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Learn more about the burden behind The Evangelical AnnihilationistIn late August 2017, Joe Thorn and Jimmy Fowler, hosts of the Reformed Baptist podcast Doctrine and Devotion, dedicated an episode to the subject of heaven. During the conversation, one of the hosts suggested that they devote the next episode to the subject of hell. As of January 2020, no further word has been said about the hell episode. (Edit: The hosts addressed annihilationism in a June 2020 episode.)
I don’t know why the JoFo have neglected to address the subject, but their failure to do so illustrates the reality that many Christians are almost embarrassed to address the subject of final punishment.
The doctrine of hell has long plagued both Christians and non-Christians. The English atheist and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, considered Christ’s teaching on hell to be the single blot on his moral character:
There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that he believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to his preaching—an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence….
I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take him as his chroniclers represent him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
—Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (New York: Simon and Schuster,1957), 17–18.
The debate over hell, however, is not exclusively between Christians and non-Christians. A fair amount of ink has been spilled on intramural debate. Broadly speaking, evangelical scholars can be divided into three camps of teaching on hell: traditionalists, universalists and annihilationists.
Traditionalists teach that hell is a place of eternal, conscious torment. To them, the sentence of hell is final and the punishing implemented there never-ending. Sinners consigned to hell are condemned to a place of everlasting, conscious punishing with no hope of escape.
Universalists believe that God intends to save, and indeed will save, the entire human race. Every person who has ever lived will ultimately spend eternity with God. The ecumenical vision of universalism teaches that all humanity will be saved regardless of their response to Christ—that all religions lead to heaven. Evangelical universalism teaches that all will ultimately come to God through Christ. Those who do not embrace Christ in this life will be given opportunity to do so in the afterlife. They may or may not suffer consciously in hell until they submit to Christ, but all will ultimately bow the knee and be received by God.
Annihilationists teach that those who do not receive God’s free offer of salvation in Jesus Christ will be resurrected at the end of time to be punished with a second, eternal death. Hell, as it is used in Scripture, is a description of the final destruction of the wicked. There will be no ongoing, eternal torment, and no hope of restoration for those who die apart from Christ. The wages of sin is death, and those who do not receive life in Christ are destined for eternal death.
This website is dedicated to explaining and defending evangelical annihilationism. It is the view of hell, I am persuaded, which best fits the biblical teaching of final punishment. While it is a minority view in the evangelical church today, and while it has ostensibly been a minority view throughout most of new covenant church history, I am persuaded that an honest and thorough reading of the Bible lends itself best to this affirmation.
The arguments I make here are not original with me. I have been influenced by the hard work of many annihilationists who have written before me. I present this website as little more than one more voice added to the growing number of evangelical annihilationists, whose allegiance is to God and his word, and who are persuaded that the traditional view of hell cannot be adequately defended from the pages of Scripture.
Nothing that I will write has not already been dealt with by others. I do, however, believe that there is room for a slightly different approach to this subject. I have found that most the material dealing with evangelical annihilationism is very academic. Academic work is necessary, of course, but I fear that it may be too far removed from the Christian on the street.
I am persuaded that the scholarship that goes into textual criticism, which ultimately produces the Hebrew and Greek texts from which our English Bibles are translated, is highly reputable. A good English translation of the Bible can be read with a high degree of confidence. I am persuaded that annihilationism is perfectly compatible with a straightforward reading of a good translation of the English Bible.
My contribution to this discussion will therefore deliberately give the benefit of the doubt to English translations of the Bible and will look at what we can glean from those translations about final punishment. As such, I will, as far as possible, avoid overly technical discussions about original languages and the like. Those discussions can be found elsewhere, but I write as an ordinary Christian who loves God, loves the Bible, and wants to rightly handle the word of truth.