It is a cardinal doctrine of Christianity that God is, by nature, eternal. The God of the Bible “lives forever” (Isaiah 57:15). He is “the King eternal, immortal” (1 Timothy 1:17). He had no beginning and will have no end. “Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, you are God” (Psalm 90:2). God is self-existent and everlasting. There was never a time he did not exist, and there will never be a time that he will cease to exist.

Paul was clear that God alone is inherently immortal: He is “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal” (1 Timothy 6:15–16). Any other immortality is derived.

Humanity and Immortality

What about the souls of men? Does the Bible teach that humans have an immortal soul? This question has direct bearing on the doctrine of eternal punishment. If the human soul is inherently immortal, it must continue to exist somewhere for eternity after the death of the body. If it is not inherently immortal, then it will cease to exist when it dies—unless God grants it immortality.

The Human Soul

If we were to give this question the absolute attention that it deserves, we would need to begin with the question about the nature of the human soul. Does the Bible teach that the human person comprises a material part (the body) and an immaterial part (the soul or spirit)? Is the spirit, as it is spoken of in Scripture, a distinct, immaterial part of the human person?

It can be, and has been, argued that the human person is an essential unity—that is, that humans are souls and do not have souls.¹G. C. Berkhouwer, for example, argues for a view he calls “whole man” (monism). He argues that humans do not have distinct parts—a material part (body) and an immaterial part (soul/spirit)—but that humanness is defined as man in relation to God. See G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 194–233. This is a very technical discussion, and since it is not directly pertinent to the question of conditional immortality, I will address it more fully in a separate post. For the sake of the present argument, let’s assume that the human soul is distinct from the human body.²Nothing that I will say demands either a dualist or a physicalist view of the human person. Physicalists (monists) are happy with the biblical language of the soul or spirit; they simply differ with dualists in their interpretation of this language. Does the soul live forever?

The (Im)mortality of the Human Soul

Recording the creation of humanity, Moses tells us that “the LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils” (Genesis 2:7). Adam’s inanimate body is called “the man” even before “the breath of life” was breathed into his nostrils. The body was not an empty shell, which became a man when a soul was breathed into it; the body was a man, which came to life when God breathed into his nostrils.

Nothing is said here about immortality. When he placed the restriction on the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he warned that disobedience would result in death. Death is the very opposite of immortality. There is nothing in the text that suggests we should understand death, in this context, to mean ongoing conscious existence. Obedience would result in ongoing life; disobedience would result in cessation of life.

Sadly, Adam squandered his opportunity for ongoing life by eating the forbidden fruit. God drove him from the garden to prevent him from eating the fruit from the tree of life (Genesis 3:22–24). If he ate from the tree of life, he would live forever, but God would not allow that to happen. “He must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.”

The biblical evidence does not support the concept of innate human immortality. Paul wrote to the Romans of “mortal man, birds four-footed animals, and reptiles” (Romans 1:23). When Samson cried, “Let me die with the Philistines” (Judges 16:30), the word translated “me” is the Hebrew word nephesh, which is sometimes translated “soul.” He was saying, in other words, “Let my soul die with the Philistines.” Ezekiel used the same word when he spoke of “people” (nephesh) being devoured and “lives” being destroyed (Ezekiel 22:25, 27). If you assume the immortality of the soul you might interpret these verses differently, but if you allow the language to speak for itself, you will be hard pressed to defend the inherent immortality of the soul.

The Bible teaches clearly that immortality is the gift of God. God abolishes death and brings about immortality through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). The believer’s mortality will put on immortality at the general resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:53–54). Paul said that it is those in whom God’s Spirit dwells whose “mortal bodies” receive “life” (Romans 8:11). God gifts humans with immortality; it is not something that is inherent to the human soul.

It is clear that God gives immortality to those who believe the gospel. But does the Bible teach that he gives immortality to all human souls? Will unbelievers experience eternal conscious existence in the same way that believers will?

The Bible speaks clearly of a general, bodily resurrection of all the dead at the end of the age, which will be followed by the final judgment (see, for example, John 5:25–29). It does not indicate, however, that unbelievers will at that point be granted immortality. Indeed, the wicked will ultimately be burned up (Matthew 3:12, 17) and driven away like chaff (Psalm 1:4). When God “reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes,” he “condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:6). “Extinction” hardly seems compatible with immortality. God, said Jesus, is able to destroy the body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28).

There are a great many texts with which we must deal when we discuss this subject of immortality—and we will deal with many of them in future posts—but we must get the order right. We cannot assume that language like “eternal punishment” means eternal punishing and therefore conclude that the unbelieving human soul must be immortal. We must first find evidence from the biblical text that the soul is immortal before we assume that eternal punishment means eternal punishing.

If the Bible teaches that all human souls are immortal, then the traditional view of hell must be true. Immortal souls must exist somewhere for eternity, and if they are not in everlasting union with Christ they must live in everlasting separation from Christ. The alternative is to affirm that human souls are not, by nature, immortal, and that if God does not grant immortality to a person, that person will not, in fact, live for eternity. To see what the Bible teaches about this, we must consider the relevant texts that speak of the ultimate fate of the wicked.³Edward Fudge has penned the definitive case for conditional immortality. In it, he examines every text in Scripture that speaks of the final judgment. He includes in his work consideration of the intertestamental writings as well as the teaching of the early church. For a more thorough examination of the relevant evidence, look no further than Fudge:The Fire that Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011 [3rd edition]).