Three Umbrella Ideas for Human Destiny – Brad Jersak

QUESTION:

I’ve been looking up the three different views of hell. I found that “eternal conscious torment” came from Augustine mis-translation of the scriptures because he hated learning the Greek language.

I was wondering, how did other believers come to “the annihilation of the soul?”

How did still other believers come to believe in “universalism” or “ultimate redemption?”

RESPONSE:

First, a little fact-checking is in order, since accuracy matters a lot in these conversations. I’ll begin by saying there are more than three views, but as very general ideas, I suppose we can use three umbrellas:

  1. infernalism/eternal conscious torment
  2. conditionalism/annihilation, and
  3. ultimate redemption/universalism/hopeful inclusivism.

These are very broad categories with significant differences in each of them.

1. Infernalism

Let’s begin with “Infernalism,” the belief in eternal conscious torment. Augustine did not originate this view, though in his later teachings, he certainly embraced it. I don’t even think it began with Christianity. Other religions and mythologies certainly spoke of an ultimate and unending judgement in fire. But in the Judeo-Christian lineage, inter-testamental Jewish books such as Enoch seem quite infernalistic to me, though many 2nd temple rabbis tend to see a terminus to Gehenna. Some early Christian teachers prior to Augustine also held to Infernalism, but I don’t see a consensus or even much of a controversy. I always remember that they speak this way rhetorically to Christians rather than as an evangelistic content.

Regarding Augustine, I wouldn’t overplay the translation issue. According to David Bentley Hart, there is a particular issue with Augustine’s translation of a verse in Romans 5 that lays the foundation for his doctrine of “original sin,” meaning for him, “guilty and damned from birth.” Hart convinces me that this was a major mistake and that limitations in his Greek work may be the problem, but that’s much different than saying he hated learning the language or tying that to his Infernalism. That said, Augustine’s dominance as a theologian in the Latin West did set up Infernalism as the most popular doctrine of hell after 400 A.D. (after the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed had already avoided embedding it as dogma).

2. Conditionalism

Annihilationism/Conditionalism teaches that those who die simply perish at death OR are resurrected for a final judgment after which they are consumed completely in the Lake of Fire. This point of view gained traction for three major reasons (mostly recent).

First, it recognizes the importance of a just judgment. Proponents saw that burning someone for aeons for sins committed in a finite human lifetime would be grossly disproportionate and therefore, monstrously unjust.

Second, they went to those key Scriptures (not many, though) where a literal reading of the words ‘perish’ and ‘destroy’ do not permit a never-ending punishment. There is a terminus to the wages of sin, which is ‘death,’ not eternal conscious torment.

Third, when the great British Evangelical theologian, John Stott, came out as a conditionalist circa 1990, the broader Evangelical world balked at calling him a heretic, and he made it safe for others who wanted out of Infernalism to make their exit without a heresy trial.

3. Ultimate Redemption

Once we discovered that leaving Infernalism behind might not be a heresy, our eyes were opened to the many wonderful theologians—ancient and recent—who held solid theological and biblical reasons for universal hope all along. They showed us the steady stream of Patristic teachers in the Eastern Church (from Alexandria to Cappadocia to Syria) who read Paul’s theology as implicitly and explicitly expectant of ultimate redemption. Rather than diminishing the centrality of Jesus, they magnified Christ as universal Saviour and demonstrated that promise from dozens of Scriptures previously overlooked or minimized. This convinced many more of us of a more beautiful and all-embracing gospel. It emboldened others who had quietly hoped their instincts were true. And it vindicated those who had endured a lot of abuse for paving the way.

It appears to me the tides are turning and while ultimate redemption is still a minority report, those of us who a persuaded by the infinite reach of divine love can stand hopeful, confident, or convinced that it is the beautiful gospel preached in Isaiah, John, and Paul, then by Gregory, Isaac, and Maximos, then in our era MacDonald, Bulgakov, and Silouan the Athonite, all proclaiming Jesus Christ “Saviour of all.”

Whatever our convictions, it’s high time we followed the Nicene Creed’s latitude in resisting charging those of others positions as heretical. For its authors, Jesus Christ was a rallying point rather than a measure of exclusion. Our religious propensity for exclusion did not come from the architects of Christian dogma. That was a later, immature, and frankly, carnal reaction to disagreement. We can do better.

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