JRP’s longer original rebuttal to Chris Date:
Since Chris insists on the importance of Scripture interpreting Scripture without divorcing context: regardless of whether {eriphos} in Matt 25 means baby-goats or not (and of whether {kolasis} means execution), Chris doesn’t mention the narrative and thematic context of those being punished. But I did as evidence for universalism!
The narrative context also involves this warning being given to Christ’s apostles!–the people Calvinists would generally regard as elected to sure and certain salvation. That’s even more obviously true at the Capernaum final discourse scene from Matt 18/Mark 9, which Chris connects to Matt 25 but also neglects to mention much narrative and thematic context. Yet this is another main textual area from which I argue, in very extensive narrative and thematic context, for Christian universalism–as Chris knows from when he moderated my debate last year.
(Even if he doesn’t agree with me, he ought to know by now at least some Christian universalists are gung-ho contextualists, rather than starting his argument by sheerly asserting otherwise.)
Matt 5:30 also warns nominal believers, amid contexts about loving our enemies so we can be perfect as our Father is perfect, not hating our brother lest we be guilty to Gehenna, and being sent to a torturous prison (certainly not annihilated!) for refusing to reconcile with our brother. (A theme repeated in Matt 18, not incidentally.) The prison has a release condition, which however it is interpreted doesn’t fit permanent annihilation. By thematic and narrative logic the release condition is reconciliation with the brother we have sinned against or who has sinned against us.
Speaking of neglected contexts, Jer 7:32-33 (echoed at Jer 17:27, also cited by Chris) refers to the results of an anger and wrath God shall pour on Jerusalem that (per 7:17) won’t quenched. Any annihilationist will know of course that the anger and wrath wasn’t quenched until it was finished–the anger and wrath didn’t continue (although it was repeated at least once more in 70CE). But God’s anger and wrath against Jerusalem didn’t hopelessly finish with Jerusalem’s annihilation (much less its eternal conscious torment): God often promises, including in Jeremiah, to remake and restore Jerusalem, in eschatological triumph, never more to rebel!
Chris rightly connects this to Isaiah 30:27-33, but that scripture describes God’s similar coming destruction of pagans besieging rebel Jerusalem to save His impenitent people–which (despite what Chris implied) certainly hasn’t happened yet, and which Chris does not discuss the context of: this whole chapter is addressed to Israel suffering in punishment from YHWH because they insisted on allying with oppression and guile and so (from the future perspective of prophecy) have been so ruthlessly shattered by YHWH (using the Assyrians), like the smashing of a potter’s jar, that not a sherd remains large enough to scoop any water or even hold a coal from a fire (e.g. vv.12-14). But they shall still be saved into repentance, even though they were not willing to repent even when the invading Assyrians came to overrun them (vv.15-17)!
Even so, after Israel’s ultra-punishment (shattered in such a way that no human could remake them, as a fired pot is shattered), God waits to be gracious and merciful to them, promising they shall eventually repent, and He shall eventually restore them with great blessings (possibly indicating resurrection here); binding up the fracture of His people and healing the bruise of His blow against them (v.26). The rest of the chapter involves YHWH smiting the invading Assyrians next, striking them with the flame of consuming fire and the rod of punishment and burning them with brimstone and fire in the valley of Topheth (i.e. Gehenna but using the name of its days as a Moloch sacrifice area). The reference to Topheth is not only ironic (that the unjust shall be slain where the unjust unjustly slew), but the term usage itself indicates that YHWH rejects what happens there even though He does it Himself! Together with the explanation of the goal of the utter destruction of rebel Israel–to lead them to salvation (not to annihilate them as impenitent sinners)–this suggests God does not mean the punishment of the rebel Gentiles to be hopeless either.
Certainly there is less than no point referring to Sodom and Gomorrah suffering “the punishment of eternal fire” (in various places such as Jude 7 and its 2 Peter 2:6 parallel) as evidence for annihilation, since YHWH (both as Jesus and in the OT) prophecies Sodom shall be at least resurrected (Matt 10:15, 11:24 par) and apparently restored to friendship with even-more-sinful-and-similarly-punished-but-also-redeemed Israel (Ezekiel 16)!–regardless of what may happen to Sodom later, the example is faulty for illustrating annihilation. (In Jude and 2 Peter much of the point is that the evildoers, after being destroyed, are being held for judgment later: so again, they were not annihilated either.)
In Mark 9:48 Jesus quotes an example of people’s bodies being consumed after being slain by YHWH; but since Chris affirms a general resurrection, the story of those bodies (much moreso the souls that used to inhabit those bodies) isn’t over yet; consequently, this isn’t a good illustration of annihilation either.
Jesus goes on to explain the purpose of that unquenchable fire in verse 49-50, since we aren’t divorcing passages from context (much less the overall narrative and thematic context of that whole incident in the Synoptics)! This purpose, salting into peace, is far from hopeless, much less resulting in annihilation.
Undying worms (actually maggots) consume corpses; but if (per Mark 9:49-50) the fire salts into peace, then the worms must refer to the medical usage of maggots, which was also far from hopeless to the person they treated: the maggots (analogically) will only consume corruption without dying until they are finished, leaving health behind with the person saved–nasty though the treatment may seem to the person! Salt and fire are tough treatments to save the person from infection, too.
The shame, since we are not divorcing passages from context, is not felt by the corpses in Isaiah 66 (the scripture Jesus references in Mark 9 et par), but by the people who have to go out to give them a proper burial, working quite hard at it for several months. These will be people who had themselves been rebelling against God again, up until they had been rescued by God from the armies now being buried. They’re being required to go do due diligence now for their enemies. That’s great for learning their own lesson (including about mercy to fallen enemies), but eternal shame and revulsion experienced by the saved, if analogically applied, wouldn’t seem like much of a heaven!–whereas if their shame isn’t being analogically applied to the saved, then why should the bodies be analogous to annihilation of the unsaved?!
Matthew, meanwhile, ends his parallel scene in GosMatt 18 (quoting Jesus’ reference to Isaiah 66) with a repeat of the parable of the 100th sheep (or goat, per the generic use of the term); and with a strong warning to the apostles about being punished by active torment if they refuse to have mercy on enemies!–a punishment with a get-out clause that, by narrative and thematic context, must involve the unforgiving servant agreeing to be merciful and forgiving, and in any case has nothing to do with annihilation.
Strictly speaking it’s JohnBapt (not Jesus per Chris) who says Jesus will burn up the wicked like chaff in Matt 3:12 / Luke 3:17; but John’s alluding to things Jesus has said (as YHWH in OT prophecy) and will say later, so that’s okay. John also says, one verse earlier, that Jesus will baptize with fire, even the (Holy) Spirit, which is generally regarded as a saving action! Christ scours His threshing floor to remove the chaff from each grain of wheat, so the analogical imagery applies better to a tough-love salvation of the “wheat” from sin than to annihilation of a separate class of people as “chaff”.
This includes JohnBapt’s inherent reference to Malachi 4:1-3: “every evildoer” who will be burned like chaff in the coming Day of YHWH, and who will be set ablaze until they are left neither root nor branch, certainly includes the rebel Israelite leaders (like the people JohnBapt was specifically speaking to!) from Mal 3:1-7. But God’s fire isn’t a hopeless annihilation for them: it’s a refining fire of God’s salvation that surely will save them, even though they won’t like the experience! Because YHWH does not change, the sons of Jacob are not consumed despite their rebellions (Mal 3:5-6). Punished, yes; punished to death even!–but not consumed. This example turns out to be contextually a reference to post-mortem salvation, and even for universal salvation if the goal of Israel’s punishment is applied (per 4:1-3) to all sinners! Only by divorcing the passage from its context could it be construed as annihilation of rebels, instead of positive testimony that God saves and explicitly not annihilates even the most treacherous rebels (i.e. rebel Jewish leaders who of all people ought to have known better).
The wheat and the tares, by contrast to the wheat and the chaff, are explicitly said by Jesus to refer to different persons, sons of the kingdom and sinners respectively. But considering that Jesus warns sons of the kingdom who don’t expect enemies outside the kingdom (by our reckoning) to be saved, with a relevantly related threat (Matt 8:12), I am not much inclined as one who claims sonship of the kingdom myself to interpret the fate of the weeds as finally hopeless! (Christ has something very similar to say later, at Luke 13:29 and contexts, to the man who wants to know if only a few are being saved.)
As for Paul’s “vengeance” (actually “justice” in Greek, which shall be value/honored by those who experience it) of flaming fire at 2 Thess 1:7-8, if it refers to Isaiah 66:15, why does it not refer even more directly to Isaiah 2 and its prophecy?–for Chris is well aware that there are parallels in phraseology there, whereas there aren’t any special parallels in phraseology at Isaiah 66. But then Isaiah 2-5 happens to mention the purpose and eventually achieved goal of that flaming fire: the people so punished will come to value the justice of their total destruction, and loyally serve God again in peace with their former human enemies!–certainly not permanently reduced to lifeless remains.
Notably, the term for total destruction there, {olethron}, is frequently considered to be even stronger than its related term {apollumi}; yet St. Paul uses the exact same term at 1 Cor 5 to describe the punishment of someone (the Stepmom-Sleeping Guy) whom Paul expects to be saved (as part of the goal of the punishment) in the same Day of the Lord to come that Paul is speaking of in 2 Thess 1. If this term isn’t inherently hopeless, neither should {apollumi} be expected to be, even when it also means “kill” instead of merely “lose”.
For example, while the prodigal son parable doesn’t involve a person literally slaying the son, the father explicitly parallels being lost (the same word {apollumi}) and being dead.
The same term for “destroy” is used by Jesus in reference to souls of Sodom and Gomorrah slain by fire and brimstone, but they weren’t annihilated by God; and there is serious evidence (from Ezekiel 16) that they will be saved by God eventually and reconciled to rebel Israel as faithful sisters under God.
Jesus doesn’t say at Matt 10:28 (or Luke’s parallel) that God will destroy body and soul in Gehenna, only that God can do so. Jesus instantly follows this (in Luke as well) by talking about God’s concern even for small birds. This thematically parallels another saying about God valuing people much more than birds. Jesus shortly afterward (6:27-28, Matt 6:28-30) draws a similar analogy about God’s provision for flowers which, explicitly unlike even people of little faith, are effectively annihilated with fiery furnace imagery! God values people more than to annihilate them.
Since Chris affirms the resurrection of the wicked, he must put their annihilation at some time in the Day of YHWH to come, generally regarded as the Great Sabbath when God rests from finishing His work. But Jesus answers the challenge of the scribes and Pharisees, who disapprove of non-emergency healing on the sabbath (Luke 6:6-11 with parallels), with a counter-challenge: “Is it allowed on the sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save a soul or to destroy?” GosMark uses “kill” instead of “destroy”, so “kill” is the meaning of {apollumi} in mind. Matthew directly connects this (via Isaiah 42) directly to Jesus’ mission to save from sin those whom God’s people aren’t expecting God to save.
Thus, an annihilationist who leans on {apollumi} must be prepared to answer Jesus’ challenge to the scribes and Pharisees, except even moreso!–is it allowed for God (moreso than a hypocritical scribe or Pharisee) on the Great Sabbath (moreso than on a merely human sabbath) in regard to an emergency (moreso than a non-emergency) to save a soul or to kill it?!
Relatedly (per Matthew’s version) if an annihilationist expects God, on the Great Sabbath, not to take hold of a goat of God’s flock that has fallen into a pit and lift it out, is the annihilationist on the side of Jesus or on the side of the scribes and Pharisees? Is a man not worth more to God than a mere sheep or goat {probaton} which would be lawful to save from a pit by a man on the sabbath?!
The goats of Matt 25 are explicitly part of the shepherd’s flock; and Jesus in John 10 insists that none of His flock shall be lost, contrasting this (10:10) to the rebel/thief who comes to steal, sacrifice and {apolusê} the flock. To insist that the Good Shepherd is hopelessly apollum-ing some of His flock in Matt 25 is tantamount to calling Jesus a brigand!–which gets one of Jesus’ servants thrown outside with the goats (by application) in the prior parable of Matt 25!
St. James not only says that he who turns a sinner from error saves the sinner’s soul from death, he also says that we should not be judging our brother (or even an associate) or else we are putting ourselves in the place of the one Judge and Lawgiver who is able to save and to {apolesai}! (James 4:11-12) This fits with many Synoptic warnings about expecting God not to save other people.
If “smoke rising from torment forever” (Chris’ phraesology) symbolizes permanent destruction, Chris’ examples don’t fit very well. Rev 14:9-11 obviously doesn’t refer to destruction: Chris himself calls those suffering the gold-refining process (which is what the Greek term for “torment” there definitely means) “restless”. The apocalyptic imagery, based on the term usage, probably hearkens more to Malachi 3 than Isaiah 34–especially since the Temple imagery parallels sacrifices being cleaned and then offered to God as a pleasing incense (not a sacrifice He rejects); but even Isaiah 34:10 overtly doesn’t involve permanent destruction, unless one simply ignores the context of the next verses where animals live safely in an area that no longer burns with pitch, rivers of fire and brimstone. In the very next chapter, the same region (also known as the Arabah) is healed by God along with its people and become a pleasant highway for the redeemed to approach by. If the fate of the apocalyptic punished is represented by the fate of the land, even Edom, the punished should be slated for redemption and restoration after punishment.
Relatedly, when St. Paul cites Malachi 1:2 at Romans 9:13, he indicates the end result of “Esau” being “hated”: “‘The older will serve the younger’”. This couldn’t happen if the people of Edom are ever permanently annihilated, but fits entirely well with Jacob’s prophecy that Esau shall be blessed in Jacob. As the land of Edom/Esau will eventually be healed and even be a highway for the righteous to pass through on the way to Jerusalem; and as Esau eventually reconciled with Jacob (a satanic deceiver saved into righteousness himself by YHWH); so Esau’s descendents shall be eventually blessed thanks to God’s blessing of Jacob. Edom/Esau is a poor choice for exemplifying permanent destruction rather than eventual reconciliation and salvation.
So is Sodom and Gomorrah: Sodom’s people were certainly not permanently destroyed, as Chris agrees even the worst of them will be raised. Evidence from Ezekiel that slain Sodomites will be reconciled with rebel Israel (also slain in her sins) should be taken into contextual account.
Not only was Tyre not permanently destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, nor even by Alexander later, it was still around in Jesus’ day (possibly in a different form, the island fortress having been destroyed) and still is today! Many people from Sidon and Tyre were evangelized by Jesus, and Jesus prophecied that Tyre (and Sodom) would find judgment day more tolerable than Galilee. Annihilation isn’t more tolerable than annihilation! (Strictly speaking, annihilation isn’t even more “tolerable” for annihilated people than for people suffering eternal conscious torment, since annihilated people don’t exist to tolerate anything anymore. Usually annihilation is sold as being more tolerable for the survivors!)
While I certainly agree with Chris that death and hades are abstract entities and cannot be tormented, thus they simply come to their end when put into the lake of fire, this is more of an argument against annihilation than for it!–it is hard to have a resurrection out of hades without the death of death (so to speak), and if death ends then there cannot be a death by annihilation either! Moreover, persons are tormented in the lake of fire, so must exist to be tormented.
If “the death” in 1 Cor 15:26 is “the final enemy to be overcome”, that probably refers to Satan by euphemism, but in any case God could not possibly overcome (impersonal) death by sentencing (personal) sinners to permanent death! So not even counting the contexts of that middle portion of 1 Cor 15 (which Chris should be aware is a major universalistic contextual argument source), appealing to it as an example seems poor.
If the end of an abstract kingdom’s dominion necessarily parallels and involves the similarly permanent annihilation of the persons involved in the kingdom, no sinner would be saved by God at all, but rather annihilated along with our rebellious kingdoms!–be those kingdoms small or large, literal or figurative.
Daniel 2:44 is actually indicative of this, as the kingdom of God did not simply destroy the Roman kingdom (generally acknowledged to be the final one in Neb’s vision) but transformed and incorporated it into the new kingdom of Christ (imperfectly expressed though that kingdom has been and still us until the second coming).
Dan 7:27 doesn’t refer to a kingdom “whose” kingdom is annihilated, but contextually refers to a king rising out of the kingdom of the beast (v.24) whose dominion over his kingdom shall be annihilated–not him (or not explicitly said anyway) and not even his kingdom which shall be given to the saints instead. And even the dominion will not be annihilated in the sense required, as the same prophecy in the same verse 27 reveals that all dominions will serve and obey Christ: the dominion itself cannot be simply annihilated if it is given along with kingdoms to the saints!
This fits with Rev 19:20, where the final rebel kings of the earth are slain by Christ in language directly echoing the Hebrew of the 23rd Psalm! The false prophet and the devil are thrown into the lake of fire along with the beast to be tormented into the eons of the eons: the “torment” itself certainly doesn’t refer to annihilation, and the beast cannot be tormented (into the eons or otherwise) if the beast was or will be only a kingdom!–much less a previously annihilated anything! But in fact “the kings of the earth” (same Greek phrase) show up in chapter 21 following the light of Christ into the New Jerusalem, bringing the glories of the nations with them, echoing Ezekiel’s similar prophecy that Israel’s enemies, even the kings of those who oppose her, will reconcile with her in the day of YHWH to come. Whatever that reconciliation may mean, it certainly isn’t annihilation, any more than it is eternal conscious torment of permanently impenitent sinners (nor any more than it can be secretly hypocritical kings trying to save themselves while remaining rebels, as 21:27 emphasizes nothing unclean can come into the city but must stay outside).
Chris began his presentation with a subsequently unsubstantiated assertion that Christian universalism is “based upon tenuous, inconsistent interpretations of passages divorced from context, interpreted through unfounded philosophical claims and flimsy extrapolations drawn from irrelevant texts. Annihilationism, on the other hand, or conditional immortality, is based upon relevant texts which actually speak of final punishment, and understands them in their contexts, allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture.”
But consistent application of the imagery and accounting of the narrative and thematic contexts (immediate, local and extended), far from “clearly” indicating “the unredeemed will be judged and punished by being irreversibly executed, leaving behind only lifeless remains” “never to live again”, instead indicates all sinners will come to loyally serve and worship Christ, even if that only happens for some people after their execution.
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