Annihilation and infant damnation

There are roughly three positions on hell:

A. Infernalism

On this view, eschatological punishment is never-ending. The damned suffer conscious eternal misery. 

B. Universalism

On this view, hell has a back door. Everyone will be saved in this life or the afterlife, although some may have to suffer remedial posthumous punishment to be saved.

C. Annihilationism

The impenitent will cease to exist. In principle, they could simply pass into oblivion when they die and that's it. That would dovetail nicely with physicalism. 

However, the Bible has a doctrine of the general resurrection, so annihilationists need to tack that on somewhere. The solution is to say the impenitent will be physically restored at the general resurrection, then annihilated. It's an ad hoc harmonization but the best they can do given the hand they dealt themselves. 

1. A related issue is the final fate of those who die below the age of reason. Because Infernalism is historically the dominant position, there's a traditional debate about whether some who died below the age of reason experience eternal misery.

However, as annihilationism gains grounds in nominally evangelical circles, that raises a parallel question in annihilationist eschatology regarding those who die before the age of reason. For instance:

Blake Giunta “Does Paul think all Jews who stay Jews are judged sinners and condemned to hell?” I answer: YES. Does this commit me to saying all children are likewise condemned? No. (Long discussion.) Moreover, I’m an annihilationist so I don't really mind saying they go to hell–i.e. punishment unto outer darkness. (E.g. I suspect my 6 month old would go to hell. It’s just that, unlike sinful adults who will first consciously suffer God’s just punishment/wrath prior to annihilation, innocent children like my son Luke would simply and immediate go right back to non-existence without pain. On my model, God has good reason to do this, and does no wrong because God does not owe Luke any more existence than he was already gifted.) 

2. That raises a number of questions. Blake doesn't seem to view annihilationism for those who die before the age of reason as punitive. The principle, rather, is that God never owes them existence in the first place, so God doesn't wrong them by not prolonging their existence. 

3. Does Blake think this is what happens to everyone who dies before the age of reason? It isn't punitive with a view to what they'd do if they grew up? It's not about their counterfactual future. 

4. God may have no obligation to initiate their existence, but having done so, does he assume a responsibility to and for rational creatures if he makes them? For instance, I may have no obligation to father a child, but having fathered a child, do I not thereby assume a parental duty to the child I fathered? Is there a duty to carry through with what I  began? 

Let's say I don't own my son existence, but I father a son anyway. At that stage, do I have the prerogative to make him revert to prenatal nonexistence, as if he never existened in the first place? 

One problem is that it isn't really a rollback the status quo ante, but a positive loss. My son now had the experience of conscious existence. So he has something to lose.

5. It seems to mean human existence has no inherent value. They don't exist, then they do exist, then they cease to exist. Their existence or nonexistence is entirely arbitrary. Like putting them in a time machine and sending them back to before they existed. Like flipping a coin. 

6. It seems to make creation gratuitous, as if there's no purpose for their existence. Like evolutionary dead-ends. Take the child who dies in a spontaneous miscarriage. On the annihilationist view, his existence simply terminates at that point. There's no intermediate state. No general resurrection for him. It was just a glitch. It arbitrarily ends at that point. 

Eschatological genocide

@RandalRauser

Some Christians seem to view the relationship between heaven & hell as being like a luxury resort beside a slum of misery. All the people holidaying at the resort have a wonderful time because a massive wall blocks out the misery just on the other side. That's a terrible picture.

https://twitter.com/RandalRauser/status/1249841346862395392

i) That's pretty rich coming from the likes of Rauser. After all, Rauser's an annihilationist. In Rauser's celestial resort, all the people holidaying have an even better time. Their view isn't blocked by an ugly wall. Rather, they enjoy an unobstructed view of the scenic countryside because God zapped the slum-dwellers out of existence. 

ii) It's ironic that Rauser constantly defames the OT as endorsing "genocide". What is annihilationism if not eschatological genocide? 

iii) BTW, notice that Rauser can never bring himself to discuss damnation in moral categories. 

Self-inflicted punishment

@RandalRauser

Christians sometimes defend the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment by saying that hell is self-imposed (rather than divinely-imposed) torment. But it is doubtful that this qualification helps much. 

It's true that that in itself is an insufficient justification. The criterion of self-affliction is too facile to stand on its own, although it can be a morally relevant factor.

If a person was engaging in egregious self-harm, wouldn't you restrain them, forcibly if necessary? Hell on this view is surely the ultimate form of self-harm. And we are to suppose nobody intervenes for eternity? 

The problem here is that Rauser is recasting the issue as if we were dealing with innocent victims of mental illness. People who engage in self-harm through no fault of their own. He uses the morally neutral language of "person" rather than the "wicked". Rauser's outlook is amoral. 

If, however, a terrorist was about to accidentally step on a cobra or a serial killer was about to accidentally step into quick sand, I wouldn't intervene to save them from self-inflicted harm. Hell is about retributive punishment, not misfortune. 

Does annihilation fit the crime?

A sequel to my prior post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/self-refuting-annihilationism.html

One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime.

http://rethinkinghell.com/explore/

Does annihilation fit the crime? What are ways in which a punishment is fitting or unfitting, proportionate or disproportionate, in relation to the offense?

Here the annihilationist takes issue with the temporal disparity. According to that objection, eternal punishment is quantitatively disproportionate. I already addressed that in the prior post. 

But what about about punishment that's qualitatively fitting or unfitting? Punishment in kind. Consider the concept of poetic justice or lex talons, where the punishment is ironically akin to the offense. The perpetrator suffers the same kind of thing he inflicted or intended to inflict on his victims. 

A classic example is financial restitution for a property crime. Here the punishment corresponds to the nature of the crime. 

To take a harsher example, if a hacker makes a living by ID theft, it is fitting that he should experience ID theft. Likewise, if a mugger beats up the victim, it's fitting that he should undergo public flogging. A violent punishment for a violent crime. If an arsonist burns down someone's house with everything in it, it is fitting if he should suffer the same fate.

Here the principle is proportionality in kind as well as degree. That can be taken to an inhumane or mechanical extreme. Lex talionis is controversial in some circles, but it's intuitively popular. A straightforward concept of just desert. It's mainly frowned upon by overbred critics who've been insulted from certain kinds of harm. At a safe distance, they can afford to be disapproving.  

Compare that to everlasting oblivion. How does that have anything in common with the offense? Isn't that utterly arbitrary in relation to the nature of the wrongdoing? How does everlasting oblivion correspond to different kinds of sin? 

Self-refuting annihilationism

One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime.

http://rethinkinghell.com/explore/

I quoted this once before in a different context, but now I'd like to comment on the objection directly. This is, of course, a stock objection to everlasting punishment. I've responded to that objection on many occasions, so I having nothing to new say on that front. 

What's striking about the objection in this context is that an annihilationist organization is lodging the objection. And in that context, the objection is ironic and incongruous. 

1. How is everlasting oblivion a proportionate punishment for temporal sins? Isn't never-ending oblivion out of proportion to whatever a sinner did in a few decades on earth? 

So the objection backfires. If you grant the principle, it cuts both ways. It cuts against any kind of infinite punishment for finite wrongdoing, whether infinite conscious misery or infinite oblivion. Given the principle, both kinds of punishment are vastly incommensurate with the offense. 

2 Moreover, annihilationism is inequitable in another regard, because the damned are punished equally regardless of their sins. All the damned suffer the same fate: eternal oblivion. So the punishment is indiscriminate.

If memory serves, some annihilationists try to rectify this inequity by posting that God doesn't annihilate all the damned instantly. Some undergo temporary punishment before they are zapped.

That, however, doesn't solve the problem. There are different factors that make punishment punitive. Memory can be a factor. Some people continue to be haunted by what happened to them even if its a thing of the past. Some people never recover from psychological injuries. 

Conversely, foreboding can be a factor. Dread of what awaits you. The fear that things will never get any better. You will never put the worst behind you. 

But even if some of the damned suffer temporary punishment prior to annihilation, oblivion erases memory and foreboding alike. They can't fear the future and they can't be haunted by the past. Once they cease to exist, they can't suffer at all. So, at the end of the day, annihilationism metes out a disproportionate punishment in two respects. 

Two-faced annihilationism

Sic

Evangelical conditionalists hold to a view of hell that results from a firm commitment to the truthfulness and perennial relevance of the Bible, and not from a desire to have its message be more palatable to our own culture.  We are not seeking to construct a more tolerable version of hell, as though primarily motivated by an emotional aversion to the idea of eternal torment.

http://rethinkinghell.com/statement/

Et Non

One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime. Philosophical and subjective intuitions about the justice of God are certainly not to override what the scriptures teach, but such reasoned counter-indications at least ought to warn us and make us reconsider our current understanding of scripture.

Bertrand Russell, articulating the sentiments of many who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, said, “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that he believed in hell.” (Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 17.) Charles Darwin said, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so . . . men who do not believe . . . will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, ed. Nora Barlow (W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 87.)

Few reasons for rejecting Christianity are given more often than the prospect that the lost face an eternity of torment as punishment for their sins. Many people cannot conceive of worshiping a God so malicious (in their mind) as to cause endless suffering forever. Others simply scoff at the message of Christ, finding the traditional view of hell to be an absurdly ludicrous, laughable notion.

http://rethinkinghell.com/explore/

Does Revelation teach annihilationism

https://equip.sbts.edu/article/revelation-teach-annihilationism/

Killing body and soul

Jesus also said the following:

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Emphasis added) (Matthew 10:28)

Hell is where God will destroy the soul! Some say that “destroy” doesn’t mean destruction in a literal sense, that it instead means conscious “ruin” or “loss.” However, aside from the consistent use of the word for “destroy” referring to killing and slaying3 when describing what one person does to another in the synoptic gospels,4 we have an indication of what is meant within the immediate context. Jesus directly contrasts what man cannot do (“kill the soul”) with what God can do. If Jesus meant that God would “ruin” body and soul in hell or something like that, then why would he directly contrast it to ability of men to kill the body and their inability to do likewise to the soul? It would amount to him saying, “don’t fear those who cannot kill the soul; instead, fear the one who isn’t going to kill the soul either.”

If God doesn’t do to the soul what humans can do only to the body (i.e. kill it, make it as vivacious and conscious as a corpse), then why would Jesus have even brought it up?

One might argue that even if annihilation5 was meant, Jesus only said that God can do it, not that he will. But, that raises the question of why Jesus would have warned about what God could do if God would never do it, even to the wicked, no matter what. If this were so, “then the same purpose would be served by some absurd warning like ‘be afraid of the One who can turn you into a melon.'”6

The meaning is simple. Man cannot render a soul as dead and lifeless as a corpse (which they can do to the body). But what man cannot do, God can and will do, which is to kill the soul, thereby destroying it as a living, conscious entity.

http://rethinkinghell.com/2013/10/29/introduction-to-evangelical-conditionalism-5-surprising-things-that-the-bible-says-about-hell/

There are some problems with this analysis:

i) What does Joseph Dear mean by "hell"? Does he simply mean the realm of the dead (hades)? What happens after you die?

ii) In that sense, hades is not where the body is destroyed. It's not as if decedents pass into hades, body and soul, then their body is destroyed in hades. Rather, when they die they leave their body behind, in this world. The body is destroyed by the natural process of dissolution. This is the place where the body undergoes destruction. So the parallel poses an obstacle for annihilationist dualists and physicalists alike. And that raises questions about what is meant by "destroy" in this context. 

iii) Many annihilationists are physicalists rather than dualists. So they don't think the soul is destroyed in hades inasmuch as man doesn't have a soul to destroy. 

iv) Physicalists believe that everyone passes into oblivion at the moment of death–the righteous and wicked alike. So everyone is destroyed in hades. That's not a fate reserved for the wicked. True, annihilationists believe the righteous will be resurrected, but that's in tension with this prooftext–in combination with physicalism.

v) I think the gist of the passage is that there's a fate worse than death. There's more to fear in the after life than in this life.

Valley of Hinnom

I reader drew my attention to this post:

https://michaelpahl.com/2017/10/02/jesus-and-hell/

Several fallacies in his argument:

i) Metaphors originate in a particular concrete phenomena, but acquire an abstract, analogical significance. The significance of the metaphor is not identical to the natural or historical exemplar. It develops a significance that goes beyond the exemplar, even in contrast to the exemplar. 

Take Edenic motifs or Mt. Zion. These take on symbolic connotations that are no longer conterminous with a specific address and/or the geography of that particular locale. Or, in modern usage, take metaphors like "salt mines" or "Siberian exile". These originate at a particular time or place, but they develop an emblematic significance that's independent of the historical exemplar. 

ii) Although the original context has interpretive resonance, the normative context for NT occurrences is how that's used in the NT. What the metaphor means at that stage of theological elaboration. 

iii) Moreover, it's not confined to the meaning of a particular word, but how that's combined with larger descriptions.

iv) Furthermore, Scripture uses a variety of metaphors to depict eschatological judgment. The concept of damnation isn't confined to the figurative range of one particular metaphor, but how that's built up on the basis of many figurative as well as literal descriptions. 

The general resurrection

Chris date is a propagandist for annihilationism. Jonathan McLatchie recently did a webinar in which Date was the speaker. I'll make some brief comments about Date's presentation. 

1. One of Date's basic arguments is that in the NT, "eternal life" is a gift to/for the saved. By implication, the damned will not enjoy eternal life. Relatedly, the saved will be resurrected. By implication, the damned will not be resurrected. 

i) This raises a question of systematic theology. On the one hand are passages about the resurrection of the just. On the other hand are passages about the general resurrection. How should these be harmonized? Date only quotes one side of the evidence. If there's a point of tension in the "traditionalist" position, it doesn't originate with "traditionalism", but goes back to the witness of Scripture. 

Someone who denies the inerrancy of Scripture would say the Bible itself has divergent theological traditions regarding the fate of the damned. Date doesn't take that route, but in that event, the onus is on "traditionalists" and annihilationists alike to explain, if they can, how these two sets of passages can be integrated. Date acts as if that's a problem unique to "traditionalists". 

ii) In addition, passages for the general resurrection create a point of tension for the annihilationists. In that case, the resurrection of the body isn't confined to the saved. Yet Date wants to argue that resurrection entails immortality in the case of the saved. 

Moreover, what's the point of restoring the damned to life if God destroys them all over again?

iii) One possible explanation, from a "traditionalist" perspective, is that "life" and "death" in some eschatological passages have a figurative significance that goes beyond biological life and death. So even though both the saved and the damned will be resurrected and exist forever, there will be a drastic difference in their respective quality of life.

2. Another issue is Date's flat reading of Scripture, where he assumes that when the NT uses imagery from the OT, that must retain the same meaning, as if NT usage can't be metaphorical. To take a comparison, consider statements about Jesus: Jesus is the paschal lamb, Jesus is manna, Jesus is the light of the world, Jesus is the vine. The imagery has OT antecedents, which are literal in the original context, but figurative in the NT context.

3. He deploys a self-defeating argument about how death and hades are thrown into the lake of fire, which he takes to mean nobody will ever die again. Yet that's an argument for everlasting conscious punishment rather than annihilationism.

4. Date uses an odd argument regarding vicarious atonement. Problem is, Jesus didn't die for sinners in the sense of dying our death, as if he died so that we won't. Each of us dies his own death. Jesus didn't die in place of my own death. It's not vicarious in terms of death, but punishment. He death doesn't take the place of my death, but the place of my punishment. (I'd say he died for the elect, but that's secondary to the immediate point at issue.)

Date misrepresents Beale's stated position (in the quote from his commentary):

i) Date defines "death" as biological death. But it doesn't follow that Beale defines "death" as biological death in terms of what "death" means in Revelation. There's an equivocation here, on whether "death" in Revelation is a metaphor for damnation. 

ii) Moreover, Beale says the redeemed won't have to suffer in the age to come. But Date turns that upside down, as if Beale says the damned won't have to suffer in the age to come.

5. One point of clarification: the orthodox position doesn't entail eternal "torment". Punishment is not synonymous with torment. There can be degrees of punishment. Different kinds of punishment. "Torment" has a narrow connotation (i.e. torture). Eternal "misery" would be more accurate.

To use the word "torment" as a synonym for everlasting punishment implies that all the damned suffer torment. But while some of the damned may well suffer torment, and deservedly so, is that a universal feature of damnation?

Bedlam

i) I'd like to briefly compare the orthodox position on the Christian afterlife with physicalist annihilationism. I'm going to focus on the afterlife of the saints rather than the damned.

ii) On the orthodox position, humans have immortal souls which survive the death of the body. On this view, the postmortem state has both a vertical and horizontal dimension. Vertically, the human race dies in stages. The older generation dies, then the younger generation dies. Great-grandparents die, then grandparents die, then parents die, then children die, then grandchildren die, then great-grandchildren die, and so on and so forth.

This means that, to a great extent, the intermediate state mirrors a historical sequence. The first human generation died first, then the next human generation, and so on. From the earliest to the latest. 

In that respect, the intermediate state preserves the cultural memories of every time and place. Each period and culture and is represented in the memories of particular saints. And that's laid down in a natural sequence, based on their arrival date. In that respect, dying is a bit like stepping into a time machine. 

That also raises the question of whether the intermediate state has a blended culture, as saints from different times and places socialize.

Related to the vertical dimension is a horizontal dimension. We don't simply die as discrete individuals. Rather, we die with our contemporaries. Death is roughly grouped according to age-mates. People of the same generation tend to die within the same basic time span. That's a part of what defines a generation. They were born around the same time and they die around the same time.

Of course, there are partial exceptions. Sometimes a member of the younger generation predeceases a member of the older generation. Yet they are still contemporaries. It's just a distinction between younger and older contemporaries.

On this view, when you die, there are members of your own generation waiting to receive you. Likewise, there are members from the generation before you. And in this life, you knew members of the generation before you. There are roughly three generations alive at any particular time in the here and now–sometimes more. 

When you die, the greeting party includes, or consists of, your contemporaries. You and they speak the same language. Not merely the same language, but the same period language. You and they have the same cultural background.

In addition, the intermediate state contains people from different periods. But because new arrivals disembark in a historical sequences, and because they disembark incrementally, rather than all at once, new arrivals are gradually acculturated to the intermediate state. There are people there whom they can instantly relate to on their own level. And that eases the transition as they get acquainted with saints from different times and places.

iii) Now let's compare that to physicalist annihilationism. On that view, the brain generates the mind. When your body dies, when you undergo brain death, that erases your personality. You cease to exist. The mind is gone.

Then, at the resurrection of the just, God recreates your body and uploads your mind (consciousness, memories) into the new brain. God had a copy of your mind, which he transfers to the new brain.

Millennia may separate your death from your resurrection, but you're oblivious to the interval, long or short. There's no you to be aware of the gap. There's the moment of death, when you pass into oblivion, for however long, then the next thing you know, you're alive in your new body. 

There is no intermediate state, just the final state on the new earth. Because the resurrection of the just is simultaneous, all the saints who died at different times and places are suddenly restored to consciousness at the same time. There's no transitional stage. No phasing one generation of decedents into the company of former generations. It happens all at once. 

On the face of it, that would be extremely disorienting. OT saints, medieval saints, saints from the 18C, 19C, 20C and so on, all thrown together. Bedlam. 

I'm not saying this is a deal-breaker for physicalist annihilationism. But it's a jarring scenario compared to the orthodox position. 

Postmortem stages

The Bible distinguishes between this life and the afterlife. It subdivides the afterlife into the intermediate state and the final state. And it subdivides the final state into heaven and hell. The question is how to sequence these stages. 

I. Traditional Protestant eschatology

Every man has one of two eternal destinies. Every man is either heavenbound or hellbound. Those run on parallel tracks.

In addition, the traditional view has a two-stage postmortem eschatology: when a man dies, his soul passes into the intermediate state. Then, on the day of judgement, the dead will be resurrected. The saints will spend eternity on the new earth while the damned will presumably spend eternity at some alternative physical location. 

The parallel tracks temporarily converge at the Parousia, where you have a common event (the general resurrection), then they diverge after that event.

There's a simple logic to the traditional position. On the one hand, men die at different times. On the other hand, the day of judgment is a one-time event which all men will experience at the same time. The intermediate state is sequenced successively and individualistically while the final state is simultaneous and corporate. 

The only folks who don't experience the intermediate state are people alive at the time of the Parousia. 

II. Catholicism

In traditional Catholicism, those who die in a state of grace pass into Purgatory before they go to heaven, while those who die in a state of mortal sin are inexorably hellbound. 

III. Universalism

A universalist must do something with all the passages regarding eschatological judgment. In universalism, heaven and hell aren't parallel tracks, but successive stages: many decedents must go through hell to get to heaven. They first go to hell when they die: a purgatorial hell. Then they graduate to heaven.

IV. Annihilationism

Annihilationists subdivide into dualist and physicalist annihilationists. They must do something with the passages regarding eschatological judgment.

According to physicalist annihilationism, the damned pass into oblivion at the moment of death. They are resurrected at the day of judgment, suffer a period of temporary punishment, and are then annihilated.

According to dualist annihilationism, the damned pass into the intermediate state at the moment of death, in which they suffer psychological punishment. They are resurrected on the day of judgment, and then annihilated. 

Each position only has so many possible combinations, given the variables. There are only so many ways in which the variables can be serially arranged. So the variables fall into place, depending on the commitments of the adherent.  

The traditional Protestant position is the most straightforward reading of Scripture. That's how Scripture lays things how. After you die, you either pass into a heavenly or hellish intermediate state. And the final state is a physical extension of one of those two conditions. 

A challenge facing annihilationists and universalists is how to show that Scripture selects for their particular series of postmortem events. Universalists have a different sequence from annihilationists. Dualist annihilationists have a different sequence from physicality annihilationists. Does the Bible specifically outline one sequence of postmortem stages over another? Or is it the position in itself that dictates a specific sequence of postmortem stages? 

"An everlasting Auschwitz"

I had a brief exchange with Christian apologist and annihilationist Matt Flanagan on Facebook:

BTW, [John] Wenham double-edged sword. For instance, he says:

Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice. It is a doctrine which I do not know how to preach without negating the loveliness and glory of God. From the days of Tertullian it has frequently been the emphasis of fanatics. It is a doctrine which makes the Inquisition look reasonable.

That is, of course, the classic moralistic objection to eternal punishment. In my experience, annihilationists of the Rethinking Hell stripe avoid that argument because it divulges the essentially sentimental motivation for annihilationism, which is bad PR if you're endeavoring to make an intellectually respectable case for annihilationism. 

In addition, Wenham was consistent enough to take his position to a logical extreme:

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.

So he's prepared to sacrifice eternal heaven to eliminate eternal hell. Both the saints and the damned face eventual oblivion. 

"The Case For Conditional Immortality" Facing Hell: The Story of a Nobody, An Autobiography 1913 - 1996 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), chap. 27.

I originally said:

We need to draw an elementary distinction between informed biblical scholars who happen to espouse annihilationism, and informed biblical scholars who endeavor to make a detailed case for annihilationism. Mere name-dropping is a fallacious argument from authority. So, for instance, Wenham did attempt to make a detailed case for his positions.

Matt counters by saying:

The comment is a few sentences of an article which contains 20 pages of argument which is entirely devoted to exegetical argument…So Steve its rather misleading to take that one paragraph out of context and suggest Wenham based his conclusion on sentimental emotion.

Notice Matt acts as if he's correcting my characterization, when in fact his observation is entirely consistent with my original statement that Wenham makes a detailed case for his position. 

To ignore a person’s actual arguments, and dismiss it on alleged motives is the ad hominin circumstiantal argument, and basing this fallacy on the reading a few lines omitted from there context suggests something of a straw man is being attacked.

i) It was never my aim in a Facebook discussion to present a systematic refutation of Wenham's arguments. Facebook is not an efficient medium for that kind of analysis. I have in fact engaged the exegetical arguments for annihilationism on other occasions. 

ii) As far as that goes, there's nothing inherently fallacious about ad hominin circumstantial argument. When, say, we're assessing the credibility of an expert witness or putative eyewitness, it is not invalid to take into consideration a vested interest or conflict of interest. 

iii) In addition, Wenham is not the only annihilationist who tips his hand in that regard. Take Clark Pinnock's statement that everlasting punishment 

...pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies whom he does not even allow to die.

Or John Stott's statement that 

I want to repudiate with all the vehemence of which I am capable the glibness, what almost appears to be the glee, the Schadenfreunde, with which some Evangelicals speak about hell. It is a horrible sickness of mind or spirit…Well, emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterising their feelings or cracking under the strain.

Does that disprove annihilationism? No. But I notice that proponents at Rethinking Hell are less candid than Stott, Wenham, and Pinnock.

iv) Moreover, it's entirely consonant with motivated reasoning to make a detailed case for your position. For instance, Dale Tuggy rejects the Trinity and Incarnation because by his lights that's incompatible with the law of identity. He then proceeds to reinterpret all the prooftexts for the deity of Christ. 

Or take people who reject or reinterpret Bible passages condemning homosexuality because that offends their moral sensibilities. 

Or, to take an issue dear to Matt's heart, consider critics who reject the historicity and/or inerrancy of OT holy war commands and war narratives because that conflicts with their preconception of divine benevolence. 

In the previous sentence Wenham shows he is using the word 'everlastingness' in contrast to eternity understood as timelessness, This is confirmed by the very next sentence, omitted from your quote, where he describes eternity as involving 'deliverance from sin and the bliss of being with God in heaven, knowing that the inexorable march of death has been abolished for ever ' So, its simply misleading to suggest that Wenham here is suggesting heaven is finite in duration. You have to snip the quote carefully so the previous sentence and proceeding sentence are omitted to give that impression. What Wenham says is that, as opposed to being an existence that is everlasting in duration. Heaven is a timeless existence in which there is no death.

i) Biological immortality doesn't entail a timeless mode of subsistence. What does that even mean? Biological life necessitates biological *processes*. If the final state involves the resurrection of the body, then that can't be timeless. Processes are inherently temporal.

ii) If by "heaven", Matt means the intermediate state, then there's no death in heaven because the saints are already dead. Death is a prerequisite to enter the intermediate state. 

Put another way, the intermediate state is a discarnate state. In that condition, they can't die again because they no longer have a body. Biological death presumes biological life which presumes a physical body.

I don't know if Matt is a physicalist or substance dualist, but his claims make no sense on either position. 

iii) Moreover, this fails to address the underlying issue. Annihilationists need to offer a consistent meaning for aionios. A meaning that applies equally to promises of eschatological reward as well as threats of eschatological just desert. The dilemma is how to finesse the asymmetry in the respective fates of the saints and the damned if aionios has a consistent sense.

Living dogs and dead lions

4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten (Eccl 9:4-5).

This is a prooftext for annihilationism. But bracketing other objections, a basic problem with that interpretation is that it fails to take the epistemological viewpoint of the narrator into account. A common refrain in Ecclesiastes is the narrator's appeal to what he saw, viz. Eccl 2:13,24; 3:16,22; 4:1,4,7,15; 8:9-10,17; 9:11. So he's speaking from experience. His statements and generalizations are literally observations. 

What he says is true from that perspective. And that accounts for the pessimism and cynicism which pervades the book. If you judge the world by appearances, then reality is pretty depressing. 

But that frame of reference, while true insofar as it goes, has decided limitations. There's more to reality than meets the eye. Existence doesn't begin and end with the physical and sensory dimension of existence. Empirical knowledge is informative and indispensable within the inherent limitations of empirical knowledge. That's just a sample of reality. 

The annihilationist interpretation overlooks the epistemological reference frame of the narrator. Throughout the book, he is speaking from the standpoint of an observer. Judging by appearances. By this life. 

Some objections to annihilationism

1. For physicalist annihilationists, the death of Christ dissolved the hypostatic union. Jesus passed into oblivion at the moment death. Not that the Son ceased to exist, but Jesus is a composite being. 

This requires the Resurrection not merely to be the restoration of a body, but a second Incarnation. 

2. Some lines of ostensible evidence for the afterlife are near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and apparitions of the dead. How do physicalist annihilationists deal with those lines of evidence?

3. Some people commit suicide to elude justice. Take top Nazis like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Göring, and Rommel. If, according to physicalist annihilationists, you cease to exist at the moment of death, didn't they succeed in cheating justice?   

4. Physicalist annihilationists might counter that the damned will suffer temporary postmortem punishment. But that raises the question of where Scripture teachrd that the damned pass into oblivion when they die, are later resurrected on the day of judgment, after which they are punished, after which they are annihilated?

For dualist annihilationists, where does Scripture teach a two-stage postmortem punishment? Where does Scripture teach that after the lost die, they first suffer temporary punishment, after which they are then annihilated? Where do we find that sequence in Scripture? 

5. In Mt 26:24, Jesus said Judas would be better off had he never been born.  But how does that follow if postmortem punishment is temporary?

6. Some annihilationists say aionios has a qualitative rather than quantitative/temporal meaning. It refers to a kind of life, and not everlasting duration. Other annihilationists say aionios denotes a never-ending outcome rather than a never-ending process.  

So what does aionios mean in reference to passages about eschatological salvation and judgment? If aionios doesn't mean the damned will suffer forever, does it still mean the saints will enjoy eternal happiness? Can you give "eternal" a consistent sense that makes promises of eternal life meaningful? Are there any Bible texts that promise of eternal life for Christians, given the annihilationist interpretations of aionios? 

7. Many prooftexts for annihilationism employ destructive abstract words as well as destructive concrete images. 

i) The stock example is destruction by fire. Characteristics of destruction by fire are visibility and physicality. Fire consumes a physical object. While it's burning, you can see it. Fire reduces the object to ashes. It generates temporary smoke. 

ii) There is, though, an obvious limitation to the scope of this metaphor. What is destroyed? The body? A body is physical and visible. At death, a body undergoes destruction. That can be a natural process, or that can be expedited by cremation. In addition, fire is sometimes the agent of death. Take a city that's torched by the enemy. Or fire as a method of execution. 

iii) A problem with using these passages to demonstrate annihilationism is that the scope of the metaphor doesn't address something that's invisible, immaterial, or incorporeal. You can't burn a soul. You can't see a soul burn. A soul can't undergo a process of physical destruction. That doesn't mean a soul is intrinsically indestructible, but the imagery of eschatological destruction involves physical destruction. Burning cities and burning bodies. 

iv) The imagery doesn't address the status of the soul. An annihilationist might contend that the imagery is a figurative illustration for the destruction of the soul. But that's not an implication of the imagery. At best, that's consistent with the imagery. Yet that's equally consistent with restricting the imagery to bodies. The observable death and destruction of the body. 

v) Of course, many annihilationists are physicalists. For them, that's all there is and ever was to the human constitution. 

But on that view, the imagery is not essentially metaphorical. It really does describe physical destruction. Not necessarily death or destruction by fire, but fire as a graphic metaphor for physical destruction. Specifically, destruction of the body. Bodies are all there is. 

So there's a tension between the hermeneutic of dualist and physicalist annihilationism. Physicalists take the imagery more literally. 

vi) In addition, physicalist annihilationists must provide a separate argument for physicalism. If humans have an incorporeal soul, then prooftexts picturing physical destruction fall short of what is needed to establish the claim. 

Mortality

This is a sequel to my earlier post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-case-for-conditionalism.html

1. Chris Date said: 

God had warned Adam that “in the day” he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die (Gen 2:17). The Hebrew phrase translated “in the day” often just means “when,” and needn’t be taken woodenly any more than when one says, “When you eat too much, you get fat.” Had God intended to emphasize that Adam’s death would take place immediately, he might have used the demonstrative pronoun: “in that day” (cf. Exod 13:8). Instead, when God carries out the sentence of which he had warned, that sentence is clearly literal death. Hence he says that “to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19), and he evicts Adam and Eve from the garden so that they will not “live forever,” lacking access to the tree of life (Gen 3:22–23). So mankind fell into mortality.

I'm in nearly complete agreement with this statement. My only disagreement is that I wouldn't say mankind fell into morality. Rather, Adam and Eve were created mortal, with an opportunity to gain immortality for themselves and their posterity–and opportunity which they blew. 

2. My bigger is disagreement is that Date makes the aforesaid statement to support this claim:

#2: Scripture consistently teaches that human beings are mortal and will not live forever unless God grants them immortality. This he will grant to the saved, but will withhold from the lost, who therefore will not live forever.

The problem with this claim is that it flounders on a fatal equivocation. Mortality/immortality can mean two different things:

i) The immortality of the body

To be immortal is to be deathless. Mortals die, whereas immortals never die. In this sense, mortality/immortality refers to physical or biological life and death. 

ii) The immortality of the soul

To be immortal is to survive death. The body expires and decays, but your personality subsists because the mind is essentially independent of the body.

The soul can't die because it was never alive in the first place. It was never alive in the biological sense. A human soul is not the kind of entity that can expire or decay. It is not a physical organism. 

(i) is more of a popular or dictionary definition whereas (ii) is more of a philosophical definition. Now my immediate purpose is not to argue for one or the other. Rather, my point is that death is only an argument for annihilationism if we define mortality in terms of (i), and combine that with physicalism. 

3. But there's another problem for Date's argument. He says "I don't, actually, define biological death as equivalent to oblivion." But that presents a twofold problem:

i) If biological death isn't equivalent to oblivion, then how can death count as evidence for annihilationism? You see, Date talks about mortality as if that's evidence for annihilationism. But when he denies that biological death is equivalent to oblivion, how does that support his position? If you don't pass into oblivion when you die, how is death or mortality evidence for annihilationism? 

ii) In addition, his denial is nonsensical. By his own admission, Date is a physicalist. And according to physicalism, the mind produces the brain. It's a cause/effect relation. Hence, brain death results in the extinction of consciousness. 

It's like a light-bulb that's connected to a power generator. Cut the power and the light goes out. 

Since Date is a physicalist, there's no way he can compartmentalize the implications that physicalism has for annihilationism. His commitment to physicalism delimits how life and death can be defined. 

The only way to avoid that implication is if God made duplicate bodies, stored on an M-class planet somewhere else in the universe, and at the moment of death, God instantly uploads the decedent's consciousness into the duplicate brain (which presumes a computational theory of mind). Otherwise, there's nothing to bridge the gap between the moment of death and the general resurrection. 

Since this duplicate body scenario obviously doesn't happen on earth, it must occur at some extraterrestrial locale. But from what I've read, annihilationists typically reserve the general resurrection for the day of judgment. 

Perhaps Date can crawl out from under the desk he's quivering beneath to offer an alternative that's consistent with his commitment to physicalism. 

4. Death can either be defined as an event or a condition. In reality, it is both. What is the postmortem condition of a decedent? What condition is the decedent in, given physicalist annihilationism? Answer: oblivion.

5. Let's approach this from another angle. Suppose we could preserve a corpse from decay. There'd be no brain function. Would it be dead or alive according to Date?

Suppose we could digitize a person and store the data, then turn the abstract data back into its pre-digitized form. Would the individual be alive during storage?