Conditionalism | Old Testament | Gospels and Acts | Epistles | Revelation | Responses | Miscellaneous
Conditionalism, also known as Annihilationism, proposes that after the resurrection and judgment of all people, the unsaved will face a second, irreversible death, ceasing conscious existence forever. In other words, the unrighteous will be finally destroyed by God. Only those who are saved through faith in Christ will receive the gift of immortality and eternal life.
The traditional belief in the eternal conscious torment of the unsaved, whether right or wrong, acts as a doctrinal grid that affects our interpretation of biblical texts. This grid forces texts about "death," "destruction," and "perishing" to be interpreted metaphorically to refer to separation from God, pain, or torment.
There are sufficient translational, exegetical, theological, and practical considerations to inspire humility and genuine reflection as one studies this weighty and important doctrine. Therefore, both sides must be careful to avoid reading presuppositions into the Bible or flippantly dismissing those who disagree. Proof-texting without regard for context or carefulness is irresponsible and unhelpful. A thorough examination of passages about the ultimate end of unbelievers is the only way we can reach clarity and certainty on the matter.
Mark Corbett, Heresy and Slander: Immune System Disorders in the Body of Christ, 2021: "Basically, I believe that unrighteous will be resurrected to face judgment. The judgment will be terrible for them. However, they will not suffer eternally. Instead, they will perish (John 3:16) as God destroys both their bodies and souls in hell (Matthew 10:28) and they are reduced to ashes (2 Peter 2:6). They will no longer exist as conscious people and will be gone forever."
Peter Grice, "Conditional Immortality"—What it Means and Why it's the Best Label, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Quotes ordered respectively: "Salvation, on our view, is salvation to everlasting life with God. Simultaneously, it is salvation from a permanent death (termination of life forever; final loss of being)." "More fully expressed, this would mean humans are mortal yet capable of immortality (after meeting qualifying conditions), or alternatively, immortal yet capable of mortality (after meeting disqualifying conditions)." "Our own view is that all people will be resurrected, but only some will receive a 'resurrection like his,' having 'died to sin' and been 'crucified with him,' in order that 'we will also live' and 'never die again,' for 'death has no dominion' over him, nor over those who are 'alive to God in Christ Jesus' (Rom 6:2-11)."
Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism: "Conditionalism is the view that life is the Creator’s provisional gift to all, which will ultimately be granted forever to the saved and revoked forever from the unsaved. Evangelical conditionalists believe that the saved in Christ will receive glory, honor and immortality, being raised with an incorruptible body to inherit eternal life (Romans 2:7). The unsaved will be raised in shame and dishonor, to face God and receive the just condemnation for their sins. When the penalty is carried out, they will be permanently excluded from eternal life by means of a final death, implicating the whole person in a destruction of human life and being (Matthew 10:28)."
I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Scripture, being the very word of God, is both authoritative and accurate in all that it teaches. It is the standard of truth over and against all human traditions, philosophies, creeds, councils, and authorities. I cite resources at the bottom of each section when relevant for further study and support. Not all the authors cited are Conditionalists, though the majority are.
What would cause someone to question a belief that seems so certain? One only needs to consider the time before the Reformation when many in the visible church believed that justification was by faith and works. It was going back to the Word of God with an open mind to be conformed to its message that revealed that doctrinal error. So, it is certainly possible for many to be mistaken about what the Bible teaches, but what in Scripture would cause someone to question eternal torment?
Well to start with, the very meaning of the gospel suggests that death, not eternal torment, is the price for sin. Everyone is under "the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:2), for "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23). "But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8), so that we have "an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood" (Rom 3:25). He, "who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification" (Rom 4:25), took the penalty for our sins, that is death, on the cross for our justification.
Those whose sins are not covered by the cross will be held accountable on judgment day. They will have to suffer the consequences of sin with the most serious punishment, capital punishment. They will be cast into the lake of fire where they will undergo the second death (Rev 20:14). This permanent, final punishment, the second death, is the ultimate consequence of sin. It entails eternal and complete destruction from God who will annihilate both soul and body in Gehenna (Mat 10:28).
This punishment is put in contrast to eternal life which is consistently presented in the New Testament as the desirable alternative to death, destruction, and perishing. The Bible clearly states that the righteous will be resurrected and given immortality, but there is no suggestion in the Scriptures that the wicked will be granted immortality. They will not receive eternal life but perish (Jn 3:16). In contrast to this, the historic doctrine of eternal torment holds that unbelievers will also be granted eternal, embodied life just like believers, and the price for their sins is not death but torment.
Mark Corbett, Why I Believe in Annihilationism Rather than Eternal Conscious Torment (in under 10 minutes), YouTube.
Glenn Peoples, Why I am an Annihilationist: "Not only am I an annihilationist, but I think that all evangelical Christians should be annihilationists, because the biblical case for annihilationism is very strong, and I think the arguments against annihilationism are very weak in comparison."
Preston Sprinkle, Biblical Support For Annihilation, 2015: "In my previous post, I said that while I am not an 'Annihilationist,' I do see enough biblical support for this position to qualify it as an Evangelical option. I have not yet had the time to clear my desk to engage in prayerful, thorough, painstaking exegesis to have landed on this position. But from what I have seen, there’s a good deal of sound, biblical arguments for it."
— The Case For Conditionalism, 2016: "In reality, following in the footsteps of early Christians like Ignatius and Irenaeus is an increasing number of evangelicals who, as J. I. Packer said of 'honored fellow-evangelicals' John Stott and John Wenham, embrace conditional immortality and annihilationism 'for the right reason—not because it fitted into their comfort zone, though it did, but because they thought they found it in the Bible.'"
Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism: "Evangelical conditionalists hold to a view of hell that results from a firm commitment to the truthfulness and perennial relevance of the Bible, and not from a desire to have its message be more palatable to our own culture. We are not seeking to construct a more tolerable version of hell, as though primarily motivated by an emotional aversion to the idea of eternal torment. Neither do we assume, however, that the correct view of Hell must be whichever is perceived to be the harshest and most intolerable."
Rethinking Hell, Rethinking Hell Live 097: Conditionalists take the bible out of context!, YouTube.
Chris Date, The Hermeneutics of Conditionalism: A Defense of the Interpretive Method of Edward Fudge: He points out that traditionalists only have a small number of texts to work with about the nature of hell, while "conditionalism’s sedes doctrinae—its seat of doctrine—can be likened to a stool with three legs, each representing a body of biblical texts collectively conveying one of these themes: life from death as the telos of the gospel; immortality as a gift granted only to the saved; and death and destruction as what happens in hell."
Edward Fudge, The Final End of the Wicked, JETS 27/3 (September 1984), 325-334: "The traditional doctrine rests on three arguments: (1) that the OT is, generally speaking, silent on the subject; (2) that the doctrine of conscious unending torment developed during the intertestamental years and came, by Jesus' time, to be "the commonly-accepted Jewish view" (it is said therefore that we ought to read Jesus and the NT writers with a presumption that they and their original hearers all held to the doctrine of unending conscious torment); (3) that the NT language on the subject requires us to conclude that God will make the wicked immortal for the purpose of torturing them alive forever without end."
Mark Corbett, What is Conditional Immortality?, 2016: "The doctrine of conditional immortality is an example of Biblical consistency. On the one hand, from Genesis to Revelation the Bible never says that all people are immortal. It never says that the unrighteous will live forever. On the other hand, the Bible consistently offers eternal life to those who put their faith in Christ."
Terrance Tiessen, Why did it take me so long to accept the strong biblical indication that God finally destroys the wicked?, 2016: "I think it is a good reminder to all of us conditionalists/annihilationists, however, that although traditionalists sometimes express concern about the growing number of evangelical annihilationists, spreading the message is not easy. Just as in conversion to salvation, theological conversion requires an inner work of the Spirit as well as a hearing of God’s word."
Consider how each one of these texts states or implies that we must believe in Jesus Christ to live eternally:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16).
"Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life" (Jn 5:24).
"This is the will of the one who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (Jn 6:40).
"These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God" (1 Jn 5:13)
"However, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first, Jesus Christ might display all his patience for an example of those who were going to believe in him for eternal life" (1 Tim 1:16).
Other times the Bible speaks of the evidence of faith, the demonstration that we are true believers, as the condition for eternal life:
"Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life" (Mat 19:29).
"to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life" (Rom 2:7).
"But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life" (Rom 6:22).
And one of my favorite verses. Notice again the condition for receiving eternal life and immortality:
"whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life" (Jn 4:14).
Those who do not have faith in Christ will not receive eternal life but perish:
"One who believes in the Son has eternal life, but one who disobeys the Son won’t see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (Jn 3:36).
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 6:23).
A Messenger of Truth, Annihilationism Is the Biblical View of Hell (Undebatable Proof), YouTube.
Mark Corbett, Top 20 Verses for Conditional Immortality (aka Annihilationism), YouTube.
Edward Fudge, The Final End of the Wicked, JETS 27/3 (September 1984), 325-334: "No, the OT is not silent concerning the end of the wicked. It appears silent to the traditionalist only because it says nothing he expected to find. It is silent, however, about unending conscious torture. But it speaks volumes concerning that penalty first threatened in the Garden of Eden: Those who sin will "surely die" (Gen 3:3; Ezek 18:4)."
The King James Version translates the words Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna as hell. This is inaccurate and confusing in modern English. There are still many modern translations which translate these words inconsistently, but Gehenna is the only one that refers to the final fate of the wicked. It is a real valley outside of Jerusalem with an Old Testament background that needs to be taken into account.
Joseph Dear, Do Evangelical Conditionalists Believe in Hell? That Depends on What you Mean By "Hell", 2022: "Conditionalists believe in hell in the sense that matters. When the Bible says people go to 'hell,' we agree. We just think it is, as Jesus put it in Matthew 10:28, where God destroys 'both body and soul.' We don’t believe in hell as a place of eternal torment because that’s not what the Bible means when it uses the underlying Greek and Hebrew terms translated as 'hell.'"
James Orr, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: "It means really the unseen world, the state or abode of the dead, and is the equivalent of the Greek Haides, by which word it is translated in Septuagint... The believer's hope for the future, so far as this had place, was not prolonged existence in Sheol, but deliverance from it and restoration to new life in God's presence (Job 14:13-15; Job 19:25-27 Psalm 16:10, 11; Psalm 17:15; Psalm 49:15; Psalm 73:24-26)."
Matthew Y. Emerson, What Is Sheol?: "For the dead, the hope was that, in order to participate in this anticipated return from exile, their Messiah would trample Sheol underfoot, and they would be raised from the dead by God’s Spirit.... The gates of Sheol will not prevail against Christ’s church because Jesus has already broken down its doors. All those united to Christ by faith and through the power of his Holy Spirit are no longer prisoners of death."
Words Translated As Hell: "The word Sheol is used in the Old Testament 65 times. The King James Version translates it as grave 31 times, hell 31 times, and pit 3 times. Can you imagine the same word being translated as both grave and hell?... By its usage we see that Sheol was considered the place or state of all the dead -- whether they were good or bad. When used figuratively it could mean the consequences of wickedness in the present world, likened to death."
Matthew Easton, Hell, Easton's Bible Dictionary: "The Greek word hades of the New Testament has the same scope of signification as sheol of the Old Testament. It is a prison (1 Peter 3:19), with gates and bars and locks (Matthew 16:18; Revelation 1:18), and it is downward (Matthew 11:23; Luke 10:15)."
Wayne Jackson, The Use of Hell in the New Testament: "Originally it simply denoted a deep place; it carries that significance in Job 40:13; 41:31 in the Septuagint. Homer, the Greek poet, spoke of 'dark Tartarus...the deepest pit' (Iliad, 8.13). Here [2 Peter 2:4], it is used of the abode of evil angels prior to their banishment to Gehenna, their ultimate destiny (cf. Mt. 25:41)."
Gehenna, the shortened name for the valley of Hinnom, became notorious during the reigns of Kings Ahaz and Manasseh as the location where children were sacrificed by fire to the god Molech (2 Chron 28:3; 33:6). The valley, we are told in Jeremiah 7:29-34 and 19:1-15, would be called a place of slaughter where it was prophesied to be filled with the corpses of those who had turned away from God. This valley thus became synonymous with divine punishment, where the dead bodies of the slain were left unburied and exposed to decay and scavengers, painting a vivid picture of desolation and wrath.
Gehenna in the New Testament represents not just bodily destruction, but the culmination of divine judgment where the opportunity for salvation is irrevocably withdrawn, and the wicked face complete destruction of soul and body by God. Jesus uses Gehenna eschatologically to illustrate the final death of the wicked (Mat 5:22, 29-30, 18:9). This imagery resonates with Isaiah 66:24, a verse Jesus quotes when speaking of Gehenna, reinforcing the notion of Gehenna as a place of total annihilation. This is consistent with Paul who speaks of the ultimate fate of the wicked in terms of destruction (Phil 1:28; 3:18-19; Rom 9:22-24; 2 Thes 1:8-9).
A common myth is that the Valley of Hinnom was a garbage dump that was always burning with fire, and therefore provided good imagery for eternal torment. However, this is a baseless claim first made by Rabbi David Kimhi around A.D. 1200. Although the garbage dump theory is commonly stated in study Bibles and commentaries to support the doctrine of eternal torment, there is no archeological or literary evidence to back it up. The reality is that the Old Testament provides the background for Gehenna as a place of slaughter, death, and destruction, a stark contrast to the idea of people being tormented forever and never dying.
Andrew Perriman, Was Gehenna a burning rubbish dump, and does it matter?: "There is no actual evidence for the commonplace belief that the city’s refuse was burnt in the Valley of Gehenna at the time of Jesus—apparently, the first recorded reference to fires in the Valley of Hinnom comes from a commentary on Psalm 27 by Rabbi David Kimhi, dating from around 1200 AD."
Chris Loewen, Gehenna: The History, Development and Usage of a Common Image for Hell: "Of the four words that are often translated 'hell,' Gehenna is the only term used in our Scriptures to describe the final fate of the wicked. It is used primarily by Jesus in the gospels, once by James and is entirely absent in the writings of Paul."
Don Stewart, What is Gehenna?: "Gehenna is derived from the Hebrew ge hinnom or the 'valley of Hinnom'... It was also called Tophet, or the valley of dead bones."
Encyclopedia of the Bible - Gehenna: "J. Jeremias stresses the sharp distinction in the NT (as in pre-NT Judaism) between Hades and Gehenna—Hades receiving the ungodly only for the intervening period between death and resurrection, Gehenna being their place of punishment after the last judgment."
Todd Bolen, The Myth of the Burning Garbage Dump of Gehenna, 2011: "I have long wanted to do a little work to debunk the endlessly repeated myth that the Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) was a perpetually burning trash dump. There simply is no evidence to support the idea, but because it seems a reasonable explanation for the origin of the Hinnom Valley as 'hell,' writers and preachers accept and propagate the story."
Penalty is that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the violation of law.
In this definition it is implied that:
1. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty there is a personal element, the holy wrath of the Lawgiver, which natural consequences but partially express.
2. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin.
Sin is the negation of the law. Penalty is the negation of that negation, that is, the reestablishment of the law. Sin is a thrust of the sinner against the law, and penalty is the adverse thrust of that law against sin.
Christ submitted to physical death as the penalty for sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was justified. Sin and its effects still remain for now. However, every believer's hope is in resurrection unto eternal life with Christ, while the end for unbelief is eternal death. These two outcomes are seen in the twofold nature of death in Scripture:
The first death is the loss of bodily life including all those temporal evils and sufferings accompanying it. Physical death is a direct consequence of sin and a curse on humanity. The first death is an expression of the nature of God and his holy wrath against sin, but it is not the full expression of God's justice against sin. The souls of all men survive the first death to be raised and judged on the last day. The bodily resurrection of those in Christ is the defeat and reversal of the first death, while the resurrection of those in Adam is for the execution of justice which consists of the second death.
The second death is the destruction of soul and body from God including all the shame and torment accompanying it. Unbelievers will be raised on the last day to give account for deeds done in this life to the Son who will execute judgment. The second death is the penalty they will face for their sins. It is nothing less than eternal death which encompasses the loss of the whole person forever. It is an eternal punishment from which there is neither return nor end. After the final judgment, justice will have been accomplished and all those who suffered in this life for God's sake will be vindicated.
Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology, (4.5.3), 1907. This section is modified from Strong's chapter on penalty.
Annihilationists deny eternal punishment: This is a strawman. Both sides affirm eternal punishment. The disagreement is over the nature of that punishment. Conditionalists do not argue that the punishment for sin is ceasing to exist. The punishment is death (deprivation of life). For the damned, this punishment is eternal.
Annihilationists redefine the word eternal: This misunderstands the position. Annihilationism is the view that the punishment for sin is death, though it does affirm that there is suffering leading up to and accompanying that death. Both positions affirm eternal punishment. It is not the view that sinners receive the punishment of torment for a long time to pay the price of their sins before God ends their lives, and it does not teach that God instantly annihilates sinners so that they face no pain.
This view must be wrong because Jehovah's Witnesses believe it: This isn't even the genetic fallacy. Annihilationism has strong support in the early church until the time of Augustine and is becoming more common among conservative, Bible-believing Christians now. This is the guilt by association fallacy. Just because this position is held by a heretical group, doesn't mean that it is wrong or that others hold the position for the same reasons. The arguments given here are exegetical and based on accepted hermeneutical principles.
Conditionalists deny degrees of punishment: It is argued that Conditionalism must deny degrees of punishment since the wicked will all face the same fate of death in the end. This does not follow though. If you want to understand degrees of capital punishment, consider the differences between death by lethal injection, firing squad, burning at the stake, and crucifixion. In contrast, the traditional view is that one sin and a lifetime of sin both merit everlasting torment. Both views give an account for degrees of punishment, though the latter appears to give a much worse account.
Conditionalists argue that their view is more consistent with God's character of love and justice: This is a red herring. The focus should remain exegetical first and foremost. There is certainly room to discuss the justness of each view, but one's intuition about justice should not be treated as the primary argument or motivation for their view. Moreover, death, not eternal torment, is consistently said to be the price of sin, so it is not hard to understand the belief that capital punishment aligns with God's justice. Traditionalists also have explanations for why God would be just to inflict eternal torment. Ultimately, we must rely on the Bible more than intuition or emotion.
Conditionalists just want to believe in annihilation because the idea of people spending eternity in hell is awful, or they are just theological liberals: This is just poisoning the well when people begin with these kinds of accusations. The goal is not to psychoanalyze the other side but to examine arguments about the biblical view of hell. It may in fact be traditionalists that are not taking the biblical language serious enough through constant allegorizing of language about life and death, perishing, destruction, fire, Gehenna, extinction, etc.
Biblical references to fire and destruction are understood as metaphors for annihilation: Trying to claim that this view interprets these descriptions non-literally or metaphorically is not only false, it is used rhetorically to discount consideration of the view. Destruction and annihilation are synonyms, and things that are set on fire are consumed and destroyed. Rather, construing these descriptions to mean eternal conscious torment is clearly the metaphorical interpretation of these passages.
Rethinking Hell, Rethinking Hell Live 043: Bad Arguments For and Against Conditionalism, YouTube.
Glenn Peoples, Fallacies in the Annihilationist Debate: A Critique of Robert Peterson and Other Traditionalist Scholarship, JETS 50/2 (June 2007), 329-47: "Annihilationists have noted that instead of speaking in terms of everlasting suffering, the Bible predominantly describes the fate of the lost in terms of destruction... John Stott has commented that 'it would seem strange, therefore, if people who are said to suffer destruction are in fact not destroyed.' He concurs with his partner in dialogue David Edwards (while they disagree on many other things) that it is 'difficult to imagine a perpetually inconclusive process of perishing.'"
The soul is not inherently immortal: Everything that is not God was created by God and depends on Him at every moment for its sustained existence. The Bible never states that the soul will necessarily live on forever. God "is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna." (Mat. 10:28).
Everyone might not spend eternity somewhere: The idea that everyone will experience eternal life, either in heaven or hell, is an assumption that must be examined biblically. 1 Corinthians 15 is almost the only text used to argue that all people will be raised with immortality and incorruptibility; however, in context, this chapter is only about those in Christ being raised and says nothing of unbelievers. Verses like John 3:16 indicate the opposite, that unbelievers are destined to perish.
Michael Horton, A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way, (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2011), 908: "However, in Scripture there is no assumption that the soul is immortal. Rather, like the body, it is a created substance with a beginning and an end. Immortality was the goal held out to Adam and Eve in the Tree of Life, and not merely for the soul but for the whole person. It is this immortality that was forfeited by Adam but has been promised to those who trust in Jesus Christ."
Peter Grice, The Neglected Doctrines of Resurrection and Bodily Transformation, 2017: "This, in a nutshell, is conditional immortality, in which salvation is understood to be rescue from the mortal condition that results from sin... It explains why Christ’s resurrection is so unique and profound, and how if we are to receive eternal life and immortality, it is necessary for us to participate in 'a resurrection like his' (Rom 6:5). To a dying world, the fact that Jesus died and conquered death for us is very good news indeed."
The books I recommend about Conditionalism in order include: Edward Fudge's The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, (3rd ed., 2011), Joseph Dear's The Bible Teaches Annihilationism, (1995), Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, (2015), and A Consuming Passion: Essays on Hell and Immortality in Honor of Edward Fudge, (2015).
I recommend Rethinking Hell's articles and videos as well as Mark Corbett's blog and videos. Chris Date, Edward Fudge, Glenn Peoples, Joseph Dear, Mark Corbett, and Terrance Tiessen are the theologians I recommend.