Recently, Clay Jones published an article on his website, titled, “And the Atheist Shall Lie Down with the Annihilationist.” I’m not immediately familiar with Jones, but the endorsements on his two books lead me to suspect that I would probably find them, and his ministry, helpful. His desire, his website says, is to help people believe in Jesus and do what he says. I appreciate that. I have no doubt that I could learn a great deal from him.
His article was spurred by “a growing number of Christians” who “are abandoning the traditional doctrine that the lost will suffer eternal torment in favor of the belief that after the Judgment, the lost will be annihilated.” He considers this teaching an error and writes to explain why.
He begins by distinguishing two types of annihilationists: those who believe that annihilation will follow a limited time of punishing and those who reject any notion of intermediate punishment prior to annihilation. He calls the latter group “straight” annihilationists and chooses to focus on them for his critique, effectively nullifying his critique for those who affirm an intermediate time of suffering prior to annihilation.
It is worth noting that, by “punishment,” he appears to mean some form of conscious suffering. He does not, therefore, leave room for the consideration that annihilation is the punishment for sin but instead considers annihilation to be the act that terminates the punishment.
As I read the article, I identified at least four broad arguments in his critique, though he does not devote equal space and time to each.
First, he argues that eternal, conscious torment is a worse punishment than annihilation. While he admits that “annihilation is, all by itself, a fearful prospect,” he adds that “the fear of eternal torment dwarfs the fear of annihilation into insignificance.” The implication, it seems, is that the severity of the sentence determines its validity.
For the sake of argument, I will grant his premise that eternal torment is a worse punishment than annihilation, though many annihilationists would challenge it. His implied conclusion, however, does not follow. We do not determine the truth of final punishment based on which sentence is severer. I don’t know to what degree he is a traditionalist. I don’t know whether he holds to hell as a place of physical torture or the more popular idea of eternal separation. Regardless, I am confident that, whatever he thinks hell will be like, someone could conjure up a worse version of that experience. Would he abandon his theology because someone could think of a severer punishment? Of course not. He should not expect annihilationists to do the same.
The nature of hell is determined by the teaching of Scripture, not by the severity of the proposed punishment. We look to what God says, not what we imagine is worse.
Related to this, he offers examples throughout his analysis that demonstrate that unbelievers do not fear annihilation. The implication seems to be that annihilationism is at the very least questionable because final judgement must be a fearful experience. Again, I grant that premise. It is, indeed, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). But I find his premise that unbelievers do not fear annihilation a little odd.
Perhaps, as many traditionalists do, Jones draws, in his mind, a stark contrast between “annihilation” and “death.” If so, he finds himself arguing against a caricature of annihilationism, in which the penalty for sin is death. And death is a penalty that people do fear. Jones himself seems to acknowledge this, given the subtitle of his second book: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do about It. Even more significantly, however, Scripture affirms that unbelievers are held captive to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). Even if we assume that the people he cites genuinely live with no fear of death, the writer of Hebrews considered death to be, generally speaking, a fearful thing for humans. And Jones himself appears to affirm this, if the aforementioned book subtitle is anything to go by.
Second, Jones argues that annihilation should be called into question because it purportedly gives people what they want. Here, he again appears to misrepresent evangelical annihilationism. This particular argument is a little confusing. At the outset, he recognizes that annihilationists affirm the reality of final judgment following resurrection. But then he compares annihilationism to the teachings of the Sadducees and atheists who deny the truth of future resurrection. Annihilationism is markedly different to atheism precisely because it affirms general resurrection and final judgment. No atheist wants to be resurrected to stand before the living God as his final judge, only to be sentenced to a painful and eternal death. The atheist version of annihilation is radically different from evangelical annihilationism.
In Scripture, even God’s servants found it frightening to stand before him. When Isaiah had a vision of the Lord, he cried, “Woe is me!” (6:5). Daniel was “overcome” and physically sick for days after encountering God in a vision (8:27). To stand before the living God as your final judge will be no picnic. No atheist will arrive at the judgment seat and find that it is what he or she wants. To suggest that anyone will do so is to undervalue the holiness of God.
Third, Jones contends that eternal, conscious torment offers incentive to repent and believe in Christ that annihilation evidently lacks. To support this, he shares his own testimony of conversion and the similar testimony of Peter Hitchens. These two examples serve to demonstrate that “many” are persuaded of the need to repent out of fear of eternal torment.
I don’t doubt that the fear of final judgment has indeed proven instrumental in some turning to Christ. After talking about the judgment seat of Christ, Paul immediately wrote, “Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Final judgment indeed serves as a fearful motivator to share and believe the gospel. But, as I have said above, Scripture holds the fear of death, not of eternal torment, as that from which Christ came to deliver his people (Hebrews 2:14–15). The apostles did not focus inordinately on the threat of hell in their gospel preaching. Hell is not even mentioned in the book of Acts, much less a prominent feature in apostolic preaching. It certainly is not upheld as a great motivator for believing the gospel.
Fourth, Jones briefly references a handful of Scriptures to argue his point. He by no means considers these references to be silver bullets against annihilationism. Indeed, he notes that annihilationism can only be defeated “by the proper exegesis of various passages pertaining to the final state of the wicked.” He undertakes no such attempt in this article and therefore does not consider it to be a “defeater of annihilationism.” Still, it should be recognized that annihilationists are aware of these texts and do not find them in the least bit challenging to an annihilationist perspective.
“Eternal fire” (Matthew 18:8; 25:41) is not fire that burns for eternity but the same fire that briefly burned to utterly destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 7). Whatever Jesus meant by “eternal fire,” it must be recognized that either the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is still burning or “eternal” does not describe the duration of the flame. Similarly, “the fire that is not quenched” (Mark 9:48) does not describe a fire that never dies out but one that cannot be stopped—that cannot be prevented from destroying what God intends it to destroy. Jones does not pretend to give these verses the careful exegetical attention they deserve in this discussion, but we must note that such careful exegesis will not necessarily lead to an affirmation of eternal, conscious torment.
Part of the problem with the evangelical discussion over final punishment is that far less attention is given to it in any single setting than the full discussion warrants. Scattered articles and time-constrained debates do not allow for the comprehensive interaction that is required. Even full-length books like Four Views on Hell and Two Views of Hell are, at best, introductions to the subject. Jones’s article, therefore, cannot hope (and does not attempt) to serve as the final word on the subject. Still, the end product strikes me as a sometimes confusing consideration of a caricatured understanding of the position he confronts and, in that sense, is not helpful for the honest inquirer.
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