Spirit and Psyche

Fourth post in a series on annihilationism.

To recap what I said in the previous post:  Jesus bore the penalty for our sins in his own body. And the penalty was, he was put to death. That is exactly what we would expect, based on the apostle Paul’s clear statement: “The wages of sin is death …” (Ro. 6:23).

Jesus merely died for our sins; he did not suffer eternal torment. This fact was recognized as a theological problem in the Middle Ages. Anselm and Aquinas both tackled the problem. They argued that Jesus suffered relatively briefly because he is divine. To paraphrase them, Christ’s finite but divine suffering is adequate to offset the infinite but merely human suffering which would otherwise be our punishment.

In my opinion, the argument is both unbiblical and illogical. It is illogical because a finite amount of suffering cannot be equivalent to infinite suffering, even if the sufferer is God.

(If anything, I would expect the proportions to be reversed. The argument is akin to saying that if a rich man pays a small fine, that’s equivalent to a poor man paying a large fine. That can’t be right. But the fundamental difficulty is, the infinite cannot possibly be equivalent to the finite.)

The rationale is unbiblical because the Bible affirms that Jesus suffered as a human being:

… who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Php. 2:6-8)

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death …. (Heb. 2:14)

God cannot die. Jesus had to become a human being in order to experience death. Thus the speculative explanation of Anselm and Aquinas is both illogical and unbiblical.

How did the Church start down this errant path? The answer is this:  the Church Fathers imbibed the dominant view of their culture. According to the ancient Greeks, the human soul is immortal and indestructible. Read the rest of this entry »

Third post in a series on annihilationism. In my previous post, I introduced the doctrine and discussed some New Testament texts that address the narrow question, How will sinners be punished after death?

In this post (divided into two parts), I want to widen the scope of our inquiry and examine several relevant theological concepts:

1. God’s justice;
2. Christ’s atoning sacrifice; and
3. The consummation of God’s saving activity.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this post, I want to introduce the doctrine of annihilationism. I want to explore the topic, in considerable detail, in a series of posts. I’ll try to publish one new post at the end of each month.

The traditional position of the Church understands hell as a place where God will torment the wicked eternally. Annihilation is an alternative view which holds,

Unsaved individuals will be punished in Hell only for a period of time that is related to the nature and frequency of their sins while on earth. This belief is vaguely similar to the Roman Catholic Church’s belief in Purgatory. However, they differ from the Catholic view in one important point: supporters of Annihilationism believe that when the inmates’ punishment in Hell is finished, and they have paid the full penalty for their sins, they will be annihilated and will cease to exist in any form.

In this post, I want to limit the scope of our inquiry to New Testament texts that speak directly to this question, the punishment of sinners. In a subsequent post, I will consider Christian theology more generally (including New Testament texts that speak to the question indirectly).
Read the rest of this entry »