Dr. Edward Fudge joins “Theopologetics” to discuss annihilation as an orthodox alternative to the traditional view of hell. This episode contains part 2 of the interview in which I present Edward with common traditionalist challenges to his view. Listen to episode 54, “Burn It Up,” in which we focus on Dr. Fudge’s book and the doctrine of annihilationism or conditional immortality.

Episode 54: Burn It Up.

Dr. Edward Fudge joins Theopologetics to discuss annihilation as an orthodox alternative to the traditional view of hell. This episode contains part 1 of the interview in which we focus on Dr. Fudge’s book and the doctrine of annihilationism or conditional immortality. Listen to episode 55, “Eternal Fire,” for part 2 in which Theopologetics present Edward with common traditionalist challenges to his view.

(This was preached at  Hamilton Church of Christ in New Zealand on the 10^th April 2011 )

(Luke 16:19 – 31 & Rev 6:9 – 11)

Introduction

Last Sunday we talked about what God might have meant when he said to Adam and Eve “you will surely die” in Genesis 2:17. We considered all that we could on this subject by doing searches on the relevant words such as, death, die, spirit, soul, heaven and hell to conclude that nowhere in the OT do we find support for the notion that a human being’s personality leaves their body to continue on consciously, somewhere, after death. This point is more widely accepted by biblical scholars today than what we might realize. McNamara writes – “The general consensus [that of contemporary biblical scholars] is that the OT rejected any natural or innate immortality.”

Martin McNamara, Miltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin, Ireland (1997).

However, there are two places, that I am aware of, that have been used from the OT to challenge this assertion which I should just quickly make comment on before moving into considering what the Jews believed in the 400 year period that separates the Old and New Testaments.

In the first of these two places, Isaiah 14:9, we are told that sheol, or the grave, is all a-stir by the rousing of the spirits of the departed to greet the king of Babylon who will be brought down there.  The chapter is not to be taken literally but is not untypical of Isaiah and the prophets in personifying lifeless items or places. Trees clap their hands and deserts feel the emotion of gladness etc. Just as the King of Babylon is said to have been dwelling in the heights of heaven during his reign (v. 12) he is now said to be laid down on a bed of maggots in sheol (v.11). This is non-literal, poetic, prophetic language.

The second place in the OT which might challenge the view that the dead are dead is found in 1 Samuel 28 where we read of King Saul consulting a medium to bring up the spirit of the deceased Samuel. We must remember that in Deuteronomy 18:11 Israel was warned to never attempt to use a medium to try and contact the dead.  Why would that be?

In the chapter Saul has a conversation with this “spirit” which we are told throughout the chapter is Samuel back from the dead. It is noteworthy that the medium never calls him Samuel only Saul does. In verse 19 “Samuel” tells Saul that the next day he will die at the hands of the Philistines in battle and join him in sheol. Clearly God had already abandoned Saul and would not reveal his will to him in any way no matter how hard Saul sought it. Therefore, in attempting to solicit the dead do we think that this really was Samuel rather than an impersonating spirit? According to the account in Chronicles when Saul was wounded the next day he in fact committed suicide by falling on his own sword.

Apart from these two questionable references the dead are dead in the OT until the resurrection of the dead.

Was the Hebrew OT View on the State of the Dead so consistently believed in the New Testament?

So what happened in the 400 year period between the Testaments? Was the Hebrew Old Testament view of death held consistently by the Jews over that period until we arrive at the NT era? In short; no it wasn’t! We see, for example, in Acts 23 Paul was able to divide the Sanhedrin, who were the governing body of the Jews, by declaring that he was a Pharisee (Acts 23:3) and therefore believed in the resurrection of the dead. We are told in verse 8 that the Sadducees not only didn’t believe in a resurrection of the dead but neither did they believe in angels or spirits.

Who were the Sadducees and why didn’t they believe in these things? It is believed by some that the Sadducees were a pure priestly line amongst the Jews who were ultra-conservative. In other words they believed that many foreign ideas had crept into certain sectors of Jewish thought, particularly between the testaments. Indeed F.F.Bruce tells us that the term “Pharisee” was coined by the Sadducees as a designation of their opponents as Persianizers; adopting Persian eschatological ideas sometime in the post-exilic era. Surprisingly the resurrection of the dead was thought to be one of those later foreign ideas.

Hence we can understand the trick that the Sadducees tried to play on Jesus in Matthew 22:23-33 by asking him which husband a woman would have, who had been married and widowed several times throughout her life, if all her former husband’s should be resurrected from the dead at the same time.

Many Jews were content to hold the Belief in the Immortality of the Soul together with the Resurrection

Yes when we get to the NT documents the Jews were not united in their views on what happens when we die. Even the Pharisees, who did believe in a physical resurrection of the dead, were content to combine such a belief with notions foreign to the OT of going to heaven and hell as a disembodied immortal soul at the point of death. Jesus spoke numerous times to the Pharisees view on these issues.

Perhaps the best example of this can be found in Matthew 10:28.  Many Christians who have argued for a conscious intermediate state, founded on the belief that a human being has two parts, a mortal body and an immortal soul, have immediately assumed that Jesus believed this to be true because he makes such a statement in this verse. Let’s not quickly forget, at this point, that nowhere throughout the OT was the nephesh “soul” spoken of as some immortal part of being human.

We must also bear in mind that Jesus is addressing a first century audience who had been conditioned by the traditional teaching of the Pharisees and influenced by popular foreign views which were now happily held by many.

When the verse is read carefully, in light of popular beliefs, Jesus is in effect saying to his audience that the popular notion they have of an indestructible soul apart from the body is false because God can destroy everything in the end time fire of hell.

The word Gehenna is a term developed from the geographical valley of Ben Hinnom where King Ahab sacrificed his sons there in following the detestable practises of the nations (see also 2 Chron 33:6). If Jesus notion of Gehenna (hell) is built upon the imagery that he adopts and uses elsewhere in the Gospel accounts from Psalm 112:10 where the gnashing of teeth ceases in extinction and Isaiah 66:24 where the corpses of the annihilated are consumed by the undying worm and unquenchable fire then this imagery is reserved for the end of the age and not for an intermediate state. Furthermore, the OT sources suggest that this takes place in this world and not in some unseen world that runs concurrent with this physical one.

It has been believed, due to the influence of a number of old commentaries, that this geographical site was a rubbish dump in NT times and always kept alight for the consumption of the rubbish produced within the city of Jerusalem. The evidence for this claim is lacking. However, there is some evidence in later Jewish folklore that Gehenna became synonymous with Sheol as a type of purgatory where disembodied souls were purged until they were released due to their supposed immortal nature (cf. 3 Enoch 44:1-6; c. 2^nd -3^rd century AD). Could some of these unusual ideas have been entertained earlier in the minds of Jesus original audience? If so then Jesus is declaring this a false belief as everything can be destroyed.

Was Jesus intent for his audience to think in terms of their folklore or to refer back to the OT sources; perhaps in a similar way to which Jesus used the Pharisees tradition in the telling of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus? We note that only once is Gehenna referred to in the NT not coming off Jesus lips (Jam 3:6). Some have suggested that James is a modified older Jewish piece of literature and this might reflect the folklore of Gehenna as a present burning fire in Hades able to set alight the tongue. Gehenna is nowhere mentioned in regards to the spread of Christianity throughout the Acts period or in Paul’s letters; although Paul does speak of a fire in the end that will consume God’s enemies.

The commentator R.T. France says in regards to Matt 10:28 “The intention is not to separate man into two parts but to point out that God can destroy the whole person.”  Jesus is countering popular foreign belief about what happens when we die by saying; there is not an immortal part to our makeup.

So when and how did the Jews adopt this Notion of an Immortal Soul?

So when and how did the Jews adopt this notion of an immortal soul? Many have reasoned that the Greek philosopher Plato, born in the 5^th century BC, influenced Jewish thought in this direction when the Jews came into contact with these ideas some time from the late 4^th century BC forward following Alexander the Great’s successful conquest of the lands belonging to the Medo- Persian Empire. I am inclined to see this as a little simplistic. Although it is not uncommon for scholars to argue that the intertestamental writings of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha demonstrate that the Jews began to adopt foreign ideas, including the belief in the immortality of the soul, this is not entirely accurate either. As Edward Fudge states there was no consistent view of what happens when we die between the testaments. In fact the predominant view in all of this literature favours what we have already established in the OT.

Edward Fudge writes – “The people of intertestamental Judaism were living, breathing, thinking folk who sometimes differed vigorously from each other on theological matters. This perfectly reasonable fact has not always come across in popular writings about this period.” (Fire that Consumes, p. 133).

It is not right to generalize on what the Jews believed during this period. For example, someone might pick up a quote like the following and quickly assume that all the Jews had changed their view on afterlife between the Testaments.

Apocrypha = Judith 16:17 (150 – 125 BC) “Woe to the nations that rise up against my race: The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment, to put fire and worms in their flesh; And they shall weep and feel pain forever.”

Even here this notion of eternal torment follows the resurrection judgment. It may just be that although the foreign notion of the immortality of the soul is not always clearly detected in this literature between the Testaments, it may nevertheless have been adopted as popular folk belief for many; as in Matt 10:28.

It is into this rather diverse world of the 1^st century Jew that we now turn in considering the NT data on what happens when we die.

The Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus

Perhaps one of the most magnetic passages in the NT that has influenced many Christians to believe in going immediately to heaven or hell at the point of death is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus found in Luke 16:19-31.

As any good scholar should recognize this story, or parable, did not originate with Jesus. Nothing compares to it in the OT and it is believed that it may have originated in Egypt. LeRoy Froom, the SDA scholar, claims that there are 7 very similar stories like this parable that can be found in the extant literature. I know of two of these.

In the writings of the 1^st century AD historian Josephus, Josephus argues for a subterranean Hades beneath the earth to detain “souls”at the point of death. This tells us that the Greeks themselves had such a similar story as Josephus recites it to them. This Hades is supposedly divided into two halves. On one side is the lake of unquenchable everlasting fire whereas the angel guides the righteous to his right hand to a region of light which is termed “the Bosom of Abraham” where they await to be released in the future to go straight to heaven. From here Josephus also argues for a resurrection of the bodily remains against the Greeks view that the body is to be discarded on account of all matter being inherently evil.

Also, in a late first century work known as 4 Ezra 7:26-44, at the end of the age everyone is resurrected from the dead at which time the pit of torment shall appear and opposite it the place of rest for the godly. These two places are further described as the “furnace of hell” standing directly opposite the “Paradise of delight”. The godly and godless shall be separated into these two places which will last for a period of seven years where the godless will perish like a mist. This is not an adaptation of Jesus teaching in Luke 16 as this is a Jewish work and demonstrates some common earlier source which Jesus himself modifies in the Luke account.

Notice very carefully that Jesus is not talking about heaven and hell! He is talking about Hades divided into these two places. This in itself should deter us from using this parable as a reliable description of afterlife.

The purpose of the parable was not to teach on what happens when we die, but rather to add to a string of parables that were intended to address the prideful self assurance of the Pharisees that they were approved by God as evident in their wealth- hence the poor man who longed to eat the crumbs from the rich man’s table who was dressed in purple (the Pharisee). This parable is not recognized by reputable scholars as a source for making doctrinal assertions about what happens when we die; as no parable should be. Parables are stories with fictitious characters and exaggerated details used to often address a moral issue in a subversive way, i.e. the pride of the Pharisees in their money as the sign of God’s approval in this life and for the next.

Souls under the Alter

In a similar way many suppose that a passage found in Revelation 6:9-11 teaches us that disembodied souls go straight to heaven at the point of death. Apocalyptic literature, like parables, is not the place to be establishing doctrine as this literature type is notoriously symbolic. The reference to the “alter” suggests to us the sacrifice called for by Christians to be faithful and true to God. Notice that this picture is restricted only to martyrs – those who die for the faith.

If the term “soul” is understood as the whole person, as in the OT understanding, then it appears a very symbolic picture of the life of the martyred awaiting vindication for their unjust deaths.

Because they cry out “how long, Sovereign Lord faithful and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood” it is assumed that these are disembodied souls in heaven talking and feeling; very much alive. This is not necessarily so.

In a similar way, we read in Genesis 4:10 of the blood of Abel crying out to God from the ground for vindication from such an unjust end at the hands of Cain. Notice also that this “alter”, under which these souls’ lay, is not described in John’s vision of heaven in chapters 4-5. Is the alter simply a symbol for the ground upon which their blood was spilt? Also, how big would this “alter” need to be, if taken literally, to put all these souls underneath it? This is highly symbolic!

The white robe is also obviously symbolic for the righteousness that these martyrs have attained through the faithful sacrifice of their lives. John is calling his audience to be similarly faithful to death if needed; to make up the full number required to bring in the end of the age. I wouldn’t think that phantom souls could dress in literal white apparel, do you? Such a vision appears to be drawn form a common source as the contemporaneous works of 2 Baruch 23:4-7 and 4 Ezra 2:34-41 also tell of a number that needs to be made up and white clothes etc.

We also notice that this scene is viewed by John after the 5^th seal has been opened and in anticipation of the opening of the sixth seal. In Rev 20:4 their cry for “vengeance” is answered in their coming to life at the end of the age. Why would they need to come to life if they are already literally alive, wearing white clothes and talking in heaven? The coming to life to reign with Christ in Rev 20:4 seems somewhat superfluous.

Personally I do not recognize the genres of parable nor apocalyptic as sound bases upon which to argue for a conscious intermediate state.

Conclusion

Next Sunday we will consider the hand full of NT passages that one reputable scholar (Richard Bauckham) has suggested as the only NT sources available by which one might infer from them a belief in a conscious intermediate state prior to the resurrection.

(This message was preached at Hamilton, New Zealand, Church of Christ on the  3^rd April 2011)

Introduction

With all the excitement of Easter coming some may wonder why I have to bring up such a morbid subject as “death” over these next 3 weeks. Well somebody had suggested last year that perhaps a series on this subject might be a good idea. It’s nice to have someone else suggest this because if I say anything that might upset someone I can simply blame it on that person who first suggested it.

I certainly do not expect that everyone will agree with me on my particular view of death which holds that the dead enter into an unconscious state of non-existence until Jesus Christ returns to resurrect them. You are welcome to disagree with me. In fact I know two families, who had prematurely lost a son, who became quite angry with me for challenging (quite unaware) the comfort they had found in the belief that their son continued, immediately following death, in a conscious and present state with Jesus Christ in heaven. To suggest that their son was actually dead in the grave was offensive – I can understand this; I’m not unsympathetic to human grief due to doctrinal correctness overpowering love and compassion. However, I do ask that you might give me some grace to present this view that, in the words of Dr. Brian Smith, the former principle Emeritus of the NZ Baptist College said, is the view that makes the most sense of all the Biblical data.

Is this Subject really that Important that it has to be talked about?

Is this subject really an important one to talk about as people can become quite offended and polarized over it – do people die and go straight to heaven or are they in state of non-existence (apart from being retained in the memory of God) awaiting a resurrection back to life?

I believe the subject is important otherwise I would not have agreed to speak on it and I will try to explain why. On a number of occasions Christians who have not held my view on death have justified our differences by saying; whether asleep until Jesus Christ returns, or immediately conscious and present with Christ after death, one’s first thought following death will be of being in Christ’s presence with no awareness of the passage of time; so what does it matter? This is a valid point only between the saved; “we’ll all be with Christ sooner or later!”

However, and this is somewhat remiss of evangelical Christians who reason this way. The implications of either view have an enormous impact on somebody who has not and will not receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour! Are the unsaved asleep in the grave with no awareness of the passage of time prior to the resurrection or are they in a traditional place of hell in fiery relentless torments where every minute matters on the pain scale while Christians say, between you and I, as the saved, this issue doesn’t really matter.

Weighing up all the Evidence

The question of what happens when we die is fundamentally a question of how God has made us as creatures. It is not good enough to draw on a select handful of NT passages that appears to match up with what may be more an inherited tradition than a well researched anthropology from the pages of the whole Bible and argue that these few verses settle it. “You know; 1, 2, 3 that settles it for me.”

To be content to allow such a serious topic to rest on simply finding select verses, that say what we might have already been conditioned to believe, might be like opening the Edmonds Cook Book determined to prove that it is about teaspoons by finding a select number of references to prove it – we need to test our beliefs on this subject more thoroughly than this!

Starting with the OT

Interestingly, although the NT spans only the period of the first century AD, the OT, which spans from creation to the beginning of the 4^th century BC; with a prophetic outlook to the New Heavens and Earth, is seldom consulted by those who argue that death results in an immediate conscious afterlife. In arguing for my view, the OT is fundamental for laying down a foundational understanding for how God created human beings, and in so doing, determining whether we do actually have some sort of intrinsic capacity for conscious immortality beyond natural death, before examining the 1^st century AD NT documents.

The Creation of the First Human Being

We read in Genesis 1:24-31 that on the sixth day God created mankind in His own image. That “image” is defined in 1:26 as being created as vice-regents to fulfil the special task of taking dominion over the earth. There is no indication that such a rule would ever be subject to death until God introduced the command to not eat from the tree of life in Gen 2:17; or they would surely die!

Are we to assume that to “surely die” would be understood by Adam and Eve to mean that their bodies of dust would return to the ground yet their “souls” or “spirits” would leave their bodies unscathed to go to an even better place, heaven, to be with God? Some punishment that would be! Is this what the word “death” might most logically mean in 2:17? If anyone is prepared to look at the 174 OT references to the word “dead”; 227 references to “death”; 266 references to “die”, as totalled up in my Strong’s concordance, and you find one single reference to suggest that death means that a person leaves their body as a spirit or soul be sure to let me know.

If we do believe that being created in God’s “image” means that we humans have some sort of immortal “soul” or “spirit” that leaves the body at death why then would God want Adam and Eve in heaven with Him eternally in Sin? Are the wages of sin heaven?

If this is not the case then maybe God has sent Adam and Eve and every sinner, prior to Christ (which they all would have been), immediately into a traditional place of hell to be tortured. I guess that they might still be there now?

Or maybe when God said they would surely die (as in 2:17) he meant that the whole person ceased to exist as a result of sin. In other words Sin is that serious before a Holy God, who alone has immortality (1 Tim 6:16), that he would un-create the human being who he had originally created to be his vice-regents over the earth.

The Bible does tell us in Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 “The dead no nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.”

Sure, you may say, but isn’t there something in us; a “soul” or “spirit”, that survives death and therefore perhaps Ecclesiastes is only talking about a mortal body?

God Breathed into the Body of Dust the Breath of Life

In Genesis 2:7 many Christians have traditionally assumed that man is comprised of 3 or 2 parts; a body, spirit and soul and one of these must be immortal after all the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition states unequivocally in the Westminster Confession CF XXXIV, 1 (34.1) that souls have an immortal subsistence apart from the body. This is simply not so!

God formed the first man Adam from the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. This term “breath of life” is a translation from the Hebrew word ruach which is variously translated as breath, wind or spirit. The word is used some 389 times throughout the OT; 224 times in the AV as “spirit” and elsewhere as wind or breath as in Gen 2:7.

It is generally used to speak of the animating principle of all creaturely life. We read in Job 34:14-15 “If it were his [God’s] intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all mankind would perish together and man would return to the dust.”

Similarly in Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 “Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath [spirit]; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

Perhaps both Solomon and Job do not reflect the consensus of all the 389 OT references to spirit ruach; well they do! Nowhere in any of these references to “spirit” is it a word that is used to suggest some form of spiritual subsistence to the body that lives on as a conscious entity beyond death!

Man became a Living Soul

We read in Genesis 2:7 that when God breathed, into the nostrils of the dust that he had formed into a man, the “breath of life” (spirit Ruach) man became a “living being” (NIV). In the AV it says man became a “living soul”. “Ah ha the “soul” is immortal then and it is that which lives on consciously beyond death!” No read it again! The combination of dust and spirit results in life. Therefore when the spirit is removed from the dust the human ceases to be a “living soul”. The term “soul”, or “being” in my NIV, is translated from the Hebrew word Nephesh. This word is used 755 times throughout the OT.

Although traditionally thought to be that which distinguished human beings from the animals, and the immortal bit that survives death, it is in fact the exact same word used of animals as living creatures. Where in Gen 1:21 we read of the “great creatures of the sea” the word “creature” is Nephesh as used exactly of humans. The word shows up again and again to describe animal creatures; e.g. Gen 2:19; 9:10, 12, 15, 16.

Human beings are not distinguished from animals as having “souls”. All living creatures are defined as “souls”! The Hebrew OT concept of “soul” is quite different from what we have come to define as a soul in western thought.

It could be said, therefore, that the term “soul” means a living breathing creature combining both dust and spirit. However, this is too simplistic! The word Nephesh is used contextually in some 14 different ways throughout the OT. For example in Genesis 34:3 it is used of an emotional attachment of the heart. Although used in some 14 different ways never once in its 754 uses is it used of some immortal subsistent phantom that is contained in a body and released at the point of death! In fact the OT speaks plainly against such a false notion! In Ezekiel 18:4 we read “The soul that sins; it shall surely die.” In Leviticus 18:29 any “soul” (Nephesh) that defies God’s commands shall be “cut off” from the people; in other words put to death. Souls can be killed!

Well maybe neither “spirit” or “soul” is the part that leaves the body and lives on consciously in an afterlife. Surely when a person dies they go to either “heaven” or “hell” in the form of some sort of indestructible personality as tradition has informed us! What does it mean when we read many times of the ancients being “gathered to their fathers” when they die? Does this mean more than the cemetery?

The word heaven (although having more than one Hebrew word translated as such) is used 318 times in the AV. Never once is a human being spoken of as going there at death; or ever for that matter! The closest we get to such an idea is in Proverbs 30:4 where we read “Who has gone up to heaven and come down?” Paul in Ephesians 4:7-10 alludes to this quote to define the unique nature of Jesus Christ who has been resurrected from the grave and ascended to heaven to come again one day.

The AV uses the word “hell”; or Sheol , 31 times so maybe here we’re in luck in supposing that people go somewhere at the point of death in the OT. Never once in my NIV does the OT throughout use the word “hell”. Why is that; because it rightly translates Sheol as the “grave” and not as “hell”. On this point the AV is misleading because of the preconceived ideas attached to the word “hell”. Traditional notions are powerful and very difficult to overturn in people’s minds even though all the evidence might be brought to bear on the subject; don’t worry I understand this.

Conclusion

When God said the day  you eat of it you will surely die (Gen 2:17) the  reason that Adam and Eve did not return to the dust from which they were formed was not because God meant “spiritual death” in the sense that the human spirit was no longer connected to God as some have tried to argue. This is simply nonsense! Adam and Eve did not die that very day, which meant that the “breath of life” would be removed from the dust body and the person would cease to be a living soul, because, as the original act of God’s grace He sacrificed innocent animals to death in Adam and Eve’s place.

Why did God do this – he did this in order to cover their nakedness and in so doing he extended the existence of the human race to continue to procreate and fill the earth in order that God could work out His masterly redemptive plan for both humanity and the whole of creation. The fact that Jesus Christ himself followed this original pattern of becoming an innocent sacrifice for humanity is significant in light of the approach of Easter and in plumbing the real significance of the empty tomb.