Stand to Reason (STR) is a ministry that aims to “train Christians to think more clearly about their faith and to make an even-handed, incisive, yet gracious defense for classical Christianity and classical Christian values in the public square.” The organization “teaches careful reasoning and well thought-out answers so that Christians will be able to participate in public discussions (at home, at work, or at the university) and present the Christian worldview in the debate.”
STR does some good and helpful work. Contributors to STR have addressed annihilationism on more than one occasion. I recently came across one video by STR’s Brett Kunkle titled “A Philosophical Argument against Annihilationism.”
He begins by stating that he does not find annihilationism compelling and that “the biblical text indicates that, unfortunately, hell is eternal, conscious torment.”
Setting aside the biblical case for a moment, Kunkle offers another argument against annihilationism—a philosophical one. He takes this particular argument from the case for the sanctity of human life. As an example, he appeals to the argument against abortion. Abortion is opposed, he says, on the argument that every human life has inherent dignity. That is poverty or disease is no justification for killing an unborn child. As Kunkle says, “Low quality of life does not give us justification to kill the unborn child.”
Kunkle sees a parallel here with annihilationism, which he characterizes as “the view that God, after death, is going to extinguish the person who is unrighteous, so that they will go out of existence, they will be gone forever, they will have no ontological status.” But since human beings have intrinsic value, being made in the image of God, a person’s “low quality of existence, being in eternal, conscious torment in hell, is not a justification for God to extinguish their existence.” Human beings are thereby “treated as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.”
Kunkle posits this argument as a philosophical argument, not a biblical one. STR does not consider philosophical arguments to carry the same authority as biblical arguments. Nevertheless, in keeping with the organization’s mission statement, this must be an argument that they consider to be “incisive,” an example of “careful reasoning,” and a case that is “well thought-out.”But just how well thought-out is this philosophical argument?
Kunkle is correct regarding the inherent sanctity of human life. God created human beings in his own image and therefore every human being, regardless of size, level of development, environment, or degree of dependency, has inherent dignity. Kunkle is therefore correct to assert that we do not have a right to terminate a human life because we perceive the quality of that life to be low.
However, Kunkle’s philosophical argument misses the point that the same conviction regarding the sanctity of human life that drives us to protect life also drives us to improve living conditions. Christianity throughout the ages has tried to improve living conditions for people across the world. We don’t assume that, as long as we don’t kill a person, we have no responsibility to do what we can to relive their misery. It was this conviction regarding the sanctity of human life that lay behind God’s command for his people to care for widows and orphans and strangers and aliens. If the sanctity of human life is “not justification for God to extinguish [the] existence” of the unrepentant, it must equally not be justification for God to keep human beings living in utter misery.
Second, Kunkle’s argument only works if (as he seems to do) he redefines the traditional understanding of hell. Rather than actual, unending, physical torment, Kunkle envisions hell as a place with “low quality of existence.” This stands in marked contrast to biblical imagery of fire and brimstone—and to the prevailing opinion of traditionalists throughout the ages.
St. Cyprian wrote of “infinite tortures for suffering,” while St. Augustine wrote of the eternal fire of hell being designed “to torture the impious.” St. Anselm wrote of the “tormenting fires” of hell where the unrepentant will be “tortured without end.” Luther wrote of hell as “a fiery oven” where sinners will be “tortured within by supreme distress and tribulation,”1Joel Beunting (ed), The Problem of Hell: A Philosophical Anthology (London: Routledge, 2010), 150. while Calvin wrote of the “torments and tortures” of hell.2Beunting (ed), The Problem of Hell, 150. Gill, Edwards, and Spurgeon likewise spoke of hell as a place of torture.
If hell is a place of eternal, physical torture, how is it a better recognition of the sanctity of human life to keep someone alive under eternal torture than it is to kill them? Torture is frowned upon by every sane civilization. If a “low quality of existence” is no justification for God to end a human life because it is created in God’s image, how is it justified for God to eternally torture someone made in his image?
As a philosophical point, Kunkle’s argument is hardly well thought-out. But, of course, the biggest problem with it is that it flies in the face of what the Bible actually teaches. Kunkle seems to suggest that there is some form of ethical problem with God killing the wicked. He uses language like “extinguish” and “go out of existence,” and I’m not quite sure why he chooses that language, annihilationists simple teach that God kills or destroys the wicked—that the wicked, apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ applied to them, perish.
Kunkle’s basic philosophical argument, then, is that there is no justification for the creator to eternally and irrevocably destroy human beings because human beings are made in his image. He takes this from the parallel that low quality of life is no justification for human beings to end the life of another human being. This argument fails biblically on three counts.
First, while it is accurate to say low quality of life is no justification for human beings to end the life of another human being, there are instances biblically where God does authorize certain people to take life. Capital punishment is a case in point: God not only allows but expects righteous government to exercise capital punishment for murder (Genesis 9:5–6; Romans 13:4). So there are cases where it isjustified for certain appointed authorities to take a human life.
Second, God is not a human being. The logic of humans protecting human life rests in the fact that all humans are image bearers. It is wrong (unless specifically authorized by God) for one image bearer to take the life of another image bearer. But God is not an image bearer. God is the creator, not a creature. The creator has the right to do what he will with his creation.
But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? 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?
(Romans 9:20–22)
Third, God specifically states that he intends to destroy the wicked. The unrepentant “will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord’s presence and from his glorious strength on that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at by all those who have believed, because our testimony among you was believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:9–10).
STR does good work. Unfortunately, this particular video is not evidence of that.
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