Sunday, January 11, 2015

Universal annihilationism


To my knowledge, the late John Wenham is the only annhilationist who, to his credit, bites the bullet on Mt 25:46. Given the symmetrically divergent destinies, he's prepared to sacrifice eternal life to jettison eternal misery. If you reject the eternal suffering of the damned, then by parity of argument you must reject the eternal bliss of the saints:

When I analyze my own thoughts, I find that (rightly or wrongly) everlastingness has virtually no place in my concept of eternal life. Everlasting harp playing or hymn singing or even contemplation is not attractive. What the heart yearns for is deliverance from sin and the bliss of being with God in heaven, knowing that the inexorable march of death has been abolished for ever. "The Case for Conditional Immortality."
Wenham is a consistent annihilationist. A universal annihilationist. The price of rejecting eternal conscious punishment is the corollary rejection of eternal life. I know of no other annihilationist who shares his bleak candor. Some people hate hell so much that they'd rather consign everyone to oblivion. It's the annihilationist equivalent of antinatalism. No one should go to heaven if anyone goes to hell. 

No comments:

Post a Comment