What about “Annihilationism”?

I want to continue to communicate how much I appreciate the step many have taken toward a more humane understanding of God’s final judgment. Conditional Immortality and similarly Annihilationism offer a more merciful depiction of God as represented in the Scriptures and most importantly as represented in God’s final Word of Jesus Christ. The new movie “Hell and Mr. Fudge” (released in 2012) will continue to challenge the assumed doctrine of eternal conscious torment and for that we are grateful. But here are a couple of reasons to start with why I believe that conditional immortality stops short of delivering a fully victorious Gospel or Good News:

First it proves to be no different from the eternal conscious torment view in its inability to offer any objective assurance to anyone. Even if a strong “salvation by grace alone” is preached it still requires a certain level of faith, a quality of “repentance,” and specific works (loving and serving the “least of these”) that prove the authenticity of that faith and repentance. People must simply trust that their faith is in the right things, their repentance is deep enough, that their works are a real outworking of their faith and not self-deceived delusions, and that they score higher on the “sheep” side than the “goats” side on the “eternal criteria meter.” So either way, assurance is always a problem and remains illusive because there are 30,000 denominations out there all defining the nature of faith and repentance and evidential works in different ways. And what about degrees? How MUCH do you need to believe and repent and do? How MANY good works prove you have real or “saving” faith? Again, this is extremely shaky ground that most cannot sustain without caving in to fear and doubt or even walking away altogether. John said “these things are written that you may KNOW that you have eternal life.” He also says in 1 John that “Perfect love casts out all fear.”

The Gospel must be ONE message of objective news that will never change: God loves and has saved sinners. This does not negate consequences or accountability or a refinement in the ages or “aions” to come. A sobering reality but it does not create a despair of hope in the love of God.

Second, the CI/Annihilationism position fails to consider the nature of sin and what it takes to fully eradicate it. Since God is a relational Being His laws are primarily relational, not legal. Therefore true justice will only be met through reconciliation. For example, to execute an unrepentant murderer only metes out a judgment of “getting even” and simply removes the threat of more evil coming from that person. But the evil itself still lingers in the hearts of those affected by that person’s crime (which we are told is primarily God: “Against you and you only have I sinned…” Psa 51). And we know that getting even does not ever feel “even;” It doesn’t bring back the loved one nor satisfy our sense of justice we know in our hearts to be true.

Simply killing an evil-doer doesn’t kill the evil nor remove it from the universe, because we who live on must bear its scar forever as an unsettled and unreconciled matter in our memory. In an annihilation paradigm, it will forever remain that billions of God’s image-bearers will have never truly come to their senses and understood the nature of their wickedness. Evil, in the form of billions of God’s humanity, will never have been acknowledged, understood, nor repented of. Is not one of the things we desire when we have been dealt injustice is for the perpetrator to understand the magnitude of what he/she has done? Killing the perpetrator is not true justice but simply bringing consequences to bear and removing the danger from society.

Annihilationism claims that these people are “successful rebels to the end” (as C. S. Lewis proposes). Is this possible in God’s own universe where we are told He is Lord – where His love never fails and is relentless and inescapable? This is a serious misrepresentation of Christ’s Lordship. As the early church fathers said, “If He is not Lord of all He is not Lord at all.” In addition, it does not account for the proposed failure of God to fulfill His most fundamental desire and decree: “Let Us make man in Our image and likeness.” For God to destroy most of His image-bearers means that God’s Word in the end returns to Him void and empty and does not fulfill that for which it was sent to accomplish (Isa 55:11).

The only thing that resolves evil is the “undoing of evil.” This was accomplished through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. This requires and will be followed by true repentance (literally “a renewed mind”), restitution (loving service), and reconciliation on the part of each offender. Until we witness each evil perpetrator repent and be reconciled to God and his fellow man, their evil can never be pronounced “dead” or eradicated. It is leaving God’s creation “unfinished” when He said to the contrary on the sixth day of both creation – it is “very good” and in the event of His RE-creation– “It is finished.”

As George MacDonald so percipiently observed: “Annihilation is no death to evil; Only good where evil was is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.”

Theologian Karl Barth understood “annihilation” in the context of resurrection. He wrote:

“God will burn us all right down to love.”

I assume you may be claiming we are saying God will then “force” His salvation on all mankind. But that is not the case. If anyone reading this is a Calvinist you already believe in irresistible grace and would have faith for that. If you are an Arminian you need to come to believe that God’s love and grace through the cross are beautiful and alluring beyond our comprehension and as the Scriptures tell us, will “never fail.” God’s love for this world is even compared to a “Romance.“

 Here are some additional thoughts by Dr. Richard Beck who wrote of his reasons for abandoning his view of annihilationism:

But the fact that annihilationism is murder isn’t what ultimately changed my mind.

The deeper problem I had with annihilationism is that it didn’t, ultimately, answer the questions I was really struggling with. The same questions that bothered me about the Sunday School hell were also bothering me with annihilationism.

Here’s the deal. Annihilationism is a doctrine about hell. It’s not a doctrine about God. Annihilationism answers a very specific question: Will hell last forever? It answers, no, it won’t. Hell is just the cessation of existence. God won’t torture people forever.

Again, this is an improvement. But this theological patch on the doctrine of hell doesn’t get at the deeper issue about who God is. Is God loving? Is God just?

Think of those Jews looking up at the shower heads in Auschwitz. Maybe they don’t get tortured for eternity in the next life. Maybe, Fudge suggested, they just die, right there or maybe later. Regardless, the last act in the drama of their life is breathing in the gas as they scream and cling to their friends, family and children. Too bad they didn’t accept Jesus in this life! Too bad they didn’t attend that nice, welcoming German bible study down the street!

In short, while annihilationism allowed me to believe that God isn’t a sadistic torturer it didn’t allow me to answer the questions I really needed to answer: Is God just? Is God loving?

And so, I eventually left annihilationism behind. The view just tweaks the doctrine of hell. And that was, for a season, helpful. And I still believe most of what Fudge writes in The Fire that Consumes. His analysis of immortality is awesome and his word study of the word “eternal” is wonderful. But I needed more. I didn’t start this search looking for a better doctrine of hell.

I was looking for God.

In his Q & A on Universalism Beck sums it up in this way:

I once endorsed annihilationism. And among all the options out there it’s certainly not the worst. Annihilationism, to its credit, is trying to wrestle with the problems inherent in the traditional doctrine of hell. However, I rejected annihilationism for three reasons. First, annihilationism is still death-centered. Death continues to separate humans from God making Death the prime mover in human affairs. Second, annihilationism still isn’t dealing with the problem of moral luck. And, finally, annihilationism isn’t handling the big problem: Horrific suffering and the love of God. Universalism, by contrast, addresses all three issues. Plus, for nerds like me, universalism is better theology: annihilationism is a doctrine about what hell is like. Universalism is a doctrine about what God is like.

UPDATE – David Bentley Hart recently published his thoughts on the topic of Annihilation (Oct. 2019) in his new book, That All Shall Be Saved:

“Admittedly, [annihilation] is considerably more palatable than the former [eternal conscious torment]; and, for what it is worth, it also appears to accord somewhat better with the large majority of scriptural metaphors, the dominical metaphors in particular, for final damnation. But such an eventuality would still be an irreducible price exacted, a sacrifice eternally preserved in the economy of God’s Kingdom. The ultimate absence of a certain number of created rational natures would still be a kind of last end inscribed in God’s eternity, a measure of failure or loss forever preserved within the totality of the tale of divine victory. If what is lost is lost finally and absolutely, then whatever remains, however glorious, is the residue of an unresolved and no less ultimate tragedy, and so could constitute only a contingent and relative ‘happy ending.’ Seen in that way, the lost are still the price that God has contracted from everlasting—whether by predestination or mere permission—for the sake of his Kingdom; and so it remains a Kingdom founded upon both an original and a final sacrificial exclusion. In either case—eternal torment, eternal oblivion—creation and redemption are negotiations with evil, death, and suffering, and so never in an absolute sense God’s good working of all things.” (That All Shall Be Saved, pg 86)

The main thesis of this website is to explore how the Body of Christ together is proclaiming and supporting the view that God’s intention is to restore all humanity. We believe restoration and not annihilation is what is written on our hearts as the ONE Body of Christ together. Our denominations do not have it all together but together as a Body we have it all!  We are, as a Body, at the same time, (just not all in the same place, yet!) proclaiming ONE Gospel:

1. Jesus died for the whole world because He loves and wants to restore all people (Arminianism)

2. God is sovereign and His love and grace are irresistible as He woos to Himself all those He died for (Calvinism)

3. God is a missionary God who comes to rescue His creation (The “missional” church)

4. God’s justice is restorative and therefore His intention is to “DO” justice and not “GET” justice (The restorative justice movement)

5. All mankind are made in the image of God and therefore there should be equal social justice for all (The more “liberal” brethren)

6. The recent re-focus on the centrality of the resurrection returning to that of the Early Church’s emphasis (Signs and wonders)

7. The recent expression of a universal restoration in our worship music (Hillsong, and many other popular worship music)

There are about 20 in all: Read all HERE