Sadly this is one of those questions that you’re not really allowed to think about thoroughly, openly, and honestly without putting yourself in danger of being kicked out of the evangelical camp if you land outside of the “Range of Acceptable Answers”. I hope the author of this letter is in a situation where he has the freedom to fully explore this issue without that fear.

Edward, you were might fast on that one. Well done. (I’m a friend of your nephew Aaron in Portland, by the way, who is a splendid and godly fellow.)
Letter-writer,
I also struggled with this issue for some time, and what kicked it off was the tension between the Bible’s focus on this life and our obsession with escaping a certain element of the afterlife. Why would the overwhelming bulk of the Bible be talking about loving one another, seeking justice, living worshipfully, etc, if hell was supposed to be as *full* and as *horrid* as “orthodoxy” claimed it to be? If 99% of humanity was going to be tortured forever and ever, then the fundamentalists are right to not give a damn about social justice or seeking peace or sexual purity or reconciliation. I ain’t got time to bleed for those comparatively small things, went the logic, if hell is that full and that bad. Sorry, Jesus: justice and love have got to wait ’til later.
Was I mistaken on reading the Bible’s obsession with living well today? Or was it possible that I’d been misreading the verses about eternal conscious punishment? The sheer bulk and clarity of the “this life” verses, and the sheer rareness and poetic obscurity of the “after-life” verses inclined me to distrust the latter.
Where did I end up? Well, Dr. Fudge’s work was a blessing to me, as was N.T. Wright’s efforts to re-contextualize the gehenna verses in the gospels.
But that only answers the question of “is hell really that bad?” The question of how full it will, or how empty, was honed by John Sanders’ “No Other Name: An Investigation into the Destiny of the Unevangelized”. And if you REALLY want to go down a thoughtful if rightly controversial rabbit hole, then read Gregory MacDonald’s “The Evangelical Universalist”, which hinges on a Molinist rather than an open-theist view of God and the future.
May God bless you with hope and joy in exploring this dark topic.

When I studied the scriptures, the traditional teaching on hell was missing in action.
http://www.kingwatch.co.nz/Times_Seasons/hell.htm

I am not sure the title of this post is quite right – what we need to ask is not “Is Eternal Punishment Just” but “Is Eternal Punishment the right interpretation of scripture?” (Not as catchy a title though.)
I don’t think so – because it doesn’t make sense if one really stops to think deeply about it. (Of course – this “sense” is not a careful exposition of scripture (yet).)

My modern sensibilities fidget at the idea of ECT (eternal, conscious torment), but I believe it is taught in Scripture right through to the very last chapters of Revelation. I’ve recently studied this issue and I found the exegesis for those who were opposed to ECT to be loose and full of their own a priori assumptions. If you do decide to really study the issue, make sure you balance the new persepctive that you read with traditional writers (like Grudem) as well. It’s too easy to brainwash yourself one way or the other.

I hate the notion of everlasting hell and would love to believe it’s not true. I can’t.
Mike: It’s not about the “range of acceptable answers” but about being honest with the text. If we’ve misinterpreted the scriptures, that’s one thing. If it’s just not as “nice” as we think God ought to be, that’s something else entirely.
Brandon: Fundies aside, “living well today” is a vital part of evangelism.

ChrisB, we’ve misinterpreted the scriptures. I think this is one of those exegesis/eisegesis things, and frankly, we’ve taken ECT and read it into the scripture. There ARE ways of reading Matt 24, Rev 20, etc that are both honest with the text AND that don’t go to our understanding of ECT.

The letter-writer asks, “Who benefits?” I can make an argument that an ?unrepentant soul? benefits from the fire of God?s holy presence in order to purge him from sin and bring him to repentance, which can be a painful process. But I cannot understand why such suffering must continue throughout eternity. God?s judgment sometimes involves punishment, sometimes involves pain, but always serves God?s loving purpose of redemption. Eternal torture with no hope of redemption is manifestly unjust.
Why do we assume that physical death is the final barrier to repentance? If God so values freedom of will that he allows such evil and suffering in the world to preserve it, then why would God take away our ability to exercise our free will ? to repent ? on the other side of the grave?
In the traditional view, sin may eventually be defeated, but this can hardly be described as a victory for God ? to spend all of eternity tormenting millions upon millions of souls who forever continue to rebel and hate him. Evil is contained, but never overcome. There will always be a pocket of the universe resistant to God?s purposes, a ghetto of suffering to testify to the indestructible power of sin.
Love is stronger than hate. Grace is stronger than sin. We don?t always experience the triumph of love and grace in this life, but we can look forward to the ultimate fulfillment of God?s redemption.

Ditto Kenton@7.
I was working through this several years ago, along with some other issues of my received theology. This was the thing that caused me the most difficulty, until I saw that I was reading ECT into scripture. When I set it aside things started changing. The dread Brian McLaren made me think about translation issues, but NT Wright helped the most, until I found my current path.
I believe there will certainly be judgment, and everyone’s hearts and deeds will be revealed. I don’t believe that judgment is the “final ending”. I don’t believe a good, merciful, abounding-in-compassion God would stand for a torture chamber somewhere in the universe. I believe there will be more to the story.
Dana

DonL,
I’m curious about your statement here, because I see the idea of hell being used to purge people of sin as God torturing a confession out of someone and them limping into heaven, claiming faith not because they wanted Christ but because they just couldn’t take much more pain. To me, that’s not much of a victory for God, either. And if everyone is going to repent anyway, why should the church engage in missions?
Your thoughts? Nice to talk to you, by the way.

This question runs deep with me, also.
I appreciated some of John Burke’s comments in “No Perfect People Allowed.” This question often reflects back on the asker – often it is asked by people who have endured injustice and seek assurance that God is in fact both loving and just.
A thought from a completely different direction: Jonah confronted the other side of God when he tried to run away from Nineveh. The Assyrians seem worse than today’s terrorists to me and they were a world power. Jonah basically told God “over my dead body you’ll redeem them.” Perhaps it would be something like a concentration camp victim being asked to bring God’s message of forgiveness to a group of Nazis and knowing they would repent. Not easy – especially if they have brutalized your friends or family.
When they did repent, Jonah told God “I knew it. I knew you were merciful and would save them. That’s the whole reason I ran!” The scandal for Jonah was that these historically cruel, evil people could repent and be saved.
It seems that God’s love and mercy as well as his justice – he runs afoul of human sensibilities on both sides.

Kenton is spot on here, IMO. The early church fathers who read the scripture in the original languages by and large did not see ECT there. Even Augustine (who read in Latin and not Greek) who was a firm supporter of ECT admitted that “There are very many in our day, who though not denying the Holy Scriptures, do not believe in endless torments.” In the first few centuries of Christianity, there were 6 accepted “schools” of Christianity. Four taught universal salvation. One taught annihilation. Only the Roman school taught ECT. Obviously, the matter is not nearly as cut-and-dried as we have been lead to believe. Unless we are ready to believe that the church was in error from our earliest record of the church fathers until Augustine restored proper teaching on the matter. Which seems to be a preposterous idea.
The reason that the early church saw the teaching of universalism as orthodox where as today it will get you kicked out of the family, is simply that they were reading the original Greek. The word translated as “forever” is aion or aionian. Pretty much all the evidence we have is that in the ancient world it meant something like eon or age. (The ancient Greek word for forever is aidios.)The word translated as punishment is “kolasin” which means correction or chastisement. (The word for punishment is “timoria”.)
It should also be noted that St. Paul never mentions hell, much less ETC. If he were an evangelical preacher, this would be seen as gross neglect.
If you wanted to explore these issues further this page provides a lot of information:
http://www.tentmaker.org/ScholarsCorner.html

Why do we assume that God desires ECT?
Is it not possible to suppose that rather God values human will to such a great degree that he ultimately says to the unrepentant, ‘I will give you what you ask for…’

Justin #10
Let?s see if I can clarify … Scripture often describes the presence of God as fire, which is how I also interpret references to the lake of fire in Revelation. Like fire, God?s presence is experienced in different ways. I can enjoy the cozy warmth and peaceful flames of a campfire. I can also suffer painful burns if I don?t respect the fire. The loving, holy, majestic presence of God can be experienced as painful flames, or as comforting flames, depending on my relationship to the fire. God doesn?t change, he is always holy and always loving. But my relationship to him needs to be changed, if not in this life, then in the next.
It?s not that God forces my confession. Rather, suddenly face to face with the awesome reality of God, I can no longer hide behind the barriers of physicality and flesh that sometimes blind us to God. I am confronted by reality. How will I respond? I see two options:
Imagine that, during this all-too-brief earthly life, you have experienced such a distorted version of Christianity and the gospel that you rejected God?s grace. After death, you are jolted with the realization of who God actually is and what Christ actually has done. You finally regret your wasted life and desire to repent and embrace God?s love and grace. Will God tell you it?s too late and turn away?
I can?t imagine that anyone who finds himself before the throne of Almighty God could continue to rebel against him, but I suppose it is possible. In that case, what will God do? Will he leave an unrepentant soul in its evil condition to suffer for all eternity? Or will he begin the sometimes-painful work of restoring the soul?
Judgment is not a punishment designed to bend a person?s will. Judgment is a process of restoration, in which God lovingly restores a person?s ability to appreciate reality, to perceive truth and to act rationally. Part of the process of repentance, whether in this life or the next, is the painful awareness of our sin and of how much pain we have inflicted on others. It can be a hard process, but ultimately, God prevails through love and grace and not coercion.
?God desires all men to be saved? … and always will.

Rebeccat (#12),
Where can I find information about the “six schools” of thought on this issue in the early church fathers/mothers?

I think there is a connection between this post and Scott?s series on eschatology. Many of the texts that have traditionally been used to support a concept of eternal, conscious torment, contain prophetic imagery referring specifically to God?s judgment upon the first-century generation of Israel that rejected the messiah in favor of a Roman savior. In other words, they refer to earthly judgments rather than eternal destinies.

DonL@16
I think you’re right on there. Yes, it’s not only about eisegesis in eschatology, but our hermeneutics as well.
Hey, I just used my 3 favorite theology words in one sentence!

John W Frye,
Well, for a reference there’s this:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc12.u.ii.html
Go to page 96 under “History”.
However, for an actual examination of these schools as a subject, I’m not sure. You can pick up the information from looking at the writing of the leaders of the schools in question, but I’m not sure where a source with this as its topic would be found. The link I provided to the scholar’s page at Tentmaker from my post above is the best source I have found for writing which has pulled the evidence about universalism and its history into one place.

Rebeccat #12
>>>It should also be noted that St. Paul never mentions hell, much less ETC. If he were an evangelical preacher, this would be seen as gross neglect.

ChrisE, Do you read “These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction” and think “They will suffer in torment for ever?” I read that phrase to mean that everything they’ve worked for in their selfish lives will be shown to zero lasting value. God’s justice is not meant to kick their @$$es, it’s meant to bring them into right relationship with Himself – either before or after death.
“I like to think of Jesus like a ninja” – Walker Bobby in Tallaadega Nights

Chris E,
1 Thessalonians 1:5-10 is almost certainly connected to Jesus’ words in Matthew 17:27-28 whose words it almost repeats:
1 Thessalonians 1:7 This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.
Matthew 1:27 For the Son of Man is going to come in with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.
As Scot has spoken of recently, Jesus’ words were immediately followed with the statement that the present generation would still be alive when this happened. Again, the word translated as “everlasting” aionios, meaning “of the ages” in this context, not aidios. When the Torah was translated into Greek, the translators used the word “aionios” to describe everything from Solomon’s temple (1 Chron 17:12) which is no longer with us to Jonahs’ imprisonment(Jonah 2:6) which lasted 3 days.
As for names of people involved with the schools, I don’t have time to do a deep search today, but I’ll pull a few off top of my head.
Clement – Alexandria
Origen – Alexandria (Interestingly, Origen was posthumously condemned for various heresies, but his teachings on universalism were not among those declared heretical.)
Theodore of Mopsuestia – Antioch
Gregory of Nyssa and his Brother Basil the Great – Ceasarea
John Chrysostom – Antioch
Obviously, there are many,many more. But I’m afraid I’m rather short on time today.

Kenton #20 and Rebeccat#21
I Thess 1.5-10 says nothing at all about people being brought into right realtionship with God. It speaks of God’s vengeance and “eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord.” If you want restitutionary punishment, I think you have to find it elsewhere.
Rebeccat- thanks for the names; I got some study to do. I think you’re referring to Matthew 25.31-46 (maybe some references got mixed up). This teaching is not immediately connected to what Scot was talking about yesterday in Matt 24 and there is precious little chance that anyone could prove that this judegement scene took place in 70 AD (I should be careful because I don’t know – Scot may argue that it did).
Anyway, a quick glance through BAGD shows some pretty convincing instances where aionos almost certainly has the meaning of “eternal’ or “everlating” – For starters John 6:51 and 58. I don’t think Jesus was telling the crowds that if they ate his flesh, they would live for “a little while”. But, yes, aionos does have a semantic range, which does include the notion of eternality. Aidios is only used once in the whole NT so not lots of help. Nevertheless, “eternal destruction” is a good translation in 1 Thess 1:9. It fits the whole passage better than “temporary punishment” would.

Sigh. I tend toward St. Isaac the Syrian and St. Gregory of Nyssa myself. But there’s so much you have to unpack about everything behind what they say that it can’t possibly fit in a comment.

ChrisE, OK, so how do you reconcile 1 Thes 1 with 1 Tim 4:10? Is Paul bi-polar? Why does the 1 Thes passage trump the 1 Tim passage?

Also, it’s not that “aionios” is better translated “a little while.” I would translate those passages (and John 3, et. al.) as “the life of all time.” We’ve always thought those passages mean “heaven when you die,” but Jesus wants us to have LIFE, ABUNDANT LIFE – the life of all time, *here* and *now*.
Yes, there’s still a resurrection we get to take part in, but the life Jesus offers is not something that’s only in the sweet by and by.

I tend towards a conditional (annihilationism) view of hell, it seems to fit the majority of passages more easily. The difficulty comes when cultural context is weighted, and we find that Pharisees taught some sort of ongoing punishment for the wicked, and this would be the school of thought that Paul came out of. Also, if Jesus indeed spoke of hell (I don’t think he did), he’d be speaking to people who understood the Pharisaic idea.
As to the “who benefits,” it depends on what your looking for. If you tend to a more Calvinistic view, and it is all for God’s glory, then God (and the righteous) benefit from God’s glory being displayed in his just punishment of the wicked.
Overall though, I think you’re on to something. No one seems to benefit. After all, it seems that YHWH’s judgment and punishment throughout the Scripture seems to be for the purpose of correction, liberation, or something of the sort. ETC does not seem to fit with this at all.

There’s a philosophical side to this matter that isn’t often raised. Is the rise of the ECT position a result of the reinterpretation of Christian teaching along Platonic lines? Plato is the one who advanced the concept of the eternal spirit (soul? it’s been a while since I read up on it) — of course, his concept of ‘eternal’ included no beginning as well as no ending.
I’m coming to believe the plain reading of the Bible, without any preconceptions, leads us to a conditional immortality. That is, those who don’t turn to Christ will be raised, judged and destroyed. In other words, God’s judgment is carried out just as He warned Adam and Eve — “Ye shall surely die”. Am I fully convinced? No. But the fact that NONE of the sermons recorded in Acts spend any time discussing the fate of the unrepentant leads me to look upon the Gospel as the Good News of how Jesus has broken Adam’s curse and how we can overcome death in every sense of the word.

No, of course it isn’t just. It is also very stupid – what is the point of an everlasting punishment if you never get the chance to learn your lesson and apply it later?

1. Eternal spirits. The idea that an immaterial part of us is by nature eternal can be found in many sources and religions, not just Plato. It is often coupled with the idea that matter or the physical is evil, or if not evil, then illusion which binds us. Neither of these ideas are either Jewish or Christian. God alone is by nature eternal. We are created. Before we were conceived we did not exist at all. And we are entirely contingent, moment to moment, on God for our continued existence. No part of us is by nature eternal.
2. Further, this idea that our spirit is in some way distinct or separable from our bodies, rather than intertwined and interdependent is also neither Jewish nor Christian. It’s why we have traditionally treated bodies differently at death. Since Jesus came out of the tomb, it is no longer the nature of man to die. There is a temporary duality now where God somehow maintains us as individuals, giving us some sort of temporary ‘hardware’ while our bodies sleep until the final resurrection and we are restored to our natural state. Interestingly, modern medical science is affirming the Jewish and Christian perspective more and more every year. If the chemical or physical structure of the brain is changed, it changes us through and through even down to what most of us would call our ‘core’ personality. Intertwined and enmeshed and ultimately inseparable.
3. Annihilationism. Given the sorts of things most Christians seem to have heard again and again, I understand the attraction of this idea. The church has always rejected it, for I think, some very good reasons. Yes, everything is contingent on God from moment to moment. But everything we see and find in scripture screams that God begrudges existence to none of his creation. He is faithful and unchanging. Though we are contingent on him, he will never cease loving and sustaining that which has created. If this thought is carried through, it also leads in some odd directions. Most Christians, I think, would immediately affirm that God created everything ex nihilo or out of ‘nothing’. I do think fewer ask from where this ‘nothing’ came. Think it through. If you do, then this alternative begins to look more like some forms of monoism.
4. ‘Separated from God’. That’s a phrase you hear and read used carelessly quite often this day. Within a Christian perspective, it’s nonsense. As the Psalmist affirms, anywhere we might go, even the depths of sheol/hades/death, God is there. As, if all that exists is contingent on God, so he must. God is everywhere present and filling all things. He is never far from us and we are never separated from him. Now, it is true that if we do not follow the way of life, we are seeking death. In a sense, we are pursuing non-existence when we turn from the God we were intended to reflect into creation and worship any other god. But non-existence is not something we can actually achieve since God does not change and begrudge existence to any of his creation. With however much fervor we pursue it, we can never achieve non-existence, just as we can never achieve self-existence. Thus, no human being can ever be separated from God.
5. Once again, I must emphasize something. The God made known in Jesus of Nazareth, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, does not change. He does not punish some and reward others, whether based on their own behavior or some internal whim of God. He is who he is and we see that most succinctly captured in 1 John 4:8. ‘He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.’ Of course, we have to immediately exclaim that it’s a love that far transcends anything we’ve ever known and which we can hardly imagine. It is so far beyond us and so unchanging that if we hold up any other example of love as the standard, we would have to say God is not that sort of love. Nevertheless, God is by nature love. And two preeminent attributes of love (from 1 Cor 13)? God is long-suffering. He is patient. It’s part of the reason he begrudges existence to none of his creation. And God is kind. God is merciful. Doesn’t he say that over and over and over in Scripture? I think it’s repeated because we have a hard time believing it. We aren’t long-suffering. We aren’t kind.
OK. In the context of this point, what does this mean? Just this. If God does not change and God is by nature love, then those who follow God and those who do not experience ultimately experience exactly the same God. As we see in many places, but I particularly love Isaiah 11, one day the veil will be lifted, creation will be renewed, and the glory of God, that is his unveiled love, will be all in all. But our God is also a consuming fire, which must be to say that his love is also a consuming fire. It leaves no place of shadow or darkness. It leaves us no place to hide even from ourselves. Those who, through the mercy and grace and life made available to all by and through Jesus, have been reshaped into true human beings will be able to stand in the fire of God’s love and experience it as warmth and wholeness. But those who have turned and shaped themselves in other ways, who have increasingly buried and hidden their eikonic nature, will experience God’s love as fiery torment.
God does not change. We change. One way or another. There is a way of life and there is a way of death.
6. In today’s Christian environment, it is only with all of that said that it is even possible to understand the point of those like St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Isaac the Syrian who I mentioned earlier. They could not imagine that the love of God would not eventually win out. They thought that his unveiled love, unrelenting compassion, and unchanging faithfulness would eventually warm the heart of even the most hardened and unrepentant. Having been pretty far down other paths myself, I empathize with their perspective. I was not seeking this God. In fact, I was pretty convinced I didn’t want anything to do with him. This was the God who pursued me, who loved me, who was faithful to me. I take the warnings of Scripture seriously. It seems there is a danger that we can become so hardened, so twisted, so deformed that the presence and love of God becomes unrelenting torment for us. But I have an inkling just how much God loves each of his precious eikons. And I find it hard to believe that that love would not eventually win every heart.
It’s not the sort of coercion we see in some strains of modern universalism, where God ultimately ‘saves’ everyone whether that’s what they want or not. And I would never pronounce it as dogma. Nevertheless, I’ve been granted a tiny sliver of God’s love, deeply veiled to protect me. And it has changed everything. When I pray, Lord have mercy, I know that he does. And so I share in this pious hope.

Most of your discussions simply assume that the Bible is God’s word and can be literally interpreted. Both of these ideas are simply human assumptions which are not supported by anything we experience in the universe. The writers of the texts that ended up in the Bible wrote what they did for many different reasons and with varying degrees of skill and knowledge. The idea of hell being a real place somewhere comes straight from the same pagan thinking that brought us the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
Only when we search the Bible texts for the probable spiritual thoughts underlying why the writers wrote the things that they did, does the Bible begin to make sense. Indeed, it explodes with life and wisdom. These ancient writers were human men creating human religious stories. What is consistent was their deference to ultimate truth, however they perceived it to be. When evil powers gave captive nations no hope for a peaceful life on earth, then a place of hellish torture in an afterlife was a natural solution.
However, Jesus taught that righteousness has its here and now responsibilities. If you have a disagreement with your brother (unresolved conflict) as you approach the alter with your sacrifice (ritualistic request for forgiveness of sins) he directed you set aside your ritual until your heart is right with our brother. In other words your rituals should be a true expression of your life. Also consider the practical spiritual teachings of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, etc., which have everything to do with deciding on righteous now and nothing about punishment later.
Who can deny that lying, greed, covetousness, jealousy, etc. create hellish lives for all of those who live by these motives? Who can deny that a personal attitude of unconditional love protects you from holding on to such motives? It brings peace and harmony (heaven) to your existence, despite your circumstances.
To me, that is the practical basis for the concepts of righteousness, sin, heaven, and hell mentioned in the Bible. It is also a healthy thing to admit that most of what is ultimately real and eternal we don’t know and probably couldn’t understand anyway, and that is OK.

Is Eternal Punishment Just?
That is the question. Some would say that for people like Hitler, Stalin, and those that bring death to innocent people (could be the millions being killed in Iraq now, or the attack on South Ossetia by Georgia?s Shakashvili), an eternal punishment would not even be enough. Of course that idea is from souls that have little passion for others and those that believe God is not up to the task to complete His will during the ages. Would God be looking for retribution like we humans seem to desire? In America we have places we call prisons, also called correctional institutions, where, hopefully, we can encourage the offenders to repent and be released to acceptable behavior in the general populace.
Psal 9415 But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it.
The judgment here is understood by some to be eternal. But eternal is not even a Scriptural word! (Weymouth, Young?s Literal don?t use ?eternal? much) Yes, it was changed and added to many of the popular English versions of the Bible we use today. This judgment is administered only as long as it takes to make those judged righteous.
Bob Todd
San Jacinto, CA
e-mail k7vhq@earthlink.net

Hello Dr. McKnight,
Have you read the Eastern Orthodox work, “River of Fire” on this topic? If not, I humbly recommend it for consideration.
http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/the-river-of-fire-kalomiros/
Blessings,
Jason

So, very few Evangelicals (and others) who posted here believe that eternal punishment is just or is even part of God’s plan. Most argue that an accurate translation of the original language would reveal that! I ask- why then so very many, including the media- isn’t that right, would be incredibly surprised at that.
I feel called to follow Jesus, but not to be a Christian, and the emphasis I’ve heard over and over for 60+ plus years about eternal damnation is one reason I don’t use the C word. Scot and RJS sometimes talk about discernment. My reading and knowledge is no where near encyclopedic, but my discernment is that most or many of the early Christians, as Rebeccat (12 + 21) points out, and Jesus himself did not believe in eternal damnation or hell. When my wife and I retired to the Bible belt (SC), we joined the UU church to lessen the culture shock! I had thought of the UU church as being quite secular, but the second U is universalist, and that is the emphasis of our two (formally presbyterian and methodist) ministers. I think they both consider themselves Christian universalists. My understanding of the Bible is close that of JFox (30), so the weekly discussions here of whether the serpent or ark stories, etc. descibe an historical reality drive me away from this blog, but I always come back because of the scholarship and decency here is so attractive. If Christianity has a future, I think and hope it will be driven by the “E” types found here and not the universalist types found at our UU church.

OOPS I meant to say “and ALSO the universalist types at our UU church,” but my original extension, “not the “Es” …” was not completely deleted. This little ACER Aspire One is a cute computer, but I need bigger keys or smaller fingers! I find myself retyping every thrd word.
Peace,
Doug

Hi Scot, will you share your response at some point? Or are there posts already online that would equally show your views? Thanks

Ryan (and others)…
I’ve been pressed a few times here to say what I think and it goes like this:
I believe God is just and I believe we have to apply the biblical sense of justice to God as well. I could dig up a quote by CS Lewis about Job who learned to apply what he knew to the situation and not give up, even if he had to learn his idea eventually didn’t go far enough. I may learn that too, but here goes:
It is unjust for someone to be eternally and infinitely punished for a temporal/non-eternal and finite set of sins. So, at some point God’s justice must run out for human sin.
Which means that either we believe humans continue to rebel eternally (which might lead to the slight possibility of a second chance) — in a CS Lewis sense of ongoing diminishment or wraith-like existence — or that the punishment leads to eventual annihiliation (conditional immortality). One might toss in here the RC view of purgatory, but I don’t think that really resolves the problem for those in “inferno.”
Thus, I don’t believe eternal conscious judgment (I think the words “torment” and “torture” are too evocative for justice) can be just unless there is some kind of ongoing eternality of sin.
I could be wrong, but that is how I see it.

i often wonder too about the idea of eternal punishment. i heard in church that the skin burns off and then regrows and the person in hell is eternally in pain. I was horrified. at some point, in eternity, God would become unjust if a person was eternally tortured and punished.

As an Eastern Orthodox Christian it should be borne in mind that this discussion is one that has been dealt with long ago in the seventh century duing the Monothelite/Monoenergist debates which finally tore through the dialectic of Origenism by the work of Maximus the Confessor.
Universalism, like Augustinianism is another species of Origen’s Platonic apokatastasis. Also, eternaly suffering isn’t the same idea as eternal torment so that while the latter entails the former, the converse is not true.
A few points should be kept in mind as to the price to pay for abandoning orthodoxy. Universalism hold the same soteriological denial of freedom as Calvinism, they differ only in the number of the elect. This is why universalism and calvinism occupy the same positon on the spectrum of Origen’s dialectic-either agents will be free but not good or good but not free.
Third, universalism and annihilationalism go hand in hand with Arianism. If being united to God amunts to a unity will only then either the will is natural or personal (hypostatic). Either universalism or annihilationalism will ensue. If union with God is essentially a matter of will, then Christ is related to the Father through will, which direclty implies Arianism. If on the other hand it is only a natural union, this will imply universalism. Both conflate the categories of person and nature. And this is why Arianism, annihilationalism and universalism often occured together either in the context of post-Nicene theology or post-Reformation theology. Union with Christ is natural as well as personal which is why the wicked persist since they are united to Christ at the level of nature, but not personally. They suffer because they have set their will against God permenantly and endure God’s goodness and glory. If universalism were true, I wonder why if the will of agents can be fixed in the good why it can’t be fixed in the evil?
In rejecting hell, you are just trading one set of problems for another to repeat the same mistakes of the past.

I was raised in a household with a traditional view of hell. Since then I have done my own research on the subject and have found annihilationism to be much more biblical than I once thought.
I’m working on an article on the subject, but until I finish it, here are some samplings.
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A cursory reading of the Scriptures undeniably reveals that Yeshua (Jesus) died as an atoning sacrifice for sinners. He died in our stead, taking our place. Isaiah 53:5-6 tells us that He [Yeshua] was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, and Yahweh laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 2 Peter 2:24 tells us that Christ bore our sins in His body on the tree [the cross].
Galatians 3:13 tells us, ?Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.? The word ?for? is the Greek ?p??, huper, which denotes substitution. The word means, ?for the sake of, in behalf of, instead of.? The Greek word ??t?, anti, is also used to denote substitution. For instance, it is used in Luke 2:22: ?Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the place [anti] of his father, Herod.? In Matthew 28:20, we read, ?just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom [anti] for many.”? Jesus certainly died in the place of sinners.
It is simply not logical to say in the same sentence that the punishment for sin is eternal torment in hell, and that Jesus took the punishment for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). If this is true, then Jesus should still be burning in Hell today! And since He is certainly not burning in hell now, we can assume that the punishment for sin is not eternal torment by fire in hell. Jesus died in our place and took our punishment, which was death.
Indeed, Romans 6:23 states, ?For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.? James 1:15 states, ?Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.?
Evildoers not covered with the blood of Christ will be pulled up and burned in the fire (Matthew 13:40-42). They will be burned up like chaff (Luke 3:17), they will vanish like smoke (Psalm 37:20), they will be swallowed up and consumed (Psalm 21:9), they will experience the second death (Revelation 21:8), they will be slain by Yahweh (Jeremiah 25:33), they will be left like refuse lying on the ground (Jeremiah 25:33), they will perish (John 3:16), their souls will die (Ezekiel 18:4), they will be no more (Psalm 37:10), you will not be able to find them (Psalm 37:10), both their bodies and souls will be destroyed (Matthew 10:28), they will be ashes under the soles of the feet of the righteous (Malachi 4:1-3), and they will be left neither root nor branch (Malachi 4:1-3).
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Edward Fudge has written an excellent book on the topic, called “The Fire That Consumes”. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he seems to have an excellent handle on this topic. An article by him:
http://www.edwardfudge.com/JETS_final_end_wicked.pdf