Theology in the Raw - 634: Chris Date Part 2 - Critique on Stand to Reason's Article "Hell Interrupted"

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

The Rethinking Hell Conference is taking place March 9–10, at The Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, Texas. Preston will be there with Chris doing a podcast live! You can find out more at rethinkinghellconference.com. Today on the podcast Preston is talking with Chris Date again from the Rethinking Hell podcast.  Preston and Chris are taking this episode to address arguments against the Conditionalist's view of hell raised by Stand to Reason's Greg Koukl and Tim Barnett. The arguments Preston and Chris are addressing are from Part 1 and Part 2 of "Hell Interrupted".  Chris is the a host and contributor of the Rethinking Hell Podcast and Blog. Chris seeks to take the Bible seriously and promote rigorous study of the scriptures.  You can find the Chris's podcast at rethinkinghell.com. The song at the end is Lazarus by Canopy Climbers.  Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Follow him on Twitter @PrestonSprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists are by no means the first people in fairly recent history to claim Christ and conditional immortality. They just got it from other Christians. Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am back here with my friend, Chris Date. And if you listened to the previous episode, you know that Chris and I sort of dialogued back and forth about the so-called annihilation view of hell, or as we prefer, conditionalism or conditional immortality. So we're going to – this episode is going to kind of pick up on that previous one. So if you didn't listen to that previous episode, you might be a little – I wouldn't say lost, but this is kind of part two of a two-part series on the Annihilation View of Hell. And in this episode, we're going to be primarily addressing some critiques, specifically some critiques raised by an organization that both Chris and I

really like called Stand to Reason with Greg Koukl and several others who are well-known Christian apologists, and we're going to be working through that document. But again, if you're unfamiliar with where we have been going, then I would highly recommend listening to that previous episode. So with that, we'll jump right in. Chris, thanks so much for being on the show again. It's once again my pleasure and honor to be here. So I just want to make clear, because this episode is going to be,

how do I describe it? I mean, it's going to be more, I guess, defensive or critical in a good way. So it could sound argumentative. And I just want to say up front, I know Chris, I know you're going to echo this, but both Chris and I have a deep respect for and love for the ministry of Stand to Reason. And we just could not speak more highly of what they're doing as Christians, as apologists, as ministers, and we have just a huge respect for them and their ministry. So if in the process of this critique, if it sounds like we're being condescending or belittling or whatever, and I can't promise you that won't happen. I mean, sometimes in the moment you just, emotions get flared up. So we'll see how this goes, but I just want you to know up front

before we get into it, that we have a deep respect for the folks at Stand to Reason. And Chris, do you have anything to add to that? I know you've been a big fan for a long time. Oh, yeah, very much so. I've called into, you know, before I was convinced of this view, I called into Greg's show a few times to discuss a variety of issues. And even on issues where he and I disagree,

I, for example, am a amillennialist and a partial preterist where he's a historic premillennialist and I am a young earth creationist where he is an old earth creationist. Even in areas where we disagree, I still highly respect the way that he approaches the disagreement, and I think that Stand to Reason does a great job, for the most part, modeling how it is as Christians we can lovingly and charitably disagree with one another and present a united front even in areas where we disagree, a united front when we're dealing, you know, fighting the culture wars or, you know, trying to reach a world that so desperately needs Christ.

And so I can't speak highly enough. The only thing I wish is that they would be, and by they I mean, you know, Greg and Tim and so forth, would be willing to actually have a dialogue on this topic and not merely write articles back and forth. I think that we would be able to more quickly and more naturally engage in the argument. But that aside, yeah, I'm an enormous fan and I can't speak highly enough of them. So it's within that context that we're going to launch into an ongoing kind of conversation with this two-part series they released. So if

you're not familiar with Stand to Reason, you can check out their ministry, their blog, their podcast, their show. And a couple months ago, they started a lengthy critique of the so-called annihilationist view of hell. It was both, well, I think it was a podcast and they transcripted it. Is that right, Chris? No, I think they had written the first of two articles that they knew were going to come out in their solid ground magazine or journal. And the interview covered some of the ground that they covered in that article they had already written. Okay, that sounds good. So we want to interact with that. And why are we choosing this one article? A couple of

things. Number one, it's very recent. This is not like we're digging up something from 1984 and critiquing it. Also, I think they really do capture a lot of the, I would say, well, honestly, I would say both the popular level and the scholarly level critiques of annihilation. I feel like they really, in a two--part series captured some of the main points raised against annihilation. So I don't think we're, we've kind of gone fishing for like a terrible critique of annihilation and therefore, you know, going to, you know, break it apart or whatever. I do, I do think we're responding to something that represents kind of a populist and scholarly response to annihilation. Chris, before we jump in, is that, would you agree with that?

Is that a good assessment? Yeah. I mean, you can find better arguments from scholars writing at a higher, more scholarly level. But in terms of something that spans the spectrum from popular to scholarly, I think this does a great job. Good. Okay, so let's dive in. does a great job. Good. Okay. So let's dive in. I honestly, and I want to be really honest with my emotions and my sort of intellectual reaction without being degrading. So that's the balance that I'm trying to ride here. That said, I was just discouraged or turned off by the very first

few sentences, primarily on a rhetorical level. Let me say, I'll just read the first few sentences of their article. It said, they say, you may have noticed that, you know, you may have noticed, but hell is not as popular as it used to be. Simply put, the doctrine of hell has fallen upon hard times. Jehovah's Witnesses have long denied it, at least the everlasting punishment part of it, the classical view, along with Seventh-day Adventists, each teaching that in final judgment, the unrepentant wicked will be snuffed out of existence, annihilated. And then he goes on to say, you know, it's not just the cults, you know, that are denying hell. It's actually some evangelicals. And he starts going in and talking about John Stott.

And I think they fairly represent John Stott, which I was very happy about. But I just, as a writer, as a speaker, I don't like it when there's sort of a lot of rhetoric pumped into an argument. I mean, I could just smell where this is going to go, even if I didn't read any longer. It's, you know, everybody's getting soft on hell and, you know, the cults have denied it. And, oh, by the way, some evangelicals have denied it too. And that just gives the novice reader or even the informed reader this impression that, oh, okay, so this view that we're about to discuss is following the cults, is following the sort of cultural tide of not having the backbone to talk about hell. And it's just sort of going soft on hell like the rest of our culture and the rest of the cults and everything,

when at least for a bulk of evangelical annihilationists, I can speak for every single one that I know, including myself, that it is only, or at least primarily, out of a raw, raw allegiance to God's inerrant, inspired word that we have revisited the doctrine of hell. And so I just, just that laying that kind of foundation, I feel like in a sense, it's kind of telling, um, that they are coming in with the presupposition that any sort of deviation from the traditional view is really just a softer version of God's word, is really just, you know, playing into some cultural kind of, you know, cultural vibe that just can't handle the truth of Christianity. Chris, what do you think about that? Am I reading too much into that? Or have you felt,

did you feel that too? And have you seen that in other people you've talked to about this? Well, I find that, I hear that all the time. and so it's long since stopped surprising me. My problems with it are its historical inaccuracies. And so, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses were, they came about in the last couple decades of the 19th century, the Seventh-day Adventists just a little bit before that. But those groups got their belief in annihilation or conditional immortality from mainstream Christians that believed in conditional immortality prior to them, spanning all sorts of denominational boundaries. Baptist Jacob Blaine, for example, wrote in something like 1853 that there were so many Christians spanning so many denominations, including Baptists and Episcopalians and so on and so forth, that there were so many Christians spanning so many denominations, including Baptists and

Episcopalians and so on and so forth, that were holding his view that he thought that the traditional view of eternal torment was on the verge of disappearance, you know, of being pushed aside by this view coming into dominance. Now, he, of course, turned out to be wrong, but the point that I'm getting at is that Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists are by no means the first people in fairly recent history to claim Christ and conditional immortality. They just got it from other Christians. But even if we look after the close of the 19th century, for decades and decades prior to Stott, there were once again mainstream Christians holding this view, just not so much in America. And the main reason for that has to do with, I think, mainstream Christians holding this view, just not so much in America. And the main reason for that has to do with, I think, the fundamentalist controversy that sort of broke loose toward the end of the 19th century, which didn't really rage in Britain the way that

it did here. And so you had people like Basil Atkinson spanning the boundary between 19th and 20th centuries, who influenced John Wenham a little bit later to become a conditionalist, and John Stott. But, you know, so there's a number of others. Even before John Stott said what he said that lit a fire on this topic, I mean, you know, there were people like Stephen Travis and a number of others. So both before and immediately after the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists, there have been mainstream Christians that hold to this view.

And so for me, it really is about the historical inaccuracy of this way of opening the thing that bothers me. Well, let's go back to, you mentioned the historical inaccuracy. I mean, I think throughout, especially the early parts of this critique, I did find some historical inaccuracies. Now, it's one thing to kind of disagree with an argument, and they provide their evidence, and we have to both counter their evidence and provide superior evidence to show that our argument in this place is better. That's what typical debates do, and that's common. But there were some places where I'm just like, man, this is an inaccurate statement. This isn't like your argument versus my argument. This is like using an inaccuracy to bolster your view, which is just a wrong view of history. And this came on, I mean, I cut and paste the documents. This is like my

page three, but they start going into, you know, the historical, you historical, what they would consider unanimity on eternal conscious torment. The Christian church has kind of always believed this, and therefore the annihilation view is going against this huge tide of Christian histories. They say, further, the conviction of the early Christians flowed seamlessly from the Old Testament rabbinic tradition of the time with the schools of Shammai and Hillel both holding to the doctrine of eternal punishment. And again, we talked about this in the last episode, we believe in eternal punishment because death is eternal, it's never

reversed. So anyway, we won't get caught in the weeds here, but Shammai and Hillel, both holding to the doctrine of eternal punishment, as did the Jewish synagogue in general throughout the first century. There's several mistakes here that I just can't glaze over, even though they're not camping out here and citing references. I mean, first of all, the early Christians, the pre-Augustine church was not uniform on this view. In fact, we find several, you know, for the first 300 years of Christianity, really significant early Christian leaders like Ignatius and Irenaeus and others that seem to hold to what

we would call an annihilationist position. Like the eternal conscious torment view was not at all the uniform position prior to Augustine. And Chris, I know you've done more specific work on this. Am I right to say that, that the early church prior to Augustine was pretty mixed on this question? I certainly think that you were, and I wrote as much in that debate that I had with our friend Jerry Shepard on your blog. you were, and I wrote as much in that debate that I had with our friend Jerry Shepard on your blog. You know, I pointed out that Ignatius of Antioch wrote in the first century that Christ suffered so that he might breathe immortality into his church, and he said that were God to reward us according to our works, we would cease to be. In the second century, Irenaeus said that life is bestowed by God according to his grace, and whereas the saved will receive length of days

forever and ever, the lost deprive themselves of continuance forever and ever, and will justly not receive from him length of days forever and ever. Those are just two. We could also talk about Clement of Rome and others. One that I think is really powerful is closer to being contemporaneous with Augustine, although if I'm not mistaken, he too was a little bit before Augustine. And I'm talking about Athanasius the Great. His work on the incarnation of the word makes it very explicit that the reason that Jesus became man and died on our behalf was to prevent mankind from slipping back to the non-existence whence we came, slipping back to the non-existence whence we came, because that return to non-existence in death would have been the just penalty, you know, that we were owed for our sin. And what's really

fascinating to me, I've only just recently learned this because I'm taking a class on atonement with Dr. Oliver Crisp at Fuller Seminary right now. People like Irenaeus and Athanasius have historically been accused by, within certain theological circles circles of holding to what's called a physical doctrine of atonement, by which is meant that they seem to focus more or less on the spiritual fruit of atonement, if you will, things like freedom from sin and so forth, to the physical effects or fruit of atonement, namely the gift of immortality that is given to people because of what Christ did on our behalf. And so, you've got even, you know, historical people criticizing these early church fathers for teaching a conditional immortality view of atonement and so forth. And there are others that I could name as well. So no, I do think you're absolutely right. And here's one last thing I'll add. Despite the variety, I mean, there were even universalists in this time frame.

And despite this variety, you don't see conditional immortality or annihilationism condemned in any sort of ecumenical councils. The closest that you can come to is the Second Council of Constantinople in the 6th century, when it is argued by some people that the council condemned the universalism of origin. But even that's questionable. And so despite this diversity and despite some of the strong words that somebody like Augustine has to say when he's critiquing other views of hell, nevertheless, there's no ecumenical agreement on these other alternative views to eternal torment being heretical. And I think that's significant. Yeah, and that council of Constantinople is kind of sketchy

how the whole thing went down. I wouldn't even call that an ecumenical council in the same spirit like Nicaea was or something. Yeah, that's true. And even so, it didn't condemn annihilation as we would articulate it. And everything you said, I agree with 100%. And even more so, most Americans that talk about church history, they're talking about Western church history.

I mean, the whole Eastern tradition has a lot more room for diverse views on the nature of hell. And as many people know, I mean, even, yeah, universalism is much more accepted within the Eastern Church. But it's really the Western Church post-Augustine that really narrowed down on eternal conscious torment, whereas the Eastern Church had more flexibility. So, but, you know, you can say, well, I don't like the Eastern Church. Well, so what? If we talk about global historic Christianity and what was the uniform perspective on whatever, there just simply is no the uniform perspective on whatever. There just simply is no the uniform perspective on eternal conscious torment in church history. Where I got hung up on,

because this is kind of my area, is on their appeal to the Jewish tradition here. You know, they say the conviction of the early Christians flowed seamlessly from the Old Testament rabbinic tradition of the time. That phrase doesn't even make sense. I mean, we have the Old Testament, we have rabbinic tradition. There's no such thing as the Old Testament rabbinic tradition. Like, that doesn't even make sense. It's almost like they tried to squeeze in Old Testament, you know, to sort of, you know, sanctify rabbinic tradition. That's my first problem with that phrase. Secondly, as any first-year student in rabbinic studies or Jewish studies knows, that we simply cannot, we cannot read rabbinic tradition or rabbinic views back into the first century. I mean, this is honestly what, you know, if I can take a pot shot at Rob Bell. I mean, Rob Bell, known for his deep knowledge of the Jewish background in the New Testament,

the big huge problem and why he would never be able to do a PhD with that kind of assumption is that he relies on rabbinic literature, which was codified in the earliest in 200 AD and onward. He takes that tradition and just assumes that it's accurately representing the first century when any New Testament or Jewish scholar is going to know that rabbinic tradition captures one strand of New Testament, you know, first century Judaism, but certainly doesn't capture the full diverse array of Judaism or Judaisms in the first century. So they try to draw this seamless line from early Christianity and Jewish tradition. The fact is, and it is a fact, is that first century Judaism, or let's just say more broadly earlier intertestamental Judaism, held to a wide

array. Well, let me say that between annihilation and eternal conscious torment, we can see different strands of Judaism, you know, expressing agreement with both views. There certainly wasn't a uniform perspective on hell. I would even argue, and we have to go back and kind of add up all the passages, whatever. I would argue that the idea of an annihilation of the wicked was probably the dominant view in Judaism, at least prior to AD 70. I think after that and into the rabbinic period, we do see eternal conscious torment being expressed a bit more pervasively. But in the time when the New Testament was written, we definitely see both expressions of hell, annihilation, and eternal conscious torment. And ECT, eternal conscious torment, is really limited to what we would call apocalyptic literature.

Now, as you know, apocalyptic literature, you know, in the Christian Bible, you know, parts of Daniel and Revelation and parts of Ezekiel have apocalyptic literature. Daniel and Revelation and parts of Ezekiel have apocalyptic literature. And apocalyptic literature is known for being kind of excessive and metaphorical and colorful and wild and extreme, you know, and the statements in Judaism that do talk about eternal conscious torment are almost limited to apocalyptic text. So even there, we have to ask the question, okay, are even these intended to be literal when this literature is very much a non-literal kind of genre? And I know you've referenced a passage. I think you have it there. It's called The Community Rule, which is kind of like –

The Community Rule is kind of like the Book of Romans of the Qumran community. It was kind of like the main kind of theology and practical document of the Qumran community. Chris, do you have a passage there that kind of captures this interplay between eternal conscious torment and annihilation and why it's not so clear sometimes? Yeah, and just for listeners' sake, this is from David Enstone Brewer's chapter of our second book called A Consuming Passion, which is what's called a festschrift in honor of Edward Fudge. So it's a bunch of essays from a variety of people in honor of Edward Fudge. So it's a bunch of essays from a variety of people in honor of Edward Fudge, who passed away late last year. And he argues that exactly what you just said, that the dominant view of Second Temple Judaism was some form of annihilation. But he points out that oftentimes this language is couched in very hyperbolic

language, which if people were to focus on that to the exclusion of the other things those writers say, they might come away thinking they teach eternal torment. But here's a passage that he quotes, for example, from the Community Rule. The citation, if people want to look it up, is 1 QS 4, 12, and 14. I'm guessing that means something like the first Qumran scroll, chapter 4, verse 12 and 14. I'm guessing that means something like the first Qumran scroll, chapter 4, verse 12 and 14. Anyway, it says, The judgment of all who walk in such ways will be multiple afflictions at the hand of all the angels of perdition, everlasting damnation and the wrath of God's furious vengeance, never-ending terror and reproach for all eternity.

And if somebody were to stop there, they would come away thinking that this scroll affirms some sort of eternal torment. But it doesn't stop there. It goes on to say, So this is just one example of several passages where some of the language sounds very eternal torment friendly, but you really have to strip that language out of its context in order to say that they teach eternal torment. I would agree that early Christians, to a certain extent, thought that their view of annihilation was consistent with certain schools of Judaism. But, well, I don't even know what the point I'm getting at is.

At the very least, I think you're right. There was a diversity of views, and nobody can point to a monolithic Jewish view, frankly, of just about anything except possibly monotheism, right? Right, exactly, yeah. They were diverse on a host of other topics as well. Yeah, one of the things that scholars of Judaism say is, if you even say like, usually it's first-year PhD students, they talk about first-century Judaism and Judaism this and Judaism that, and you can see all the second- or third-year students rolling their eyes

and the scholars cringing, and they kind of force us to use the phrase first-century Judaisms. It's an odd phrase, but they say, look, there was no such thing as Judaism, but Judaisms. Lots of different diversity, lots of different things going on. And all of that is kind of streamlined

in the rabbinic period. And that's when it gets really kind of monolithic. But that's the problem when people take rabbinic literature and read it back in the first century is they're taking a very monolithic view of Judaism, which was monolithic because all the other ones died out. The Pharisaic tradition is the only one that had some sort of continuity because when the temples destroyed, the Sadducees were basically out of business, and the Essenes who went out to the desert, they got destroyed. And so you had the Pharisees, which continued on, which morphed into rabbinic Judaism and wrote all this stuff about the first century.

But you just can't read that kind of monolithic view back in the first century. But we're getting a little sidetracked. Let's keep going here. The other thing that they kind of hit on here was the whole argument against emotion. And part of it, in a sense, I kind of read this and I glaze over because I'm like, well,

that's not me. I mean, maybe there's some annihilationists that do that or universalists, but, you know, I can kind of ignore this argument. But I do think it's a little bit telling. They say, you know, that, you know, taking counsel from our feelings on a revolting topic like everlasting torment is perilous since we inevitably stumble into the error of sacrificing God's justice on the altar of his love. And I just look at this saying, amen and amen. This has nothing to do with me or you, but amen to that. But I also, I don't know, like the whole,

you shouldn't interpret the Bible based on emotions or you shouldn't believe things on emotions. For the most part, I agree with that. But then there is this one little, For the most part, I agree with that. But then there is this one little footnote I want to make, though, is that our emotions are also, when we say emotions, they're somewhat influenced by the Holy Spirit. They're also influenced by sin, and sometimes it's hard to pick that apart. Is God speaking to me, or was it the devil speaking to me? And, you know, when we're dealing with subjective things, it's hard to sort out. But there could be space for people looking at the view of eternal conscious torment, reading about who Jesus is in the Gospels, reading about who God is, reading about the overarching storyline of Scripture, and just having this sense, this emotional sense of, I don't know, this just isn't sitting right with me. We could say that it is possible that that emotional sort of hesitancy could be a byproduct of God nudging you by saying, yes, look at my character. Yes, look at the storyline. Yes, look at the rest of scripture.

Your uneasiness with this doctrine of eternal conscious torment is actually a product of divine sort of, you know, movement in your soul. And again, I absolutely, I don't want to say that as an argument, like I'm going to base my view on that. I've never based my view of annihilation on anything other than the biblical text, but I don't want to just write off everything that's emotional just so haphazardly. Chris, any thoughts? Well, just that I, I mean, I agree with everything you're saying. I think what you've proposed as a possibility means that there's nothing wrong with somebody taking, revisiting what the Bible says because they are pricked emotionally. You know, as long as that person says, I'm willing to go where Scripture leads even if it's not where my emotions would like me to go, but the fact that I'm so emotionally responding to this or it seems counter to the character of God or whatever, I think at least it's – there's nothing to discount a person's journey if that was the beginning of it, as long as what finished it was the biblical

counsel. But here's what I will say. I do and have recommended that conditionalists not leverage this argument in their conditionalism, even if it's secondary. And the reason is precisely this kind of phenomenon. Anytime a conditionalist even mentions emotions or justice or anything like that, it's immediately leapt upon by our critics. And it's not that I think there's no room for it, but if we're talking strategy, I think the way we're going to change more minds, um, or at the very least convince our critics that we're, we really are believing this because we think the Bible teaches it. We really probably should consider putting the emotions,

leaving the emotions out of our case. Yeah, I totally agree with that, just even on a rhetorical level. And I could say before you and before God and before the three or four people listening to this, it's probably more than that. But I really, and there's no way to prove this, but I really haven't in my heart, in my soul, in my mind, in my emotions moved towards annihilation for any other reason than scripture. Like, I honestly have approached this question from a, if I could say a radical fundamentalist point of view, like it very much was like my grandma said, you know, the Bible says that I

believe that that settles it. Like that has been my posture towards the annihilation. I would say that now looking back, once I have seen all the exegetical evidence in favor of annihilation, yeah, I do, yeah, flat out, I do think the ECT view is, you know, is a really difficult view to hold while holding to other passages about the character of God and Jesus and everything else. But hey, if God wants to do that, He's free to do that. I think he would reveal to us that he's going to do that, and he would do that through scripture, and I just don't see it in scripture anymore. So yeah, so I don't want to poo-poo the emotions, but yeah, I 100% agree with you. I think that we shouldn't get caught up in that argument. They do go on to mention, so once they start getting into text, of course, they go

to Matthew 25, 46. You know, we spent a lot of time on this in the last episode, so I don't want to belabor the point. It is fascinating that, I mean, it's kind of a little bit funny that, you know, after people have listened to you give your perspective on this verse, that now we're going to go back and read kind of their, I mean, I would say a gross overstatement on the so-called clarity of what Matthew 25, 46 is teaching. Again, Matthew 25, 46 says these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go away into eternal life. And so the argument, as the argument goes, you know, if eternal punishment or if eternal life is forever and ever, so is eternal punishment.

And both Chris and I are going to say amen and amen. Punishment is forever. But what is the punishment? If the punishment is death, not never-ending ongoing torment, then yes, of course it's eternal. And there's no reason exegetically, according to the context of Matthew 25,

to assume that punishment, kolosis in the Greek, means ongoing torment. We have to ask that punishment, kolosis in the Greek, means ongoing torment. We have to ask the question, what is a punishment? If the punishment is death, then of course, yes, it's eternal. Death never ends. So this is what they say. They say the sheep experience blessedness forever

and the goats experience punishment forever. And again, I'm not necessarily going to disagree with that statement because they will experience death forever, although they mean something very different by experience punishment forever. What they mean is they will experience punishing forever, which has problems for several reasons. But they go on to say the parallelism is clear-cut, which it's not. I mean, according to the just raw Greek grammar and linguistics, it's not. I mean, according to the just raw Greek grammar and linguistics, it's not.

Then they go on to say, the duration of the conscious experience for the first group, everlasting joy, is the same as the duration of the conscious experience of the second, everlasting torment. And they interjected the phrase torment there. And this is the classic logical fallacy of, I don't even know if there's a name

for it, but, you know, saying it is doesn't make it is. Like, you actually have to prove it, prove your case. And they say, you know, it's clear cut. You know, the parallelism is the same. The duration of the act of punishing and the act of living is the same. But here they're just interjecting all kinds of assumptions into this text. Chris, thoughts on this? And again, we spent time on this, but any kind of summary thoughts of what you just said in the last episode? Well, I would agree with them that the parallelism is clear where there's a parallelism. And the parallelism is in the duration. That's why the Greek adjective ionios is used to describe both fates.

But at the same time as there is a parallel in duration, there's a stark contrast in nature, because the one fate that's described as everlasting is life, whereas the other fate described as everlasting is punishment. And so I don't think that STR is here taking seriously enough the contrast between these. It's not only parallel, it's also contrast. And the other thing that strikes me as interesting is that, and maybe this struck you as interesting as well, in their way of paraphrasing the teaching here, they say the sheep experience blessedness forever and everlasting joy.

But that's not actually what the text says. It says they receive everlasting life. And they go on to, STR that is, goes on to critique us a little bit for taking eternal life in its ordinary sense, everlasting, ongoing life. They think that it's a term of art, which we're going to get to, I think, here shortly because they explain what they mean by that in a moment. So I think that taken on its face, which is kind of what we would think of when we talk about taking the plain and ordinary sense of a phrase like eternal life, taken on its phrase, eternal punishment ought not to consist of life. And I still think that that's really

important. And I think they're overlooking that. They're explaining it away, I think. Good. We got a lot to cover here, Chris. So'm reading through this, but I wanted to get to the point where they criticized some things I said. But yeah, any thoughts? I keep leading this discussion, but do you want to throw in anything you haven't covered yet so far? So listeners should know that at Rethinking Hell, we're going to do a much more in-depth and point-by-point analysis, both in writing and in podcasts. So if there are things we skip over that listeners would like to see us critique further, please do stay tuned to RethinkingHell.com for that. So with that in mind, the thing I think it would be worth addressing is their claim that eternal life is a term of art. addressing is their claim that eternal life is a term of art. They go on to say this, I think, probably in the second article, so I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but we can come back. But what they say is that eternal life has a specialized meaning in biblical use that is different from our ordinary understanding of the words. And they cite as support for that claim John 17.3, in which Jesus says, this is eternal life, that they may know you,

the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I won't go into too much detail on this since we covered it last episode, but that's simply not the only or obvious way to understand what Jesus means when he says this is eternal life. Like I said, there are two other places in John where Jesus links life to some other noun using this verb is. And in both cases, you know, the Father's commandment is life. The Spirit is life. He's not talking about, he's not using is as a definition. He's using is to refer to cause or result.

And so what I think Jesus is saying here that's most consistent with everything else that Jesus says on the topic and the most consistent with the rest of scripture is that eternal life is the result of knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ whom he has sent. That's very consistent with what we're saying, and it's also – it allows us to take eternal life in its plain, ordinary sense of the words, living forever. But if that's what it means, coming back to this passage in Matthew 25, if that's what it means, then we would expect eternal punishment not to consist of living forever. And STR doesn't think that is, in fact, what eternal punishment is. They think the resurrected lost will be made immortal and will live forever. I don't think that can be, I think that is the less plain and obvious sense of this text. That's good. That's good. There's another phrase here. There's several places where they kind of in passing, we refer to some of these metaphors in scripture. Again,

I don't have, in my cut and pasted Word document, I think page numbers are kind of arbitrary, but somewhere in the first critique, they talk about, you know, the wicked are shut out from the feast. They're banished to a place of outer darkness where they enter into eternal punishment, weeping and grinding their teeth in agony of the eternal fire. Okay. Yeah, I agree with all that. Those are all biblical phrases, fire. Okay. Yeah, I agree with all that. Those are all biblical phrases. But they go on to say, there is no mystery here, no ambiguity. Jesus's meaning is unmistakable. You know, just, and I want to get to these specific metaphors, but just again, rhetorically, that's just, I mean, how do I say it in a non-condescending way? It's just really sloppy. You can't just reference metaphors, then give no exegetical explanation for what they mean, and then leap

to there's no mystery, no ambiguity, Jesus' meaning is unmistakable, and what they're saying there is, you know, his meaning supports our understanding of these metaphors. Like, to to me, that's just, that's just, I hope that the average reader will be able to pick up on that and say, okay, wait a minute. Again, you know, saying that you're right doesn't make you right. Like you actually provide evidence for why weeping and grinding your teeth in agony and, you know, being cast into the outer darkness necessitates an understanding that the punishing is forever and ever and ever in a resurrected conscious state with no end. So with weeping and grinding teeth, or weeping and gnashing your teeth, I mean, this is, and I very much have sympathy. I mean, for decades I read this passage in passing saying, gosh, that eternal flame where I'm

never going to pass out of existence, where I'm grinding my teeth and weeping and worms crawling all out of my nose and stuff. You know what I mean? I just like, oh, I just, I would stare at fireplaces and horror because I knew that's what hell would be like. And those images are just reinforced. But okay, if we're going to be biblical, we have to go back to the Bible. What does the Bible say that weeping and gnashing of teeth mean. And here we have some references like Psalm 37, 12, and Psalm 112, 10, and Acts 7, when Stephen's being stoned and they're gnashing their teeth at them. According to the Bible itself,

gnashing your teeth simply is a metaphor, a symbol of anger, of bitterness, of holding on to your sin, your bitterness, your anger, of not repenting. It doesn't at all mean you're sitting there in a flame and gnawing your teeth because you're in pain. Like, that's just not what the image biblically means. And weeping has all kinds of other possible meanings. It doesn't, weeping doesn't demand that you're suffering forever and ever and ever.

These metaphors are just describing people going to hell and holding on to their anger, their lack of repentance or whatever. It doesn't at all speak to how long they're going to be enduring some sort of punishment in the afterlife. Chris, any thoughts on those metaphors? Well, I think that some of the passages that you cited where gnashing of teeth is used, I think are really important, like Psalm 37, 12, because there the wicked person gnashes his teeth in anger, but is ultimately slain, which fits the context of the places where STR says that these verses are used. I mean, take, for example, you know, they make this argument that if you follow the flow from Midway into Matthew 24 through Matthew 25, 41, and 46 into the following chapter, that you'll see a consistent flow of everlasting conscious torment being the punishment,

but I don't see that at all. Matthew 24 to 45 to 51, the faithful and sensible slave, STR writes, Matthew 24 to 45 to 51, the faithful and sensible slave, as TR writes, is put in charge of all his master's possessions while the evil slave is scourged and banished to a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Greek word translated scourged there means cut in two. Now, that doesn't mean – I mean it could be hyperbolic, but it's hardly clear that this slave is just merely being punished with pain and then sent to a place to go experience pain forever. The language here is of being executed. And in fact, that's consistent with other places where weeping and gnashing of teeth is used.

So, for example, in Matthew 13, verses 30 and 40, or in verse 30, Jesus finishes a parable of wheat and tares, and he says that the tares will be thrown into unquenchable fire where they will be burned up, the Greek word katakio meaning to burn down completely, not merely to burn. And then when Jesus interprets that parable just a little bit later in verse 40, he says that just as the weeds are thrown into the fire and burned up, so will the wicked be thrown into a furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Well, if what happens to – and by the way, in mentioning this furnace of fire, he's alluding to Malachi 4 where the wicked are burned down to ashes beneath the soles of the feet of the righteous. This is all burning up extinction language, not imprisonment, suffering pain forever language.

And so – and then to add to all that, this weeping and gnashing language, Kim Papaiwano argues in his book, The Geography of Hell and the Teaching of Jesus, that this is language that describes the sadness and anger that people feel when they realize they've been shut out or excluded from God's kingdom in the eschaton. And I think that what STR is doing is assuming that if somebody's shut out from, like the virgins, for example, they go on to cite the parable of the virgins who are shut out because they don't have lit lamps. Being shut out from that kingdom does not imply, as STR seems to think it does, that they will go on living outside of God's kingdom forever. You know, imagine, for example, if they were to say, hey, look, the people who didn't make it onto the ark were shut out. You know, they were excluded from God's kingdom, from the salvation by means of the ark. Well, no, they were not. They weren't merely excluded from the ark. They were killed because they weren't on the ark to be saved. And so likewise, the shutting out from God's kingdom where you no longer have access to the life that God has to offer would naturally result in death, I think.

So there's a whole lot that could be said about these metaphors. But one thing that cannot be said is that they clearly teach the eternal torment view. So later on, they kind of give a shotgun, a bunch of rapid fire references to these kind of metaphors, assuming that it supports their view. They begin by saying, John the Baptist warned that Jesus will, quote, burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire, Matthew 3, 12b. And then they go, they move on from that. And I'm like, I highlighted that. I'm like, well, that teaches annihilation. It says that, you know, you referenced this already, you know, the phrase burn up is not to burn, like as in, you know, to burn on, you know, to smolder under a flame or something, but to burn

up is, katakayo is to burn up, like completely destroy with unquenchable fire. That is one of the more clear pictures of annihilation that I've seen in scripture. And yet they sort of reference it in passing, like, see, see, see, see, here's another one that proves eternal conscious torment. And it's just a little bit, I mean, it's kind of ironic that they don't realize that this verse actually goes against their view. They go on to say, Jesus warned often against the furnace of fire. Okay. Do people roast forever and ever and ever in a furnace or are they burned up? Well, they'll last in the fire if God saves them from it,

like he did Daniel's friends in the furnace of fire. But that's a good thing, not a bad thing. They go on to talk about the eternal fire, Matthew 8.18, the unquenchable fire, Mark 9.43, the fiery hell, Matthew 5.25. He likened that fire to Gehenna where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. That's another metaphor that some people get hung up on, Mark 9.48. Chris, do you have any thoughts on that? I mean that's got some clear allusions to the Old Testament. The worm does not die. The fire is not quenched.

Yeah. Well, so first of all, what a lot of people don't realize, although this is decreasingly the case as people encounter the work of conditionalists like us, but what a lot of people don't realize is that in that passage in Mark 9, Jesus is not coming up with this language of unquenched fires and undying worms on his own. What he's doing is he's citing, he's quoting almost verbatim Isaiah 66, 24, where it says, They shall go out and look on 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.

The picture here is of a pile or landscape riddled with the corpses of God's slain enemies irresistibly being consumed by fire and maggots. That's what it means that the worm won't die and that the fire won't be quenched is that those consuming agents won't be stopped from doing their job of consuming these corpses. stopped from doing their job of consuming these corpses. And so, in a similar passage in Jeremiah 733, for example, the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, where people had sacrificed their children to the god Molech in flames, God promises that that valley will become the valley of slaughter, where the corpses of God's slain enemies would be strewn about and unburied, and nobody would be able to frighten scavengers away from feeding on those corpses. This isn't language of people living and writhing in agony because worms are coming out of their noses to use the language that you did earlier. This is the language of bodies being completely burned up.

And if you just think about it, that's obviously what it means that a fire can't be quenched. Imagine if you got a phone call at work, if you didn't work at home, I'm not sure where you work, but imagine if you were at work like I am every day and somebody called me to say, hey, the firemen are at your house trying to put out your fire. You better hurry up and get home because your house is on fire. Well, if I got home and all that was left was smoke rising from the smoldering remains of my house. Imagine if the fireman came up to me and said, hey, congratulations, you'll be happy to know the fire that was burning down your house was quenched. And I looked at the smoldering remains of my house with smoke rising from it.

I would laugh at it, well, or punch him in the nose for failing to quench my fire. And that's what quench means. It means to put out. And when a fire can't be put out, that's what it does. It completely consumes. And there are plenty of examples in Scripture where that's its meaning. In fact, in that passage in Matthew 3, I think that STR quotes, not only do they use the Greek word katakayo, meaning burn down, but they say the reason that it will be burned down is because the fire is unquenchable. That's what it means. You can't put it out, and so it will completely burn down. Good word, Chris. We're getting a little close to the end here, and I'm just scrolling down. There's just so much I want to talk about, but I hope we've given at least enough thoughts for people to consider. But let's just do a couple more here. Now I'm moving into the second document here, the second part of this.

And just to point out again, I just, I don't want to let them go on this. You know, they say in passing that we also noted that for two millennia, the church universal was not divided on the doctrine of unceasing suffering for those condemned to hell. That is just absolutely incorrect. And if I, yeah, I mean, I doubt anybody at STR is listening, but just statements like that, I mean, that's just incorrect. Like that's worthy of like going online and saying, hey, we're sorry, we actually made an unfactual statement to try to support our case. Just things like that. I've done that in the past. I've made factual incorrect statements and I've gone public saying, I'm sorry, I still believe what I believe, but this statement was just absolutely incorrect, and I shouldn't do that again. But in this second one, they return a lot to kind of the idea of hermeneutics, of how to interpret the Bible. And again, rhetorically,

when they're kind of saying, okay, so this is how you interpret the Bible. And again, rhetorically, when they're kind of saying, okay, so this is how you interpret the Bible, and this is how you interpret these words and everything. I gotta admit, I mean, I roll my eyes a little bit saying, well, of course, we're all trying to do that. And in fact, I feel like we are the ones that are actually trying to understand the meaning of Scripture against Scripture itself. Like we're actually going to Old Testament passages that are being alluded to and looking at those words and looking at how words are used in the context of the biblical narrative. So it just, it seems a little bit, I don't know, condescending or whatever, that they're kind of going back to kind of the rules of hermeneutics and saying, okay, so this is how we interpret the

Bible with the assumption that if you just do this, you'll end on eternal conscious torment, which I think is a bit inaccurate and maybe even disingenuous. But they say, you know, our goal when interpreting any communication then is to determine an author's intended meaning using the ordinary conventions of language. Well, yes, of course. We're all trying to do that. And by using the author's ordinary conventions of language, we're using the primary source of the meaning of that language, meaning the Bible itself, especially the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where some of these Greek words are deriving their sort of impact and their meaning. One more quote here, they say the meaning of any text is derived from the flow of thought

in the immediate context of a passage. Then they say without reference to any other books or especially other testament if the contextualized meaning itself is straightforward. That's just a false dichotomy. Again, I don't want to pull,

it's just that wouldn't fly in any sort of like upper level theology class because it's just this false dichotomy of like saying immediate context, don't go in any cross references. Well, guess what? How do you understand the meaning of words? You don't just go to a lexicon because, I mean, you do, I mean, but lexicons understand the meaning of certain words by going to how that word is used elsewhere in scripture. And so by going to other passages, we're not simply punting to another passage saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this passage says, what we're doing is saying, in order to understand

how this author is using this word and this phrase, let's look at how those words and phrases are used elsewhere in scripture to inform how this biblical author is meaning it here. So I don't know. Maybe they don't – I don't know if they don't understand that or if they just don't agree with it. But I just – I felt like some of these statements on, you know, kind of hermeneutics 101 here was a little bit, I mean, reaching to say the least, if not kind of belittling to say the most, I guess. Chris, any thoughts on that?

I don't want to interject, you know, intentions in their heart or whatever. I just think that this section could be cleaned up quite a bit. Well, yeah, and I would agree with you. I mean, there's so much I could say. I'll try to limit it to just a little bit. First of all, if somebody were to 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now find a book in which somebody wrote it was or a newspaper article where it said it was rating cats and dogs, the only way you would know what somebody meant by the language of raining cats and dogs is by looking at other uses of that phrase. You could do all the lexical work you want to find out what it means to rain, what a dog is, and what a cat is, but until you look at how people use that phrase, you're not

going to understand what it means. And so I agree with you. I don't think it's enough to simply rip a text out of its greater linguistic context in the form of the language that's being used in Scripture and say, oh, I can interpret it correctly in that context without any recourse to the rest of the analogia fide, or the analogy of faith, which is what the Protestant reformers affirmed, which is simply that Scripture's best interpreter is Scripture itself, and you can't interpret any verse, no matter how consistent you think your interpretation is with the immediate context, if the meaning you come away from reading it with goes contrary to what the rest of scripture teaches. You simply can't, you can't do that or else you've got to deny the doctrine of biblical inerrancy or inspiration, because then you've got God saying mutually contradictory things. And then the last thing that I'll say is just that it's kind of ironic that STR is trying to

give its readers, you know, and annihilationists a lesson on hermeneutics since Anthony Thistleton and I, Howard Marshall, are both recognized authorities in hermeneutics and exegesis, and both of them are conditionalists or were conditionalists. So, yeah, there's just so much that could be said here. Oh, and I'll just add, if listeners want to follow RethinkingHell.com or befriend me on Facebook or something like that, any day now I've got an article coming out in the upcoming issue of Evangelical Quarterly where – the title of which is The Hermeneutics of Conditionalism, A Defense of the Interpretive Method of Edward Fudge. This is a peer-reviewed journal article where I make an explicitly hermeneutical case for conditional immortality. And so if people want to hear what somebody from our side of the debate might have to say when it comes to hermeneutics, I'll have this article available any day now

and RethinkingHell.com will point them to it as soon as it's available. Good, good. And also I just want to plug again the conference on March 9th and 10th in Dallas-Fort Worth, the Rethinking Hell Conference. If you go to RethinkingHellConference.com. Is that the right URL, Chris? Yeah, RethinkingHellConference.com. That's right. I highly recommend that you go and register for that. Again, as Chris said last

episode, there will be both representations there. This isn't just a one-sided indoctrination fest. This is very much a dialogue with different people on different sides. It's going to be cordial, nice, hopefully vigorous, and hopefully intense in a good way. But that would be a great place if you're actually sorting through this and want to dialogue in person rather than just reading a bunch of books and articles. That would be a great place to go, RethinkingHellConference.com. I got so many other highlights here, but Chris, I think we should probably turn in. I think we've given people enough at least to think about. Again, don't just, I mean, I honestly mean this, don't just take our word for it. Like, maybe I think, you know, if you listen to us, maybe we sound convincing, but maybe we don't. I don't know. Maybe you're like, oh, these guys are out to lunch and that's fine too. But

I just encourage everybody, if this is a doctrine that you're thinking through and you care about the Bible, then it really is worth revisiting. I mean, in my 22 years of Christian sort of ministry and academia, this is one of the few doctrines where people have such strong opinions on and yet I think haven't really gone back and revisited a lot of the evidence for their view or for other views. And so I'd encourage you to look at that. Chris, thanks so much for being on the show. And any last words for us? Just that I really do hope that Greg Kokel and or Tim Barnett will listen to this and will understand where our heart is. Our heart isn't to criticize them, but we do think that there's some sharpening of one another's iron to be done here. Having said at the beginning just in what high esteem we hold STR, I hope that they get that. And lastly, again, I just want to say if – I understand that STR doesn't want this to be all their ministry is about or anything like that. It would be great for their listeners to have a dialogue on the topic with me or with you or something along those lines rather than just sort of these long articles written back and forth. I mean we're brothers.

We can have a conversation. And so I would just encourage them to reach out to me and maybe we can set something up. But even if that doesn't happen, I hope that they hear our heart when we share what we've shared today with them. And I hope listeners will find the conversation we've had today edifying. Thanks, Chris. That's a good word to end on. Thanks so much, listeners, for listening to Theology in a Raw. If you desire to support this show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw

if you desire to contribute to this ministry. Until then, we'll see you next time. Lazarus, unwrap your face now Unwrap your face now Unwrap your face Do you not believe in who I am? Well, do you not believe in who I am? Well, do you not believe in who I am? I'll show you who I am.

Ooh, I'll show you who I am Well everyone It's been four days now. It's been four days now. It's been four days. I have raised him from the dead now Him from the dead now Him from the dead Do you not believe in who I am?

Do you not believe in who I am? Do you not believe in who I am? I'll show you who I am Ooh, I'll show you who I am Do you not believe in who I am? Do you not believe in who I am? Do you not believe in who I am? I'll show you who I am

Ooh, I'll show you who I am.