Christian Conditionalism vs Traditionalism (Rethinking Hell)

[LuftWaffle]

17 hours ago, Jeff2 said:

To me, the historical tradition of eternal punishment and the Scriptures that support it are clear. While not a salvation issue, I find that the annihilation position is based far too much in a philosophical argument than in Scripture.

I'd say that the exact opposite is true if you actually follow the discussions so far. Firstly the notion that all human beings are immortal is not found in scripture, scripture states that everlasting life is granted only to the saved. The notion however is found in the writings of Plato and church fathers like Tertullian quote plato when speaking of the immortality of all souls:

"Some things are known even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many; the knowledge of God is possessed by all. I will use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato when asserting Every soul is immortal." - Tertullian in his treatise "On the resurrection of the flesh"

Secondly the idea that death is a separation isn't found in scripture but is also found in the writings of Plato.

Thirdly when looking at the way the proof texts for eternal conscious torment are offered, they generally follow the following style.

1. Where there is smoke there is fire
2. Where there is fire there is fuel
3. Rev 14 talks about smoke rising forever
4. Therefore there must be fuel forever
5. the fuel of the fire are the wicked people
6. Therefore the wicked burns forever

The same can be said for "the worms that don't die", "eternal fire" and most of the other proof texts. In the absence of a single verse stating that the wicked will live forever in torment, the traditional view relies on philosophical syllogisms that are meant to show that the worms have eternal food, that smoke has eternal fuel and so on.

My approach at rebutting these was purely exegetical. By simply showing how these terms are used elsewhere in scripture and where they are used elsewhere they describe death and destruction instead of the conclusions of the traditional views attempted philosophical syllogisms. Now of I have been using reason, it's impossible to have a discourse without it, and reason isn't a bad thing, usually.

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If you have to explain away half of the passages that deal with eternal punishment to arrive at where you desire, something is wrong.

I don't believe I have "explained away" any passages. I have addressed the poor reasoning behind many proof-texts for the traditional view and have shown how, when they are properly exegeted, offer better support for my view. In addition I have pointed out how the traditional view ignores the literary genre of Revelation when sourcing most of it's proof-texts from apocalyptic imagery, while ignoring clear teachings of Jesus and Paul. In fact I have demonstrated on page 15 using 3 extensive list just how the traditional view contradicts the clear teaching of scripture when they let their guards down while teaching on hell:

Those lists cover 3 categories, namely:

1. that the bible teaches the death of the damned, while traditionalists teach that the damned never die.
2. that the bible teaches that only saved live forever, while traditionalists teach that the damned live forever.
3. that the bible teaches that the damned are destroyed, whereas traditionalists teach that the damned are never destroyed.

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Every position has a few difficult passages to deal with, but when you have to turn the Bible on its ear to prove a point

I agree, which is why I think the lists on page 15 should offer some cause for concern.

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The twisting's and turnings of Sophistry is no substitute for Scripture.

Sophistry is a strong word, and I should expect such a claim to be backed up with some examples of I or any other supporter of conditionalism have relied on sophistry. Empty accusations do not serve anything but to stir up strife.

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Secondly, I do ask myself, what is someone to gain by rejecting eternal punishment? Is it an effort to prove that they are more correct than the majority? Is it to have a point to argue that their position/denomination is more correct than others, and therefore we should yield to whatever else they say? This is what I have seen from my interactions with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

 I find it interesting that truth doesn't feature at all in your above reflection. If conditionalism is true, then the gain is that one is closer to ultimate truth which is God's reality. Isn't it better to know true things than false things?
I want to know what is true, don't you? How do we determine what is true if we don't discuss scripture and we don't have reasonable discourse?

But ever since I became a conditionalist the gospel story took on a much more profound significance. The curse in the garden of Eden was seperation from the tree of life, and death entered the world. The problem with the world isn't paradise lost but that mankind has been cut off from Christ which is the source of life. The traditionalist view focuses on where you go, heaven or hell, and completely misses that the bible is about life. Christ is the way, the truth and the life. His resurrection unto life is the ultimate and direct proof that Christ meant what He said and that He had paid the wages of sin with his life, that death has been conquered. Instead of asking "Teacher how do we get to heaven", we should ask the way those who listened to Jesus' teachings asked, "Teacher how do I obtain everlasting life".
The conditionalist view makes the conquest of sin and death so much more profound because evil isn't merely quarantined in some dark section of the universe where sinner keep of sinning, but sin and death are utterly vanquished.

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Lastly, while not an essential for salvation, I wonder at the commitment and passion to disprove eternal punishment.

You are welcome to wonder all you like, thus far I've had my motives questioned by more than just you, so you're certainly not unique in resorting a ad hominems.

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Historically speaking, the issue is late in Christian history

This is false. Throughout Christian history there have been conditionalists:

First Clement (late 1st century)
Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st century)
Epistle of Barnabas (late 1st or early 2nd century)
Irenaeus (2nd century)
Arnobius (early 4th century)
Athanasius (4th century)

Isaac Barrow (17the century)
Joseph Nichol Scot (16th century)
Henry Constable (19th century)

So the idea that Conditionalism is relatively late is misinformed.

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and dominates in groups that I would not want to hold hands with doctrinally.

Ah, one cannot have this debate without the old guilt-by-association trope.
 

Edited March 26, 2017 by LuftWaffle

[LuftWaffle]

5 hours ago, Yowm said:

Just from one Greek Lexicon (Friberg), it shows that separation is the essencse of death. I can post others as well.

13395  θάνατος, ου, ὁ death; with every form of it in the NT treated not as a natural process but always as a destroying power related to sin and its consequences; (1) physically, as the separation of soul from body (physical) death (JN 11.13); (2) as a legal technical term, of capital punishment (physical) death (MT 26.66); (3) spiritually, as the separation of soul from God (spiritual) death (JN 5.24; JA 1.15), opposite ζωή (life); (4) spiritually, as the separation of soul from spirit or from the possibility of knowing God, as the result of judgment (eternal) death (RO 1.32); called second death in RV 2.11; 20.6; (5) by metonymy deadly disease, pestilence (RV 6.8)

My contention has been that the idea that death means separation (as well as the immortality of the soul) isn't found in Scripture, but has made it's way into church doctrine through the importing of Greek philosophy, and your counter to this is offering a Greek lexicon?

Notwithstanding the irony, you're committing a Hermeneutic fallacy called: "Unwarranted expansion of an expanded semantic range". Basically the fallacy states, that you can't redefine the meaning of words by hunting for a dictionary definition that supports what you want the word to mean.

The reason for this is that lexicons can't tell you what a word should mean in its current context (that's the job of the translator). Lexicons tell you what range of meaning theologians assign to a word. Obviously separation will feature since theologians have described death in that way. If some theologians mistakenly defined death as meaning "icecream", then some lexicons will have "icecream" included in the semantic range of that word.
All you're proven is that some theologians define death as a separation, which goes without saying.

The bible over and over describes the fate of the wicked in terms of death, destruction and to perish, and it illustrates this with words like ashes to ashes, dust to dust, corpses decaying and being devoured and burned up. Chaff being burned up. The traditionalist point of view is the opposite, the dead live forever, they do not perish and they aren't ever destroyed.

Edited March 26, 2017 by LuftWaffle

[LuftWaffle]

4 hours ago, Yowm said:

Rather, I simply responded to this general comment of yours...

" Jesus' audience and Paul's audience didn't have the luxury of theological notions such as "progressive revelation", but instead knew the old testament very well."

Your response was that they would have understood the images, not according to how they're used in the Old Testament meaning but according to your assumed progressive revelation that hell is eternal conscious torment.
My response is that you're begging the question if the proof-texts must be interpreted according to some assumed progressive revelation that supports your view.

What is your justification for the "progressive revelation" that hell is eternal conscious torment? The proof-texts! What's your justification that the original meaning of the images as used elsewhere in scripture must be overridden? Progressive revelation!

This is text-book circular reasoning.

 

[Running Gator]

7 hours ago, Yowm said:

As I said, I could provide many well established lexicon definitions.

Since we can't depend on lexicons for meanings but instead  I suppose we will have to depend on your definitions, then I will kindly bow out of this conversation and it's  pseudo intellectual sophistry. Have a  nice day.

That is not what he said at all.  A lexicon gives you a range of possible meanings for a word, the way the word is used in context is what determines which of those meanings is the correct one.

[Jeff2]

He denied the word death carried with it the connotation of separation. In every Greek
lexicon I consulted it was so.   

Ahhhh... the Greek must be wrong! Plato, a Greek, used the word that way!

Edited March 27, 2017 by Jeff2

[Jeff2]

This is false. Throughout Christian history there have been conditionalists: 
First Clement (late 1st century)
Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st century)
Epistle of Barnabas (late 1st or early 2nd century)
Irenaeus (2nd century)

Instead of a copy and paste from a website as proof, would it not be better to actually prove this?

 

I'm willing to look at your references! (Irenaeus would not surprise me, he had some unorthodox views that the rest of the Church did not follow.)

[LuftWaffle]

4 hours ago, Jeff2 said:

He denied the word death carried with it the connotation of separation. In every Greek
lexicon I consulted it was so.   

Ahhhh... the Greek must be wrong! Plato, a Greek, used the word that way!

I have not seen any scriptural reason for changing the word death in scripture to "separation". Lexical definitions are theologians' opinions on the range of meanings that a word can have and since most theologians are traditionalists, who need to explain why dead people can live forever, they use the Platonist definition of death which means separation. 

Show me the verse(s) in the Bible that say we need to redefine death as "separation".

Where you will find it is in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers, and the church fathers who were versed in Greek philosophy. This is also where the idea that the soul is immortal comes from.

"And they are right, Simmias, in saying this, with the exception of the words “They have found them out”; for they have not found out what is the nature of this death which the true philosopher desires, or how he deserves or desires death. But let us leave them and have a word with ourselves: Do we believe that there is such a thing as death?
To be sure, replied Simmias.
And is this anything but the separation of soul and body? And being dead is the attainment of this separation when the soul exists in herself, and is parted from the body and the body is parted from the soul—that is death?" - Plato's Phaeo 61-64 (http://www.bartleby.com/2/1/31.html)

So, while I'm being accused of ignoring scripture and peddling philosophical arguments, the Bible does not once define death as "separation" and clearly contradicts the traditionalist belief that all souls are immortal in passages such as

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
(1Co 15:53-55)

So, instead of the sarcasm and vague accusations, perhaps we can get down to brass tacks:

1. What scriptural justification do you offer for seeing death as separation, in opposition to how scripture defines death using descriptions like perish, destroy, ashes to ashes, corpses being devoured, the grave and so on?

2. What scriptural justification do you offer to extend the Greek philosophy of separation of body and soul to the second death and defining it as separation of man and God? Now I'm happy to confirm that death would entail separation from God, but your claim isn't merely that death entails separation but that it must be interpreted as living forever separate from God.

3. What scriptural justification do you offer for the immortality of all souls, especially given clear texts such as the one cited above?

[LuftWaffle]

5 hours ago, Jeff2 said:

This is false. Throughout Christian history there have been conditionalists: 
First Clement (late 1st century)
Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st century)
Epistle of Barnabas (late 1st or early 2nd century)
Irenaeus (2nd century)

Instead of a copy and paste from a website as proof, would it not be better to actually prove this?

 

I'm willing to look at your references! (Irenaeus would not surprise me, he had some unorthodox views that the rest of the Church did not follow.)

I am happy to if asked. You must understand that I've been spending a lot of time responding to everybody here. If I take shortcuts then it's not some sinister agenda, I promise.

Would a video help?

Now, before you cherry pick the less direct lines of evidence from the above video, I want to restate why we're talking about this in the first place:

Your assertion was that Conditionalism is relatively new and it was to that assertion that I responded with the list of church fathers. Even traditionalists grant that Arnobius was a Conditionalist so even if only that one goes through, your statement that Conditionalism is relatively new, is misinformed. Unless you're prepared to consider the 3rd Century as relatively new.

In terms of your attempt at poisoning the well against Irenaeus by claiming that he has lots of unorthodox views: only the issue of conditionalism is relevant, because the matter on the table is whether your claim that Conditionalism is relatively new is true or not.

[LuftWaffle]

 

16 hours ago, Yowm said:

As I said, I could provide many well established lexicon definitions.

So, only extra-biblical sources? Do you really need a dictionary to tell you what death means?

By the way, why is it that traditionalists aren't consistent with how they use the word "death". After all if they truly believed that death must be seen as "separation" then why, in the lists I've offered on page 15 where traditionalists say that the unsaved cannot die, they're clearly not using the *special* definition?

In fact the only time I ever see death defined in that way is when traditionalists are defending eternal conscious torment against, well, the plain meaning of the word "death". The rest of the time, when they let their guards down, they seem to use the word the same way us conditionalists use it. Here is that list again:

What the bible has to say about the death of the damned:

Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:13: For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the
body, you will live.

John 6:50: This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

John 11:25–26: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet
shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

What traditionalists say:

Saint Anselm: O worms, O worms, why do you gnaw me so cruelly? Pity me, pity me; pity poor me, that suffer so
many and such awful other torments! Ah, poor me, poor me! And I want to die; but, dying and dying, still I cannot
die.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne: Wicked men shall be cast away by themselves.—It is said, they shall wish to die, and
shall not be able. They shall seek death, and death shall flee from them.

Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East: Some say, “Suppose me go to Hell, me soon
die there—big fire soon kill me; then me no feel.” But God says you no die in Hell. Suppose you put stone in the fire,
he can't be burnt ! No—fire can't burn him—he always live there! God says the wicked have hearts of stone, and
fire will no melt them.

John Wesley: Neither the righteous nor the wicked were to die any more: their souls and bodies were no more to
be separated.

Hyman Appelman: You can take poison; you can blow your brains out; you can hang yourself and believe you have
left your difficulties behind. But there is no poison in Hell. There are no guns in Hell. There is no death in Hell.

John MacDuff: [If we could] look into the lake of fire, and have a sight of the wretched beings who are there
writhing in deathless agonies--we would then thank God for the most miserable condition on earth, if it were only
sweetened with the hope of escaping that place of torment!

John Willison: Pray earnestly, that all your sins may die before you die; for if they die not before you, but outlive
the dying body, they will live eternally to sting and torment the never-dying soul.

John Gill: …the soul in torment shall never die, or lose any of its powers and faculties; and particularly, not its
gnawing, torturing conscience.

Jerry Vines: To go to into hell knowing you will never return is the tragedy of all tragedies. “Let some air in.” No air
is in hell. “I need a drink of water.” No water is in hell. “Turn on some light.” No light is in hell. “Let me die.” No

 

So, Yowm and Jeff2

When all the above theologians claim that the damned in hell cannot die, do they mean their souls cannot be separated from God? I thought according to the traditionalist view hell was exactly that? Or do they mean their life (and thus suffering) cannot end? Do these theologians not read their Greek lexicons?

Edited March 27, 2017 by LuftWaffle

[Jeff2]

Your assertion was that Conditionalism is relatively new and it was to that assertion that I responded with the list of church fathers.

What I meant by that is that the doctrine is new in popularity and acceptance. While it would be good to prove that this is not just a 19-21st century excursion, I will say that the seed of many errors are to be found in the Church fathers. The fact that one may entertain them, and the rest of the Church did not embrace their doctrine, says something. They were working out many doctrines as time advanced; the question is, were they correct, or were they a deviation?

I have read most of the writings before the 2nd century. However, I have not looked specifically to find and evaluate their views on future punishment.