Reasonable Faith

Kevin Harris: Bill, we've had our eye on what's being called Hellgate for some time now. It's a video from Kirk Cameron examining the biblical teaching of hell. Kirk has been questioning his view. He had a conversation with his son about this, which led to this whole thing.

So he invited Paul Copan, Chris Date, Gavin Ortlund, and Dan Paterson to a panel discussion, and they got together and just laid it all out on this doctrine. Two different views. We've been delaying a podcast on it because you've been working on this particular section of your systematic philosophical theology. So tell us about that section as we get started.

William Lane Craig: I'm now involved in working on the fifth volume of my systematic philosophical theology. This section is devoted to the subject of eschatology or the doctrine of the last things. These things typically include the return of Christ, the general resurrection of the dead, Judgment Day, and then the final state of either heaven or hell. It's that last topic that is the issue discussed by this panel today.

Kevin Harris: And Bill, I know also that you wanted to wait until you read Dr. Paul Copan's book. It's called *Concerning Hell* that he just published from IVP Academic. You wanted to read that book as well before we launched into this podcast. Did you get a chance to do that?

William Lane Craig: Yes, it is an excellent book that I can recommend to our listeners. It's a two-views book that contrasts the two views that we'll be talking about today from six different perspectives, such as biblical theology, New Testament exegesis, systematic theology, and pastoral theology.

So there is a proponent of each view in each of those different areas. Then there is a response from someone on the other side. So what one gets is a very thorough and fair debate on this subject that I recommend highly.

Kevin Harris: And again, the four panelists from these clips who we are about to take a look at, they represent the two views of the nature and duration of hell that we're talking about. The eternal conscious torment is more of the traditional view, and the conditional immortality view. We're going to define those here in just a moment. Let's go to the first clip. Chris Date clarifies what he sees as a common confusion.

Chris Date: One thing I'd like to add that I think we can all agree on is that although the period of time between death and resurrection is not entirely unrelated to this topic, we are nevertheless debating the nature of something that happens after resurrection from that intermediate state. Very often, people confuse the debate over hell with the debate over what happens when you die, but we're really not talking about what happens when we die. We're talking about what's going to happen when we're resurrected from death.

Kevin Harris: He suggests that either view requires thinking beyond the so-called intermediate state after death. Are there biblical grounds for thinking there is an intermediate state, Bill?

William Lane Craig: Yes, I think that there are, Kevin. The biblical view of man is body-soul dualism. When the body dies, the soul persists in this intermediate state until the resurrection of the dead at the return of Christ.

Notice that there is already a division in the intermediate state between the redeemed and the cursed or the condemned. The redeemed go to be with Christ in paradise, whereas the unredeemed, the cursed, go to Hades.

Already in the intermediate state, we see a manifestation of God's retributive justice. I think this is extremely important because both sides in this debate seem to agree that however you construe the nature of hell, this is, like the intermediate state, a manifestation of God's retributive justice. He is giving to the unredeemed their just desert. The point of contention is, what is the nature of that just desert?

Kevin Harris: Up next, Kirk asks each side to steel man the opposing view. Let me say a little something about steel manning your opponent's view. It's the opposite of straw man, and Justin Brierley does the same thing just to make sure that you understand the opposing view. You're asked to spell it out. What is it that the other person believes? So Dan Paterson offers what he thinks is the basic eternal conscious torment view.

Dan Paterson: The view is the idea that those who are resurrected face final judgment and whose names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life are cast into the lake of fire. It leans into the language like undying worms or unquenchable fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, to say that the lost cast into the flames of hell will be conscious for all eternity.

In one sense, they will be physically embodied, experience physical life in hell. In one sense, they will be immortal, but the traditionalist would say that immortality in the Bible has more to do with the gift of life in God's presence rather than life in hell. But they'll be alive forever in hell experiencing some kind of negative experience from the judgment of God.

Now, this conscious aspect, there have been various pictures of how this has looked across history. The dominant view from sort of Augustine, the beginning of the fifth century all the way through to really the 20th century, early 1900s, was that this involved predominantly physical torments. So you were in an immortal body that cannot die being burned by the holy presence of God, this eternal fire, being regenerated so that you'll be dying but never dying, constantly experiencing pain.

Kevin Harris: Now, Dan no longer holds that view, but that's his take on the definition. I must say, Bill, that that is a grim scenario. Gavin Ortlund later says he doesn't even like to think about all this. It's probably what C.S. Lewis had in mind when he wrote that the doctrine of hell is intolerable.

Yet Lewis thought the doctrine is morally and scripturally sound. Nevertheless, the description Dan just gave is probably what the average person thinks of as hell. It's a place of conscious torment in some kind of resurrected body for all eternity. Notice that Dan said one's body in hell would be regenerated or sustained so that one is dying but never dying. I'm with Gavin on this; I find it hard to think about.

William Lane Craig: Yes, I think it is undoubtedly an uncomfortable doctrine. I think this cannot but raise the suspicion that a large part of the motivation for annihilationism is the emotional reaction to this prospect. But biblically, we're not committed to the idea of someone's body being literally burned up and regenerated. That's more of a medieval extrapolation.

The key point here is that on the traditional view, the condemned will still exist in hell. I would not say with Dan that they will be alive in hell. No, they will be dead, and this is important lest we think that death means annihilation. The dead still exist, but the unrighteous dead are separated from God, who is the source of life, and so cannot truly be said to be alive even though they still exist.

Kevin Harris: Dan continues with a popular aspect of the traditional view.

Dan Paterson: In the last couple of hundred years, there have been offshoots that have become far more popular, maybe a view called separationism, where the kind of torment that you experience is more as a result of separation from God. It's the torment of privation. Separated from the goodness of God's light, instead you experience sin and all of its effects being handed over, just like Romans 1 would say God handed them over to the lusts of their flesh.

God hands you over to your sins and so you receive within yourself more of a psychological loss or torment like a flower removed from the sun. Or another view which is more popular, which is kind of a dehumanization view or the eternal Gollum-ing picture, where you become less and less the human you were created to be as sin takes its full course and that that itself is the source of the kind of punishment you receive. But those would be probably the broad definitions of eternal conscious torment.

Kevin Harris: You just mentioned that, Bill. It's also a very popular view, especially among the laymen today. I hear it a lot. The emphasis is on separation from God, and it avoids the torture chamber caricature of hell. He also mentions the Gollum effect, which is found in Jewish legends and seen in *Lord of the Rings*. The character Smeagol is given over to his sin and corruption and gradually devolves into the despicable, pathetic Gollum who barely resembles anything human.

William Lane Craig: Right. The whole dispute between traditionalists and annihilationists comes down to the nature of the punishment that the damned receive. Traditionally, it's thought to be some sort of conscious suffering, whatever that might be. But the annihilationist thinks that the punishment is nonexistence. The point is that the essence of the traditional view is some sort of everlasting conscious suffering, whether that's physical or spiritual is an in-house debate. The annihilationist, on the other hand, thinks that the essence of the punishment is nonexistence.

Kevin Harris: At this point, Paul Copan wants to bring in some information on the biblical meaning of torment.

Paul Copan: I think there are words that are associated, and of course there is a conversation that judgment comes in degrees, that not all will see the same sort of judgment. I think this is why the term torment can fuzz out that sort of a distinction of the degrees of judgment.

But you also see terms that are used to describe the final state as conscious, which has to do with Revelation 14, that they are without rest. They have no rest day and night, so there is that restlessness. Romans chapter 2 talks about where as for the believer there is glory, honor, and immortality, for the unbeliever there is trouble and distress.

Torment can sometimes be like Jesus' parents who were looking for him. They were anxious about him. Or the language is used in Acts chapter 20 when Paul was saying goodbye to the Ephesians, that they were grieved, they were distressed, that they were probably not going to see Paul again.

So there can be this range of inner states that doesn't amount to what some people describe as some sort of an infinite torture chamber. I think we need to get away from that sort of language of people being fried or whatever. We also need to keep in mind too that God will not judge someone with too great a severity or too great a leniency.

God is going to do what is just and also loving. Even in that passage in Luke 16, Abraham tells the rich man, he calls him very tenderly, "child." He addresses him lovingly. Even the person who is cast out in Matthew 22 who doesn't have the right clothing, he is addressed as "friend." So I would argue that even as we talk about the final judgment, God's love still continues, that God is basically allowing people to have their own way. God, it could be argued, for God to obliterate someone could look rather unloving. Whereas He says, if you want to stay alive, I'll let you stay alive. That's your choice, but you can just have your own way forever, find happiness your own way forever. So I think there are different ways that we can cash this sort of a thing out.

Kevin Harris: I think this is the pinnacle excerpt from this whole exchange. Paul not only eliminates some caricatures, but he clarifies some biblical passages on the meaning of torment. Just to summarize some of the things he said, Bill, he says that we can trust God to know the severity of judgment, that there are indications of degrees of punishment in scripture in hell, and that God's love and justice are not diminished by the doctrine of hell.

William Lane Craig: I don't want our listeners to miss the important point that Paul Copan is making here. Paul indicates that there are degrees of punishment in hell. Now, that would make no sense whatsoever if the damned are simply obliterated and cease to exist, as the annihilationist claims. So annihilationism seems to be inconsistent with this notion of degrees of punishment in hell.

Paul also points to a number of scriptural passages that show that the suffering is conscious. He quotes Romans 2:9, "There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil." He might have also mentioned Second Thessalonians 1:6, where Paul says, "God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you." Now, these sorts of terms—tribulation, distress, affliction—these are descriptions of psychological states that are incompatible with nonexistence.

Kevin Harris: Let's define the other view represented on the panel. Gavin gives his turn to steel man, and so he gives what he understands is the conditional immortality view.

Gavin Ortlund: In my video on this, I tried my best to steel man the conditionalist view, and so together we can work at this. But I would just say the experience of the damned is an eternal punishment, but that is not an ongoing conscious existence. Rather it is that different annihilationists could maybe understand this differently. I think you'd have freedom within that view.

But it could be some long duration of time first, or it could be a lesser one, but there will ultimately be an extinction or annihilation or destruction of the damned in hell. Sometimes that will even just be understood in terms of how could it be otherwise if they are not given the gift of immortality. So one of the things we want to say to try to steel man an annihilationist perspective is the word eternal doesn't always require that it is eternal in the experience of it as opposed to in some other aspect like its consequence. Just as we speak of an eternal sin, but that doesn't mean you're sinning for eternity.

Kevin Harris: That's Gavin's understanding of conditional immortality. This view is probably not familiar to a lot of our listeners. I was not very familiar with it either.

William Lane Craig: In Jesus' story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew chapter 25, in verse 46, Jesus contrasts the redeemed and the damned on Judgment Day. He says that the redeemed will go away into eternal life, whereas the damned will go away into eternal punishment. Now, Gavin points to an essential difference between the traditionalist and the annihilationist understanding of the expression "eternal punishment," or better, "everlasting punishment."

On the traditionalist view, everlasting punishment means being punished forever. But the annihilationist interprets the expression to mean that the consequences of the punishment are everlasting. One will be annihilated and therefore forever cease to exist. In that sense, the punishment can be said to be everlasting.

So let's take capital punishment as an example. Is capital punishment an everlasting punishment? The annihilationist says yes because the consequences of the criminal's being executed last forever. He will never come back to life, so in that sense, he suffers everlasting punishment.

Kevin Harris: Chris Date is known for this view. Here are his comments on Gavin's definition.

Chris Date: Really close. I think the one bit of additional clarification I'd want to add is that really what we're talking about when we're talking about annihilationism is a final execution, a capital punishment. Most conditionalists are not talking about a punishment of pain that lasts for a long time and then once the punishment is exhausted, then they're annihilated. That's for the most part a caricature of our view.

Rather, we see the punishment as everlasting death, the kind of death that results from being killed, like in an electric chair or whatever. One of the reasons why I like this way of understanding it is because we all know from just ordinary human experience that the various means by which the capital punishment is carried out inflict varying degrees of pain.

There's relatively speaking painless and quick deaths. Lethal injection is allegedly very painless and quick. Being in the firing squad, you get a whole lot of people, trained marksmen firing into your heart at the exact same time, and it's practically lights out. But at the other end of the spectrum, you have crucifixion, which is extremely protracted and torturous. You've got being stoned to death, which is extremely painful and torturous.

So the point I'm getting at is just that what's interesting is that all these various forms of capital punishment, despite all their different degrees and durations of pain, they all inflict the same penalty, which is the penalty of death—not being alive anymore. If that penalty lasts forever, it is by definition an everlasting punishment. That's really what most of us conditionalists understand the eternal punishment to be: death forever. Death is ordinarily understood, not death in some kind of esoteric or code language.

Kevin Harris: Chris compares annihilationism to capital punishment.

William Lane Craig: Yes, the question is whether this is a plausible interpretation of the biblical passages that speak of everlasting punishment. Is the Bible talking about punishment that goes on forever, or is it talking just about punishment that has everlasting consequences?

Do we really think of capital punishment as everlasting punishment simply because it has everlasting consequences? Is it plausible to think that when the Bible talks about eternal punishment, it's referring not to the act of punishing, but to the consequences of being punished? That strikes me as odd.

Kevin Harris: Let's go back to Chris Date. Here is his understanding of the view that he holds, conditional immortality.

Chris Date: Well, you've got to spend eternity somewhere, forever, heaven or hell. But you guys are saying something totally different. So explain what conditional immortality is all about. Historically, the doctrine of eternal torment or eternal conscious punishment has posited that the lost, when they are physically resurrected, will be made physically immortal. Historically, they were comfortable using the word as far back as the second century in the likes of Athenagoras of Athens and Tatian of Adiabene all the way through Augustine and Aquinas and Anselm and Jonathan Edwards and Spurgeon all the way to the modern day. People like even Wayne Grudem explicitly say that the risen lost are physically immortal, or to use the word you prefer, everlasting, and that they will live physically forever in hell. In fact, it's not uncommon for less careful theologians to say things like everybody gets eternal life, it's just a matter of where you live it—in a good place or a bad place.

I would count the doctrine of eternal torment as a form of unconditional immortality. There are no conditions that we as God's creatures must meet in order for God to resurrect us immortal. So it's unconditional immortality. We believe that the scriptures make clear that immortality is not something that humans enjoy naturally. Plausibly, we're immortal in the sense that our souls don't naturally die with our bodies. We sometimes characterize vampires as immortal because they don't naturally die. But of course, we can kill them in the mythology. So our souls might be immortal in that sense; they don't naturally die with the body. But in terms of immortality as endless resurrected life, physically embodied life, scripture seems to say that you must meet a condition in order for God to grant that immortality to you. That condition is being saved through faith in Christ.

Kevin Harris: Is that an accurate representation, Bill?

William Lane Craig: You've noticed, Kevin, that I have not used the expression "conditional immortality" to characterize this view. I've referred to it rather as annihilationism. I think this clip illustrates why the label "conditional immortality" is such a misnomer. It is a very poor description of this view.

You see, I agree that human beings are not naturally immortal. Adam and Eve were mortal creatures who needed the tree of life in order to live forever. But that doesn't commit me to annihilationism. Similarly, I thought it was striking that Chris was quite willing to grant that the soul naturally survives the death of the physical body. This is very important because the traditional view of the soul is that because it is immaterial, it is not inherently susceptible to corruption in the way that material things are. The soul doesn't just grow old and corrupt; unless it is annihilated, it will just naturally go on forever. But that is not the same as eternal life. On the traditionalist view, the damned in hell do not have eternal life even though they will go on existing forever.

Kevin Harris: By the way, Bill, am I to understand that both camps agree that the fire of hell is metaphorical or in some ways non-literal?

William Lane Craig: It seems so. The different metaphors that Jesus uses to describe the state of the damned, for example, fire and outer darkness, are incompatible with each other because flames are luminous. So these are metaphors for the fate suffered by the damned. The question is, are they metaphors for conscious suffering, or are they metaphors for nonexistence?

Kevin Harris: Up next, Chris brings up something I don't think I've ever really thought about. This is interesting.

Chris Date: It's also important to understand that different people are going to understand what is greater or more severe differently. So for example, probably it's the case that most humans find the prospect of eternal torment in fiery hell more terrifying, more severe than being annihilated. I grant that. That's probably true of most humans.

My understanding is there's a long stream of tradition where a minority of humankind actually very much fears annihilation far more than being eternally tormented. I'm among them. So for example, the first-century historian Plutarch said of his Greek countrymen that his fellow Greeks would much rather go on suffering forever in torment than being annihilated because the human being loves life more than anything else. Augustine himself in *City of God* said that if you were to present the impenitent sinner with the option of either being tormented forever or being annihilated, they would joyfully choose to go on being tormented forever. Now, I'm not saying that therefore I'm right and annihilation is the more severe fate. I'm just saying that which is more severe, which is greater, might very well be a subjective assessment and therefore can't really arbitrate what the symbolism in Revelation is getting toward.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, you know, that surprises me, Bill. It would seem to me that anyone would want to just be put out of existence if they were suffering, to be put out of their misery. But Chris says that historically that's not always the case. At least a minority find the prospect of no longer existing worse than existing in torment. I don't know whether that's just a psychological preference or a deep existential dread of oblivion, or perhaps both.

William Lane Craig: It's hard to see the relevance of this point about what sort of fate people prefer. That doesn't determine the teaching of scripture, does it? In any case, I honestly find Chris's idea difficult to take seriously.

In the ancient world, Epicurean philosophers, for example, pointed out that it's foolish to fear death because when you die, you cease to exist. So Epicurus wrote, "When we exist, death is not present. But when death is present, then we do not exist. Death is nothing, therefore, either to the living or to the dead, since concerning the former it does not exist, and concerning the latter they no longer exist." So they had no fear at all of nonexistence.

In fact, it was a very popular epitaph that is found on many tombs in the ancient world reading, "I was, I am not, I do not care." This is true in Judaism as well. In Judaism, the Sadducees had a similar view to the Epicureans because they denied any sort of the afterlife. They thought that when you died, you just ceased to exist, and yet we don't find them wringing their hands about that.

Even today, we talk about putting someone or something out of his misery by ending his life. To go on suffering forever is vastly worse than simply ceasing to exist. Interestingly enough, I came to realize just this week in my reading that this is recognized in Catholic theology by how they handle the fate of unbaptized infants who die. For Catholics, unbaptized infants go to a place called limbo. Now, in limbo, they suffer the loss of the knowledge of God, the beatific vision. They are separated from God, and yet they do not experience any sort of suffering or physical pains. This is regarded as a much more merciful treatment of the infants than those who die and do suffer these physical torments.

Kevin Harris: Dr. Copan holds the more traditional view. He gives more biblical reasons for his view in this next clip.

Paul Copan: In fact, it's kind of interesting too that this place of final separation is the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's not as though it's the place of destruction; it's the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth as though consciousness is connected to this in a very deep way. But back to Matthew 13, you have mention of the furnace that purportedly consumes, but then it goes on to add the consciousness element, where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then it connects to Daniel 12, and Jesus is quoting Daniel 12 about the righteous shining like the sun and so forth, that you have this consciousness on the one hand of the unrighteous, but also the consciousness of the righteous as well.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, that makes sense to me, Bill. In whatever state a person exists in hell, it does seem to be not only conscious but eternal, eternally conscious, based on those passages that he just mentioned.

William Lane Craig: Paul Copan is referring to Jesus' statement in Matthew 13:41. Let me quote it: "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers and throw them into the furnace of fire. There, men will weep and gnash their teeth."

Paul's point is that it does not say that there the evildoers will be obliterated or there they will cease to exist. Rather, it says that there they will weep and gnash their teeth. It indicates that the furnace of fire is a place of conscious suffering, not extinction.

In general, Kevin, one of the major difficulties with annihilationism is that we lack in the Bible any clear statement that the damned cease to exist. Rather, the annihilationist has to infer this from other terms like "our God is a consuming fire." From this expression, they infer that God annihilates people in hell. But as Paul Copan says, why think that the fire, which is a symbol of God's wrath and judgment, literally annihilates those who are subject to his wrath? The annihilationist position is based upon this crucial inference of nonexistence from other expressions, and yet what basis is there for this inference?

Kevin Harris: One more clip. Dan Paterson gives another reason why he eventually changed his view from a more traditional view to conditional immortality.

Dan Paterson: One thing that began to trouble me when I was wrestling with this subject theologically is I'd never considered that the traditional view says that God is sustaining evil forever. So there is never a point where evil comes to an end or where there is a final victory where Christ is all in all in terms of being reconciled. Now, our reconciliation concept isn't just "I'm over you in judgment." It seems to be more that all that is left in creation is reconciled to Christ. That's curious.

Those sort of apokatastasis passages, things like in First Corinthians or in Ephesians where he'll become all in all in Colossians. But the other element of it, and this is maybe more troubling for me, was this idea that it means that God's justice is never satisfied eternally. So if there's always punishment left to mete out, there's always punishment left to mete out, and so God's justice will never ultimately be satisfied in the suffering of the lost. Those concepts of the eternal upholding of evil, because even if you want to say it's the removal of his presence, God's still omnipresent, but he still has to sustain the evil in creation and enable them to sin forever. So he's effectively upholding an opportunity for sin to continue forever. I've just always found that seemingly very difficult to reconcile with these other passages once I became kind of consciously aware of that.

Kevin Harris: So, is evil eliminated, quarantined, or what, Bill?

William Lane Craig: Here Dan is presenting theological arguments rather than biblical arguments against the traditional view. But are these arguments any good? Well, let's consider the first one from the existence of evil. It is incorrect to say that God sustains evil forever because evil is not a thing. Evil is a privation. It is the lack of right order in the creaturely will. God sustains creatures in existence, and that is good, but he does not sustain evil. So I think this first argument is simply misconceived.

Now, what about the second argument based on the satisfaction of God's justice? Well, on the traditional view, God's justice is satisfied in that the just desert of the damned is everlasting punishment, and that is exactly what they receive. They receive their just desert, namely everlasting punishment. So I don't think that these theological arguments are really very persuasive at all.

Kevin Harris: I have a question as we wrap up today, Bill. Are there any philosophical problems with either view? For example, let me tell you what I'm thinking. With respect to conditional immortality, the prospect of annihilation could encourage persons to not care whether they accept the gift of the gospel. They may reason that they can live autonomously for pleasure or for whatever they want because one day they will be winked out of existence and won't know a thing. So it doesn't matter. On the other hand, the prospect of being conscious somehow forever is a different matter.

William Lane Craig: This is related to what we talked about earlier with respect to degrees of punishment in hell. Retributive justice requires not only that every wrong be punished, but that the punishment be proportional to the crime. On annihilationism, everyone gets the same punishment. Whether you're Adolf Hitler or Mao Tse-tung or Pol Pot, or you're just a nice guy that didn't believe in Christ during your lifetime, you all get the same punishment: you're all annihilated.

So I think there's a real question whether or not that really is a just punishment. I think you're quite right, Kevin, in saying that a great many unbelievers would really welcome it if they just get annihilated and don't have to pay any further for their sins.

But let me mention another problem that I think is deeply troubling. Traditionalists and annihilationists agree that the punishment of the damned is an expression of God's retributive justice. It is their just desert. But this has major implications for the doctrine of the atonement. According to a penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, Christ endured the suffering that we deserved as the punishment for our sins, thereby freeing us from our liability to punishment and affording us a divine pardon.

If Christ did not bear the punishment that is our just desert, then God's justice is not satisfied by Christ's atoning death, and our salvation becomes impossible. But clearly, Christ did not suffer annihilation when he died. Indeed, since Christ is God, he cannot cease to exist. He cannot be annihilated. Therefore, the annihilationist view threatens to undermine the efficacy of Christ's atoning death on the cross and thereby our very salvation.

Kevin Harris: Well, this has been a fascinating and also very sobering topic today. There are several resources from Dr. Craig on the doctrine of hell that you can access at reasonablefaith.org if you would like to pursue it further. Thank you so much for being with us today, and thank you for your prayers and financial support for Reasonable Faith. Your prayer and gifts keep Dr. Craig's work and ministry in a position to impact hearts and minds for Christ all over the world. Thank you very much. You can give online at reasonablefaith.org. I'm Kevin Harris. See you next time. Some great topics coming up on Reasonable Faith.