

Peterson is absolutely correct in his analysis, for if we believe that God at the point of death withdraws his “breath” thereby extinguishing life completely by removing the life force – then Jesus truly died and was required to have the same faith in his Father as we are asked to display; that God would remember him and restore his life.

[Jesus] also himself likewise took part of the same [nature as us]; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. (Heb 2: 14).

For Jesus, the horror of the crucifixion was not the pain and suffering or the shame of the cross – it was the complete separation and forsaking by his Father who had been with him all his life and could not be with him in the grave.