Whatever Happened To Hell? Ctd

A reader writes:

I've been following your discussion of hell with interest. Let me put in a plug for an alternative concept: annihilationism, aka "conditional immortality".

St Paul says, "the wages of sin is death / the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus." That text is a good starting point to explain the concept of conditional immortality. Consider what the text doesn't say: "the wages of sin is eternal torment". No, the wages of sin is death — the sinner ceases to live, according to St. Paul. On the other hand, life after death (eternal life) is described as a gift. It is not the innate condition of human beings, but something that God bestows, or withholds — hence, "conditional" immortality.

It helps if one realizes that the immortality of the soul is a Greek concept. The Bible was not written by Greeks, but by Jews. The Hebrew mind did not conceive of human beings as consisting of a mortal body coupled with an immortal soul (separate, and severable). To the Hebrew way of thinking, the body and the soul were inseparable, and both were subject to death. This is why Christ's resurrection is depicted as a bodily event (not merely the survival of His spirit: a concept that is amenable to us precisely because of the Greek influence on Western culture).

Returning to St. Paul: on its face, the text says that sinners will cease to exist (annihilation) whereas those who are in Christ will be given the gift of eternal life (conditional immortality). If there is any experience of "hell" after death, it would be temporary. Jesus says the condemned will suffer. One could interpret this as being a temporary experience of suffering: a period of suffering commensurate with the individual's sins. (Not an eternity of suffering, which would be disproportionate to the individual's sins and therefore manifestly unjust.)

Among evangelical leaders, John Stott (an iconic figure among evangelicals) and R.T. France (a highly-esteemed scholar) have expressed support for the annihilationist interpretation of the New Testament. Both Stott and France continued to regard the Bible as inerrant; they merely argued that the traditional interpretation of the texts was incorrect.