Well, since you were a Catholic Charismatic (if I remember correctly), the Fourth Lateran Council (long before Dante, as though Dante could somehow change or influence the Church’s teaching, the opposite is true: Dante was influenced by the teachings of the Church ) states the following at the end of its first canon:
‘He will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, to render to every person according to his works, both to the reprobate and to the elect. All of them will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their deserts, whether these be good or bad; for the latter, perpetual punishment with the devil; for the former, eternal glory with Christ.’
Moreover, the Fathers of the Church overwhelmingly spoke of eternal punishment, not annihilation. So it is difficult to reconcile annihilationism with orthodoxy.
Furthermore, even setting aside magisterial teaching and the witness of the Fathers altogether, what sense would it make to resurrect someone only to annihilate him afterward? If annihilation were true, it would seem far more likely to occur at the particular judgment immediately after death, in the case of the wicked.
I have no problem with modern interpretations or developments in doctrine, so long as they do not conflict with two thousand years of teaching. For example, Fr. Most’s teaching does not conflict with anything in the Church’s tradition
I know you asked Roy, so I hope you don’t mind if I also interject here …
Another way to frame that question: Do you think hatred and love are co-eternal with each other? A kind of yin-and-yang equivalent co-existence? Or does one of those two predominate in eternity?
Different question. I’m asking about the entailment: does perfect love require overcoming all resistance? Because if it doesn’t, then the original claim doesn’t hold—regardless of how we frame love and hatred.
Revelation 14,9-11 is quite clear in ruling out annihilation, though: “Anyone who worships the beast or its image, or accepts its mark on forehead or hand, will also drink the wine of God’s fury,* poured full strength into the cup of his wrath, and will be tormented in burning sulfur before the holy angels and before the Lamb. The smoke of the fire that torments them will rise forever and ever, and there will be no relief day or night for those who worship the beast or its image or accept the mark of its name.”
How can the passage “there will be no relief day and night” be squared with annihilation? Especially when it follows the preceding passage “The smoke of the fire that torments them will rise forever and ever”
Tradition gives us a long-standing interpretation, not a guarantee of final understanding. The issue here is whether the text itself requires that interpretation.
I would expand Matthew 25 to 25:31-46. Verse 41 tells that the eternal fire was prepared for Satan and his angels.
Matthew 18:6-9 mentions the eternal fire.
Daniel 12:2 mentions resurrection and what follows.
Jude 1:7 mentions the punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 1:13 mentions utter darkness forever.
To conclude, there are many passages telling about an ‘eternal’ punishment and most of them mention ‘eternal fire’. It is a matter of interpretation and speculation to conclude what happens to the people who are thrown to the ‘eternal fire’, whatever that is. Do they just ‘burn’ (= end of existence, ‘eternal death’) or do they stay conscious in the suffering forever? I have been told that the suffering lasts forever but annihilation seems to fit better to the idea that a fair punishment should be in some relation to the seriousness of the crime. Eternal suffering sounds as a really extreme punishment.
It should also be kept in mind that the ‘eternal fire’ was not prepared for humans, it was prepared for Satan and his angels.
When tradition is backed by magisterial teaching is kind of hard to argue against it, though. And even the texts themselves, when they speak about having no relief day or night and the smoke of their torment that will rise forever and ever seem to point quite clear to an anti-annihilationist reality.
So, in your opinion and according to tradition, tradition is and always will be unchangeable and correct. A very Roman Catholic position, but not mine.
More extreme than annihiliation? Annihilation would seem less extreme, I agree, but what do you think demons would choose if God offered them annihiliation? In other words, the idea that annihilation might be preferable might be our (because even i tend to think of it as a preferable fate compared to eternal damnation) assumption, not what an angel or an individual would actually choose (after death).
Not really. Only when it involves definitive teachings. Also, the idea that the fathers of the Church might have been collectively wrong about very important teachings seems quite problematic, in the sense that once we grant that, where do we draw the line? How do we know what is true and what isn’t? Which I why I said that the magisterial teachings and the Church’s fathers are my litmus test when it comes to novel interpretations (for example Fr Most and his teaching on predestination is very compatible with everything that has been taught and manages to save both God’s mercy and justice, showing that Justice will strike only the utter unrepentant and the ones who will willfully resist until the end, which is why I think it has a very high probability of being true, even if it’s a rather novel interpretation).
If Scripture can call God Himself a “consuming fire,” then “eternal fire” cannot simply mean “literal endless burning.” The image is doing theological work. It speaks of the action of divine holiness against evil. The remaining question is what that action finally entails.
Not necessarily. The dead are not literarily thrown to the valley of Gehenna/Gehinnom, although Gehinnom became a figurative destination for the wicked dead in Judaism. The description seems to be figurative speech, a colourful image or metaphor, rather than a modern description and report of what happens.
Tradition backed by magisterial teaching may be enough for some but not to those who do not support the claim that the magisterial teaching is always correct.
Edit:
What I wrote was about the speculated destiny of ‘wicked humans’. What happens to Satan and his angels/demons is another question - the ‘eternal fire’ was prepared for them, not humans.
That is true as far as it goes: ‘“ fire”’ in Scripture is often theological imagery, not necessarily a description of material flames. But this doesn’t help annihilationism.
The point is not whether “fire” is literal.
Even if it is symbolic, the texts themselves explain what the symbol signifies: not mere extinction, but eternal punishment. Matthew 25:46 says “eternal punishment”, not merely “eternal fire”. “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life”.
If the punishment were annihilation, it wouldn’t be eternal at all.
But wicked humans will join them, that’s the whole point of Matthew 25,31-46. Eternal punishment is extremely hard, borderline impossible, to square with annihilationism.
Sure; but then it comes the problem “where do we draw the line?”.
If the Church has erred for 2000 years since the times of the Church’s fathers on definitive matters regarding faith and morals, nobody would be able to know which teaching is right and which isn’t. Some teachings that many refuse are as well attested and accepted in the early Church as Christ’s Divinity, for example.
It’s not an eternal punishment for you will not suffer, otherwise we would have been punished for 13.7 billions years before our conceivement, since annihilation would simply entail a return to the nothingness that was there for us before we were conceived.
Eternal separation from God can be a punishment only if said separation causes suffering and the knowledge of having irreparably lost something, otherwise, I repeat, we would have been collectively punished for 13.7 billion years before our conceivement.
Annihilation would be a punishment but it would be very much not “eternal”.
There is no punishment when you literally cease to exist.
Have you considered why so many Christians stress the importance of the teachings in the biblical scriptures?
The biblical scriptures tell what was generally accepted as apostolic teaching in the early church. The early Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene) clarify what they believed the scriptures and tradition told and was judged to be essential. Those do not include statements about the details of the eternal punisment/’eternal fire’.
What? Annihilation is subject to time constraints?
Apparently, a pound of my flesh is very popular today. I guess I’m just going to have to wait until everybody has said what they want to say, and then decide what I want to respond to.
Which is why everybody has historically described hell as being full of it.
Whether it helps annihilationism is beside the point. My point is that “fire” is not a self-defining term in Scripture. So one cannot simply move from “eternal fire” to a fully specified doctrine of eternal conscious torment as though no interpretation were involved.
Yes, because at that time the teaching in question (namely, the eternal punishment of the damned) had not yet been seriously challenged.
Once some began to question it, the Second Council of Constantinople spoke quite clearly in its condemnations:
‘If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration (ἀποκατάστασις) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.’”
In this Canon, the Church emphasizes that the damned share the same fate as the demons. And we are speaking of A.D. 553.
An annihilationist would try to read it narrowly, as though it condemned only Origen’s universal restoration and not the final extinction of the wicked, but the text first condemns the claim that the punishment of demons and impious men is “only temporary” and “will one day have an end”, and only afterward mentions apokatastasis (which an annihilationist already rejects). So what is rejected is not merely universal restoration, but also the very idea that the punishment of the wicked comes to an end.
Once you are annihilated you don’t exist anymore. The punishment then would be at the moment of annihilation but it wouldn’t be eternal; just like you weren’t being punished before being conceived (as annihilation would simply be a return to that state). Sure, you would lose everything, but you wouldn’t be aware of it after annihilation, just like you weren’t aware of anything before you were born, as “you” simply didn’t exist.
