I thank God for the ministry of
Desiring God. God has used this ministry to encourage, equip, and spiritually
strengthen me when I studied at seminary, and then when we served the Lord
among unreached people groups for 14 years, and now over the last nine years while
I’ve been serving as a pastor. So, my criticism of their most recent article on
hell comes from a grateful brother in Christ and a friend, not an opponent of
their ministry. Even good ministries can have blind spots (Lord, please help me
with mine!). A blind spot for Desiring God seems to result in their continued defense
of the traditional doctrine of hell as a place of eternal torment.
Earlier this week (on February 3,
2020), Desiring God published another
article defending the traditional view of hell. In this article David
Mathis attempts to address the problem that many Christians “can barely stomach
the thought of divine judgment.” Tragically, Mathis’s answer to this real, serious, and common
problem fails because Mathis believes that divine judgment involves eternal
torment. When hell is understood as eternal torment, any attempt to justify or
explain it or to address the problems it creates for people is doomed to
failure because the Bible does not teach eternal torment. Instead, the Bible
teaches that God’s judgment of the unrighteous will result in them perishing
(John 3:16), their bodies and souls being destroyed in hell (Matthew 10:28),
and them being burned to ashes (2 Peter 2:6).
In the rest of this blog post I
will briefly respond to Mathis’s article in seven points. I will attempt to
explain how conditional
immortality offers answers that are more biblical and thus far more satisfying.
As this is a short blog post addressing an issue with a lot of biblical
evidence, along the way I will provide links to posts that can help with more
in depth study for those who are interested.
1. Eternal torment is an embarrassing doctrine for good reason
The problem Mathis is attempting
to address is that the traditional view of hell is hard to stomach, Christians
are embarrassed by it, we avoid talking about it, and it is “one of Christianity’s most offensive claims.”
Is Mathis overstating this problem? I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t think he
recognizes (or at least doesn’t discuss in this article) the full extent of the
problems caused by the doctrine of eternal torment. I’ve been interacting with
people a lot on the topic of hell for several years now. I’ve heard multiple
testimonies of Christians who felt great distress and a lot of confusion
related to the doctrine of eternal torment. There is also strong evidence that
the doctrine of eternal torment has played a part in causing some Christians to
deconstruct (lose their faith), some to move to progressive forms of
Christianity (what used to be called theological liberalism), and not a few
people to embrace atheism. I’ve documented and discussed some of this in this
blog post:
Al
Mohler Reveals One of the Reasons that Correcting the Error of Eternal
Conscious Torment is Important (he
does this inadvertently, as he himself believes in eternal conscious torment)
Mathis is right
to see unease with the traditional view of hell as a serious problem that needs
to be addressed. Unfortunately, he attempts to justify eternal torment instead
of going back to the Bible and seeing that eternal torment is a doctrine that
should be abandoned and replaced with the consistent biblical teaching of
conditional immortality (aka annihilationism).
2. The Bible speaks of “the day
of wrath,” not “eternal wrath”
In his article, Mathis refers to “eternal
wrath” and “wrath for all eternity.” The Bible does not use that language.
Instead, the Bible speaks of “the day of wrath” (Romans 2:5), “the day of the Lord’s
wrath” (Zephaniah 1:18), and “the day of judgment and destruction of the
ungodly” (2 Peter 3:7). It is not difficult to understand that it is right for
God to be angry at evil. We certainly don’t want Him to wink at it or look the
other way or approve of it. The problem comes when a clearly biblical (and
reasonable!) doctrine like the wrath of God against evil is distorted into
something grotesque like God being angry forever and tormenting the unrighteous
forever.
Matthis writes, “The idea that we might someday enjoy
God’s justice and power on display in his judgment seems almost imponderable .
. . ” (emphasis on enjoy is Mathis’s). It’s imponderable because Mathis
is imagining eternal wrath that produces eternal torment. Here’s
an example of the difference between celebrating justice and celebrating long
term torment: After a US Navy Seal team killed Osama Bin Laden, crowds
celebrated his death in New York and other cities. Whether or not you think
that celebrating the death of a terrorist who killed thousands of innocent
people in your city is an appropriate response, it certainly is not an “imponderable”
response. On the other hand, if Bin Laden had been captured alive and they
began torturing him and he was still being kept alive and continuously tortured
to this day, only people with a twisted soul would be celebrating his torment.
Yet such a fate would merely involve years or decades of torment compared to
the billions and trillions of years (and then more and more and more unto
eternity) of torment that awaits the lost according to the doctrine of eternal
torment. It’s true that some people reject any type of wrath connected to God’s
justice. But limited and proportional wrath is easy to defend both biblically
and in terms of logic. What’s imponderable is how eternal wrath could be
justified, much less celebrated.
You may read more about this topic in this
short blog post:
3. Exodus (and other OT examples
of judgment) point to annihilation, not eternal torment!
Mathis points to the destruction
of the Egyptian army in the sea by God as an example of God’s wrath which is
celebrated by God’s people. And he’s right that God’s people did celebrate God’s
destruction of the Egyptian army. The
problem is that the destruction of the army is nothing like eternal torment.
God didn’t keep the soldiers from drowning and water board them for thousands
of years. He killed them. His wrath was intense, but short-lived. Like other
examples of God’s wrath in the Old Testament, this gives far better support to
the doctrine of annihilationism than it does to eternal torment. In fact, New
Testament authors specifically mention Old Testament judgments like the flood
and the destruction of Sodom as examples of God’s future judgment (Luke
17:26-30; 2 Peter 2:5-6). Peter specifically states that God burning Sodom to
ashes is an example of what will happen to the ungodly. See more on this here:
4. The biblical view of eternity
leaves no room for continuing rebellion
Traditionalists sometimes attempt
to justify eternal torment by arguing that the unrighteous continue to sin in hell
and thus continue to deserve punishment. Mathis may have this in mind when he
writes of God’s wrath against those who “endure
in their rebellion against their Maker” while the saints are praising God in heaven.
Not only does this fail to justify eternal torment (after all, they could be
killed at any instant and that would stop them from sinning), it actually reveals
a way in which the traditional view of hell is inconsistent with the biblical
view of eternity.
The Apostle Paul
wrote, “The last enemy to be abolished is death” (1
Cor. 15:26 CSB17). But if millions of people “endure in rebellion” after death
is abolished that would mean that God will continue to have millions of enemies
in rebellion against Him forever. It is difficult to reconcile such a final
state with Paul’s vision of eternity seen in Ephesians:
CSB17 Ephesians 1:9-10 He made known to us
the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in
Christ as a plan for the right time-- to bring everything together in Christ,
both things in heaven and things on earth in him.
As one who sees conditional
immortality taught in the Bible, it is easy for me to foresee a day when
literally and without exception everything that exists will be in joyful
harmony with Jesus. All the unrighteous will have been burned up. God’s
judgments involve pay back for sins, but they are also designed to purge
creation from all evil.
5. Even the book of Revelation
does not teach the doctrine of eternal torment
Mathis has an extended section
dealing with scenes in Revelation where the saints are rejoicing in heaven as a
result of God’s righteous judgments. I agree that God’s righteous judgments
will be one of many reasons that we praise Him forever. But this does not mean
that His righteous judgments will include the eternal torment of the unsaved.
In the book of Revelation many of
the main themes are easy to understand. The imagery makes a powerful impact on
our emotions and imagination. It’s a glorious book that has practical
application for our lives. However, when we press the book for doctrinal
details it can become one of the most difficult books in the Bible to
understand. The wide variety of interpretations by Bible believing Christians
is testimony to this fact. The main reason this is the case is that most of the
book consists of visions with symbolic imagery. Some of the imagery is bizarre
and shocking. Tragically, many Christians have treated two passages in
Revelation which either explicitly mention eternal torment (Revelation 20:10) or
seem to strongly imply it (Revelation 14:11) as being literal and then use
these two passages (the ONLY two in the entire Bible which speak of eternal
torment) to reinterpret a multitude of passages throughout the Bible which
speak of the final fate of the unrighteous being death, perishing, destruction,
and being burned to ashes. Even Revelation itself interprets the imagery of the
lake of fire as referring to the unrighteous dying a second time – which affirms
conditional immortality. I’ve researched these two passages in Revelation in
great depth and have written a series of blog posts on them which begin here:
6. “Destined for destruction”
means destined for annihilation
In his article, Mathis quotes
from Romans 9:22-23:
CSB17 Romans
9:22 And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power
known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction?
And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of
mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory--
When Paul writes that objects of
God’s wrath are “prepared for destruction,” he uses the Greek word apoleia
for destruction. The apoleia/apollumi word group contains the words most
used in the New Testament to refer to the final fate of the unrighteous. Examples
include Matthew 7:13, Matthew 10:28, John 3:16, and Philippians 3:19. Apoleia/apollumi
are among the best words in the Greek language to refer to people completely
and permanently perishing (annihilation!). We know this because Greek authors
used these words in this exact way. I have documented this in these blog posts:
7. What the article gets right
If Mathis had been defending God’s
wrath as the complete and permanent destruction of the bodies and souls of the
unrighteous (as in Matthew 10:28) rather than God’s wrath as the eternal
torment of the unrighteous, he could have written an excellent article. Most of
the sentences in his article I could wholeheartedly agree with except that I
know that in the context of the article when he mentions destruction, wrath,
and judgment he has eternal torment in mind. Mathis is correct that God’s judgments,
as well as His mercies, give us reason to praise Him. He is correct that God executes
judgment against the ungodly for the benefit of us who are saved. But he is not
correct in thinking that God’s judgment leads to eternal torment.
Conclusion
In his article David Mathis seeks
to deal with the problem that the doctrine of hell makes Christians uneasy.
Unfortunately, he assumes the traditional view of hell as eternal torment is
the correct view. As a result, he takes on an impossible task. Christians should
find the eternal torment view of hell unpalatable because it is a terrible and
unbiblical doctrine that makes God and Christianity look bad. Once we see that
the Bible teaches that in hell God destroys the bodies and souls of the
unrighteous, it becomes far easier to explain, and yes, to value and be
thankful for, God’s wrath and His judgments. God has not hardwired us to think
that our actions deserve eternal torment. God has hard wired people (even unbelievers)
to know at some level (even if this truth is suppressed) that our sins deserve
death (Romans 1:32).
I long for the day when many
Christians will biblically reframe the gospel. Instead of presenting it as the
solution to the problem of eternal torment, we should present it as the
solution to the problem that apart from grace in Christ no one is worthy of
eternal life. The alternative to eternal life is death (you don’t need to be an
expert in philosophy or theology to figure that out). That’s biblical (Romans 6:23)!
I plea with my traditionalist brothers and sisters in Christ to spend less
time attempting to defend eternal torment and to spend more time reexamining what
the Bible teaches about the final fate of the unrighteous.
Throughout this blog post I have
shared some links to material on this topic. I also have a blog post where I
have gathered links to my own material and the material of others (blogs,
videos, and more) on the topic of hell. I pray it will be helpful. You may find
it here: Mark’s
Resources on Hell.
Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .
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