The Sean McDowell Show - Hell in the Bible: Eternal Torment or Annihilation?

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Is hell eternal conscious punishment or does the Bible teach that the wicked will ultimately be destroyed? This is one of the most debated theological questions among Christians today. Today, we have two leading scholars to explore the biblical case for two different views of hell: eternal conscious punishment and conditional immortality (annihilationism). Together they examine key passages from both the Old and New Testaments and covers major texts such as Daniel 12, Matthew 25, Mark 9, Luke 16, 2 Thessalonians 1, and Revelation 14–20, along with the historical views of the church and the philosophical and pastoral implications of each position. We'll also be back Tuesday, March 10 at 4:30 PST LIVE to follow up on questions about hell! CHECK OUT: https://www.paulcopan.com by Paul Copan CHECK OUT: https://rethinkinghell.com by Chris Date READ: Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism by Chris Date (https://a.co/d/0aFG1swY) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day? The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy Daily Bible trivia and humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store, download it today.

Life Audio. Is hell an eternal, conscious state of suffering, or sometime after final judgment, does God annihilate unbelievers? The text promises only those who rise unto eternal life will, for that reason, live forever. So what does some will rise to everlasting life and others to shame and everlasting contempt mean? It means some will rise and live forever.

Others will rise. They will feel shame, but they will be remembered forever in contempt by God and by his people. In the ancient world, there was kind of the most. horrendous thing that could ever happen was that you had ceased to exist, your personal identity would be obliterated, you would no longer be. God does not take that step. Is hell an eternal conscious state of suffering? Or sometime after final judgment, does God annihilate unbelievers? Or is there a third option? It's no secret that the debate on hell is heating up. Today we have two leading scholars

on the topic of hell who have co-edited a book together, Paul Copan and Chris Dates. And the book is titled Concerning Hell. We also have a studio audience of Biola and Talbot students with us who are eager to ask questions after our conversation. And what we're going to do uniquely, I think, is we've got some opening questions for you, but really want to kind of dial into the biblical passages in some depth, especially since this is Talbot School Theology and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Thanks for both of you for flying in from Washington all the way from the East Coast in Florida to be here in studio. Appreciate you guys coming. Great to be here.

Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah. So give me just a quick backstory of why you're interested in this topic. I'll start with you, Paul. Okay. Well, I was invited to a conference called Rethinking Hell, and this is where Chris State comes in. he is spearheading this ministry and these conferences that take place every year.

And so I was invited to speak back in 2020 in the Seattle area. And so I came to speak on the kind of the traditional position. And during the panel discussion, we had four people sitting on the panel during, you know, we were wrapping up. And I was sitting next to Chris. And I leaned over and I said, well, maybe I could turn this conversation into a book. and he latched onto it and it's just taken off from there. I mean, it's been, it's taken a while to get there from 2020 here.

It is 26. But we have, you know, many thanks to Chris, who's really helped to get the people and list the people to write this book. And so it's been an opportunity for me to step into this topic in greater depth. And so I'm really grateful for this opportunity to go deeper. And that's what I love about, you know, writing it as. in editing, you learn so much in that whole process. You're kind of forced to in some ways. Yeah, exactly.

So I'm really grateful to Chris, who's really done such a masterful job as a co-editor, and so we're looking forward to seeing where this book goes. I love it. Chris, tell us your story. So I went into public ministry back in 2010 or so, started a blog and then a podcast, and I would have guests on my podcast, many of whom shared my views on certain things, but I would often have people on who held views I didn't hold, but that I considered within the pale of orthodoxy.

And one of those guests was Edward Fudge, who wrote The Fire That Consumes. And going into that interview, I had, for the 10 years of my faith that I'd been a Christian up until that point, had no problem with the traditional view. I wasn't kept up at night. I didn't have any moral or philosophical concerns with it or anything. But I found his case incredibly compelling and his answers to all of the objections that I raised very compelling. And so I found myself on the fence. And in the months that followed, I dove into every sermon I could find, every book, every article, every anything I could find to try and convince me of eternal torment again. To this day, I wish I could believe it.

But I just found that with every such source I turned to, I became more and more convinced of conditional immortality or annihilationism. And so a ministry that had just started up called Rethinking Hell invited me to participate and the rest has been history. What keeps where my interest is, though, isn't the topic primarily. It's more the heat that it causes, the division it tends to cause between Christians. And my hope is that one day the debate between these two views will be no different than the debate between Calvinists and Armenians or, you know, pre-millennialists and post-millennialists and so forth. And when that happens and we're no longer throwing each other under the bus, I'll probably stop focusing on this issue. Now, I was wondering when the first pun about hell would come up, and you said the debate is heating up to that effect. I didn't even intend that as a pun.

You said it. So it's been settled. The first one was made. But I find a fascinating. We're going back to this. You said you wish you could believe in eternal torment. We will circle back to that. I find that so fascinating on so many levels.

But let's just, I mean, let's dive in in terms of the substance. And let's clarify what the two main. positions are that we're debating. Of course, there's other positions. We'll just circle back to briefly. But since you hold what's often called the traditional view, makes sense to start with you. So explain just not your defense yet, but what position you hold. I call it eternal conscious punishment because I think the word torment can sound like torture chamber. It can sound as though everything is flattened to the same level of punishment, as though Satan has the same level of punishment as, say, the humanitarian atheist who lives down the street.

I think there are degrees of punishment. And so, and you see this cashed out in various ways that there is a conscious awareness, even glory, honor, and peace to those who strive for immortality. But distress and trouble, words of consciousness, there are there. And so as I see this position, I've kind of more finely tuned it as I've gone through the literature and have talked to biblical scholars and so forth. That that's pretty much where I land, that God is not going to judge someone too severely or too harshly. It is going to be a just judgment and so forth, but that there is – and, you know, I want to get into the defense, but that's basically where I'm coming from, but we can tease things out. Eternal doesn't end conscience. It's experienced by the individual. And some say torment typically, but you say it's a kind of punishment that lasts forever and never ends.

Yeah, sometimes described as restlessness and distress and so forth. Yeah. Awesome. Love it. Explain your position, Chris. Yeah. So one thing that Paul didn't mention, and that's totally fine. I'm not criticizing him for it is that the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment entails resurrected immortality on the part of the lost in hell. This goes back all the way to as far back as Athenagoras of Athens and Tayshi Navaray in the second century, straight up to Wayne Grudom and Robert Peterson in the modern era, the traditional view of hell has maintained that the resurrected lost, physically embodied again, will never physically die. Historically, believers in this view have comfortably used the words immortal and live forever to describe what happens to these people in hell.

And that's important because my view is the denial that the resurrected lost will live forever. Our view is that the punishment meted out in hell is capital punishment. They're literally executed. But in the first death, if death only extends to the body, which is what Jesus seems to indicate in Matthew 1028, don't fear those who can kill the body but not the soul,

rather fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell, if only the body dies in the first death, but the soul continues to exist consciously afterwards, in the second death, body and soul will be slain. And so it's a death of the whole person, including the very consciousness of the lost in hell. So I think the real, just in a nutshell, the way to think about the two views is that on one view you have something like an eternal quarantine or an eternal prison sentence or something like that, whereas in my view it's eternal capital punishment, death forever.

So the body and the soul cease to exist. Hence the term annihilationism at some point after the final judgment. And to add to what Chris is saying, it is eternal or everlasting in the sense that. that the consequences endure. It's not as, you know, so it's not as though he's denying eternal punishment. It's just that it is a matter of the consequences of the results of that are ongoing, that there's a cessation and that person is deprived of any future life. Yeah, the way that Augustine put it in the city of God is that when governments

capitally punish people, when they execute people, they don't measure the duration of the punishment in terms of how long it takes to die. If that's how we measured how long capital punishment is, then if somebody collapsed in the electric chair but then gasped back to life in what scientists call Lazarus syndrome, the state would have to let them go, right? But nobody thinks that's what the state would do. They would flip the switch again until the person remains dead. And that's because the punishment in the death penalty is not being alive anymore. And if that's the state that somebody's in forever, they're never alive again. That's by definition an everlasting punishment.

Okay, gotcha. And we'll get into some of those differences, but that's helpful in terms of definitions. Before we jump in, just a handful more questions before we get into the pastures, we're going to spend most of the time. Where do the two of you have common ground, and do you consider this an agree-to-disagree issue? Well, we probably could list a whole bunch of things where we agree, obviously, the scriptures are our final authority, and that we are not, the tradition should be measured against the scriptures. And that's what I appreciate about Chris, is that there is this re-examination of the scriptures

and going back to the church father and so forth too, and seeing if this traditional view holds up under scrutiny, which does a better job of holding up. And so, you know, Chris and I and the others at the roundtable earlier, we have had that common commitment to, like the Bereans, to search the scriptures to see if these things are true. So that's one thing. I mean, we can go back and forth too,

but maybe that's maybe an important starting point in seeing the scriptures as overriding tradition and that we need to continue to examine those traditions. Okay. At the same, yeah, and at the same time, I would add that I think we also have a healthy respect for tradition. There are certainly people on either side of this debate that it's sort of like me and my Bible under a tree. That's all I need.

But that's not our view. We think we stand on the shoulders of giants and dwelt by the Holy Spirit who has gifted the church with gifted teachers over the years. and we can't just dismiss them and pretend like we're the first Christians on the scene. But I think really the clearest answer to your question I think would just be, we agree on the ecumenical creeds of the first centuries of the church. We agree on all the essentials of the faith. We just disagree as to what the nature of the punishment meted out in hell is.

And so there's no question of heresy here. It's a matter of under the umbrella of orthodoxy. And I've mentioned this that some of the leading scholars, biblical scholars, theologians, I respect, you know, a number of them are conditionalists. Some of them are on the fence. They're agnostic about the issue. But I have a high regard. You feel like John Stott, one of my heroes, you know, a very, you know, he was an annihilationist, but, you know, he was one who really helped shape my early formation as a Christian. And for people don't recognize that name, one of the foremost, really theologians, biblical scholars, for decades.

He was like evangelical pope. That's what they call them. Yeah, he really was for four years. Well, let's dive into the scriptures. And I thought we'd start with the Old Testament. And we could ask kind of in general, what do we learn from the Old Testament about hell? But there's kind of two passages that people seem to focus on that come up. So let's take them one by one in the order in which they would appear in the scriptures. So let's start with Isaiah 6624. And I'll read it for us and then just kind of get each of your takes on this.

So it says, and they shall go out and look on the. the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Clearly the key words in this are the worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched. What's your take on what this passage teaches about the nature of hell and what we can garner at this stage? Well, I think I would be in agreement with Chris here that I think the strong emphasis here is on the corruption, the degradation of these dead bodies and so forth. And I don't place as much emphasis on this. I think you can draw it out. I think, you know, Jesus emphasizing it three times in their, you know, New Testament scholars

will raise questions about, you know, the fact that, well, why emphasize the worm not dying, the fire not going out three times, that maybe there's some sort of a connection to this ongoing, the ongoing nature of that judgment. But I'm sympathetic with what Chris is saying on that point as well from the Old Testament. There may be more that's added in the New Testament. But I think from the Old Testament perspective, I don't see that that is drawing out some sort of eternal conscious punishment view per se. Okay. Now, you referenced his point, but we haven't heard your point yet.

It's in the book. You guys have talked about elsewhere. Explain what your point is and then maybe just clarify exactly where. Maybe jump in with Daniel 12 with Chris first and then I'll offer you. for a comment. Yeah, well, so it's exactly as you read it. These are not living immortals in hell. These are dead bodies. The Hebrew Pagharim, it means corpses, carcasses. The picture is that God has slain his enemies. And the reason for the emphasis of their worm or the maggot won't die and the fire will not be quenched is because in the ancient Israeli mind, the ancient Jewish mind, to have one's dead body exposed to the elements allowed to rot away or burn away or be eaten up by scavenged. was a great shame. And they fought desperately to prevent their remains from being corrupted in that way. And what God is saying there is that you won't be able to stop the maggots from completely devouring these dead bodies. You won't be able to stop the fire from completely burning them up.

So you won't be able to avoid this everlasting contempt, this everlasting shameful memory. So the worm that won't die, the closest parallel we have anywhere in Scripture is in Jeremiah 7, and where God is talking about how one day the valley of the sons of Hinnom will no longer be called that, but will be called the valley of slaughter because the dead bodies of God's enemies will be left unburied, and no one will be able to frighten away the beasts and birds. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture.

Plus, you'll enjoy Daily Bible trivia and humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. That feed upon the corpses. And the language of fire not being quenched is stock Old Testament language in places like Ezekiel 20, 47, 48, where precisely because God's fiery wrath can't be quenched, that doesn't mean die out. It means put out, extinguish.

Precisely because you can't extinguish God's wrath, Ezekiel 20 says, the trees and the palaces of Jerusalem will be devoured, burned up. So this language is far from, at least in my less humble than it should be opinion, far from supporting an eternal conscious punishment view. It's very consistent with our view. Okay. Sounds like you agree at least. would you agree that it's consistent with their view and that we shouldn't read too much into this? Yeah, in fact, I mean, I think a lot of these, you know, and maybe I should have said this early when you said, how do you, what things do you have in common? Well, I think we have in common a, the kind of weight that we assigned a certain text, you know, how do we read apocalyptic text?

How do we understand the role of consciousness as well as the language of perishing, destruction, and so forth? What gets the greater weight, the greater emphasis? should you relent maybe on the consciousness and in a sense give in to the language of perishing and destruction? And I guess as I see it, there are areas of consciousness. It seems like that continues to be described as the final state. But I can see where Chris is coming from. So I know that there are ways in which both could respond and say, no, we can accommodate that. We can accommodate that on both sides of the issue.

Okay. So we're going to need further revelation to close. clarify this one. The other passage is often referenced is in Daniel 12.2 and to take your advice also to hear this time, Paul. Yeah, yeah. Let me read to us. It says, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth

shall wake. Some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. The contrast that's often drawn is everlasting life on one side, everlasting contempt on the other. Your take on this passage. Yeah, so

here again, it seems to me that this view just straightforwardly teaches my side of the debate. Obviously, that's why we're here. And the reason is because the text promises seemingly, at least a surface reading of the text, that only those who rise unto eternal life will, for that reason, live forever. The traditional view says that so too will the lost. They just generally think the expression, eternal life means something other than physically living forever. And we can discuss that if we come to it. So then what would it mean then if the those who are raised to shame and everlasting contempt don't also live forever? Well, the word contempt, only the word contempt is described as forever.

Shame plausibly, likely, is the experience of the person who's lost. They feel ashamed for what they've done. But that's not what contempt is. Contempt is actually an emotion experienced by the redeemed, by the righteous. So the only other place that that word is used in the Old Testament is Isaiah 6624. It's the word translated abhorrence in the text that you. just read. The corpses of God's enemies are not experiencing abhorrence. They are causing abhorrence on the part of the righteous that are seeing them. So what does some will rise to everlasting life and others to shame and everlasting contempt mean? It means some will rise and live forever. Others will rise. They will feel shame, but they will be remembered forever in contempt by God and

by his people. Okay. So to make sure understand, everlasting life, would you say it's the same, even though it's not explained here when Jesus talks about eternal life. That's what's on one side of the equation here. Is eternal life in that way? Okay. On the other side is shame. So contempt is others viewing those who did not fall the Lord. Shame is something they personally experience.

So the everlasting life is contrasted with everlasting contempt, but the shame is temporary because they ceased to exist. Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, it's think about the way that we. hold people like Judas Ascariot in contempt today or Hitler or Paul Pot or whatever, right? We in the West today often pretend as though we don't really care what people think of us after we're gone. But that really is pretense. All of us imagine what it would be like for our funeral to be unattended and like,

what are we just going to be forgotten or worse? Are people going to think negatively of us? So for the authors of Scripture, I think it was very important to them how they would be remembered, what sort of legacy they would leave behind. And to know that you will be forever remembered in abject contempt, I think is a terrible punishment. Okay. So my question, though, is what's being contrasted here is this everlasting life? It's this everlasting contempt.

It doesn't say everlasting shame. So if it said everlasting shame, then you would say, oh, okay, fair enough, because then there's a conscious, ongoing experience. Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Your thoughts. Yeah. And I would say that in my take on Daniel 12,

that you can include those things that, of course, Chris says that it's the mere memory and so forth. And I could appreciate that, but I think that there could be a larger picture. And I think Jesus offers his own commentary on Daniel chapter 12 in Matthew 13, verses 40 to 42, where we see it's the parable of the tears, the weeds that are growing up with the wheat and are gathered together, or gathered and separated, and then the weeds are burned. and so it says it's thrown into the furnace. So it looks like, oh, the end of story. But then it goes on to say, the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And that is Jesus' standard description of the final state, weeping and gnashing of teeth. And, of course, the gnashing of teeth doesn't have to do with, you know, some sort of a physical pain so much as it has to do with hostility to, you know, in this case, toward God. And just like when Stephen, and you look at the Old Testament, gnashing of teeth is parallel with vexation and so forth. And when Stephen is about to be stoned, those who are about to stone him are gnashing their teeth at him. So there's that tone of hostility toward God, anger at God, and so forth. And so it goes on to say, you know, it says, so there's the language of the furnace, destruction, there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then it's commenting on Daniel chapter 12 says that the righteous will shine like the sun. So you've got, on the one hand, you've got the consciousness here of the condemned.

and you have the consciousness of the righteous who will shine like the sun. So it seemed, and I pointed this out in previous conversations where Chris and I have talked about it in the book, you know, people like Craig Keener and David De Silva, New Testament scholars, you know, very well respected. They see that in the Old Testament literature, and we could perhaps go into this, or the Intertestamental literature, you have the dominant or the majority view, which is, I think, very interesting, is largely torment. extinction, except for the most heinous of sinners. And as De Silva and Keener look at the language, they say, well, Jesus and John the Baptist, for example, are taking the minority view and applying it to all the condemned, that this

is something that is going to be applied to all, you know, the place for the devil and his angels. And so this is, you know, so there is that kind of a backdrop to this. And so I just want to bring that in because I think that there, that is reflected in what Jesus is saying in Matthew 13. sneak in some New Testament passages. We're getting there, Paul. In fairness, I know you have a response of this. But I'm saying at surface level, you know, I could appreciate where Chris is coming from. But, again, is that all there is to it is the question. Fair enough. So if you're going to sum up in like a tweet,

what you think the Old Testament contributes to our understanding of hell, what would it be? Ask the Old Testament not what it says about hell, but what it says about the end of the wicked. If you ask that question instead of looking for hell in the Old Testament, you instead look in the Old Testament for what it says will happen to the lost. It says they'll vanish like a dream. They'll vanish like smoke. They'll waste away like lime melted. They'll disappear. They'll be like a dream forgotten.

They'll be punished with, they won't enjoy the esteem of people that they, you know, the respect that they had in life and all these kinds of things. So there's a lot it says. It's just it doesn't say much about hell. And that's why it's so often thought to not say much. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, no, I agree. Even in books where traditionalists are commenting on the Old Testament, they admit there's not a whole lot in terms of the final state of the wicked. So in terms of conscious punishment.

Fair enough, which we shouldn't surprise us. How much are we going to understand about the triune character of God? How much we understand of salvation by faith? There's progressive revelation. And so let's move to some of the New Testament passages. I think these are arguably the top six. I asked ChatGBT, and that's what Chad TBT said, so I'm going with it. Kidding aside, these are some of the passages you explore here.

And what's interesting is the range of verses that talk about this. You have James 3.6, of course. You have Hebrews talking about hell. You have the Gospels. You have Paul. Now, we have to explain what each of those are, but they cross different authors in different genres. But I figured we'd take at least one from each of the three Gospels. So let's go to Mark 9, 43 through 48.

And this will play back on what we just read from Isaiah. So in this famous passage, Mark 9, I'll read it. It says, and if your hand caused you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter like crippled than with two hands to go to hell, in this case, Gahena, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot caused you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you enter life. then with two feet to be thrown into hell. If you got caused you to sin, tear it out.

It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, then with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, again, the exact same language from Isaiah 66. I'll start with you on this. And what's your take on what we can draw from Mark 9? Well, so first of all, the word translated unquenchable, the Greek word asbestos, it doesn't mean never dies out. So, for example, in Matthew 312, I think it is, John the Baptist says of Jesus that he will gather the weed into his threshing floor and burn them with unquenchable asbestos fire. But the word translated burn there, katakayo doesn't mean burn. Kaya means burn.

And it's a generic burning that could go on for a long time or not. Kata kio means reduced to ashes. So apparently asbestos or unquenchable fire reduces to ashes. And that's what Jesus seems to be saying in Mark 9, 43 to 48, is that you don't want, it'd be rather, you'd rather go to heaven incomplete, you know, maimed, then go whole into hell, well, you'll be, well, you'll die and be destroyed. The worm that won't die and the fire that will not be quenched language, we've already talked about from Isaiah 66. And importantly, Jesus doesn't add anything here in the context that would suggest that he's co-opting the meaning of Isaiah and changing it to mean something else. There's no indication that he's doing that. I actually think the most interesting thing about this passage is the next verse that you didn't read,

which is that everyone will be salted with fire. Because one of the things that conditionalists like me often observe is that modern traditionalists aren't very traditional. And I don't mean any offense by that. But if you look at the writings of traditionalists historically, they write in extremely gruesome terms about what they anticipate awaiting the lost. I think minutious Felix in the third or fourth century wrote that the fires of hell literally burn off your flesh while simultaneously. painously regenerating it, you know what I mean? And they'll use passages like this salted with fire language, you know, salt preserves. And that's the point here, some traditionalists have said, WGT Shed, I think, said this as well, that the salt preserves the wicked in hell.

But I actually don't think that's what's going on there. I think what is going on there is there was a practice in the Old Testament where when one army would defeat a city and destroy it, they would salt the land to prevent it from growing back, to prevent it from flourishing. So it's still, even there, I think, a destruction kind of promise. So, yeah, I just, I don't think that Mark 9, in fact, Mark 9 and Isaiah 66 were the first texts that got me thinking, maybe I'm wrong about this. Oh, that was the start of the journey. Because of the dead corpses language in Isaiah 66 and what all of this fire not being quenched language means everywhere in Scripture. Okay, yeah, that's helpful. Your take on Mark 9.

Yeah, and again, I know Chris has mentioned this, that, you know, like when you look at Matthew 25, which we'll get to, you know, how does. how does Jesus speak elsewhere about the final state? So that should inform how we may need to look at Matthew 25. And I'd say the same thing with this text that you've just cited, where you, where, you know, is Jesus maybe using this to indicate something more? Well, let's see if other texts from, say, the synoptic gospels will illustrate this. I think they do. But I think given the Old Testament context, you know, unless, you know, and again, the question is, is Jesus adding more and fleshing it out as he taking that minority view, which I think he is, then I think that that does shed light and does give maybe a new glimmer, you know, just like

we do with the Trinity, you know, with the, you know, the spirit hovering over the water or, you know, or by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and so forth. So we see, oh, kind of trinitarian intimations here. But I'd say that, you know, again, given that Old Testament context and Jesus quoting it, we need a little bit more. And I think we see that illustrated in in Matthew 13, where you have that text of Jesus commenting, as it were, on Daniel Chapter 12, that there is conscious existence for the righteous, but also so it seems for the wicked. So it sounds like both of you agree that when it comes to Mark 9, Jesus is not co-opting or adding a lot more to this language that advances it.

We're only going to make sense of Isaiah this passage when we bring in Revelation 14, Matthew 25 and other passages to really get to clarify our positions. Would you agree with that for the most part? I say to some way. I mean, Chris would say, no, this is more definitive. You know, and I might say, like, even when you get to Matthew 25, you know, the place prepared to the devil and his angels, well, what does that look like? Well, it helps to look at the, you know, at Revelation 14 and 20, that this is the outcome.

This is the destiny of the devil and his angels, but also, you know, those who don't, those who are going to that place that is prepared for them, we see that kind of illustrated or commented on in the book of Revelation as well. So I do think there is that the importance of the analogy of Scripture. We compare Scripture with Scripture and weigh those things and we weigh them differently. Well, and I certainly agree. You know, I've often said that if I found one verse that I could not possibly deny taught eternal conscious punishment, I would interpret everything else through that lens. I just, my conviction, my read of Scripture is that there is no such verse. And so, yes, I agree that if Eternal Torment is true, you're not going to find it in

Mark 9. But as it turns out, I don't think it is true. I think you're going to find our view everywhere in Scripture. Well, that's where we're going to get to. But I think we agree that as we get into these additional passages, there's arguably more and more clarity. And what says in the book from the writers is when it's Revelation 14 and Revelation 20, these are the most compelling cases. You think it points one way, you think it points another, but we're getting there. So, all right, so let's move on a passage that you think is a little bit more clear in this case. Matthew 2541 through 46. And I'm going to read it for us, so we've got the context here.

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you gave me no drink. I was a stranger, you do not welcome me. Nake you do not clothe me. Sick and prison you did not visit me. Then they will also answer saying, Lord, when would he see hungry, a thirsty, or stranger, or naked, or sick in prison and did not minister to you? Then he will answer to them. Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And then here's the kicker. He says, and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Now, you've pointed towards this passage a few times as you think being more clear. Tell us what you draw out of this for your position. Yeah. Well, of course, this is in the context and several times than Matthew 24 and 25. You do have mention of Jesus' standard

description of the final state of consciousness, you know, weeping, the place where there is, weeping and gnashing of teeth. And so this text that you're referring to, of course, you know, you have the parallels of, you know, eternal life and eternal punishment. And I, I would say that when you have them in parallel, I think that does raise interesting points that there is, is it duration, is it conscious experience and Chris and I will weigh those things differently. But you know, Craig

Blomberg, another Craig, he comments on this saying that, yes, you can have mentions of say eternal redemption in the book of Hebrews and so over. When you have them, in a sense, side by side, it seems that you have a point of comparison here

that is, I think, you know, there's there's much more of a, you know, a deeper connection, and he sees it, and I think there's a point to it of ongoing conscious existence. And again, this is informed in other ways by other texts from the, from the gospel. So, so I see a number of these consciousness, you know, final state texts that do, I think, support this sort of a view. And so I would see that that is what what Jesus is talking about, at least, you know, I think a reasonable case could be made for it. Okay, fair enough. So this says, at the third. first part, it says, depart from me who are cursed into the eternal file prepared for the devil

and the angels, the eternal fire, which is hinting towards revelation of 14 and 20. We'll come back to that. Your key point now is that there's not, like we talked about Daniel 12, too, the eternal everlasting contempt is those viewing back on them with contempt. But it's not everlasting shame, which would have been a conscious experience of the people who are cast into this eternal destruction. You're saying when we get to Matthew 25, you see eternal life contrasted with eternal punishment, and the punishment to be eternal seems to imply some kind of ongoing conscious experience. Did I sum that up there? Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

Okay, awesome. Your take. Well, first of all, just a passing response to the weeping and gnashing language. In the places where Jesus uses that language, it seems in virtually every case that that weeping and gnashing will not, in fact, go on. forever. So, for example, you've mentioned Matthew 13. In the parable Jesus is interpreting there, weeds are katakayo. They're burned up in fire. And then Jesus says just as the weeds are burned in fire. So will all causes of lawlessness and all lawbreakers be thrown into the fiery furnace, alluding, by the way, to Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace in Daniel, which was so hot that Nebuchadnezzar's

soldiers lacking divine protection died, just getting close to it. But God's protected people inside the fire survived it. interesting how people who, well, anyway, I'm not going to go there. So, so now, and I would just encourage people to check out the work of a scholar by the name of Kim Pope Iwano. He's got a book that he published with Wiffenstock, I think, called the Geography of Hell and the Teaching of Jesus. And he makes a really compelling, I think, case that this weeping and gnashing language is in no way a challenge to my view. But I'll encourage people to check that out. Now, as for this passage in particular, Eternal Fire is an expression that Jesus' own brother Jude uses in Jude chapter 7 to refer to the fire that came down from heaven.

Genesis 19 and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude uses it to mean that. It's not fire in which people burn consciously forever. It's the fire of God himself, which it can't be quenched because it's divine fire. It's his wrath and it can't be extinguished. And so it's going to completely destroyed. Jesus uses the expression of eternal fire earlier in Matthew, where he sets it up in parallel to Gehenna, which is this valley of the Son of Hinnom language in the Old Testament, which God promised would be where he would slay his enemies and the corpses of his enemies would be ingloriously destroyed. So, eternal fire doesn't help the traditional view here, I think.

As for eternal punishment versus eternal life, this is really important. One of the misconceptions a lot of people have of conditionalism and annihilationism is that we believe in a finite punishment, a temporary punishment. But we don't. We believe it's an everlasting punishment. Where we disagree is what the nature of that punishment is. The traditional view says the nature of that everlasting punishment is everlasting misery of some sort, pain, spiritual separation from God.

God, whatever. We think that punishment is death, not being alive anymore. The Greek word colesis in the Septuagin often means death penalty. So it's just a matter, we all agree that punishment lasts forever. It lasts just as long as the life does. But interesting that only the righteous are said there to receive eternal life. So somebody like me says, why should I think that the unrighteous are going to live forever if only the righteous rise to eternal life? The only everlasting punishment that doesn't also include living forever is the everlasting death penalty. And that's the way I take Matthew 25. And I would make a distinction, you know, everlasting or eternal life.

I think this is a qualitative existence that also involves, you know, the existence within the new heavens and the new earth where there is this transformed physicality. So I would, you know, and again, Chris will say, well, you know, immortality was used in the early church to, to connote the state of the wicked. But true immortality has to do with resurrection of the body that is this transformed physicality of the body that Jesus had that is that is you know therefore able to participate in this transform physicality and the new heavens the new earth and so I would say that the the distinction with the raised unrighteous is that they don't have that qualitative

existence and so that's why I'll say you know they they'll have you know kind of you know ever last they'll exist everlastingly but that's not immortality in the true sense of the word the biblical sense of the word and I'd also say too yes fire does burn but you know you can also have the language of, of course, when you look at fire and darkness in the scriptures, if we took them literally, they would cancel each other out. But even in, you know, a text you didn't say we're going to cover, but I think it's relevant here, is in first Peter chapter, or second Peter chapter three, where you have the mention of the flood, where the world is destroyed

and, you know, and of course, it wasn't destroyed, destroyed because it was re-inhabited. So it was just, it was just, you know, just flooded with water. But then re-enhabited. And, you know, it was just, you know, re-inhabited, so it wasn't obliterated. And then you have, in the same way, the language of the coming of the new heavens and the new earth, this transformed physicality. And there's a language of burning with intense heat that the elements, you know, being, you know, being destroyed. But yet it's, you know, a lot of interpreters, and I think this reflects the Old Testament, that the, like the wilderness being transformed into this kind of paradise of flowering trees and so forth, and verdure. And, and verdure. verdant meadows and so forth, that language of transformation is seen in 2nd Peter chapter

3 where the heat burns away certain things, the fire burns away, the elements and so forth, but what is remaining is that which is the new heavens and the new earth. So it's not an obliteration of the old heavens, and then the new heavens and new earth are created ex-Neiloh. I think that that would be, you know, so I think it just illustrates that just because there's fire doesn't mean that there's obliteration or destruction, even though Chris makes a case for that in other

cases, but I think in Second Peter there's, I think, a very strong case to say, well, yeah, it's something might be ruined, something might be destroyed, you know, in that sense, but it has been obliterated. And so we, I think that's why we kind of have a measure, I have a more measured view of what

destruction means, you know, can it mean obliteration, or can it mean something like ruin or the like. Okay, so we both I'm going to come back to Chris. Yeah. Both sides believe that unbelievers are destroyed, would use that language, but differ over what that destruction and destroying means. So destroying means at some point they are going to seize to exist and have a loss of the eternal life that was promised to believers. Come back and qualify that if you need to.

Destroying in this case would mean continue to exist, but destroying either the humanity, their relationship with God, who they were meant to be. ongoing like you see in Second Peter. Is that fair? Your thoughts? Well, first of all, I agree that most traditionalists today, who are not very traditional, will say the wicked... You said that twice. You like pointing that out, don't you? I'm a little bit of a... Yeah.

But it is interesting. You're right that modern traditionalists do say, yes, the lost are destroyed. The question is what that means. But it is interesting that if you look historically, traditionalists have unabashedly said the wicked are never destroyed in hell. in our second book A Consuming Passion, which is a feshrift in honor of Edward Fudge,

one of my friends Ronnie Demler, he catalogs statements from traditionalists throughout church history, and they just unabashedly say, yeah, the wicked are never destroyed. The wicked are, they live forever, et cetera. So I do think that's a little interesting.

Okay. So fair point. But when they say they're not destroyed, aren't they meaning it in a different sense of like they're not seizing to exist? But they still would agree that they're destroyed in the way that Paul is taking in, right?

Maybe. Maybe. I'll leave that up to you to decide. But I'm just saying how frequently traditionalists have just matter-of-factly contradicted the biblical language with the language they use. Now, they may say, well, there are different ways I mean to destroy. In one case, it might mean one thing and another case another. But it is interesting how, if you just look at quotes from traditionalists throughout history,

they just matter-of-factly contradicts Scripture on numerous occasions. Okay, so the traditional view, which is held, I think the way it's phrased in the introduction. So presumably both of you would agree with it. In fact, I think I, let me see if I can pull back here. You said it's an, the conditional immortality view is an extreme minority view. Except you would argue at the first few centuries, there are some people who hold it differently. But at least since, I don't know, Augustine forward, it's been an extreme minority view.

Would you agree with that just in general? I don't want to put words in your mouth. With one nuance, I actually think that if you look at the apostolic fathers up through about the time of Justin Martyr, they all held in my view. It's not until Justin Martyr arrives on the scene and then Tati Navadi Abani and Athanagoras that Eternal Torment arrives on the scene. By the way, at the same time, universalism

appears on the scene in the likes of Clement of Alexandria and origin of Alexandria. But you're right that at least since the time of Augustine, if not a little bit earlier, my view's been in the extreme minority. But again, the modern traditional view is very unlike what it's been held to consist of

historically as well. So there's a sense in which I think we're kind of both on the same page in rejecting a lot of tradition is just to what extent we're rejecting that tradition, I suppose. Do you agree with that, by the way? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I agree. But I would say in, you know, in Chris's defense,

I think a lot of people dismiss annihilationism as though this is totally aberrant and outside the pale of orthodoxy. And I think that Chris is making a very good point that, you know, look at the, you know, not just to mention the intertestamental period, and I've given my take on that. But, you know, early church, you know,

fathers are writing in this vein too. So I think to be so quick to dismiss the conditionalist, you know, I think fails to consider some of those, you know, the early writings that, you know, that I think reflect some, you know, some of that tradition that is coming out through the intertestamental judicistic period. And so I just, you know, I just want to defend Chris on that front. And rather than, you know, I think a lot of modern people think that this totally out of line. It's an innovation trying to do away with hell. and that this is a modernistic attempt to tamp down the nature of hell. And, no, I think Chris has antiquity to appeal to here.

Okay. I appreciate that very much. One thing I want to clarify a little bit is that when I talk about destruction, I'm actually not thinking in terms of ceasing to exist. I'm thinking of ceasing to live. So, for example, in Matthew 1028, where Jesus says fear the one who can destroy both body and soul and hell, the Greek word of polymie there is translated to destroy. But the argument we're making is not that he's saying cause the body and soul to cease to exist.

None of us think that God's like Thanos and he's going to snap his fingers on the last day and half the universe is going to disappear. No, they're going to be slain. The Greek word of polymere everywhere in the synoptic gospels where it's used in the active voice with a human as its direct object, the way that Jesus uses it in Matthew 1028. It means. I just want to clarify that the emphasis in our minds is not ceasing to exist. It's not living anymore. Okay, so you make that point in the book, and I'm failing to understand the significance of it, and maybe this is on me. Because I don't think Jesus ceased to exist, but I think he bore up our punishment in our place.

But he did die. But, yeah, we're talking about physical death in that case. Of course, he physically died. But that's not a permanent failing to live. Well, he also wasn't tormented forever either. Agreed. But if somebody's not living, are they existing in any sense? after they are destroyed in hell?

Is there any sense of continued existence where they live in one way but not another? I don't think so, but the reason is because death extends not only to the body and the second death but also to the soul. Okay, so the body and soul ceased to exist. The body doesn't, at least not initially. I mean, we don't make any hard and fast claims about how long it takes for the body to be burned up or even if it will literally be burned up. The picture in Isaiah is of corpses that remain for a while at least so that the righteous can look on them and find them a Okay, so for eternity, there might be bodies that are true now, or you just don't land that one. I just don't, I don't think the Bible makes that clear.

But the point is, I'm not denying that the wicked cease to exist as conscious beings. I'm just trying to emphasize that that's not what we're saying is the emphasis of the destruction language. The reason they cease to exist consciously is because the mind, which is what the soul is, dies as well in the second death, whereas only the body dies in the first. Okay, so let me come back to you, but I just want to make sure I understand that the difference is, eternal punishment in Matthew 25. And then we're going to move to Luke 16 here in a minute is eternal punishment. This is a conscience experience in some physical state. Now, we've used the term resurrection to life and death, but you would draw distinction in

1 Corinthians 15. There's an immortal qualitative difference with those who are saved. But there's some either conscience or bodily eternal existence. And what I understand is the eternal punishment is the loss of life. That loss continues forever, even though there's not somebody experiencing that loss. That's right. Is that fair? Yep.

Okay. Yeah. And I would just add to this that when we talk about, say, body and soul being thrown into hell, I think that that's what happens with the second death, that those who are, you know, who tried to exclude themselves from God, you know, are put into that final state, body and soul. And that is seen as destruction. I know that Chris talks about destruction as being more definitive, but you do have language of, you know, the lost coin or the lost son or the lost sheep and that language.

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and bookmark favorites to revisit later. Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. Which that is used is, you know, kind of the destroyed coin, the destroyed sun, you know, that same, you know, the same cognate is used.

And so that's why some scholars like David De Silva hesitate to say, well, you know, it's part of the same word group and that this destroyed sun has still not been obliterated. But, you know, so they'll say that that's why they hesitate on kind of pulling the, you know, pulling the plug on the traditional view. And so, yeah, I was going to say a bit more on that. But I think when we get to Revelation, we'll talk a bit more about that, except to say, that when we're dealing with, say, the devil and as angels, keep in mind, I think a lot of times we emphasize the physicality of the final state, you know, from the traditional view, but keep in mind that the devil and as angels are spirit beings. They don't have nerve endings or bodies.

So the language of flame affecting them is really not the issue. It's really related to final judgment, the finality of the state. Okay. All right. So we're going to get to, we're going to jump here to Luke 16, 19 through 31, in a famous passage. but I want to remind people watching and listening. We've got some questions coming from students soon. So students be writing down and thinking of your questions for Chris and or for Paul.

And by the way, I'm going to go live Tuesday after we post this with one or two Talbot professors to get their take on this conversation. So make sure you join us Tuesday, 430 Pacific Standard Time live. All right, I'm going to start with you on this one, but this is Luke 16, 19 through 31. and this story is only found in the Gospel of Luke, interestingly enough. And it's about Lazarus, not the Lazarus Jesus rose from the grave in John Chapter 11, but it's either the parable or the story, and there's some debate about that. About a rich man who was clothed and fine linen, and he feasted sumptuously, at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus covered with sores, he desired to be fed,

the dogs came and licked his sores. Poor man dies and is carried by angels to what's called Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried in Hades, and it says, being in torment, he lifts up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he calls out Abraham to have mercy on him. And he says, give him water for his tongue for I'm in anguish in this flame. And of course, he reminds him, Abraham reminds him that you had good things during your life and comfort. now it's the reverse. But one of the lines is it says, he says,

five, five brothers, warn them unless they come into this place of torment. And of course, his point is, if they had the prophets, they won't even be convinced if someone's been risen from the dead. Now, you don't spend a lot of time debating this passage in the book,

but in the end in your closing, you kind of bring it back and say there's some important points for the conversation we should draw from this. I don't even know where I should start. You guys tell me, who should I start with on this one? Yeah, I mean, I think, well, maybe I'll just say this. Both Chris and I would agree that this is referring to the intermediate state, that this is not the final state.

Okay, now to find that just for people to me about that. Okay, the intermediate state where they, you know, where there is, you know, at death, both the believer and unbeliever are in, you know, either with the Lord or in this state of, as it were, separation or removal from the blessing of God. and that they await the final resurrection. So they are in a disembodied state in which they're experiencing things. So the rich man does not have a resurrected body, doesn't have a resurrected body yet. This is a, as it were, kind of virtual sensation, so to speak. But it's certainly a state of distress. Before you dry, points out of it.

So if somebody died right now, they would go to one of these two places until Jesus comes back. and Millennium Final Judgment is where really this debate comes in, what will happen after the final judgment. Yeah, the final resurrection. The final resurrection is what the debate is about that, not the immediate point of death. You guys talk about that in the introduction. So that's the both of you agree that this passage in Luke is in the immediate, intermediate state, not the future final judgment. Right, right. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's a picture of, you know, of distress, you know, the same language is used of, of, you know, Jesus' parents, when they're looking for him, they're distressed, or the Ephesians, they're distressed when Paul, they're not going to see Paul in Acts chapter 20. They're not going to see him anymore, you know, alive on the earth. And so I, and I talk about this, too, one of the points that I'm making is that there's a kind of tenderness with which Abraham is addressing this man. He calls him child, you know, my child, a child, technon. And he is, I think that there is something about, preserving someone in life, in conscious life, rather than obliterating that person, giving that person his way, you know, trying to keep God at a distance, not wanting to have communion with God. But there is this act of love, as it were, to allow a person to continue in existence rather than obliterating him. As Ryan Mullins is actually here on campus, he says, if God destroys you, it just goes to show you that he's not really all that into you. And so. But I think that that ongoing existence could actually be an expression of love. After all, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance and so forth, and that he simply allows people to stay on in that existence. And perhaps, you know, and Chris, we've talked about this before, that in the ancient world, there was, you know, kind of the most horrendous thing that could ever happen was that you would lose your own,

you know, you would cease to exist, your personal identity would be obliterated. You would no longer be. and and you know God does not take that step and so we we disagree on that but I think that we could from my angle that it would be an expression of love too you know and being there's something about being that is good that God gives being to all and that is a good thing although that being can be corrupted but but you know so there is a certain goodness to continuing to exist okay so we're going to come back to whether hell as you understand it is loving or just after we work through the passages but in this passage you're saying someone can coexist

with flames, whether they're real or judgment, and there's something metaphorical, yeah. Metaphorical. And God, continuing somebody alive is an act of love even amidst this judgment. Those are a couple of the key things you draw from this passage. Your take, or did you want to add? I would draw from that passage, but I just say it may suggest something beyond the intermediate state to the final state. Got it. Good qualification. Go. Yeah. So I think Paul's right that the fact that,

torment is ongoing in flame in this scene does mean that we can't just apply as a blanket application of fire that anywhere fire appears it's got to burn people up. So I appreciate that that you're drawing from the text. I don't have much to add in terms of this text. What I do want to say though is this highlights one of the common misconceptions about conditionalism or about annihilationism. So many people I've heard from have said, I thought that annihilationists believe that when you die he ceased to exist and it's all over. Well, no, outside of the Seventh-day Adventists and the Advent Christians, which are denominationally affirming both annihilationism as well as an unconscious intermediate state, outside of those denominations, evangelicals who hold to annihilationism are very diverse in how they understand the intermediate state. Many of them believe in a conscious intermediate state in which the righteous are in the presence of God and the lost are suffering in Hades. One of the biggest, the, The King James version is great.

It's got a lasting legacy that will serve us forever. But one of the big mistakes that the translators of the King James version made was that they translated both Hades and Gahena as hell. And that's a big mistake. So even Ironaeus of Leone in the second century writing against heresies is affirming a conscious intermediate state while at the same time affirming final annihilation in hell. So I just want people to understand that annihilationism, the debate about hell has almost nothing to do with the nature of the intermediate. state. People can hold to any view of the intermediate state and any view of hell. They're going to have to, you know, cash those things out independently. And if I could just quickly add to that, you know, we see that Jesus goes into the realm of

Hades, you know, and, you know, that depends on how you understand that. No, he goes to the realm of the dead, you know, that this is the, you know, kind of the, the shield, the realm of the dead, the grave, and that, and that he didn't see corruption in that state. And so you do have that kind of a language of, you know, both the, you know, redeemed and the unredeemed being in that state. Of course, you know, and I think that's why the Apostles' Creed refers to, you know, that, you know, he descended into hell. I don't think that's the realm of the departed lost. But rather, it's the realm of the dead. It's sometimes translated, you know, he departed to the dead. And, but of course, he says to the criminal on the cross,

today will be with me in paradise. So, so there is that, you know, that thing perhaps that needs to be added as well. So it's worth pointing out, and this is a really important point you made about the King James version. It's not the only that does this. That there's different. words like Shiol, the realm of the dead, like Hades, which is the intermediate state, at least being referred to here, Gahena, which seems to be referring to the lake of fire, and those have very different points. And so this passage, you're saying one of the key confusions is we assume that conditionalists believe that the moment you die, there's a seizing to exist, and you're saying, no, there is an extended intermediate state where there could be varying degrees of

punishment, but eventually people will cease to live. That's what you mean by hell. Or the way that Revelation puts it, Hades will be emptied. The dead will come out of Hades and resurrection, and then Hades itself, along with death, will be thrown into the lake of fire along with the resurrected loss. Okay. Because there's, you know, so you've got, because you got the two resurrections. So there's no, there's no realm of the, you know, that intermediate state of the, you know, Hades any longer. And so it's in a sense done away with. Yeah. Okay, love it. All right. We're making some serious progress, at least in my mind. I'm enjoying this. This is helpful.

Okay, so we've looked at three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Let's get at least one passage in there of Paul and see how this fits into the case. And this is one that's often cited to understand the nature of hell and that it's eternal. And you also cited in the end and your conclusion. So I will start with you on this one because you think there are some significant things we can draw from it. Let me read verses. This is Second Thessalonians 1, 5 through 9. says this is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God

that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and grant relief to those who afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels these last two verses is where it gets precise inflaming fire inflicting vengeance

on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 9, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. How do you understand this passage and how do you think it advances or at least clarifies your position? One of the things, you know, through this project, and I really, you know, it's been great to work on this book together with Chris because, you know, as I've looked at this text in Second Thesslonians 1, you know, it's often transcends. translated away from the presence. And of course, I think that's what is, in a sense, the leading indicator that hell is separation from God, that, you know, people are accordingly off. Or there's another realm, as it were, from, you know, that, you know, and humans are excluded,

you know, the condemned are excluded from, you know, say, the presence of God in a meaningful way of blessing and joy and so forth, that they're removed from the blessing of God and so forth. But here, what seems to be that this is taking place, you know, that away from is actually not how it should be understood. It's actually, it's, you know, before the face of God. That's in the, as it were, in the presence of God that this is the, that, you know, and this is echoed, I think, in another, from another angle in Revelation 14, where those who are, you know, restless, those who are being judged who have worshipped the, the beast and his image and so forth, that they, you know, that they have no rest. And this is actually taking place before the throne of God.

Rather than being removed from the presence of God, it's actually the reaction of the wicked in the presence of God. And Dallas Willer talks about how you talked about the flames of heaven, as it were, you know, the new heavens and New Earth. But the flames of heaven burn hotter than the flames of hell because people who are in, you know, who are in the presence of God find this distressing. They find it, you know, discomforting that this is something deeply problematic. So they're actually before God. But whereas the believer reacts to the presence of God in a loving, joyful way, it is a point of distress and discomfort for the unbeliever to be facing this. So rather than seeing it as cordoning off, which is sometimes how Second Thessalonians 1 and is understood, I think this presence model is a better way of looking at it. It is before the presence of God, and this is reinforced from another angle in Revelation 14.

Okay, we'll get to Revelation 14. Maybe you heard this. I think maybe you said the flames burn higher in heaven. Hotter, yeah, hotter. In heaven than in hell? Did you mean they burn hotter in hell than in heaven? No, no, heaven. Okay.

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Dallas Willard said, in other words, this, you know, that there is, the presence of God is so distressing for the believer. It's wonderful for the believer. And so that in a sense, it's kind of like the sun that can warm, you can get a sun tan, very comforting. It's, you know, a lot of people just love to be warm. They find it so comforting. And but heat can also scorch. It can create drought and so forth. So the presence of God brings out different reactions in people, brings out, elicist different responses.

And that's, in a sense, a provocative way that Dallas Willard is using that language to say, you know, you know, oh, everyone who want to be. in heaven, you know, the universalist. Yeah, everyone will want to be the presence of God. Well, you know, I think kind of echoing paradise lost, you know, Satan who says, you know, better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. I think that that's really what's going on here. But anyway, that's... It's a very stark Eastern Orthodox view.

Yeah, it is. That heaven and hell are both the presence of God in all of his unmitigated glory, his unmitigated love. But, you know, imagine a father, you know, trying to lovingly embrace his two sons, and one of them loves his father and the other hates him. That loving embrace is going to be experienced as love by the son who loves his father, but it's going to be tormenting for the son who hates his father. That's kind of an analogy for what I'm talking about. Okay, so God, this would solve the issue of God's omnipresence and what it means to be away from the Lord, but believers and unbelievers are

separated, but both experience the presence of a Lord in a very different fashion. That's your argument. Do you think, go ahead? And I wouldn't say it. And I, know that there is the language of, say, you know, depart from me and so forth, there is that separation language, but I think when you look at these texts more closely, and I think you can, you know, I simply, you know, we're talking about people receive joy through communion with God, but those who refuse communion with God, it is distressing, it is troubling, it creates a sense of restlessness, and that's just the fallout from keeping God at a distance. So in some ways you can perhaps cast it as separation or self-separation, as it were. But, but, but, but,

But, you know, there's also the language of depart from me and so forth. So I think we can reconcile those, but perhaps this is not the place to do that. Fair enough. So I'm going to have to think about this more because the typical understanding is it's banished away from the Lord. And it'll be explained, if not physically, relationally. You're saying, no, God is present. But they are – so it's not like in hell you're present with Satan. In hell, you're present with God, but experiencing the full weight of his wrath, so to speak, and your rejection of him.

Okay. All right. Just clarifying those positions, we could circle back to that. In your mind, before we get to Revelation, when it talks about inflicting vengeance, does that language of like it feels like it's ongoing, inflicting something, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction? Does that add to your case you think? And then I want to know why you obviously think it doesn't. Yeah, I think in some ways this is more of a neutral text because it's typically been taken as removal from the presence of God that that's the essence of hell.

that's, you know, the view that I've taken, but, you know, actually reading a traditionalist, Charles Quarles, you know, commenting on Second Thessalonians 1.9, I thought, well, he's making, you know, he's saying it's not a separation language. It's kind of a causal language that the presence of God causes joy for the believer, but it causes distress for the unbeliever. And that's, that's how he's, how he's casting it. But even though it says suffer the punishment of eternal destruction. Yeah, I mean, I, again, we could take our cues from Matthew 25 or you have them parallel and so forth and see it in other ways. I would say, yes, it could speak into that language. I don't necessarily see that as decisive.

Okay. But anyway. Fair enough. Presume you agree with that or what would you add to that? I mean, I agree with some of the things. So I'll just make three quick points. Number one, and Paul, I'm so glad that you see this and acknowledge it. The Greek preposition of pa does not mean away from.

It just means from. And the passage most scholars think that he's sort of drawing upon is in Isaiah chapter two, where the wicked, they are fleeing in terror from, sorry, they're fleeing from terror of the Lord, the terror of the Lord. Now, notice from there doesn't mean they're trying to hide away from God's own fear. No, they're hiding because of fear of the Lord. So this language of a from means cause. So the mistranslation, therefore, would be appalling. So anyway.

Well, away from is fairly mild. Then you get the NIV was shut out from, and then you get some that are even worse than that. Really abused. Read a lot in. So that's number one. Okay, before you go to two and three, let me just make sure people understand this. It says they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from or shut out from the presence of the Lord. you're saying creates this idea that hell is a part separated.

And if we just say suffer the punishment of eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord, that literally changes everything. And you both agree on that. Okay. All right. So the second point is you quoted the inflaming fire and inflicting vengeance language, which I think is important because that combination of terms appears together in only one other place in all of Scripture. And that's Isaiah 6615, where it's talking about God's angels coming to slay.

God's enemies. And we've already talked about how that scene ends with God's enemies having been reduced to corpses being eaten by maggots and burned up by fire. So I think that that's what Paul is alluding to there, which sounds like he's teaching my view. The third and final thing I want to talk about is just this language of eternal destruction. Some people who object to annihilationism, they will say, well, why would he call it eternal destruction? If destruction is annihilation, that's by definition eternal. So to call it eternal will be redundant. But again, this just trades on misconceptions of what we think. By destruction, we mean death.

And the whole point, or one of the obvious implications of the doctrine of resurrection, the general resurrection, I mean, is that death isn't forever in the first death. It's not everlasting destruction. But when the resurrected lost are destroyed a second time and never live again, that is everlasting destruction. And I think that that's the point that Paul is trying to make. Yeah, and I would also add, just a little nuanced, not add maybe, just say something here about the, you know, the word L.A. Thras, you know, a ruination, you know, and it could be, you know,

that same word is used of, you know, in, say, First Timothy chapter six, where the love of money has led to the ruination of person. So not their obliteration, but their ruination. And so, you know, again, kind of, I think I can, I see that. I say, okay, well, seems like it's not, you know, obliteration or annihilation here. But, so anyway, anyway, I just would want to add that. Well, one thing I think it's really what I love about what you just said. It highlights the importance of recognizing that this debate doesn't come down to just an individual word here or there. We have to look at context. We have to look at intertextuality. We have to look at historical context, those kinds of things. And that's what we're trying to do all through our book.

We're doing biblical exegesis for the most part here. But you also have chapters on systematic theology pulling in doctrines of God. That's another lens to look at this, which we're not really exploring. And some of this debate, you're right. You point back towards Isaiah 6615. And we see it in that language. But it raised a question, we cannot probably go down this rabbit trail right now is how the New Testament authors cite the Old Testament and their freedom to add meaning and interpret. And that adds a layer of complexity to this. But let's move to the passages that pretty much everybody agrees.

And you spent some time in the conversation with Kurt Cameron going into this one. So let me read. We'll start with Revelation 14-9 through 11, and I'll read it for us, and we'll get her take. It says, and another angel, a third, follow them saying with a loud voice. If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever they have no rest,

day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name. So this is talking about anyone who worships the beast receives a mark, and we don't have to go in any detail what that means or how to identify that. Another conversation. We'll get God's wrath. It says twice, tormented with fire and sulfur. The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest. Now, we could go to Revelation 20, but you've been pointing towards Revelation a handful of times as you think this brings some clarity. And then I'll come to you because I know you see this very, very differently as well. But how do you think this makes, clarifies your understanding?

Yeah. Well, here, you know, the torment, as it were, is seen as, you know, having no rest, which, you know, for those who worshiped the beast. But, you know, in contrast, verse 13 of Revelation 14 talks about those who are, you know, the saints who have died in the Lord and they cease from their labors, that they have rest from their labors, that there is this kind of relief, as it were, that they have accomplished what they have faithfully lived out on earth, and now they have their rewards. So you have this contrast between the restlessness of the beast worshippers, and you have the rest of the believers. And a number of commentators see this as kind of a seemingly plain parallel of the final state.

And again, obviously, we're talking about consciousness here, conscious awareness. And so, again, I know we'll talk about other things like apocalyptic literature, et cetera, you know, the smoke rising. I think that's kind of a secondary sort of a thing. I think what is at issue is, you know, that they have no rest day or night. And that seems to parallel the kind of language that is used of in Revelation 20 of the devil, a personal being. and, you know, he has, you know, again, he, you know, he'll be tormented day and night forever and ever. And then, you know, in the Lake of Fire, the final state. And then it goes on in verse 15 to talk about those who, you know, whose names are not written in the book of life.

You know, they are in that same, you know, the state of condemnation. Okay, so unmistakably here, presumably we're talking about the Lake of Fire and the final judgment. Would the two of you agree on that? Or would you not agree with that? To be honest, I lean toward thinking Revelation 14 isn't about hell, but I don't make a big deal out of that because I think even if it is about hell, it still clearly teaches my view. But we'll get there. Okay, okay, fair enough. Let me come back to that.

I love it. So you believe this is the lake of fire. It's referring to, same as in Revelation 20. Okay. And the key is not so much the smoke going up forever and hever, but there's this contrast like we saw in Matthew 25, eternal life, eternal punishment between they have no rest. in this passage, which feels ongoing and like you can't sleep at night, contrast with those in heaven, the new heavens in the new earth who have rest. Yeah, kind of illustrating what Romans chapter two is talking about of, you know, of glory,

honor, immortality, the reward, the rest that the believer has, as opposed to the, you know, the distress and trouble that the unbeliever has in this state of having no, you know, having no rest day or night. So I would see that as, you know, again, ongoing consciousness. Okay. That's the key where really a lot of this debate comes. Is there ongoing conscious torment and existence? Having no rest in your mind advances that case. Your thoughts? Yeah, so you're going to have to give me a little bit of time.

I'm going to try to be as brief as I can. But it's really important because we at Rethinking Hell and many conditionalists, we just admit that in the vision that John is being shown, the lost are tormented. forever and ever. I'm not denying that. We everything in hell don't deny that. But the question is, what is the nature of this kind of vision? And that's where I need to spend just a moment to help clear things up. Because I think a lot of modern Westerners, we come to this vision and revelation, and we think that John is literally seeing the future, almost as if the future had been recorded on camera and the recording sent on a flash drive back in time to Paul who plugged

it in, you know, whatever. But that's, sorry, John, but that's not the way that visions of the future work in Scripture. So you go all the way back to Joseph's visions of the future and then and then Pharaoh's workers and then Daniel's visions of the future and Ebuchadnezzar's visions of the future without exception. These are all visions in which the future is foretold or revealed to the seer, but by means of symbols. There is no vision of the future in scripture I've been able to find in which the future is literally depicted. So for example, Pharaoh in his vision of the future, he sees seven healthy cows come up out of the Nile and then seven sick gaunt cows.

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Google Play Store and download it today. Come up out of the Nile and eat the first seven. But you know what he's told when Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dream is that that has nothing to do with cows, right? Or the Nile. It's about there being seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. So the cows symbolize years. The fatness of the first seven symbolize abundance in the first seven years.

And the gauntness of the seven cows after them symbolize seven years of famine. All right. So the stage I'm trying to set here is just that the question we need to ask ourselves when we come to the book of Revelation isn't primarily what is depicted in the imagery. The primary question should be what does that depiction symbolize in reality? So then the question becomes, well, how would we arbitrate that? How would we answer that question? I think the one of the best ways to do that is to look and see if the same symbols converge elsewhere in the same vision. And as it turns out, they do. So in Revelation 14, 9 to 11, the wicked

are made to, the beast worshippers are made to drink of God's wrath as if from a cup, they're tormented in fire and sulfur, and then smoke rises from them forever and ever. And then you've got the restlessness thing as well, although there's a translation there thing that we could discuss if we have time. But those three symbols appear again, just a few chapters later in Revelation 18 and 19, where Mystery Babylon, this blood-drunk vampiric prostitute riding on the back of the seven-headed ten-horn beast, she is made to drink God's wrath. She is tormented in fire. And at the beginning of chapter 19, a hallelujah, a hallelujah chorus cries out, the smoke from her rises forever and ever, just like we read in Revelation 14. But at the end of Revelation

chapter 18, an angel tells John what the fate is of the city that this woman represents. He says, he throws a rock into the sea, and he says, so will the great Babylon, or so will the great city be found no more. She'll be thrown down with violence and be found no more. The people who inhabited her will be found no more. So the picture, these symbols converge in the very same vision to communicate the destruction of a city and the deaths of many of her inhabitants. And so that makes me think why in the world would I think those symbols converge to mean something utterly different just a few chapters later in the very same vision? That strains credulity in my thinking.

Okay, fair enough. So you're pointing more towards the genre of apocalyptic language, how these words appear elsewhere. And don't disagree that the words as we look at it in maybe a literalistic fashion would communicate ongoing lack of rest day and night. It's literally what John is seeing in his vision. Yeah. And he's describing that. But the way we understand in the book of Revelation would lean us differently. I think so. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Before we come to Revelation 20 thoughts in this one. Talk about opening a can of worms with Revelation.

Yeah. Yeah. And I've used this analogy where you know, you have, of course, in chapter 14, you have everyone who worships the beast drinking from this cup of wrath. You have then chapter 16. You have Babylon, you know, this city in rebellion against God, drinking from that cup of wrath. But you also have, you know, I think of, say, an analogy of Nazism, where you have Nazism, the system that has been set up against God. That's, you know, inspired by demonic forces and, you know, the devil himself. But, you know, you know, in Nazi Germany, once you have the trials of those who led the Nazi, you know, movement, those who brought about the Second World War, those who, you know, then destroying the symbols and the flags and so forth and basically removing any hint of Nazism, you still have

intact the German nation, at least those who haven't been killed in the war, you have them, you know, my mom survived the bombing of Berlin. And she came from Latvia, but, you know, and so, so, yeah, Germany was still largely intact, but yet without this demonic Nazi system that, you know, any longer in operation. And I think there's something like that that is going on here. But again, it's a matter of weighing things. And, of course, you have apocalyptic literature. You'll have people on Chris's side who will say, no, this is how we interpret it.

People, you know, like G.K. Beal and David De Silva, who are, you know, they know they know they're apocalyptic stuff too. And they will say, no, I think this is how it ought to be interpreted. So, so again, it's, you know, there are. are, you know, there's a, you can understand why people might be agnostic on some of these things. Well, and I will just say, as much as I think these passages in Revelation teach my view pretty clearly, it does seem to me as though it's probably a little unwise to rest the case for a particular theological doctrine on the most enigmatic, most difficult book to interpret faithfully in all of Scripture, which I think is what some tradition, not all, but some traditionalists have done as they've said, look, if you want the clearest picture of heaven, Hell, if you want to, it was all unclear until we got to the most unclear book of scripture, and then all of a sudden hell was made clear.

I think that's a little. So what I would like to see is for the case for eternal torment to be based more on texts that are less unclear than Revelation. Okay. And Revelation 20, you can see if this adds anything to it. Obviously, six chapters later, 10 through 15. The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and false prophet were. and they will be tormented day and night forever and forever. Describe some other things as he gets the bottom.

Verse 13, and the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were thrown into it. They were judged each one of them according to what they had done. Verse 14, then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And then verse 15, the one that's been quoted as much or any verse from Revelation, and if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

How do you think this adds to or clarifies your position? Well, you know, you have, of course, the lake of fire, and you have, you know, the devil, a personal being, being, you know, again, and his demonic hosts, you know, the devil and his angels, Matthew 25, you know, being tormented day and night forever. And I think that in this setting, if the lake of fire means, you know, utter, you know, obliteration of a person, annihilation of a personal being like Satan, his going on, he's being tormented day and night forever and ever doesn't sound like that. So you have that kind of a juxtaposition.

And so I would, I would say it, and not to mention that in Revelation 2215, you have mention of those who are outside the same. city. It seems like there's this ongoing existence of them. They're mentioned in twice in Revelation 21, and then, you know, the dogs, the immoral and so forth, the cowards, that these are outside the city of the redeemed. And so it seems like

there is this ongoing existence that they also experience, again, removed from the blessing of God, but God's not stuffing them out of existence. So, again, like we said, these could be enigmatic passages and

revelation is a challenge to any interpreter. But again, I see those things like, okay, well, it seems like there is something else going on here besides mere destruction. Maybe we need to understand that language of destruction, perishing, and so forth, in ways that are more like ruination rather than obliteration. Okay, so we have the devil. We've got the beasts. They're tormented day and night forever and forever. Death in Haiti's thrown in the lake of fire. Your point, 2215 on read.

It says, outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murders and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. This seems to be a reference to outside the kingdom of God, ongoing existence that matches Revelation 14 and 20, this kind of ongoing torment. And so you're pulling from other passages to say we see a theme here of conscious punishment that continues. Is that fair? Yeah, and I guess the city would be kind of tantamount to or kind of the virtually equivalent of the new heavens and the new earth, you know, all the things that have been restored and good. And, of course, the city, I think, is strongly emphasizing the people of God and the redeemed people of God in, you know, the language of jewels and so forth. But, but yeah, that's how I would take it.

Got it. That's helpful. Chris. Well, so first of all, I'm going to try to be as brief as I can. Number one, I don't think that, Paul, you're understanding the end of Revelation properly at the end of chapter. 22. What we're dealing with... Basically this on G.K. Beal, by the way.

Well, fair enough. Fair enough. And I have the utmost of respect for G.K. Beal. He's a hero of mine. I just think he doesn't follow his own great scholarship to the extent that he should. But anyway, so, for example, at the end of Revelation 22, chapter 22, we're no longer in the vision. This is a common misconception. The vision ended halfway through chapter 22, where John then says, these are the things that I saw, blah, blah, blah.

and now we're in what we might call the epilogue of John's epistle that we call Revelation. So I think it's a mistake to think that what John is saying is the wicked are still there outside the city. I mean, the author of Hebrews writes about us as having come to the heavenly city now, in the here and now. So I think this is language of whether we are in Christ or not in Christ right now. I don't think it's about the vision. But again, I've already acknowledged that the vision depicts or portrays everlasting conscious torment on the part of the wicked. So it wouldn't surprise me if they're still being depicted outside of the gates. And that's fine.

The second point I want to make is I acknowledge that it is strange. It seems awkward that one might use a symbol of everlasting conscious torment as a symbol for death. That does seem strange. But we've already talked about pictures of death allegedly being used as symbols for eternal torment. Why is it only one direction that we can go? So the picture of corpses in Isaiah 66, why can that be a symbol for everlasting torment if everlasting torment can't be a symbol for annihilation? This just doesn't make much sense to me. But those are minor points.

Here are the main points I want to make. Number one, everything thrown in that lake of fire is a conscious entity in John's vision. The devil, the beast, the false prophet, resurrected humankind, and— Sorry for hitting your laptop there. And death and Hades. So death and Hades aren't abstractions in John's vision. They're the fourth horseman of the apocalypse in Revelation chapter 6. Death is riding the pale white horse and Hades is following him kind of like a squire.

So these are conscious beings in the imagery thrown into the lake of fire in, I think, Revelation 2013 and 14. But what is their fate in that fire symbolized in reality? Well, just a few verses later, God says from the throne, I think it's Revelation 214, Hathaas Uchestai Eti, death shall be no more. And this is drawing upon Isaiah 25 where Yahweh promises to say, swallow up death forever. First Corinthians 15, death is the last enemy to be destroyed. So the picture of these conscious horsemen being thrown into the lake of fire seems to symbolize the annihilation of death itself. Once all of God's enemies have been destroyed and his redeemed people are immortal and live forever, the existential threat of death is gone. Nobody will ever have to fear death again. It will have been annihilated. So that's one reason why I think this symbolism symbolizes my view. But the one other thing that's really important is that when John and God himself say that the lake of fire, is the second death, they're not labeling the lake of fire. They're not saying, you know, there's a sense in which the lake of fire is death. They're doing what all throughout

scripture is known as interpretation. When Pharaoh sees the vision of the seven cows, Joseph says, the seven cows are seven years. The seven cows are seven years. When Daniel interprets the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, he says, the tree is you, or the head of gold is you. So when John and God say the lake of fire is the second death, They are telling you the lake of fire symbolizes the second death. Well, so then what does second death mean? Well, the only place in intertestimental Jewish literature that we find the expression second death is in what's known as the Targums, the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Old Testament that were compiled after Jesus,

but have oral traditions stretching back into the time before Jesus. And everywhere in that tradition that the phrase second death appears, and sometimes, by the way, it appears next to the word Gehenna. Everywhere it appears in the Aramaic Targums, it means literally dying a second time. So when John interprets the lake of fire as symbolizing the second death for people, he's saying, he's teaching my view just matter-of-factly. This scene I've just described for you that God showed me while I'm in exile on the island of Patmos. This scene symbolizes this cosmic event. All of you already expect to happen where the resurrected...

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never to participate in the life to come. did you do that in one breath? No, I took two or three. I was like, I'm not sure he breathed in that. I have these arguments a lot, so it just comes. Okay, all right. Now, there was like five or six points, which are a part of your case, which is fair. You walk through it in the book.

There's no way we're going to be able to dissect each one of those points. Anything, I'll give you one come back on this one before we keep going, unless you're like, we've covered it and go. No, I mean, I'll just offer a few points. Well, no, I'll just keep pointing. I would say even, you know, initially I had removed from consideration Revelation 2215, those outside the city. But G.K. Beal himself, in his shorter commentary, actually brings us back to the same list that is mentioned within the apocalyptic language of Revelation 21. So not not outside the vision any longer in 2215. But still, you know, you have those vice lists mentioned twice in Revelation.

21. So it seems that there is carryover. It's not just a matter of what is going on in terms of some, as it were, confused vision. I think there's a kind of continuity that this is something that is a permanent fixture. This is something

that is ongoing. And it is connected. A G.K. Beal in that commentary does say, no, this does connect. That there is this seeming ongoing conscious existence of those who are outside the city. But I'll have to leave it at that. All right, fair enough. I've got a ton more questions, but I think what might be most interesting is if we go to some of the students. Again, we have some undergrad students from a class I teach, gospel kingdom culture. We have some theology students, philosophy students, a science and religion student, which is awesome. So you can ask your question, and then you can ask it directed to somebody if you want to have your respond, and then the other person, whoever is not directed to give your two cents on it. And then I'll bring us back and ask a few questions as well. So do we have the mic ready to?

ready to rock and roll for the students. Are we good to go here? Check one, two, three, four. Check, check. Well, he's checking the mic. So, uh, that awkward moment. Maybe we'll edit this out later.

Maybe not. Maybe we'll just leave it in because it's part of the real life. Leave it in and show how messy it is. You know, like the conversation's messy on many levels. Yeah. We're living after the fall. You tell me if we need to pivot to another question. Just like one second.

Check check. See, he used metaphor. language when he said one second, just for the record. He didn't actually mean it. The question is, what did he mean by one second? We're good to go. Okay. All right.

Who'd like to be first? Go ahead, please. Hi, I'm Eunice. Thank you so much for the conversation. It was really intriguing. I have a question for Chris. I think I heard you say that there is somewhere in the Bible that it says that God gives the believers eternal life, non-believers, not.

that. And I know that everlasting life and eternal life are also different. Would you, what would you think about the interpretation of eternal life as God himself instead of my life being eternal or everlasting? Yeah, so I'm open to that possibility, but it seems to me that the adjective Ionios really does have a temporal sense to it. It derives from. It's a cognate of the noun Ione which is where we get the English word eon from. The adjective Ionios really does seem to mean something like in perpetuity, everlasting,

or at the very least indefinitely long. So I just have not yet been persuaded that that adjective means something more like of divine quality or something like that, which is what it sounds like you're proposing. Have you seen that word in the New or Old Testament used in a divine way more, though? No, I haven't. That's part of the reason why I remain. So, for example, the closest I think we come to are places where it clearly doesn't mean everlasting.

I think there's places where, like, ancient mountains are called everlasting, which, of course, they're not everlasting. They're finite in duration. But we use the language of forever that way even nowadays, right? Oh, that took me forever. We don't mean literally forever. We just mean it took me an awful long time. And I think that that's how sometimes the word is used.

But I don't see it used anywhere where it does. doesn't seem to have this sense of protracted time. But again, I'm open to being persuaded. One more follow up, and then I want to give someone else a chance. Yeah, I just wanted to say, so you don't see the difference between eternal life and everlasting life in the Greek or Hebrew too much. I'm aware of no distinction between those two expressions. There is no anywhere where you see the translation everlasting life, if it's Greek, if it's the New Testament or the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, it's going to be Ionios Zouet or something like that.

And by the way, Zouet, life doesn't mean some special quality of life. When we talked about Luke 16, the rich man is told, in your Zouet, in your life, you experienced good things. But this was a terrible wicked man, right? So it just means life, and everlasting life just means enduring, unending life.

As far as I can tell. Thank you. Good stuff. Paul, you need to weigh in here. You're good. All right. Let's go in the next question. Please.

Thank you for that one, Eunice. Hello, Chris. Hi. I'm Ruel. I just had a question, maybe a clarification. I'm kind of confused on your position when you mentioned about, like, whether the wicked will cease to exist or cease to live? Like, can you elaborate more on that? Yeah, there's at least two ways to be dead.

One way to be dead is your body's dead, but your soul continues to exist. And that's what most Christians have believed is the case with the first death and the intermediate state. Another way to be dead is to be dead in body and in soul because your soul has been killed as well. Now, what is the soul in sort of in classical Christian anthropological dualism? It's the mind, right? It's pure consciousness. So now think about what is characteristic of a dead body. It's inert.

It's inanimate. It's lifeless. It's motionless. It's inactive. If all of those things are true of our consciousness itself, then there is no consciousness anymore. And so when death extends not only from the body but also to the soul, the person ceases to exist, but not in some metaphysical sense like the Thanos example I gave of snapping his finger. They cease to exist as conscious beings. They're dead and unconscious forever,

never to live or experience in anything ever again. So I don't mind saying that, yes, we believe the lost eventually ceased to exist in hell, but that's not our emphasis. Our emphasis is they cease to live. The death extends to their souls as well. And as a consequence of that, they know longer exist. So you just said that you don't emphasize on them seizing to exist, but then I don't see how seizing to live, like it feels like seizing to live entails seizing to, like seizing to be conscious seems to be seizing to exist. Okay, let me ask for clarification. You're not saying they're opposites, it's one or the other. Is it more a matter of emphasis in your position? It's a matter of emphasis. It's a matter of what we mean by what we think the biblical authors mean by their language. And we think what they mean by the language of destruction is the death, the execution of the lost. And Jesus was executed, but he didn't cease to exist. If, you know, an anthropological duelist Christian annihilationist still thinks that Jesus's soul continued to exist between its death and resurrection. So death can occur without ceasing to exist, but it can also occur with ceasing to exist.

exist. And the reason that we think that the second death entails a cessation of existence as well is, number one, because Jesus says death will extend not only to the body, but also to the soul and the second death. And number two, philosophers, you'll know this, but philosophers have long argued that the only way that resurrection is even possible is if a soul continues to exist between death and resurrection. So the reason Jesus' soul continues to exist between death and resurrection, and the reason ours do is because we're going to be resurrected. But when the wicked are slain in hell for their second death and they'll never be resurrected again, there's no purpose for God to keep their souls in some kind of half-human half-existence, which is what an intermediate state is.

Does that help at all? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So you just, when you say Jesus ceased to exist, you, you just, okay. So I would just clarify. That'd be serious heresy. We can all agree on that one.

Right. All right. Hold the mic right up there like ice cream. Just don't lick it. But that was a wonderful question. and a follow-up. Thank you. Just to make sure we pick it up.

But other questions, way to go, students so far. I got planted asked, but I don't want to give you as much opportunities as you have for Chris or for Paul. Hello, I'm Rocco. I have a question for Chris. I don't mind. I love it. Yeah. What do you think Revelation 14 does not teach about hell because you said something about that?

So I want to be careful, again, plenty of conditional. Plenty of annihilationists do think that has to do with hell. So I don't want to make a big deal out of this. But I'm what's known as, unfortunately, is known as a partial preterist. I think that most of the Book of Revelation was fulfilled in the first century surrounding the 70 AD. Surrounding 70A.D. is what that most of the book of Revelation was about. That's why I don't think it's about hell. But I understand that partial preterism is a minority view amongst the different. competing as catalogical views. And so I just don't make a big deal out of it. And again, even if it is about hell, for the reasons that I gave, I think it still teaches my view. Thank you. Yeah, good clarification.

I have a question for both of you guys, I guess. This might be a question more about the language, but is it possible that by eternal contempt, the passage means that those in hell hold God in eternal contempt? Do you mean in Daniel 12, too, where it says shame? and then eternal contempt. So this is not other people holding them in contempt, but they're continuing to be conscious and holding God in everlasting contempt.

Is that what your question is? Correct. All right, since you've been asked 37 questions so far, kidding aside. Your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, I don't have an axe to grind on this. You know, I do think that it can apply.

But I see Chris's point. I do think it's interesting that Jesus does, you know, I think most well illustrated in Matthew 13 where there is the furnace. Then there is mention of the weeping and gnashing of teeth where there is that contempt toward God. And then there is the mention of the righteous shining like the sun. So I think that Jesus is bringing those two things together and that the conscious existence could also be incorporated in there, but it may not initially be in January 12. of what is, I can see how Chris

arrives at his position, but I think it could, you know, I think Jesus may is seeing it as applying to both. Okay. Do you want to weigh in on that one or you? That's plausible on the surface. I think a couple of reasons incline me against that reading. One is that I'm aware

of no biblical scholar ever who's made that claim, which doesn't prove anything, but it is interesting. I'm a big believer in the idea that if it's new, it probably isn't true, and if it's true, it probably isn't new. And so I'm reluctant to embrace something that nobody in church history has ever embraced before. But the other reason is there seems to be a relationship between shame and contempt there.

And the natural relationship between shame and contempt is there's the experience of the one who is experiencing shame. And then there's the shame in which they are perceived or remembered by everyone else. And that's their contempt. And that seems supported by the fact that the only other place in the Old Testament where that word is used is in Isaiah 66, where these dead bodies are abhorrent to others. So I think the weight of the evidence inclines toward contempt being what God and his people are experiencing, not what the wicked are. I have a quick question for you. You said if something's new, it's probably not true, agree.

And you make the case that early some of the first apostolic fathers held your view. Are there any other issues that you hold that the vast majority of Christian thinkers don't hold that, that are in the extreme minority. And if you say, yes, it doesn't mean you're wrong about hell, but I'm just curious, is this unique? Or are you the kind of thinker that you have a lot of things you push back on? I wish you hadn't asked because I don't want to out myself. But there is one thing that I hold that is an extreme minority.

And that is I'm known as a non-reductive physicalist. So I don't know. I'm not an anthropological duelist. I don't think we have souls or spirits. Wow. I've been speaking as though we do because most Christians, including most annihilationists do hold that view. And so I'm perfectly fine representing that view, but that's not my conviction.

I'm more in line with people like Joel Green at Flore and others who think that we are purely physical creatures who aren't conscious while dead. And I'll admit, I'm aware of no Christians in church history who hold that. And so I'm willing to admit this is a place where I'm violating my own axiom a bit. I have so many questions about that. That'll be a follow-up conversation. Maybe we'll fly you. down and have JP Morland on this side or something.

I'd love to talk with Morland. Man, that would be fascinating. I do have one question for you. This came up a lot in the conversation that Kirk Cameron hosted and was one of the things that Dan just talked about as really being concerned for him. And he's someone who also embraced conditional immortality. How God can be sovereign overall if people keep sitting in hell and rejecting him. And even D.A. Carson talked about how things.

ailing to love God, which is seemingly happening in hell, would be an ongoing sin. And this is what some universalist point to, which is a separate conversation. But how would that square with your position? Yeah. Well, I mean, I do maintain that there is, again, if we take that language of conscious awareness, that there is gnashing of teeth, hostility toward God, then, yes, sin would be continuing in this final state. And so it's a matter of, well, okay. It seems that there is this ongoing conscious awareness that God is allowing people to have their way.

He's, you know, showing love to them and not obliterating them. And this is a, you know, some people say, well, that's not very tidy, is it? Well, I think probably universalism would be the most tidy position of all in some ways that it's all going to be wrapped up. Everything's going to be reconciled. But it does seem to be the case that if, yeah, if you do have people who resist God, that, you know, that outside. the city are people who are opposed to the rule of God, opposed to loving God, then that it would continue. It's just kind of an inference drawn from, you know, kind of making the sense of these texts. But looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day. The Daily

Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy daily Bible trivia and humor. fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word. Search for the daily Bible devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. But, you know, I mean, as I said, even in Revelation 20, there doesn't seem to be something odd about Satan being tormented day and night forever, and that being, in a sense, part of the, vision that this seems to be ongoing.

And so, anyway, those are just some things that I would say in response. Totally fair. Good stuff. Let's go back to the students. Can I say one real fast? If it's fast. All I want to say here is I do find it interesting that often we annihilists are the ones who are said to be downplaying the holiness of God or something like that. But it is, we're the ones who, we're the ones who, think that God hates sin so much he will finally obliterate it, whereas the traditional view says God hates sin enough to punish it forever, but he's not going to get rid of it. It's something to at least consider. Okay, fair enough.

Hi, okay. Thanks so much for being here. Again, this has been so interesting. I definitely feel like I'm in a little bit over my head. We all are to some extent. Right. Not a specific question on anything you have said, but just I want to hear from both of you as you've spent a huge part of your ministry studying the doctrine of hell, why is it important for a believer to have a right theology of hell? Good question. Yeah. Go ahead, Chris. I mean, if I'm being honest, I'm not convinced it is all that critical. I don't think this is a dividing line. What I do think is critical is that where we disagree, we disagree well. And that's something that I think on this topic Christians have not done a great job on, and that's one of the things I think Paul and I are trying to remedy.

What I will say, though, is there are many Christians for whom this issue is very important. I can't count the number of people I've heard from who've said I was on the way out of the faith because of the doctrine of eternal torment, and when I discovered that there's another biblically faithful view that I can hold, it's re-energized my faith. I can't count the number of people I've heard from who've said I'm able to connect with my creator in a far more intimate and deep way because I no longer have this tension between a loving God as depicted in scripture who will supernaturally immortalize the loss so that they can suffer miserably forever. There are Christians, I'm not one of them, I'm just kind of like a

robot, but there are a lot of Christians who are very emotionally affected by what they think about hell. And for them, this is a big issue. And I think that my view brings those Christians a lot of comfort and a lot of closeness with God that they've never experienced before. On the other hand, there are people who, when they find out that most, if they become persuaded that most of church history has gotten this issue wrong, that's going to really challenge their faith. And they're going to be, well, what other things should I abandon? And so this is a tough question.

And I would just encourage people to take it slowly and carefully and in community and let the let the evidence lead them where it leads them, wherever that may be. And just to add to that, I think what you're, you know, some people say, oh, that's going to diminish people's concern about evangelism. But two leading lights in evangelism have been John Stott and Michael Green from England and both very much committed to evangelism. And I think that if you understand the, say, the obliteration of the self as something horrific. and terrifying. Well, you can see, you know, that the Lord, that the gospel message is to remind people, you don't have to, you don't have to go that direction. You don't have to lose your personal existence. So, you know, and you can, you can find relationship with God, union with God, and

continued existence. So, so I think that the, the message of the annihilationist in terms of the gospel, you know, there's something to be, there's something to be said there, too. So I don't think that, you know, it diminishes one's zeal for, for evangelism. You know, anyway, I, I, I, We should probably go to other questions, but I just wanted to add that as well. But I think it just should obviously be a place of pastoral concern. That is whatever the final state is, you know, we want people to share in the joys of union with God rather than being, again, removed from experiencing that. And you have a final section in the book where you talk about this, which I think is a helpful way to wrap it up. Yeah.

That's in there as well. Let's go to students. Hold it right up there. My name is Jeremy. and this is a question for Paul, and thank you for being here. But I want to ask on a qualitative level, do you believe the level of punishment within annihilationism is an eclipse of God's wrath?

Because I think hell is a very touchy topic to think about and to talk to others. And I have the conviction of not wanting to water down the level of God's wrath. So in other words, would you agree that even though annihilationism is not where you hold, is it, would you agree that it could be a full biblical view, full biblical view of his wrath being displayed? Yeah, I mean, I do think that there is a connection that could be made there and there are,

you know, again, it could go into a very lengthy conversation here about, you know, the, you know, the son of God suffering, you know, what is the God for sakenness of the sun mean. I don't think there's a rift in the Trinity at all. I think it's just simply a Jesus being blocked from having that kind of a, you know, joyful intimacy with his father, the experience that has been, that has been blunted now in this, in this condition. Some, you know, and some will argue that this is tantamount too, or is the equivalent of, you know, even though it's finite and not eternally, but it is, you know, we're talking about the son of God who's experiencing this. So from that angle, you'd say, yes, there is a, you know, it may be a diminishing of that. But on the other hand, I mean, I see Chris's point, and he is certainly not one who is

diminishing the holiness of God in his view. He's simply trying, and I think both of us are trying to do this, trying to take the text seriously and say, what does the text say and what does this tell us about the holiness of God, rather than saying, this is what I think the holiness of God is and therefore, or what the wrath of God ought to entail, and therefore I'm going to try to find a way of bringing this to the scripture. So I think that it's just a kind of a fair question. How do we interpret the text? And then how do we, therefore, in light of that, see and understand the nature of God as he's revealed himself, his holiness, his love, his wrath, and so forth. Just two fast points in following up. Number one, I think if the best place to look for the best

most full-throated example of God pouring out his wrath would be him pouring out his wrath on his son in our place. And what happened to his son on the cross? He didn't live forever in torment. He died. And so I can't possibly, I cannot relate to anyone who would say, well, if the wicked are just killed, that's somehow downplaying God's wrath when the whole point, the central focus of the biblical message is God's pouring out his wrath on sin on Jesus on the cross. So that's number one. Number two, again, I think I also don't want to downplay God's wrath, but in the utmost of respect, I don't think it's annihilationists nowadays who are doing that. I think it tends to be people on the eternal torment side who are air-conditioning hell. Again, when you got people the likes of

Venusius Felix and Jonathan Edwards and others saying that the flames of hell are literal, they literally burn off the flesh of the wicked and simultaneously regenerate it for all eternity. And nowadays you have people saying, well, it's like being stuck in a bar where there's only warm, flat beer forever. That's what the guy who runs tectonics ministry has said. JP Holding. JP Holding, right. Or they'll say, oh, it's just sort of like an everlasting prison sentence. It's like being banished, exiled forever. Well, you know, that's kind of bad, but it doesn't sound as bad as having flames burn off your flesh and regenerate them forever.

But then there's a question, though, of, you know, how do you interpret? those images and they were reading them very, very literalistically, and I'm saying, no, these are metaphorical. So, so yeah, I would want to clarify that. Well, I agree. And my point is just that let's, let's dispense of this fear of who's watering down hell and let's just deal with the biblical data, you know, that's where I agree on that. Let me ask you this one of the most fascinating parts of this book to me is a response that you had that has had me thinking. And I want to set it up in the sense that I've had multiple atheists in conversation with me say, why would I fear death. I didn't exist before and I won't exist afterwards. So there's no reason to fear death.

Scriptures talk about a punishment that is worse than death. Talk about your take on that. In light of the comment you made at the beginning, if I heard you correctly, you said you wished you could believe in eternal conscious torment. Why would you wish that? Help us understand and respond to that. So it's certainly the case that there is a large number of people through human history who share some variation of the sentiment that you just described. But the reality is, I think most philosophers will tell you that the Epicurean endeavor was pretty much a failure. The Epicureans were trying to talk people out of their fear of death by arguing, hey, there's nothing to fear because after you die, you won't be here just like you weren't here before you were born.

But they didn't make many converts. And if you look through history, you find maybe a minority, but a strong minority of humans who fear annihilation even more. and they fear everlasting life and torment. The first century Greek historian Plutarch said that if you were to offer his fellow Greek countrymen, the choice between eternal torment and annihilation, they would joyfully choose eternal torment and annihilation. They would joyfully choose eternal torment. Augustine himself in the city of God said that if you were to offer the impenitent sinner, the choice between eternal tormentor, they would joyfully choose to be eternally tormented. These are sentiments that I admit a lot of people can't relate to, but it's nevertheless there.

Read the poem al-Bod by the 20th century agnostic poet Philip Larkin, who goes, he talks about his fear of death. And then he talks about people who said, hey, don't fear death. You just won't be around after you die. And he responds with, you don't understand. That's precisely what I fear. No longer being, no longer experiencing, no longer loving, no longer feeling. So this is a very strong undercurrent, a current through human history. And I think what it highlights is that at the very best, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the question of which is worse, which is more terrifying, is a very subjective thing. And for me, I fear annihilation more than I do eternal torment. And I would rather my lost loved ones get to live forever, albeit in some kind of misery, than be obliterated and never experience anything ever again. And so for those reasons, and because it would make me fit better with my conservative reformed, you know, brothers, for those reasons, I wish I could believe in eternal torment. But I had to subject my, I had to bend my need of scripture. I was sort of dragged by my commitment to scripture kicking and screaming into embracing this view.

That's so interesting. I have a million things to say about that. Any thoughts on that, Paul, how you see it? Because is it just a matter of subjective kind of takes and given takes? Or do you think there's something more to fearing eternal conscious punishment when we understand it biblically? Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, plus reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead? The Daily Bible app reads verses, reading plans, and chapters allowed, handy for the headphones moment of your day. Choose from versions like ESV, NIV, NIV, KJV, and more, and bookmark favorites to

revisit later. Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and Facebook. begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. As you do, that we would want to do everything to get out of that. Yeah. Well, it's interesting.

I think, of course, our intuitions need to be subjected to the scriptures, and John Stod is very clear on that, even though he takes the conditionalist perspective. But, you know, in our own modern world, we think of the life in prison as being more compassionate than, say, capital punishment. You know, that that is, you know, and some people, you know, some people will say, well, you know, isn't, you know, isn't what you're saying about, say, conditionalism, you're saying that this is, you know, that, you know, taking someone's life is actually just going to be, well, one, it's going to be, you know, very, very severe. But I think that we have in this, in our modern understanding, I'll just maybe just go back to that, where we think that allowing people to live their days out in prison is the more competitive. passionate way. And I think I just go back to the, so we could have these competing intuitions, but again, I just want to bring this back to scripture that we, we subject those to what the

scriptures are actually saying. And so if the scriptures are saying, you know, obliteration of one's, you know, personal identity, consciousness, and so forth, or, you know, eternal conscious punishment, well, that is, you know, well, that's just what the scripture is saying. And that's worse than death. And we need to figure things out from there. Fair enough. I think you, you both agree on that. Let's go to one more student question. Hi. Thank you guys for both being here. And all of your insights are just so interesting.

And I think so important for people to hear. Thank you. I do have a question about like how keeping the conscious mind alive is an act of love from God. I'm just like wrestling to grasp what that actually means. And how is like, because in my experience from people that, I've talked to about like where they will go after they die. They're like, well, I don't know what's going to come after this, but I kind of hope that I just disappear. But if like how, I don't know, I just feel like people wouldn't prefer to be living in forever torment.

I love this. Let me jump in here. So let's hold off what people would prefer. And I'm going to have you both address it. There's a line in the book, and I'm glad you brought this up because I want to ask this. It says, for some, it paints God as a. moral monster, and you've written the book, is God a moral monster, who has unnecessarily created the ultimate Holocaust. So how is keeping people alive an act of God's love if love is being

committed to somebody's good? And then I'm going to ask you how it's loving to stuff somebody out at some point. Yeah. Well, I mean, again, we have touched on this a bit, but if God, you know, we talked about being, to have existence is a good thing. And even if it's a, corrupted existence, there's still something good about having being, having existence. And so I would say that, you know, the, again, competing intuitions here and subject them to scripture, but to obliterate someone is, you know, in a very, I think, significant way, and an assault on them, you know, that to keep them alive is more an act of love. So you have to choose between the two, and there may be some conditions where, you know, extremists, and I know Chris is going to

talk, bring about a science fiction scene here. But, but I do think that there is a, that there is a, I think a fundamental affirmation of a person's being, of a person's, of not snuffing that person out, and wishing, you know, desiring that things had been different. But, and it's sort of like the parable of the prodigal son, where you have the, the prodigal son, where you have the, the prodigal son, who's come back home, the destroyed son, the lost son, who comes home and the brother is outside and doesn't want to come in to celebrate. And, you know, again, God's not going to hold up the party of the celebration just because his older son is sitting out in it. And so I think that there's a kind of a picture here of, yes, the Lord will allow us to have our own way. He will allow us to have the choice that we have made to refuse communion with him to find happiness our way.

And so I think that that is really what is going on here in this scenario. So God doesn't stuff out. There is an act of – there is love that is exhibited here. God doesn't desire for any to perish and so forth. But anyway – So by keeping – God has made us beings with choice, by honoring that choice to reject God. He loves us by keeping us alive in that rejection of him because that's the kind of beings we are that make choices. Okay.

So let's flip that, though. How is it loving for God to do the opposite? Yeah. So Paul mentioned that he expected me to turn to science fiction because I love movies. I watch a lot of movies. And I point out on TV shows. And I see myriad examples in movies and in TV where people kill people as an act of love for those people. And the example I gave, I think last time we talked about this was when at the end of X-Men 3, I think it is, Wolverine kills Gene Gray.

precisely because he loves her and he wants to prevent her, she wants to be prevented from being taken over by the dark phoenix that's taking her over. But that's actually not the route I'm going to go this time. I want to do something a little more Socratic. The guy that is believed to have executed, assassinated Charlie Kirk, who turned him in?

Do you know? His dad. And what do you think they expected is likely to happen to their son if he's found guilty for assassinating Charlie? That death penalty, right? Do you think that they, do you think that it was unloving of them to turn their son in to efface justice, knowing that he'd probably be killed? That's a great question.

I think it is a good question. Now, here's the reason I bring this. J.P. Moreland, whom you mentioned earlier, he's defended the death penalty precisely on the grounds that there's almost no greater dignity you could show a person than by allowing them to face the consequences for their actions, the just penalty for their actions. And if an action, if a crime, if sin merits death, then giving the death penalty people who choose to do it is an act of upholding their dignity, showing them the dignity, the value that they have as free agents. So I just agree with J.P. Morland that the death penalty isn't necessarily an active, you know, failure to uphold dignity or show love. Yeah. I suppose the comeback would be, you know, it's not the obliteration of their existence either to. That's fair. So there are these other nuances and levels that we could go into.

Those are both great questions, but I do have to say this is the first show I've done where one of my guests has quoted superheroes more than I did. So big time kudos on that. You brought Thanos into this. You brought X-Men 3 into this. You started with Pirates of the Caribbean, though. Which is not a superhero movie, but maybe we could, oh, I thought you were just going to debate for the sake of fun. All right, good. We have common ground on that one.

I expected that one to come. All right, there is a ton more that we could say here. Let me let me end with this question. I'll both be away in here. One of the things that I feared about this conversation, having this conversation, and one of the students earlier echoed this, is that people would walk away and say, I'm more confused than when I started,

and actually less clarity on what view they should have. So what encouragement would you give to people watching this saying, I just spent two hours here trying to land this plane, now I've got more questions. What's next? Why don't you give your thoughts, Chris, and then Paul wrap us up? I think we as Christians need to be more comfortable with not having all the answers right away. Amen.

The whole, all of church history is a record of Christians trying to work together, digging into God's word, listening to the Holy Spirit, and trying to come to the truth together on a whole host of issues. And yeah, I agree that if you've been raised to believe that. the only view of hell is this eternal conscious torment view and all of a sudden somebody like me comes around and says what at least on the surface sound like they're pretty compelling, it's going to leave people confused. But part of that's just because they've only been exposed to one strain of thought on this topic. If they were to hear a conversation between, say, a Calvinist and an Armenian and they're already familiar with that debate, that's not going to leave them, you know, scared and confused.

They're going to be like, oh, this is an interesting conversation. I want to be a part of this. And that's what I want is as I want to encourage people. to say, I don't have to land immediately on an answer to this question. I can take my time. I can talk to other believers and we can wrestle together and sharpen each other's iron. I think that's beautiful. I think it's beautiful when God's people disagree in a way that honors their Lord, which is exactly what we're doing here. And I think if people can see the beauty in that and find comfort in being able to not have hard and fast answers right away for some time, I think it'll

resolve that concern. Yeah. And I certainly would echo that call for all of us to engage in a kind of theological hospitality where we welcome that kind of conversation. We want to have iron sharpening iron. And I think what this is illustrating is that Chris's ably defended his view and, you know, whatever people think of mine. But I think that it illustrates that we're not dealing with heresies.

We're dealing with people who are. are committed to the scriptures, really searching the scriptures, people who, and like Chris, had thought differently, but his mind was changed by examining the scriptures. And this is really the spirit of the Bereans of searching the scriptures daily to see what Paul was saying was so. And we all ought to cultivate that same sort of a spirit. So rather than having that knee-jerk reaction, that kind of a negativity, which again has come through, you know, in that conversation with Kirk Cameron, a lot of people just vilifying him and vilifying, you know, Gavin Ortland and me for being part of that conversation.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Just some kind of like we're compromising. I'm glad I passed then. That we're kind of, you know, that we're engaging with heretics and treating them on an level playing field. And I think this sort of a conversation illustrates that we are about looking at the

scriptures and seeing what fits best with what God, how God has revealed himself in those scriptures. And that we need to understand that, you know, you know, tradition as how. helpful as that is, as how much it shapes us and so forth, we always ought to be revisiting the scriptures and saying, is this, I've been holding this, is that actually true? And so I think this conversation hopefully illustrates the importance of going back, not having those knee-jerk reactions, but engaging in theological hospitality in searching the scriptures together. Love it. This has been eye-opening.

Flew by to me. I thoroughly enjoyed this. You guys have made your case. And you said at the beginning, you're like, you know, gauge the conversation with Kirk Cam. Was it done a respectful fashion? I wouldn't have brought the two of you here if I didn't think we'd have the same kind of conversation. You both modeled that well. By the way, for people listening and watching, I'm going to go live Tuesday with at least one or two Talbot professors to get their reaction. And as you can tell from the questions in the audience, Talbot professors will hold the traditional view. Most of our students do, although there might be more variety than I'm willing.

aware of. I have no idea, actually, what our students hold on this one. Interestingly enough, so we'll come back. We'll give our way. Make sure you join us. It'll be Tuesday at 4.30, Pacific Standard Time for about an hour. We'll get some theology professors on here to give their two cents. You could also email questions into questions at shon-McDowell.org and just put revelation or something or put one of these passages or hell, and we'll do our best to get to some of those. If you're watching or listening, make sure you hit subscribe. and please let us know this is a much longer conversation than we've often had on this channel. There's probably a little bit more depth, nuanceing a lot of things than we typically do.

Let me know if this is helpful. And if you want more conversations like this in person and what topics you would want us to discuss, thanks for listening and tuning in. And thanks to our students for joining us. We'll see you Tuesday. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community.

And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual formation, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. Dedicating time each day to spend feeding our minds and our hearts, the truth of God's word,

is immensely helpful in our growth as followers of Christ. I'm John Stongy, and each day I host a show called Daily Devotions with Pastor John. On the show, I spend just a few minutes taking an applicational look at one or two verses of Scripture before coming to the Lord in prayer. If you'd like to make a habit of spending more time meditating on the truth of God's Word, You can listen to Daily Devotions with Pastor John at lifea Audio.com or on your favorite podcasting app.