“When an unrighteous, unrepentant, unregenerate person dies, they face either eternal conscious torment or eventual cessation of existence, i.e. annihilation.” So begins a rebuttal of the annihilationist perspective by (seemingly inactive) blogger rhology. His argument in this article is not exegetical but logical. He follows what he considers to be the logic of each position, from a certain perspective, to show the superiority of a traditionalist perspective. His conclusions, however, are flawed because they begin with the wrong assumptions.
While incidental to his overall argument, his opening paragraph displays two immediate misunderstandings. He writes, “If annihilation, upon death they will either entirely cease to exist immediately or they will undergo a period of suffering.”
While this may simply be a rushed rebuttal without careful thought to accurately presenting the rebutted view, rhology begins by ignoring the reality of resurrection and final judgment, which is crucial to a proper understanding of conditional immortality. Whether he has misspoken or not, he argues that, in the annihilationist perspective, the punishment happens “upon death.” In reality, annihilationism teaches that the final judgement will take place following resurrection at the end of time.
Second, and less crucially, rhology employs the strained language of “entirely ceas[ing] to exist.” I have argued elsewhere that this language unfortunately gives a wrong impression of annihilationism. Conditionalists believe that the punishment for sin is death, not “cessation of existence.” A body that dies may, in a sense, ceases to exist as it decomposes, but that is the result of the completed punishment rather than the punishment itself.
As I have stated, however, those two errors are incidental to his overall argument, and so I will not dwell on them. His logical argument in opposition to annihilationism rests, I believe, on a weak foundation. This is evident in at least three ways.
First, the argument is weak because rhology sets his own ground rules for the satisfaction of justice. Without appealing to a specific text or set of texts, he argues that, without a period of conscious suffering, there can be no justice. I acknowledge once again that his argument is designed to be logical rather than exegetical, but such an assumption must surely be defended.
Presumably, rhology would argue that the instant death that befell Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit was a punishment devoid of justice since their deaths did not involve any degree of conscious suffering. Or perhaps he would argue that justice in this life plays by different rules. Regardless, he does not attempt to argue his case. He expects us to agree with his assumption without arguing for it.
For its part, the Bible consistently presents the punishment for sin as death, not suffering. To argue that death must include suffering is to make an assumption, which cannot be backed with textual evidence. If he wants to insist that the divine death sentence, to be just, must include suffering, he should present evidence for it, not just assume it. Of course, God may determine that the final death sentence should include suffering, but, if so, that will be his determination. He is not bound to our interpretations of justice.
A second line of rhology’s reasoning has to do with his apparent understanding that post-mortem suffering has to do with sanctification. This sounds like a form of purgatory, though I see nothing in this article to suggest that he holds to such theology. He writes that the implication of finite suffering “is that once they died and began their suffering, this unrepentant unregenerate person who hated God during life was totally sanctified after he died.”
The flaw here is that annihilation has to do with punishment, not sanctification. Even if we allow, for the sake of argument, that there is a period of finite suffering between resurrection and the second death, the purpose of that suffering is not sanctification but punishment. Suffering does not in some way purge the sinner but serves as punishment for his sin. Even if the final judgment does include suffering, therefore, it will not end because sanctification has been achieved but because its part in the divine death sentence has fulfilled its punishing purpose.
This leads to a third error in rhology’s logic. He writes, “If they continue to sin in rebellion against God during their suffering, then their suffering cannot come to an end without violating principles of justice as stated above, for they keep sinning on an ongoing basis during their God-inflicted suffering. They do not stop sinning.”
The assumption here is twofold: (1) that unrepentant sinners will persist in their rebellion after their resurrection, and (2) that God will continue to punish them for post-mortem rebellion.
The first assumption appears to have some biblical warrant. In Scripture, weeping and gnashing of teeth, elements frequently included in allusions to final punishment, communicate sorrow (weeping) and anger (gnashing of teeth). Some translations of the Bible render Romans 3:4 in such a way that implies sinners will accuse God of wrongdoing in the final judgment. Simply put, there is sufficient textual evidence to suggest that sinners in the final judgement will not (at least initially) humbly accept God’s verdict.
The second assumption, however, does not necessarily follow. The New Testament repeatedly paints the final judgment in terms of sin committed in this life. Paul wrote that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Revelation 20:10–15 shows sinners judged “according to their works” prior to, not following, the second death. Every indication is that the final judgement is for sin committed in this life. An argument for ongoing punishment because of ongoing sin must be taken from Scripture, not assumed. rhology makes no attempt to do so.
The logical argument in this article is fine inasmuch as the assumptions on which it is based are sound. In my opinion, however, the argument falls flat in the absence of robust testing of its assumptions. Simply put, the conclusion (“Annihilationism is false”) does not follow from the proposals.
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