Theology in the Raw - 672: #672 June Questions and Answers

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

On episode #672 of Theology in the Raw Preston answers questions submitted by listeners. Questions covered on the show included: 1) Does the scientific theory of relativity refute Calvinism? 2) What principles is Paul teaching the church in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16? 3) Is a house church better for fostering biblical literacy? 4) Questions about annihilation and ETC. 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.

Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am going to address some of the questions that you guys sent in. Again, if you're an avid listener to Theology in the Raw, you know that my Patreon supporters are the ones who vote on your questions. I usually get a lot of questions that I just can't get to. I can't get to them all. So I have my Patreon supporters vote on which questions they want me to answer. And they picked some doozies.

Is that even a word anymore? Doozies? They picked some doozies for this episode. And some of them are really tough. And I had to do quite a bit of research. In fact, if you're watching the YouTube version of this podcast, I'm going to go ahead and do this. I've got like tons of books and material and stuff sitting out here. And we're actually going to look at some of these texts that I have

laid out. I've got some Greek texts, got some Hebrew texts, because some of the questions that you ask have to do with Greek and Hebrew texts. So if you want to become a Patreon supporter, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and support the show for as little as five bucks a month. Five bucks a month gets you a Patreon only podcast that I record once a month and answer even more questions that are sent in by my Patreon supporters. So without further ado, let's jump in. The first question says, Does the scientific theory of relativity refute Calvinism?

You say, So this questioner has a beef with Calvinism and believes that the scientific theory of relativity basically cancels out Calvinism. The questioner goes on to say, relativity tells us that space and time are inherently linked. As Christians, we believe that God created space and matter. Therefore, he must have created time as well. The creator is not subject to his creation. Therefore, God is not trapped in time like we are. He sees time as an outsider observer. So he sees the future the way that you or I can look at a map. Our choices are not predetermined. He just has knowledge of them. It just is a matter of perspective. So you want to know, you say, shouldn't this be the end of the arguments regarding predetermination or am I missing something? Well, let me give a caveat to what I'm going to say.

First of all, I'm not a scientist or a philosopher. I'm kind of a theologian, but I'm more of a, it sounds so arrogant to say this, but I'm more of a biblical scholar. The scholar part drives me weird. But yeah, I like to deal with the text of the Greek and Hebrew scriptures now called the Bible, the Christian Bible. So even theologians have a broader knowledge of like history and even philosophy more than I do. I like to focus just on the meaning of the text, Genesis to Revelation, in the context of its background. So not even quite a theologian, although sometimes a biblical scholar, a theologian, they get thrown around, those terms get thrown around interchangeably. I'm definitely not a philosopher, definitely, definitely not a scientist. Okay. So I'm going to respond to your question

with those caveats, but let me give three responses that I think would suggest that I do think you're missing something here. No offense. I mean, I miss a lot of things. So we all are missing something. I do think you're missing something in your, not in your question, but in the argument kind of built into your question. So number one, God's revelation of himself, both through scripture and ultimately and perfectly through Jesus Christ, this happened, this revelation happened in a pre-modern era, a pre-scientific language era. primarily was made or is achieved apart from that revelation being sort of baptized in scientific, modern scientific knowledge. So some of the scientific claims you're making are not intrinsic to God's revelation of himself through scripture and through Jesus Christ.

So I'm always nervous about taking modern scientific understandings of time and nature and the universe and assuming that the biblical writers were sort of aware of that, or assuming that that's even integral to our understanding of God. Because again, our understanding of God is primarily gained through God's revelation of himself through scripture and through Jesus Christ, which was in a pre-modern sort of package. So I think we know all that we need to know about God through scripture, through Jesus Christ, which can be made apart from modern science. That would be my first, I guess, caution. Number two, Jesus is the most perfect revelation of who God is. The whole book of John, but especially John chapter one says that Jesus is the most perfect revelation of who God is.

The whole book of John, but especially John chapter one, says that Jesus is like the exegesis of God. Like who we understand God to be is most fully and perfectly revealed through Jesus. Well, guess what? Jesus through the incarnation was subject to time. So your assumptions about God, if I can be so bold, don't account for Jesus. It's this concept of God that's kind of out there. Like God is creator, therefore he created time. Therefore he's not bound by time. Therefore he, therefore, and therefore, and all these therefores are really driven by scientific and philosophical assumptions. But you need to account for the fact that the most perfect, clear revelation of God was through Jesus Christ who took on materiality, who took on time,

who incarnated, who entered into history. So you can make, we can make claims about the divine being above time, being outside of, you know, the creation or whatever. And I think there's some legitimacy to that, but we must also consider our knowledge of God through the perspective of the incarnation where God became human flesh to reveal who God was to us. Thirdly, I think you're presenting a bit of a false dilemma. Your logic seems to be, A, God is outside of time. Therefore, B, God has knowledge of our choices, but doesn't predetermine our choices. It's that therefore that I'm a bit nervous about. God can be both outside of time, and he can also predetermine some, all, or none of our human choices. And those are really theological problems that we need to resolve, but I don't think logically we can say, predetermine some, all, or none of our human choices. And those are really theological

problems that we need to resolve. But I don't think logically we can say, or even theologically say that because God is outside of time, therefore he doesn't or can't predetermine our choices. I think that's a false dilemma. God can be outside of time and also predetermine our choices. So, I don't know, chew on that, see what you think. I don't think that your claims or even the scientific theory of relativity rule out predetermination. Whether or not you think God predetermines our human choices is a theological, even philosophical question. I don't think scientific theories are in and of themselves sort of solve that question. Next question is a, oh my gosh, this is such a deep and complicated question. And I spent a good amount of time looking into it.

The question is this, what principles and what practices is Paul teaching the church in 1 Corinthians 11, 1 to 16. This is that passage. I mean, you'll have to look it up, but it has to do with women in head coverings and talks about men shouldn't wear long hair. It talks about man being the head of a woman, or maybe the husband is the head of the wife. I mean, there's just all kinds of stuff going on in this passage. This questioner says, I am blessed and challenged by listening to your podcast. I appreciate that you're willing to stand up on issues that many people have just given into culture, even though the Bible teaches differently. And you can go on to reference nonviolence and biblical sexuality as examples.

Here is a question that I think would be valuable to discuss with your listeners. Your question is this, what principles and practices is Paul teaching the church in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, 1 to 16? You send me a link to a sermon that somebody preached on this passage. I didn't listen to the sermon, didn't have time to listen to the whole sermon, but I will give some thoughts on 1 Corinthians 11, 1 to 16, or really it's 1 Corinthians 11, 2 to 16 is the unit of thought as you indicate down below in your question. The first caveat I want to give before I even dive into this, and I know I do this a lot, like I give caveats and footnotes, like saying, hey, I'm going to respond, but let me make clear that you understand X, Y, and Z before I even do that. I don't know if that's annoying or not. I

think it's super important. I think sometimes we just dive in with, here's the answer to your question. And I want to, if necessary, I want to unpack and reveal some sort of complications that we need to be aware of before we even dive into address certain questions. So here are, well, here's one big caveat I have is 1 Corinthians as a whole is a book filled with exegetical interpretive minefields. I mean, it's just a, it's a very difficult book to interpret, especially the section you reference. First Corinthians 11, 2 to 16 is filled, almost every sentence, every verse has all kinds of really heavy exegetical problems that biblical scholars divide over. And you may say, well, isn't that true of every verse in the Bible? Well, sort of, but some passages are more complicated than others. And this is one of the more complicated passages in the New Testament.

So to ask me kind of to summarize, you know, what's the main gist of this passage is, you know, it would take me probably a few days to really unpack my understanding of each verse, every problem, every word, and give you a defense for why I believe this word means this and not that, for why I think Paul's talking about this and not that, to give you some understanding of how I understand the cultural background, whether it's a more Greek cultural background or a more Roman cultural background. That makes a big difference to the conclusions you come up with in this chapter. So I don't want to discourage you.

I want to encourage you to say, oh man, before you come to a conclusion on how you understand this passage, we got to do a lot of deep study on it. I mean, and I haven't done that. I've done some, I've dabbled in the passage, but haven't exhausted all the various problems that this passage presents. So some of the problems that we need to wrestle with are, you know, is Paul referencing a veil or a head covering when he says women must cover her head? Is he talking about husband-wife relationships or just male-female relationships in the church?

The Greek words here could go either way. Is he elevating women or is he demeaning women? Like some verses are crazy. Like they're like, well, you know, he says things like in verse 7, 1 Corinthians 11, 7, for a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but a woman is the glory of man. Are you kidding me? Did Paul just say that women don't possess the image of God? Like it's like God, man, and then woman. Like, is that what Paul said? Seems like that's what he said. But then a few verses later in verse 11, he says, nevertheless, in the Lord, in the Lord, is he saying, oh, what I said before isn't a Christian perspective. That's just a societal perspective. Is the phrase in the Lord? Is he saying, oh, what I said before, isn't a Christian perspective. That's just a

societal perspective. Is the phrase in the Lord triggering a transition here that now he's talking about a, a different kind of Christian perspective, but I don't know. It's, it's a tough issue. So, in the Lord, a woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. That's a radical claim that supports the value and priority of women. I mean, name me one other first century Roman author who said that a man is not independent of a woman. Like that could be a radically feminist kind of statement. As far as women, for as women was made from man, so man is born of women and all things are from God. That seems like a really equalizing kind of statement. Like, cause earlier

he said, well, you know, a woman was created out of man, but here he says, yeah, but man was, is born of a woman. So is Paul demeaning women? Is he elevating women? It's tied. It depends on which verse you're looking at. You need to look at the passage as a whole. Verse 10 has a weird statement about just because of the angels, cover your head because of the angels. What does he mean by because of the angels? In what way does nature teach us that men shouldn't have long hair? He says, doesn't even nature teach us that men shouldn't have long hair? Well, what'd he do with Samson, John the Baptist, and even Paul himself, who seems to have taken a Nazirite vow where he didn't cut his hair? What's the meaning of kephale?

The Greek word kephale, which is often translated head. Does it mean authority or does it mean source or something else? So these are just, I mean, a few examples of the many, many really complicated exegetical questions that are going on in this passage. So all that to say, I would have to work through all of these to really give you a fully like nuanced and sound and thought out and well-researched answer to your original question, which is what principles and practices is Paul teaching the church in 1 Corinthians 11, 1 to 16? I do think that gender difference, gender difference, or more specifically male and female gender difference, is one major thread woven throughout this passage. In other words,

I think like gender difference and order in the midst of mutuality and reciprocity or similarity and difference or difference and mutuality or, yeah, difference and unity, like this whole beauty that we see in Genesis 1 and 2, where you see differences in creation singing together in harmony. It seems that God almost has Genesis 1 and 2 in the background, where male-female differences are part of the created order. And he specifically targets clothing. That's kind of the main focus here in 1 Corinthians 11 is the role of clothing in, if you can say, church worship. I don't want you to imagine just modern day contemporary worship services necessarily, but imagine kind of the

house church in the first century coming together and And Paul's saying, I want there to be mutual reciprocity, people working together. I want there to be harmony and unity. And yet I want you to maintain sex or maybe specifically gender differences in that coming togetherness. This is a commentary. If you're watching the YouTube version of this podcast, I'm holding up a book now by a guy by the name of Anthony Thistleton. Anthony Thistleton wrote, I think, one of, if not the best commentaries on 1 Corinthians. My other favorite commentary

on 1 Corinthians is by Gordon Fee. Gordon Fee is a fantastic New Testament scholar, wrote an incredible book on commentary on 1 Corinthians. Unfortunately, I don't own it. I looked around my library. You can see my library here. The Corinthians section is somewhere in there, that area. And that's where I pulled this copy of Anthony Thistleton's commentary on 1 Corinthians, but I actually don't have Gordon Fee's commentary. I must have only used it at the different libraries I've been at. But so Thistleton, I think he rightly says regarding clothes, because it can be, it's kind of a weird thing. Like, why does, why does Paul care about clothing? Like, what's the significance of clothing? Well, clothing can be very significant societally, culturally. And he's quoting, well, he's summarizing the view of Roland Bardus. I don't even know how to pronounce his name. Never

heard of this guy, but he summarized another scholar saying that this scholar has convincingly demonstrated that clothes have usually operated in human cultures as powerful semiotic, as a, as a powerful semiotic system. In other words, they generate ready signs or signals of class, style, modesty, self-promotion, attitude, or whatever. Similarly, and he goes on to quote another scholar, I am speaking through my clothes. So clothing is not just some neutral or arbitrary thing. It expresses gender. It expresses class. It expresses attitudes or whether you think highly or lowly of yourself. It's, you know, clothing is really wrapped up into how we view ourselves. So the emphasis on clothing here is going in a sense

past just threads and fabric. It's actually looking to various societal expressions. And what Paul wants to do is emphasize, and this is going down, reading another part of Thistleton's section here. He says, the relationship between God and Christ in the epistle entails both order and differentiation on one side and mutuality and reciprocity on the other. I love that summary. I think that captures it. Well, in the midst of all the exegetical difficulties, I still think that that general perspective holds true. What Paul is getting at is difference, mutuality, similarity, reciprocity woven together. They reflect the order of creation woven together

in the gathering, the worship gathering in the house church at Corinth. I encourage you to do a lot more study on your own because that's a very short answer to a very, very complicated question. Next question, is a house church or a different type of church better for fostering biblical literacy? And just to summarize the gist of this question, I mean, this question is drawing on some things I've said in the past that have been very positive about house churches and have been very discouraged at the high level of biblical illiteracy in the church today. I've often said

that we have more access to the Bible in dozens, if not hundreds of different translations in our, if you're an English speaker and in the English language, let alone translations in many other. I just saw a creepy looking spider crawling across my books over here that you can't see. I just really threw me off. I'm not going to squash it yet, but that's creeping me out. So if it gets closer, it's a really big black spider. Like, I don't know if it's poisonous and I just killed one the other day. I don't know where these things are coming from, but if I died, I just got bit by a spider. Anyway, where am I going? Oh, so we have so much access to the Bible and yet, I mean, statistically, and there's been lots of surveys done on this, the biblical literacy rate of American Christians is like an all-time low.

It's crazy. So this questioner says, is a house church model the best way to elevate biblical literacy among God's people? Let me just say, as much as I love and value the house church model, I'm also very nervous about elevating one type of church model. I, more and more, I think there's a lot of idealism in specific church models. I think people that are way into the megachurch are, I think, a little idealistic that megachurch is the best model for every type of Christian and every branch of Christianity across the globe. I would say the same thing, maybe less enthusiastically, about the house church. I think the house church has many wonderful things going for it. And that would probably be my default model. I think it, yeah, I think it is more conducive for relationships, for authenticity,

for community, for even rich evangelism, for radical discipleship, and quite possibly for elevating biblical literacy. But I still want to say, don't just rely on the model to do that for you. Every model is going to have its own challenges. Every model is going to need intentionality. So even though I think a house church model is the most conducive for authentic relationships, you can have a really inauthentic house church. If you have leadership that doesn't foster authentic relationships, if you have people that don't really want to engage and if not engaging is very much allowed, like just because you meet in a house or just because you meet in a small setting, that doesn't necessarily guarantee

that, you know, community is going to happen. So the same thing with biblical literacy. I don't want to say, oh, if you just do X, Y, and Z, or you just have this model, biblical literacy will happen. I think, I would say, I think Francis Chan's movement, really, house church movement in San Francisco, I think they're doing great things to elevate biblical literacy among the people, but they're very intentional about it. They all but require people to read through the Bible every year. Like if you're coming to this church, like you should be reading through the whole Bible every single year. And there's various ways in which they do that. So yeah, that, that would very much elevate biblical literacy. But just because you're meeting in a house

doesn't mean that's going to happen. That's happen. That has to do more with the substance of the kind of house church that he's pursuing, not just the fact that he's meeting in a house. But I do think house church is more conducive for hands-on radical discipleship that should include elevating biblical literacy. But biblical literacy, I assume you know this. I'm sure everybody listening to this is going to agree with this. Maybe that's an optimistic assumption. But just because you know the Bible, just because you have high biblical literacy doesn't mean you're actually being an obedient Christian.

I think we all know that. Hopefully I just want to emphasize that, that even if you elevated biblical literacy, it doesn't mean you've elevated obedience literacy. So don't be satisfied with biblical literacy. That's a great first step, but biblical literacy must lead to radical discipleship. Last question. This questioner has some lingering questions about annihilation and ECT. This questioner says, like you, I find conditional immortality or otherwise known as annihilation to be a biblically supportable position, but I'm not 100% convinced that ECT is not an option. Right now, there are two questions that I have that prevent me from embracing conditional immortality 100%. Number one, the meaning of the word death. And then number two, you talk about Isaiah 66, 24, where it says their worm will not die and their fire is not quenched. So let me address the first

one. You go on to say about the meaning of the word death. You say folks who believe in conditional immortality or annihilation make a big deal of saying that death means death, cessation of being. But historically, many theologians have interpreted death as meaning something more like separation, the separation of body and spirit, the separation of us from God. So conditional immortality folks say death equals cessation, while ECT folks say death equals separation. How do I decide? Okay. How do you decide? Do a very simple word study on the Greek word thanatos. Yeah, I am of the persuasion and I don't mean this condescending or cynical. Okay, I do a little bit, but yeah, I believe death means death.

Like when you say my grandmother died, people don't say, oh, I'm so sorry she was separated. Like it's, it's the, her life is no longer. And we can, you know, speculate about what the afterlife existence looked like. Is it embodied? Is it bodied? Is it soul sleep? Or is it outside of time, inside of time? I mean, it's just, there's a lot, there's a ton we don't know about what happens immediately beyond the grave. But yes, the word death, specifically the Greek word thanatos, in its normal pervasive meaning, usage means the cessation of life. And immediately, I know a lot of people are going to say, well, what that means is, you know, when you die, your body goes...

I'm like, okay, that's a theological belief and assumption, but that's not what the word death means. That's not what the word thanatos means. At best, thanatos can be used metaphorically to refer to something like spiritual death. Like when Jesus in Luke, what is it? Luke 9 said, let the dead bury their own dead. And he kind of plays on the word dead there, meaning like those who had died, like their life has ceased. Let the spiritually dead bury the dead. Or in Ephesians 2, he talks about those who were, or we were dead in our trespasses and sins, meaning we were sort of spiritually dead. And there, I guess you can have the idea of we were in some way spiritually separated from God, but that's drawing on and

playing with the normal meaning of the cessation of life. That's not, when we come to the word death or thanatos, we assume that it means the cessation of life unless the context demands, not our theological presuppositions, but the literary context demands that it doesn't mean the cessation of life. If you come with that approach, almost every instance of thanatos means, this is not a radical claim, folks, means the cessation of life. So honestly, and here's another thing when people say, well, no, I think it means separation. Well, my understanding of death as a separation of, as a cessation of life, I guess can include separation.

I'm not saying it doesn't mean separation because when your life ceases, you're also, I guess, separated from God. So I think it's a bit of a false dilemma to say it means separation and therefore not the cessation of life. But either way, to say it means separation and not the cessation of life, you got to make a really good exegetical, not theological, but exegetical argument based on a thorough word study of Thanatos to show me or prove to me that it doesn't mean the cessation of life, that it only means the continuation of life in a state that's separated from God. That is a theological

assumption. And that is why, you know, most theologians who say it's separation, not cessation of life, are making that out of a theological assumption. They believe either that the soul is intrinsically immortal, or they believe that people live on past death and an eternal conscious state of torment. And it's that prior belief that spins right back around and informs their understanding of thanatos without regard to the actual usage of thanatos in Greek literature. It's what people call circular reasoning. You begin with an assumption that must be true and read that back into the meaning of the term without an actual exegetical basis for showing that that's what the term means. So I'm very happy with you

just simply doing a thorough word study on the Greek word thanatos and don't believe what I say, make your own conclusions based on how the Greek word is used and how the meaning of that Greek word is derived from common usage. Your second question has to do with Isaiah 66, 24 that says, and they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me. Okay. So we're looking at corpses here. What are corpses? Are corpses people who have simply been separated from God or have they died? Is there life in those corpses? No, there's no life in the corpses. The corpses are corpses. So they look upon the corpses of the men that have transgressed against me, for their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. This questioner says, same person who raised the previous question about

Thanatos. This verse is also referenced in the New Testament. And I recently heard someone who was making a case for eternal conscious torment. And he is also a Hebrew scholar. He said that the word worm in Hebrew could be referring to the ones who had died. The men who died are the worms. So you would translate it something like, and they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me. For those worms do not die and their fire is not quenched. It's like using the word worm as an insult. You go on to say, like in Psalm 22, 6, like using the word worm as an insult, you go on to say, like in Psalm 22, 6, where it says he has no better, he is no better than a worm. Okay. So I don't know what Hebrew scholar argued that this is referring to the word worm is actually referring to the corpses who have died,

but that's a very poor understanding of the actual Hebrew. So I've got my Hebrew text out here. And I even highlighted the word here. Okay. I highlighted the word, which you can see there. And if you don't know Hebrew, then this is going to make no sense. But that first looking letter there that is, uh, looks like a little circle. Can you see that? Okay. That means their worm. It doesn't mean those worms. So, um, I have a bunch of questions for the Hebrew scholar you're referencing that is translating this as those worms when the Hebrew clearly says their worm will not die and their fire is not quenched.

I even looked up in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and here is the Greek word. Can you see that? If you know Greek is the word there. I even highlighted my Bibles and ruined them because I don't highlight my original translation Bibles just to make this clear. So I hope you really pay attention to this. Their worm will not, uh, uh, their worm will not die or cease to be is the meaning there. And yes, it's translated in the New Testament in Mark 9, 48, in the words of Jesus. And here, I didn't highlight this because this is a brand new, this is such a, somebody sent this to me as a gift. this is such a, somebody sent this to me as a gift. It's a new Greek New Testament that's been done through tons and tons of research, getting the best manuscripts put out by Tyndale House. Thank you for the gift. Whoever sent this to me, it's amazing. So I didn't highlight it,

but I do have my finger here on the Greek word for their. There. Outone. There, not those. So it is linguistic and grammatical gymnastics to say that Isaiah 26, 66, 64 in the Hebrew, Greek, or even the New Testament usage means those worms, those human worms do not die. He's already said that they are corpses. And a few verses earlier, it says that the Lord will slay those who oppose him. And it's those corpses that have died in the sense of thanatos, that it's a cessation of life. They have been killed and their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched is a way of saying, is a way of referring to a comprehensive annihilation, that there is no reversal, no life that can be breathed into these corpses. Their death is final

and it is irreversible. There is nothing in the book of Isaiah or even in the entire Old Testament that would suggest that these corpses will somehow live on in a state of eternal conscious torment. Look, any honest Hebrew scholar will say that the Old Testament by itself does not teach eternal conscious torment. Sure, there's statements in the New Testament that if you understand them wrongly can be taken to mean eternal conscious torment, but the Old Testament itself simply does not teach that. That is not what Isaiah 66, 24 means at all. Again, I'm going to say it one more time. It's talking about people who were slain by the Lord.

And it's referring explicitly to the corpses of those who have been slain. Corpses that have died. That's what corpse means. There's no life in it. And there's no speculation in the book of Isaiah as a whole, let alone chapter 66, about some sort of life beyond the grave for the wicked who have been slain by the Lord. Yes, there is a verse in Isaiah 26, 19 that could suggest that the righteous will be raised up and live forever, that they are raised from the dead and live forever.

So there is one verse, maybe a couple other hints at this, that the righteous might live beyond the grave in a resurrected kind of state, but there's no mention of those who reject God, the corpses of those who have been slain by the Lord for their wickedness, that they will be resurrected to a new life and will live on in a state of eternal conscious torment. That simply is a thought that is foreign to the prophet Isaiah himself.

And we need to understand the Bible in its original intention and according to the original context, not project some theological system onto it. And that is all I have to say about that. I do believe that the annihilation view of hell is one of the most consistently, pervasively taught doctrines in scripture. So I'm going to get some emails for that. But if you're listening to this show, you've been listening for a while, you know, that's my view. And I think it's the more I look at this question, the more clear it is to me. When you look to the Old Testament, don't ask the question, how long is hell or how long will people suffer forever in the afterlife?

That's the wrong question. The ultimate question to ask the Old Testament is, what is the ultimate and final fate of the wicked? So you need to look at verses that talk about the ultimate and final fate of the wicked. If you ask that question, or sorry, if you answer that question with the actual text of the Old Testament, you will see that there are dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of passages that clearly, and I will say clearly, they clearly say that the ultimate and final fate of the wicked is the cessation of life is death. Now, maybe the New Testament expands or changes that or whatever,

and that's another question we need to answer, and that's a possibility. But in terms of just looking at the Old Testament, when we ask the question, what is the final state, final fate of the wicked? It is the cessation of life with no ongoing eternal torment. I'm Preston Sprinkle. You're listening to Theology in the Raw. If you want to support the show, go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. You can support this show for as little as five bucks a month for as much as $10 million a month. If you want to do that, you're free to do that.

It's your own free choice, I guess. But for five bucks a month, you get an extra Patreon only podcast episode. For $10 a month, you get a Patreon only episode of Theology in the Row. You also get a blog. For $25 a month, you get two episodes a month that are Patreon-only, not available to the public, and the blog. And there's other perks that you get in addition to that if you support for more than $25 a month. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to my Patreon supporters for picking some really hard questions. we'll see you next time Thank you.