Yesterday I attempted to answer the objection to annihilationism that it doesn't satisfy justice. I wanted to move on, but there's more to say about this.
As I have been poking around the internet trying to make up my mind about the doctrine of Hell, I have come across quite a few statements in this vein: "Sinning against an infinitely holy God is an infinite offense and it merits an infinite punishment."
But this strikes me as a philosophical way of justifying an idea that is otherwise extremely unpalatable: God tortures people that he claims to have once loved. And he does it eternally. But at least he is justified in doing so because he is so holy.
But where is the verse that makes this clear?*
It's not Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Why doesn't Paul take the opportunity here to lay out the awful truth in clear terms: "For the wages of sin is eternal torment, but the gift of God is eternal life"?
What does "the wages of sin is death" even mean if everyone - the wicked and the redeemed - live eternally?
If everyone does live eternally, wouldn't it be clearer if all of the New Testament - starting with Jesus - instead spoke of the two afterlife options in terms of "eternal pleasure or eternal pain"?
As Paul's wording stands, it sounds like the opposite of eternal life is ... death. Did he make a mistake?
Or by "death" does Paul mean what we commonly take "death" to mean?
Here's a similar question: Why does Jesus soft peddle eternal torment to Nicodemus?
In John chapter 3, the most famous evangelistic passage in all of Scripture, Jesus explains, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
But should he have added, "And just so we're clear, Nicodemus, when I say 'perish', I don't just mean 'cease to be'. I mean 'tortured for millions of billions of years', so I would suggest you believe in me"?
___________________________________
* I see the same approach among Calvinists who want to argue in favor of Determinism/Predestination. If Determinism is how the universe works, I would expect Scripture to teach it clearly, unapologetically, and repeatedly. Instead, Calvinists put a lot of weight on a handful of verses they interpret as deterministic and then are forced to explain away numerous passages that make it clear that humans actually have free will. But do other passages that don't line up with their assumptions get acknowledged? No, they get run through the Calvinist filter.
I am starting to think I may have been doing the same thing with my assumptions about Hell throughout my life.
One weakness I see in your argument here is the assumption that all the Bible ever means by "death" is "annihilation." But as J.I. Packer wrote, "death never signifies extinction in Scripture; physical death is departure into another mode of being, called sheol or hades, and metaphorical death is existence that is God-less and graceless; nothing in biblical usage warrants the idea that the 'second death' of Revelation 2:11; 20:14; and 21:8 means or involves cessation of being."
ReplyDeleteThe first mention of "death" in Scripture is God's warning to Adam and Eve that on the day they eat of the fruit, they will surely die. (Gen. 2:17) In chapter 3, they eat the fruit but they do not keel over physically. They continue to exist under the curse, cut off from the Garden and alienated from God. Death here means not extinction but a state of separation from God. Paul uses death in this sense in Ephesians 2 when he says that unbelievers are "dead in their sins." They are cut off from the life of God. The question is: does that alienation from God cease when one is separated from the body or does it continue on into the afterlife? Daniel 12:2 seems to answer this question when it speaks of "those who sleep in the dust of the earth awakening - some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt." In intertestamental Judaism, verses like that led to a widespread belief that punishment continued after death. Jesus and Paul's use of words like "death" and "perishing" have to be understood in the context of the OT and the Jewish theology of their own day, in which belief in eternal punishment was widespread. (Jesus shows his awareness of and agreement with this belief in his own parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31.) Other NT authors like John also show their awareness that death is not merely physical extinction by referring to the lake of fire "the second death," or "death beyond death." In summary, to say that "death" can only mean what we commonly mean when we use the word is, ironically, to run NT language through a selective filter of a different kind - one that ignores the OT background and Jewish theological context in which NT authors were operating.
As you say, Adam and Eve do not keel over physically after eating the fruit. It *seems* then that the "death" they were warned of was metaphorical since they ended up "separated from God". (But, then again, God never said, "If you eat of it, you will die IMMEDIATELY.")
ReplyDeleteWhat if that separation, though, was the result of a real death - a spiritual death rather than a physical death?
They are sent out of the garden so that they do not have the opportunity to eat from "The Tree of Life". If Adam and Eve are already inherently immortal, body and soul, (or even just soul) then why does God need to separate them from the Tree of Life?
Later, Jesus appears in God's time and says, "Good news - there IS a way you can live eternally! But listen ... you must be born again. Born of water AND of Spirit." Physical birth (we've already got that) and spiritual rebirth (available through faith in Jesus).
Otherwise you are still under the old condemnation and you will die.
I respect J.I. Packer, but when he speaks in such absolute terms - "death NEVER signifies extinction" and "nothing in biblical usage warrants the idea" - it does raise my eyebrows a bit.
The word all humans associate with cessation of being NEVER means cessation of being when the Bible uses it?