Truth Unites - Is Annihilationism Heresy? (The Internet Is Shaping Us)

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Gavin Ortlund uses the conversation around Kirk Cameron’s views on annihilationism to reflect on how Christians can cultivate healthier, more charitable disagreement online.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Kirk Cameron recently made some comments suggesting an openness to annihilationism. I'm sure you've probably heard about this. It's interesting how these things, kind of one particular thing comes up and then everyone is talking about it. I'm going to make this video not about his position or his reflections on the issue, but about the way these kind of conversations unfold. And the question I want to put forward is, what kind of culture of disagreement is the internet shaping right now? A few months ago, I put out a video articulating why I'm not an annihilationist and trying to steal man that view and interact with it critically, I, you know, I gave my criticism for why I don't hold

to this view. I also tried to do some apologetics about the very nature of hell and triage the issue and so forth. Link in the video description if you want that. Here I want to talk about something different. I think there are some real deficiencies in Christian discourse right now. I don't think these things are going away. I was talking with a friend today. I was saying, this isn't just going to automatically get better. In 2035, if Jesus has not returned yet, what's it going to be like then? We've got to work on this, you know? So let me highlight two issues that I think are most pressing on my heart. Internet reactivity and intellectual hospitality.

Let me define these. Oh, how I pray I'm not contributing to it here. Let's try to think about this. First, internet reactivity. The internet creates possibilities for large numbers of people to interact faster than ever before in human history, not even a contest. You know, there's more people alive today and everybody can swarm. There can be this like piranhas, you know, just lunging in on one particular topic.

Now, the communication abilities we have has some positives, obviously, but there are incredible temptations, and I think we need to be continually discerning about this. This is a real issue. This is not a sidebar issue. How we talk to each other on the Internet, the way the Internet is accelerating certain toxic elements of human discourse and Christian discourse. This is a serious issue, because what shapes conversations on the Internet is algorithms, many bad faith actors, anonymous accounts.

bots. I always say we don't use social media. Social media is using us. A shockingly high percentage of online engagement is low accountability profiles or bots. Not everybody, of course. Some of us are doing our best on here. But we have to understand the tone is getting shaped, the agenda is getting set by forces that are not acting in our best interests. They're certainly not acting in the church's best interests. I don't think the response to that is total disengagement for every person, though for some of us it might be. But I think we, I often say every Christian should come up with a personal policy, maybe write out a game plan. Here's how I'm going to use social media so that I'm discerning about its effect upon me and so forth. And we want to just basically have wisdom

here. Think of it like this. If you were at your local church, you're in, and there's an elder meeting, and you show up and you find out the agenda for this meeting was written by the five most divisive people in our church, and the moderator who is now leading the meeting is someone who is excommunicated six weeks ago and holds a grudge and is unrepentant, you would not allow that in the local church. You would say, this isn't how we should run meetings. This isn't what should be setting the agenda. But if we wouldn't allow the local church to be governed like that, why do we allow the global church to be? That's not an exact parallel, but something like that is happening, and all of us are watching it play out. Now, I want to be so clear here,

I am trying not to give a hard and fast rule. I am not saying we should not disagree on the internet or criticize ideas on the internet, though I think we should probably consider doing it less, doing more of it in real life on the phone or something. But I am saying the culture that we're creating is broken. There's something, I think we all sense that. I doubt I need to convince too many people of this. Something is broken in the way we're communicating through the internet.

We need to be asking this question with more discernment. What is the overall culture that we are creating right now? And again, I don't want to get to 2035 and think, well, we did nothing. We just kind of got hooked in and it just got worse and worse. And what's it going to be like in 10 years if we don't work at this, right? Don't we want to have a healthier culture of disagreement as Christians? Wouldn't it be awesome if non-Christians looked at us who claimed the name of Jesus and said, wow, they really have strong convictions, but there's a different quality to the way they work

through their disagreements, and I see love in the way they talk to each other. Come back to that at the end. I do have a book on this, The Art of Disagreeing. I just feel so passionate about this. And so link in the video description to the book, too. I never thought I'd get into this, but I just see it as a pastoral need. It's the end of the day, and I'm tired. I didn't plan on making this movie, or this video, I didn't want to get into this topic, really, but I'm just so burdened about, I think we need to think about this. Let me hone in on one specific issue that I think's worth unpacking a bit. It's probably the heart of this video. And that's the, the need for intellectual hospitality. This is one of the things that I think the internet is reducing.

Now, there's others as well. Let's just talk about this one for now. Intellectual hospitality is the idea to court an opposing view and critically evaluate it on its best terms, calmly and with arguments and reason, rather than sort of immediately and impulsively reacting against it. I am not trying to accuse one side or the other of this debate of always doing that, but I just, in general, we see that a lot on the internet and we see that in this occasion as well. Intellectual, so think of the word hospitality. That's a great word. You know, to be hospitable, you invite someone into your home and they can sit at your table, they can sit on your couch, and they're welcome there. To do this with ideas means having the humility to recognize that people who disagree with us and hold an opposing view are probably not just, less intelligent. They probably have some experiences and considerations that we've not come across. I mean, again, I've seen this happen so much where I realize Christians have never read a book

about a topic, and yet they are just blasting away with supreme confidence about an issue. This is not what we need. What we need is more asking the question, how does this view make sense to that person and trying to see it through their eyes? Then we give the criticism, but we do so with this effort at a sympathetic understanding. Now, we all know this, I think. I'm not trying to be preachy here and talk down to people. You know that. We all, and we all fall short. I fall short. But the point is the Internet is accelerating that, and we need to be aware of that and push back against that. I think many Christians today have not cultivated critical thinking skills that are important for knowing how to analyze foreign ideas that can make us feel threatened. We actually

need to have good psychological wisdom and sociological wisdom to know why certain ideas make us feel so nervous and critically reflect upon that. And because there's this dismissiveness that's not helpful. I think this is a matter of Christian discipleship of looking like Jesus. I think this affects the kingdom of God. Just to give a Bible verse, for example, think of the way heavenly wisdom is described in James 317. I mean, this is one of my favorite verses. It's the many wonderful adjectives here. There's a single Greek word here that's translated open to reason. Now, just think about that.

Being able to be the kind of person who can say, huh, I didn't think about that. Let me think about that. Hmm, maybe you're right. I'm going to listen. I'm going to, I'm open to a rational appeal. I'm not just like a stone wall where arguments just bounce off, but I'm listening. The Internet reduces that. human ingredient. And it's a part of the, it's a part of heavenly wisdom, according to James.

That's one way of talking about this. I think you understand what I'm saying. We all see this. It's very unpleasant. In hell, no one ever changes their mind. Everybody's always right, and everybody's always a victim. Heaven is the kind of place where people say, hmm, that's heavenly wisdom. Say, oh, wow, I didn't think about that. And court a new idea. Do we need more of that in the church? Yes, we do. I'm not saying all criticisms of Kirk Cameron are like that. I'm not trying to come down with a real, like, pharisaical judgment here in this debate, but I think a lot are. You know, you hear a lot of language about annihilationism that I think reflects a lack of openness to reason. You know, some of the criticism is, well, he denies hell. You hear this language, or you hear the heresy word

thrown around. This is not helpful. This is not a denial of hell. Okay, there are good argument. This is an issue about the nature of hell. And what I would want to encourage people to consider is there are good arguments for annihilationism that need to be considered. Now, I'm not an annihilationist. I'm not finally persuaded of those arguments, but those arguments need to be carefully sifted. And this is not a first-rank issue. Historically, the church has never treated the exact nature of final punishment as first-rank. You can find annihilationists in the early church, godly Christians. The disagreement about this is not church dividing. It doesn't rupture the gospel. It doesn't make it impossible to have fellowship or something like that. The exegetical debates in like the book of Revelation,

those are genuinely difficult. It's not just a complete, you know, walk in the park. Humble theologians can recognize that. And calling something second rank or third rank that doesn't say it's not important. It just means the overriding importance of Christian unity is even more important. That's all. we're saying when we say something is not a first-rank issue. I thought Wes Huff made this point very well on X. He was pointing, he basically said, I hold to ECT, that's an alternative view, eternal conscious torment, but I do understand the topic of conditional immortality, and I have yet to see anyone actually give a rebuttal that shows me they've interacted with the arguments and biblical reasoning from the other side. I think he's right about that. And he points to two

proponents of conditional immortality. I think most people probably prefer that term. Chris Date and Dan Peterson. I'm going to put a link to this video. You can check out some of their reflections about this. They're good proponents of that view. These are our fellow Christians. And so we owe it to them to interact with their arguments and give, you know, again, the calm curiosity. And then we can give a forceful, clear articulation of the alternative. We say, this is, I think this is wrong. And here is my argument. But you know what I'm saying? There's a calmness in the way we do it that is healthy. Final thought. The reason I talk so much about theological triage and how to rank different issues and working through disagreements like this, it's not to be nitpicky. It's not because I was just

looking to record another video this week. I already recorded one on Calvinism, so I thought I got my quotia in for controversial videos. The reason is I think this really matters for practicing Christian love, and Christian love is a first-rank doctrine. Just read the book of First John. If you do not love other Christians, that's a first-rank issue. That is, I mean, look, there's lots of theology that is difficult. That one is an easy one. You have to love other Christians, and you should. And I want to have a Christianity that is intellectually hospitable and personally loving so that people, you know, for my kids, as they grow up and have doubts and work through things, I want them to feel the sense of you're not going to get zapped with a

cattle prod if you take one step off the range, so to speak. So that doesn't mean we don't have strong convictions. We set clear parameters and boundaries, but there's this sense of just calmness that can come with that that I think is healthy. Think of it like this. As a good theologian, you need different kinds of tools. Sometimes you need a hammer to smash things with. Other times you need tweezers to do a careful extraction, and other times you need other tools. But it's a real problem. The hammer is that there for a reason. There's first-rank heresy that needs to be sort of bluntly opposed, but it's a real problem if, for every issue, you bring the hammer. And so you've got a situation where you need tweezers and you bring the hammer. That's kind of a weird way to make the point.

Think of it. Here's another way to make the point. There are Galatians 1 moments, and then there are Romans 14 moments, and we're not reflective enough about the difference between those two in the Church of Christ today. The Internet is reducing our ability to distinguish the Romans 14 issues and the Galatians 1 issues. And it does affect the kingdom of God. And godliness means being really, really careful about that. And the reason is, so we love other Christians, like Kirk Cameron, our wonderful brother in Christ. Here's a way to think, final thought. When you're doing theological disagreement with someone, remember this. And none of us do this perfectly, but we can all just keep repenting and getting better. Jesus died for this person and the Holy Spirit dwells in this

person. That's the person I'm talking to. I'm going to be with them in heaven forever. If this is a believer. You know, we were at an event today and we were in worship and I just had this image in my mind of Christ above the angels. You know, in Revelation 19, this glorified Christ and thinking he came down and died for us. If there's anybody that he has set his love upon and now the Holy Spirit now dwells in that person, don't we owe it to Christ to treat them well? Don't we owe it to Christ to pray for them before we give criticisms and to show, I mean, what would it be like? How beautiful would it be if we conducted our theological conversations with overflowing love, knowing Jesus died for this person? I want to love this person the way Jesus loves them.

I'm not trying to say that only one side in this debate is doing this versus the other. This is just a general issue that this occasion definitely raises and reminds us of. I'm burdened about this because I think it's important. I think it affects the kingdom of God. If we had love like that for each other, even in the midst of strong disagreements where we give forceful argumentation, non-Christians would look on and say, wow, our culture is going crazy, and yet those Christians talk to each other, and there's something different about it and it's attractive to me. And this is, to me, that is a first-rank issue to me, and I think in the New Testament. I don't know. Let me know what you think in the comments. Let's keep talking about this.

my video here is not a hammer. I hope this is tweezers if to use that image. This is just to get us to keep reflecting. I'm not trying to single out one person right now. I'm not logged into X right now, so I'm hearing this more from a distance. So I'm more reacting from at the big picture. Okay, I got to cut it off there.

If I'm off script, I'll ramble. Let me know what you think.