Annihilation vvs Suffering
- From: Peter Lear <Christian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 12:18:45 +0100
Apologies for starting a different thread, but I find that the threads with no snipping but lots of contributions are too confusing to follow. Tom asked me to state why I believed in annihilation of souls from scripture. I offer the following as a selection, and not the totality:
Psa. 37:20 But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.
Obadiah 16 And they shall be as though they had not been.
Rom 6.22 now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It seems very clear to me that God will clear away and destroy those whom he has judged. That is my position based on scripture and prayerful reflection on the nature of Love in God as revealed in Jesus. Destruction being kinder and more loving than eternal retributive 'justice'.
However, I do realise that there are those who accept the doctrine of eternal suffering/torment. The following from the Moody Handbook of Theology:
"Evangelicals agree that the souls of all men will live forever in resurrected bodies in either heaven or hell. Unbelievers will continue in an eternal state of torment. The expression “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28) suggests both suffering and despair, v21 implying a continued existence of suffering. In Matthew 25:46 the terms “punishment” and “life” are modified by the same word “eternal,” hence if life is eternal, then of necessity so is punishment. Annihilation is denied in this verse; punishment continues for an endless duration.
At the end of the age the devil, the beast, and the false prophet will be thrown into the lake of fire where “hey will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).
While there is not much said about it, it appears there will be degrees of punishment in hell. This is generally acknowledged from Luke 12:47–8 where the slave who did not know his master’ will and did not do it will receive few floggings, whereas the slave who knew his master’ will but did not do it will receive many lashes. Some also use Revelation 20:12 to suggest degrees of suffering, but this text probably stresses that the works of unbelievers will be deficient and will condemn them.
Finally, hell may be seen as “a) a total absence of the favour of God; (b) an endless disturbance of life as a result of the complete domination of sin; (c) positive pains and sufferings in body and soul; and (d) such subjective punishments as pangs of conscience, anguish, despair, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, Matt. 8:12; 13:50; Mark 9:43–4, 47–8; Luke 16:23, 28; Rev. 14:10; 21:8."
I do not agree with the interpretations above, but they are widely and honestly held, and we shall never really know for sure, this side of death itself.
But I have not come across anything in scripture or the Fathers, or Church Traditional teaching which portrays the picture of hell that Tom gives us. Perhaps he would explain.
Peter
-- Rev'd Peter Lear Assistant Priest Upper Coquetdale, Newcastle Diocese .
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