“It might not solve the problem entirely…”
I think that’s a serious understatement of the problem which annihilationism poses for itself. It doesn’t solve the overall problem at all. For even assuming that it solves one side of the problem (which I only assume for the sake of argument), it leaves another side of the problem untouched.
“…but I would much prefer to know that my damned loved ones were out of their misery than to know that they were suffering unending conscious torment.”
The connotations of somebody being “out of their misery” are person-variable”
i) A pet-owner may find it preferable to euthanize a beloved pet rather that see it suffer. Yet he may always miss his beloved pet. He can’t go back to the way things were before he had his beloved pet.
ii) If a loved one is dying of some excruciating illness, and we have reason to believe we will see him (or her) on the other side, then it’s a relief to see his earthly suffering come to an end, even if the separation, while temporary, is an irreparable loss in this life.
If, on the other hand, we have no reason to think we’ll see our loved one again, then we have radically different feelings about his demise. He (or she) isn’t going to a better place. And the pain of separation is unremitting–precisely because it is so hopeless. The survivor feels his own loss, as well as feeling for the loss of his loved one. A double loss. A loss to him, and a loss to his lost loved one. Moreover, the loss to his loved one accentuates the loss to himself.
“The sadness over being deprived of some good is in no way commensurate with the sadness over the infliction of pain and suffering.”
i) I don’t know how you begin to measure such a thing.
ii) Sounds like the sort of thing a young man would say. Very noble sentiment.
However, people can be inseparable in this life. When they lose a loved one, their grief may be inconsolable.
In addition, this can have a cumulative effect. The first loss might not hit as hard. But survivors can reach a tipping point where they’ve lost the people who make life worthwhile. They were able to get by for a while, but one more loss is one loss too many.
What is more, at that point each loss is weighted with every other loss. There’s a delayed effect. What was bearable the first time it hit them circles back and hits them with unbearable force on top of every succeeding loss.
Again, I’m just responding to the annihilationist on his own grounds. Annihilationism raises an emotional objection to the traditional doctrine of hell. Yet annihilationism is subject to emotional objections no less weighty.
iii) Of course, the annihilationist might say that there will be compensations in heaven. God will work it out somehow.
Yet that appeal is equally available to orthodox Christians who uphold the traditional doctrine of hell.
"Yet annihilationism is subject to emotional objections no less weighty."
ReplyDeleteOf course it's understandable that a Christian who believes in the justice of unending retributive punishment for the damned must believe that. But the two scenarios are not at all equivalent. As painful as the loss due to death is, there are truly fates worse than death.
In one scenario, while you suffer the loss of a loved one who you later come to realize is among the damned, you know that at least their own sufferings are over. The person you were once attached to no longer exists. At that point there is no reason to maintain any sort of attachment to them, any emotional investment. The fact that in this life the emotional investment remains is largely due to the fact that we refuse to believe they are really gone.
In the other scenario, after a lifetime of suffering, the loved one dies, but you come to realize that they still exist, but are subject without hope of reprieve or restoration to an eternity of punishment. Grade the punishment if you want, so that maybe some of the damned only suffer for an hour a day for all eternity, but the fact remains that they are eternally lost, but still exist and thus still have a claim on you. It's like being whisked away from a concentration camp to become a prince, but with the knowledge that many of your friends and family are still in that camp, alive and suffering.
I could get over knowing those friends ceased to exist, that their suffering ended. But no amount of royal treatment could dull the pain of knowing of their ongoing suffering, again without hope of reprieve or restoration.
Dismiss it as youthful sentiment if you like. I can just as easily dismiss your dismissal of sentiment as a seared conscience become too used to the prospect of eternal punishment.
P.S. This is not just a problem for close loved ones. I would not wish the fate of unending conscious torment on my worst enemy, and I would be troubled to know that anyone was subjected to that fate, whether I knew them intimately or not.
ReplyDeleteP.P.S. It's not necessarily about going back to the way things were. It's about closure. Any loss, even a temporary one, produces grief. But that grief is manageable within the context of a definite beginning and end to the relationship. At a person's ultimate extinction, there is closure. No such closure is possible if they are alive but eternally separated from you.
ReplyDelete"..the loved one dies, but you come to realize that they still exist, but are subject without hope of reprieve or restoration to an eternity of punishment." JD
ReplyDeleteI believe my Dad, and older brother, Tommy, are both going to be judged by God, and are even now as the "rich man" was in Luke 16.
Yet. I'm not 100% certain, because of the way they died, there was some hope.
I find myself very sad at times. But the pure ans simple truth of our Lord's teaching is that, it would have been better, if they would have never been born.
And the same goes for me, and you, and all mankind, really, unless the Lord has mercy on us, and doesn't harden us.
Very deep and hard truth to discuss.
Thanks for posting it.
PS I shall never understand it this side of glory. However, Christ being tortured, and even sweating blood, and then having spikes hammered into His wrists and feet and being lifted up on a Cross should help our heavy souls to deal with this, I think.
JD WALTERS SAID:
ReplyDelete“Of course it's understandable that a Christian who believes in the justice of unending retributive punishment for the damned must believe that.”
i) Retributive punishment, whether eternal or temporary, was not a presupposition of my argument, either in this post or the previous post of which this is the sequel.
ii) Moreover, the sense of loss I describe is hardly idiosyncratic. Anyone with a passing knowledge of human experience would be aware of this.
Your hostility disables you from interacting with what I actually set forth.
“As painful as the loss due to death is, there are truly fates worse than death.”
Undoubtedly so. But you’re confounding two distinct issues: the loss to the damned and the loss to the survivor. I’ve explicitly distinguished the two in both my posts.
“In one scenario, while you suffer the loss of a loved one who you later come to realize is among the damned, you know that at least their own sufferings are over. The person you were once attached to no longer exists. At that point there is no reason to maintain any sort of attachment to them, any emotional investment. The fact that in this life the emotional investment remains is largely due to the fact that we refuse to believe they are really gone.”
With all due respect, you’re just a gauche young fool when you presume to speak about the grieving process. You lack the life-experience to know what you’re talking about.
Let’s just take one example of many I could cite. In the past I used to walk and pray at a local cemetery for about an hour every Saturday. And there was a widower who, like clockwork, would also come around that time to visit the grave of his departed wife. He’d park his car by her grave. Take some garden tools out of the trunk of his car to tend her grave. Water her grave. Tidy things up. Then leave.
Occasional I’d walk there on other days, and depending on the hour of the day, I’d encounter him there on other days. The fact that I’d run into him by happenstance makes it likely that he visited the gravesite of his wife every day of the week.
His attachment to his wife outlived his wife. There’s a profound sense in which he still can’t live without her. This is the best he can do to maintain some connection.
There are also husbands who, if their wife predeceases them, commit suicide shortly thereafter. Or they simply die of “natural causes” shortly thereafter. They lose the will to live.
Sensing that their loved one is “really gone” doesn’t sever the emotional bond. To the contrary, the emotional bond is the very thing which makes the sense that they are “really gone” inconsolable for many survivors.
Not only does this apply to deceased friends and family members, but it can even apply to a long-gone pet.
Cont. “I could get over knowing those friends ceased to exist, that their suffering ended.”
ReplyDeleteThat’s just a pompous, self-important conceit. You’re in no position to know that. You presume to speak to an experience you haven’t had. But you can’t know what you’re missing until you miss it.
You’re a bright guy, JD, but no amount of brainpower competent to address this issue. Only experience (or revelation) can address this issue. It’s not an analytical question.
“I can just as easily dismiss your dismissal of sentiment as a seared conscience become too used to the prospect of eternal punishment.”
That’s quite ironic given your callow, callous, dismissive remarks about the emotional state of those left behind.
“This is not just a problem for close loved ones. I would not wish the fate of unending conscious torment on my worst enemy, and I would be troubled to know that anyone was subjected to that fate, whether I knew them intimately or not.”
You make these fatuous hypothetical claims about yourself which have nothing behind them except gaping inexperience and a greatly exaggerated self-estimate.
It’s easy to make airy statements about your “worst enemy” when that’s in the realm of the imaginary.
“But that grief is manageable within the context of a definite beginning and end to the relationship. At a person's ultimate extinction, there is closure.”
Even if there were closure to their existence, that hardly means there is closure in your attachment. You treat this like taking measurements in the kitchen for a new refrigerator.
There are some issues where you just need to shut up and learn by observation. Wait a few decades until you live what you profess.
JD WALTERS SAID:
ReplyDelete"I can just as easily dismiss your dismissal of sentiment as a seared conscience become too used to the prospect of eternal punishment."
Yes, my conscience has been irreparably seared by believing what Jesus said about the fate of the damned. As Bertrand Russell put it, “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell.”
OK, I'll admit, I don't have any experience of the grieving process. I have no right to extrapolate what I might and might not be able to get over.
ReplyDeleteBut let's keep the issue on the analytical level. The question was if the emotional objection to annihilation is just as weighty as the object to unending conscious torment.
Let the voice of experience speak. If you were to ask which final destiny for that grieving man's beloved wife, assuming she was among the damned, would be more tolerable to him (assuming he is among the redeemed), which do you think he would choose: annihilation or unending conscious torment? If the latter is a fate worse than death (conceived as extinction), how could he not prefer the former option?
You would insist that both scenarios are equally emotionally intolerable, but that's because you already think you know the truth about the fate of the damned, and now it's just a matter of showing that none of the alternative views fare any better. A reasonable apologetic strategy in light of your unalterable commitments, but hardly one that commends your voice of experience to us gauche young'uns.
That is why I find it hard to interact with you, although I do anyway because I find it sharpens my own analytical skills and I know I have a lot to learn from a learned Christian such as yourself: I know that your mind is already made up, that you're not here in search of the best answer, you're here only to defend the one you've already settled on.
"...and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."
ReplyDelete"the expression day and night also occurs in the throne room scene where the four living creatures sing praises to God day and night without ceasing (4:8). By contrast those who are cast into the lake of fire are tormented day and night forever and ever (see also 14:11). Next, all they whose names are not recorded in the Book of Life suffer a similar fate and we be eternally with Satan and the two beasts (v. 15).Third, Scripture nowhere teaches that their torment will eventually come to an end. On the contrary, Jesus said, "Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the ETERNAL fire prepared for the devil" (Matt. 25:41)." -Simon J. Kistemaker
It's a spiritual and mental torment and punishment
Donsands,
ReplyDeleteSurely you are aware of the annihilationist exegesis of those passages. The fire is eternal, but what is thrown in there does not last forever, but is consumed. From J. Ramsey Michaels' commentary on Revelation:
"More important, the lake of fire swallows up death and Hades (compare Is 25:8; 1 Cor 15:54). After the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and after all the dead were judged, says John, death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire (vv. 13-14)...This is all very confusing for modern Christians who were taught that "Hades" is a biblical word for hell (see the KJV "death and hell were cast into the lake of fire") and that "hell" in the book of Revelation is itself the lake of fire. How can hell be thrown into hell?...The confusion stems from the fact that "Hades" is not "hell" as understood in Christian tradition, but the grave, corresponding to "Sheol" in the Hebrew Bible. It is never mentioned by itself in the book of Revelation, but only as the companion of "Death" (see, for example, 6:8)...The notion that death and the grave are thrown into the lake of fire characterizes the lake here not as a place of torment (contrast 19:21 and 20:10), but as a place of destruction or nonexistence. Death and Hades are not tortured or punished, they simply cease to exist. The message of this vivid scene is a simple one: "there will be no more death" (21:4). In Paul's words, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Cor 15:54-55). The way is cleared for the triumphant visions of chapters 21-22."
JD WALTERS SAID:
ReplyDelete“The question was if the emotional objection to annihilation is just as weighty as the object to unending conscious torment.”
Just to set the record straight, before you redefine the issue, the question of the original post was whether annihilationism solves the problem it poses for itself. It raises an emotional objection to the traditional doctrine of hell. However, even if (ad arguendo) it succeeded in one respect, it fails in another crucial–as I pointed out.
“Let the voice of experience speak. If you were to ask which final destiny for that grieving man's beloved wife, assuming she was among the damned, would be more tolerable to him (assuming he is among the redeemed), which do you think he would choose: annihilation or unending conscious torment? If the latter is a fate worse than death (conceived as extinction), how could he not prefer the former option?”
i) So you’re framing the issue in terms of two emotionally repugnant options, but claiming that annihilationism is a little less repugnant. Yet even if we grant your comparison, that proves my original contention. Annihilationism rejects one option because it regards that option as repugnant, yet it replaces the repugnant option with another repugnant option. (“Repugnant” as definable by annihilationism itself).
ii) Moreover, even if the fate of the damned is worse on the traditional view than annihilationism, this doesn’t mean that any given mourner will perceive it that way.
For instance, there are mourners who will say they’d rather spend eternity in hell (however they define hell) with their loved one than suffer eternal separation from their loved one.
iii) Furthermore, some folks say they fear oblivion more than suffering.
“I know that your mind is already made up, that you're not here in search of the best answer.”
The best answer is the true answer, and the true answer is the revealed answer.
"Just to set the record straight, before you redefine the issue, the question of the original post was whether annihilationism solves the problem it poses for itself."
ReplyDeleteBut that's not what I was responding to. My very first comment in this post was addressing your statement that "annihilationism is subject to emotional objections no less weighty." I provided arguments to the effect that the emotional objection is greater to eternal conscious torment than to annihilation. Now you're going back to your original contention rather than interacting with my own comments.
"So you’re framing the issue in terms of two emotionally repugnant options, but claiming that annihilationism is a little less repugnant. Yet even if we grant your comparison, that proves my original contention. Annihilationism rejects one option because it regards that option as repugnant, yet it replaces the repugnant option with another repugnant option."
Hardly. The eternal destiny of the damned is a problem for all Christian traditions, and annihilationists (at least this tentative annihilationist) acknowledge that. It's not as if annihilation has nothing emotionally repugnant about it. This is a relative, not absolute issue. Again, I am entirely responding to your claim that annihilationism is subject to emotional objections no less weighty. I think this is clearly false.
"Moreover, even if the fate of the damned is worse on the traditional view than annihilationism, this doesn’t mean that any given mourner will perceive it that way."
You're equivocating here by distinguishing between objective reality and perception. The annihilationist objection is predicated on certain emotional responses being adequate to the objective reality. It is not merely a gut reaction of distaste, or a matter of how a mourner might feel in a certain stage of mourning.
"For instance, there are mourners who will say they’d rather spend eternity in hell (however they define hell) with their loved one than suffer eternal separation from their loved one."
Key phrase there 'however they define hell'. They are probably not defining hell as you and other advocates of eternal conscious torment envision it. These mourners envision a kind of satisfaction in hell from being with a loved one, a kind of positive good which outweighs the negatives of being in hell(!). But on your understanding of hell they would never have even that satisfaction.
"Furthermore, some folks say they fear oblivion more than suffering."
Their metric is suffering they know in this life. They are not imagining the unending, hopeless suffering of hell as you imagine it.
JD Walters to Steve Hays: "I know that your mind is already made up, that you're not here in search of the best answer, you're here only to defend the one you've already settled on."
ReplyDeleteThis is a false statement. Quite probably uttered more in frustration than anything else.
As Steve said, the best answer is the true answer and the divinely revealed answer. If Steve has already been given the best answer, then why shouldn't he defend what he's already settled on? Why the mean-spirited imputation upon Steve?
That's really beneath you, JD.