Great article! Fair critique of Comer. You’ve definitely convinced me that he’s weak in the areas you described.
I’m huge fan of the podcast and everything you’re putting out there so forgive me if this comes across combative—if so it’s not intended, I just don’t know how else to write and this is an issue close to my heart.
I’m not sure annihilationism got a fair shake here. I think there is room in annihilationism for God’s punishment of sin.
Destruction is not just a way of sweeping sin under the rug, but a punishment in and of itself. Language of destruction and annihilation are used all through scripture to describe God’s judgment and punishment. Just by observing the world, you can observe that destruction usually involves a great deal of pain and suffering. An annihilationist need not erase all punishment, or even all pain and suffering, from God’s judgment on sin (though there are surely annihilationists who have that goal). For me, it’s the *eternal*, *maximal* piece that is being brought into question.
For me, annihilationism is not about whitewashing God to make him nice and pleasant and less scary (“don’t worry, he doesn’t spank them, they just don’t get as much candy”), so much as making sense of how a God who is good, compassionate, slow to anger, the defender of the helpless, Love himself, Goodness himself, perfectly just, etc., punishes.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and a God who destroys the wicked is terrifying and awe-some and just. We need not paint him cruel in order to be humbled before his justice. A God who creates billions of conscious beings that he just tortures maximally forever (and that includes, like, 95% of humanity, even if you draw the borders of the church broadly, no?; but even if it only included 5%, the point would stand) is terrifying too. He is also, by any simple definition of the word, cruel. And it doesn’t fit any comprehensible definition of his justice, mercy, goodness, compassion, fatherhood, etc. As far as I can tell, it is starkly incompatible with the just and fearsome and holy, but also compassionate and good and patient Creator who revealed himself in Jesus and in the pages of scripture.
I know that a list of verses can be marshaled in favor of this very specific eternal-maximal-torment view of God’s method for punishing sin (which shouldn’t be equated with the view *that* he punishes sin). But I think those verses must be interpreted in light of the clear overall picture of God’s justice, mercy, and goodness that scripture as a whole paints, and that plethora of verses about “destruction”, “annihilation”, “utterly destroyed”, etc. as a method of God’s just punishment should also be considered. When all of that is taken together with the more cosmological considerations I laid out before, I think annihilationism should be given more weight as a legitimate, biblical, orthodox view, even by those who don’t subscribe to it.
Again—long time listener, first time caller. And you’re a better theologian than I! No shade intentionally thrown. Just thought I’d throw it out there!
Zach - thanks for this really thoughtful comment. It's exactly the kind of thing I love about doing So We Speak and what I hoped would increase moving over Substack. No shade taken - really appreciate this!
As I read it, there are two parts to your comment - 1) how annihilationism fits with what I was saying about Comer and 2) annihilationism in general (more your point, I think)
First, as far as it pertains to Comer, I mentioned annihilationism to put the apparent lack of discussion about sin into context. I don't mean that as a sideswipe into heresy, or a dismissal. John Stott, for example, is someone I have a huge amount of respect for, and he held that position. It is a departure from the historic teaching of the church on the whole, but I wasn't mentioning it as a potshot.
Instead, Comer's annihilationism informs us about the way he sees sin, primarily as horizontal. There are other tells as well. In discussing the problem of evil, he is so anti-Augustinian (and anti-John Piper) that he flirts with an open theist position. He also appears to be resistant to substitutionary atonement. These positions are going to influence and be influenced by your view of sin. On the whole, I'm finding very little about atonement for sin at all in his writings. I'm simply making a "birds of a feather;" this is not surprising kind of argument.
Second, to the points you make about annihilationism. The doctrine of Hell is difficult to stomach, and it does present us with difficulty in reconciling God's love and mercy with his justice. Reading your post, I was reminded of the way C.S. Lewis talked about his own reluctance over the issue, "I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved'... And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is Hell" (Problem of Pain, 121).
I take your point that annihilation can be conceived of as a form of punishment. Not all annihilationists believe quite the same thing. As you describe it, there could be a punishment that is not eternal. Still punishing sin, but just not to the extent of eternal torment.
The point I would take issue with is when you write, "He is also, by any simple definition of the word, cruel. And it doesn’t fit any comprehensible definition of his justice, mercy, goodness, compassion, fatherhood, etc." Here, there's something out of balance. Who gets to define the terms?
We must conform our understanding of God's character to what he's revealed about Himself. For example, and the sake of argument, if we agreed that God has revealed that the only commensurate punishment for rebellion against a holy, infinite God is eternal in scope, then would we not have to say that it would be unjust to do anything other than punish sin in that way?
We might still prefer a different definition of justice left to ourselves, but we would have to agree - given these premises - that God's view of judgment is fully satisfied and that his love, mercy, and justice are all intact. God gets to make the rules and what he does is good and right. So everything comes down to what he's said in his Word.
Based on the post, I don't know if we agree on what God has revealed. We would have to go into the text to compare notes. I have a hard time reading texts like Mark 9:48, Matt. 25:46, Rev. 20:10, and others as anything other than a description of eternal punishment, not annihilation. And so as much as this doctrine is difficult for me to stomach as well, I have to submit my intuitions to what God has revealed.
I can see in your post that though we may disagree about what the specific texts say, we're both engaging in that great adventure of "faith seeking understanding" and trying to work this out. Thanks for thinking through this with me and for your comment!
All excellent points! I still have a lot of learning and thinking to do about the topic, and you've given me many insights I haven't considered fully. I take your points about Comer, and I better understand where you're coming from there. And I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I'm learning a lot through this.
To your point about who gets to define terms, I would say that the English language itself (or whatever language is being used) gets to define the words, and one major task of theology is figuring out to what extent certain words are true of God, given the context of the language. Of course, this is a whole thing - there are technical theological definitions vs. broader definitions and whatnot. There's the whole Aquinus, univocality, equivalency, analogy conversation. I am definitely out of my depth here, I know that this is, like, a whole field of philosophy and theology I am not yet well-versed in.
But on a personal level, in the discussion about eternal, maximal torment, the definitions of words or terms like "compassionate" and "cruel" (to narrow it to just a few) end up getting hollowed out of any intelligible meaning.
In Exodus 34, we have God revealing his character to a human for the first time, and the first word he uses is "compassionate". The Hebrew word "rakhum" comes from the word for womb, "rekhem", and could be (overly literally) translated as "Wombish". (It's not the only attribute of God, and needs to be considered along with others. I don't want to oversimplify things, or reduce God to this one attribute, just want to limit the discussion to one attribute for the sake of brevity and making the broader point about defining words. Given its status as the first word God uses to reveal himself to a human in scripture, it seems as fit as any.)
An uncontroversial meaning of the English word "cruel" is "willfully causing pain or suffering to others."
I think if you asked Moses or Isaiah or Jesus or Paul, or any Christian alive today, "Is God compassionate?" their answer would and should be "Yes." If you asked them, "is God cruel?" their answer would and should (surely!) be "No."
And so, we come to the doctrine that God maximally torments almost everyone forever. If this is true, and it is also true that rakhum is a crucial aspect of God's character as revealed to Moses, then it must be true that it is compassionate (motherlike, loving, merciful) for God to maximally torment almost everyone forever. And if that can be truly called compassionate, then I now can't make heads or tails of the word itself. I'm not even rejecting it morally or aesthetically, I'm not expressing a preference--I just can't make sense of it. My mind goes blank. It's not just difficult to stomach (though, yes, it is that too), it feels impossible to know what exactly what I'm even supposed to believe. I'm supposed to believe that God is compassionate, but also that most of what he does (throughout all of eternity, to most people) is beyond anything I can intelligibly imagine when I hear or say that word. You might as well say that God is "moktomusiam'skum". Or, well, that he's "cruel"...
Similarly, if the doctrine is true, and it is also true that God is not cruel, then it must be true that maximally tormenting almost everyone forever is not cruel. Which makes nonsense of the word "cruel". If it is true that God "willfully causes maximal pain and suffering to almost all of his human creatures for all of eternity", then it is simply true to say that God is maximally, eternally cruel, just based on what the English word "cruel" means and what we have described of God's actions. If X=Y, then "maximally, eternally X"="maximally, eternally Y".
I agree that we have to conform to God's definition of himself, even if we don't like it. I am completely on board with that. I'm not trying to conform God to what I want him to be- I mean, I suppose in my sin, I am always doing this no less than anyone else- but to the best of my incomplete knowledge, I am just honsetly trying to make sense of all the things he's said about himself.
If it is true of God that he tortures almost everyone forever, and that this is a part of what it means for him to be compassionate (or just, good, etc.), then I will ultimately just have to suck it up and get on board with the fact that those words are all more or less completely unintelligible to me, as they pertain to God. But doesn't this make an equivalence (to use Aquinas's term*) of God's self-revelation, at least in that particular instance in Exodus 34? Doesn't it make it so that God actually *hasn't* been revealed, if the words he used to reveal himself don't actually mean what they seem to mean?
I am unsatisfied with the argument that God, in his sovereignty, gets to define compassion (justice, goodness, etc.), not because I disagree with the premise itself, but because in the context of this particular issue, it essentially collapses all of his attributes into his sovereignty. Why say that God is good at all, when all that you really mean is that he is sovereign? Why say that God is compassionate when the word "compassionate" means nothing substantially different from the word "sovereign"? Why say anything about God at all, other than that he is sovereign?
I believe in God's sovereignty. But this appeal to his sovereignty to explain what sounds and feels to me like a reconception of his compassion (justice, goodness, etc.) so radical as to make it meaningless, just doesn't change anything for me. God's sovereignty can be taken as a given in this conversation; for me, what this doctrine brings into question are other attributes, or at least the intelligibility of the words we have for them.
I also want to address the verses you sited. But I've run out of time on my (now very much extended, and very fruitful) lunch break 😂.
*I may be using the wrong term - but I mean whatever word he used when he talked about words having no ability to describe God at all, against "analogy" where they have an incomplete but non-zero ability to describe God, and therefore can be used to sufficiently reveal him to us for salvation, but not comprehensively reveal him, and against "univocality" where they can describe him comprehensively. I may also be completely misunderstanding Aquinus. I am way the heck out of my depth here, but I'm trying, ha.
Zach - again, there’s a lot of good stuff here and I’m seeing more what you’re getting at. In one sense, this is over complicating things. I’m thinking less about the semantic range of our English words vs their Hebrew analogs and more about the concepts. There’s a frame being placed back on the text (conceptually) that I don’t think fits. For example, can God be full of loving kindness and also just in the way the Bible describes? I think so. That’s what God reveals about himself and now it’s up to us to calibrate what those words mean as they apply to God. Or to use other words… which might be the sticking point here.
So, I see this in the meaning of “cruel.” It’s effectively a tautology along the lines of, “I don’t think God is cruel,” and “eternal torment is cruel,” therefore, “God does not engage in eternal torment.” My point is that while this may make intuitive sense, I don’t think the premises necessarily follow from what God says about himself in Scripture. Again, what if eternal punishment is the just response to sin against a holy God? What has to change? Either our definition of cruelty or the way we apply that attribute to God. So it’s not a matter of the words being meaningless, but a mismatch between using them the way we are as a description of God and the way God reveals himself. That’s what I mean by, “he gets to define the terms.”
On a bit deeper level, another thing emerging here is the problem of pitting God’s attributes against each other. You can deduce endless apparent contradictions and quandaries by doing this. Is it loving to be wrathful? Is it just to be compassionate? Etc. Here, I think Thomas is helpful in reminding us of God’s “simplicity.” His essence is one. There is no true division in his nature, but can be in the way we talk about his attributes. So in some ways the discussion of attributes is by nature an approximation or a helpful tool in describing what God is like. I see this as especially helpful in the comment about reducing everything to his sovereignty. We could say the same about his love, or whatever else.
A last point, among so many that could be discussed, the witness of the church broadly is that these things can be reconciled. Across many different languages and settings, people saw a consistency in God’s nature in being merciful in saving sinners and just punishing the guilty. And there are some very rich resources for us to follow. Annihilationism is almost unheard of before 150 years ago. It makes me wonder what changed? I think we have to be doubly careful to lean too heavily on our own conceptual sensibilities on topics like this when we have such a weight of history in the church against it.
Now I’m wishing this were in real time across the table. Thanks for the great conversation on this!
Great article! Fair critique of Comer. You’ve definitely convinced me that he’s weak in the areas you described.
I’m huge fan of the podcast and everything you’re putting out there so forgive me if this comes across combative—if so it’s not intended, I just don’t know how else to write and this is an issue close to my heart.
I’m not sure annihilationism got a fair shake here. I think there is room in annihilationism for God’s punishment of sin.
Destruction is not just a way of sweeping sin under the rug, but a punishment in and of itself. Language of destruction and annihilation are used all through scripture to describe God’s judgment and punishment. Just by observing the world, you can observe that destruction usually involves a great deal of pain and suffering. An annihilationist need not erase all punishment, or even all pain and suffering, from God’s judgment on sin (though there are surely annihilationists who have that goal). For me, it’s the *eternal*, *maximal* piece that is being brought into question.
For me, annihilationism is not about whitewashing God to make him nice and pleasant and less scary (“don’t worry, he doesn’t spank them, they just don’t get as much candy”), so much as making sense of how a God who is good, compassionate, slow to anger, the defender of the helpless, Love himself, Goodness himself, perfectly just, etc., punishes.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and a God who destroys the wicked is terrifying and awe-some and just. We need not paint him cruel in order to be humbled before his justice. A God who creates billions of conscious beings that he just tortures maximally forever (and that includes, like, 95% of humanity, even if you draw the borders of the church broadly, no?; but even if it only included 5%, the point would stand) is terrifying too. He is also, by any simple definition of the word, cruel. And it doesn’t fit any comprehensible definition of his justice, mercy, goodness, compassion, fatherhood, etc. As far as I can tell, it is starkly incompatible with the just and fearsome and holy, but also compassionate and good and patient Creator who revealed himself in Jesus and in the pages of scripture.
I know that a list of verses can be marshaled in favor of this very specific eternal-maximal-torment view of God’s method for punishing sin (which shouldn’t be equated with the view *that* he punishes sin). But I think those verses must be interpreted in light of the clear overall picture of God’s justice, mercy, and goodness that scripture as a whole paints, and that plethora of verses about “destruction”, “annihilation”, “utterly destroyed”, etc. as a method of God’s just punishment should also be considered. When all of that is taken together with the more cosmological considerations I laid out before, I think annihilationism should be given more weight as a legitimate, biblical, orthodox view, even by those who don’t subscribe to it.
Again—long time listener, first time caller. And you’re a better theologian than I! No shade intentionally thrown. Just thought I’d throw it out there!
Zach - thanks for this really thoughtful comment. It's exactly the kind of thing I love about doing So We Speak and what I hoped would increase moving over Substack. No shade taken - really appreciate this!
As I read it, there are two parts to your comment - 1) how annihilationism fits with what I was saying about Comer and 2) annihilationism in general (more your point, I think)
First, as far as it pertains to Comer, I mentioned annihilationism to put the apparent lack of discussion about sin into context. I don't mean that as a sideswipe into heresy, or a dismissal. John Stott, for example, is someone I have a huge amount of respect for, and he held that position. It is a departure from the historic teaching of the church on the whole, but I wasn't mentioning it as a potshot.
Instead, Comer's annihilationism informs us about the way he sees sin, primarily as horizontal. There are other tells as well. In discussing the problem of evil, he is so anti-Augustinian (and anti-John Piper) that he flirts with an open theist position. He also appears to be resistant to substitutionary atonement. These positions are going to influence and be influenced by your view of sin. On the whole, I'm finding very little about atonement for sin at all in his writings. I'm simply making a "birds of a feather;" this is not surprising kind of argument.
Second, to the points you make about annihilationism. The doctrine of Hell is difficult to stomach, and it does present us with difficulty in reconciling God's love and mercy with his justice. Reading your post, I was reminded of the way C.S. Lewis talked about his own reluctance over the issue, "I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved'... And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is Hell" (Problem of Pain, 121).
I take your point that annihilation can be conceived of as a form of punishment. Not all annihilationists believe quite the same thing. As you describe it, there could be a punishment that is not eternal. Still punishing sin, but just not to the extent of eternal torment.
The point I would take issue with is when you write, "He is also, by any simple definition of the word, cruel. And it doesn’t fit any comprehensible definition of his justice, mercy, goodness, compassion, fatherhood, etc." Here, there's something out of balance. Who gets to define the terms?
We must conform our understanding of God's character to what he's revealed about Himself. For example, and the sake of argument, if we agreed that God has revealed that the only commensurate punishment for rebellion against a holy, infinite God is eternal in scope, then would we not have to say that it would be unjust to do anything other than punish sin in that way?
We might still prefer a different definition of justice left to ourselves, but we would have to agree - given these premises - that God's view of judgment is fully satisfied and that his love, mercy, and justice are all intact. God gets to make the rules and what he does is good and right. So everything comes down to what he's said in his Word.
Based on the post, I don't know if we agree on what God has revealed. We would have to go into the text to compare notes. I have a hard time reading texts like Mark 9:48, Matt. 25:46, Rev. 20:10, and others as anything other than a description of eternal punishment, not annihilation. And so as much as this doctrine is difficult for me to stomach as well, I have to submit my intuitions to what God has revealed.
I can see in your post that though we may disagree about what the specific texts say, we're both engaging in that great adventure of "faith seeking understanding" and trying to work this out. Thanks for thinking through this with me and for your comment!
Cole
All excellent points! I still have a lot of learning and thinking to do about the topic, and you've given me many insights I haven't considered fully. I take your points about Comer, and I better understand where you're coming from there. And I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I'm learning a lot through this.
To your point about who gets to define terms, I would say that the English language itself (or whatever language is being used) gets to define the words, and one major task of theology is figuring out to what extent certain words are true of God, given the context of the language. Of course, this is a whole thing - there are technical theological definitions vs. broader definitions and whatnot. There's the whole Aquinus, univocality, equivalency, analogy conversation. I am definitely out of my depth here, I know that this is, like, a whole field of philosophy and theology I am not yet well-versed in.
But on a personal level, in the discussion about eternal, maximal torment, the definitions of words or terms like "compassionate" and "cruel" (to narrow it to just a few) end up getting hollowed out of any intelligible meaning.
In Exodus 34, we have God revealing his character to a human for the first time, and the first word he uses is "compassionate". The Hebrew word "rakhum" comes from the word for womb, "rekhem", and could be (overly literally) translated as "Wombish". (It's not the only attribute of God, and needs to be considered along with others. I don't want to oversimplify things, or reduce God to this one attribute, just want to limit the discussion to one attribute for the sake of brevity and making the broader point about defining words. Given its status as the first word God uses to reveal himself to a human in scripture, it seems as fit as any.)
An uncontroversial meaning of the English word "cruel" is "willfully causing pain or suffering to others."
I think if you asked Moses or Isaiah or Jesus or Paul, or any Christian alive today, "Is God compassionate?" their answer would and should be "Yes." If you asked them, "is God cruel?" their answer would and should (surely!) be "No."
And so, we come to the doctrine that God maximally torments almost everyone forever. If this is true, and it is also true that rakhum is a crucial aspect of God's character as revealed to Moses, then it must be true that it is compassionate (motherlike, loving, merciful) for God to maximally torment almost everyone forever. And if that can be truly called compassionate, then I now can't make heads or tails of the word itself. I'm not even rejecting it morally or aesthetically, I'm not expressing a preference--I just can't make sense of it. My mind goes blank. It's not just difficult to stomach (though, yes, it is that too), it feels impossible to know what exactly what I'm even supposed to believe. I'm supposed to believe that God is compassionate, but also that most of what he does (throughout all of eternity, to most people) is beyond anything I can intelligibly imagine when I hear or say that word. You might as well say that God is "moktomusiam'skum". Or, well, that he's "cruel"...
Similarly, if the doctrine is true, and it is also true that God is not cruel, then it must be true that maximally tormenting almost everyone forever is not cruel. Which makes nonsense of the word "cruel". If it is true that God "willfully causes maximal pain and suffering to almost all of his human creatures for all of eternity", then it is simply true to say that God is maximally, eternally cruel, just based on what the English word "cruel" means and what we have described of God's actions. If X=Y, then "maximally, eternally X"="maximally, eternally Y".
I agree that we have to conform to God's definition of himself, even if we don't like it. I am completely on board with that. I'm not trying to conform God to what I want him to be- I mean, I suppose in my sin, I am always doing this no less than anyone else- but to the best of my incomplete knowledge, I am just honsetly trying to make sense of all the things he's said about himself.
If it is true of God that he tortures almost everyone forever, and that this is a part of what it means for him to be compassionate (or just, good, etc.), then I will ultimately just have to suck it up and get on board with the fact that those words are all more or less completely unintelligible to me, as they pertain to God. But doesn't this make an equivalence (to use Aquinas's term*) of God's self-revelation, at least in that particular instance in Exodus 34? Doesn't it make it so that God actually *hasn't* been revealed, if the words he used to reveal himself don't actually mean what they seem to mean?
I am unsatisfied with the argument that God, in his sovereignty, gets to define compassion (justice, goodness, etc.), not because I disagree with the premise itself, but because in the context of this particular issue, it essentially collapses all of his attributes into his sovereignty. Why say that God is good at all, when all that you really mean is that he is sovereign? Why say that God is compassionate when the word "compassionate" means nothing substantially different from the word "sovereign"? Why say anything about God at all, other than that he is sovereign?
I believe in God's sovereignty. But this appeal to his sovereignty to explain what sounds and feels to me like a reconception of his compassion (justice, goodness, etc.) so radical as to make it meaningless, just doesn't change anything for me. God's sovereignty can be taken as a given in this conversation; for me, what this doctrine brings into question are other attributes, or at least the intelligibility of the words we have for them.
I also want to address the verses you sited. But I've run out of time on my (now very much extended, and very fruitful) lunch break 😂.
*I may be using the wrong term - but I mean whatever word he used when he talked about words having no ability to describe God at all, against "analogy" where they have an incomplete but non-zero ability to describe God, and therefore can be used to sufficiently reveal him to us for salvation, but not comprehensively reveal him, and against "univocality" where they can describe him comprehensively. I may also be completely misunderstanding Aquinus. I am way the heck out of my depth here, but I'm trying, ha.
Zach - again, there’s a lot of good stuff here and I’m seeing more what you’re getting at. In one sense, this is over complicating things. I’m thinking less about the semantic range of our English words vs their Hebrew analogs and more about the concepts. There’s a frame being placed back on the text (conceptually) that I don’t think fits. For example, can God be full of loving kindness and also just in the way the Bible describes? I think so. That’s what God reveals about himself and now it’s up to us to calibrate what those words mean as they apply to God. Or to use other words… which might be the sticking point here.
So, I see this in the meaning of “cruel.” It’s effectively a tautology along the lines of, “I don’t think God is cruel,” and “eternal torment is cruel,” therefore, “God does not engage in eternal torment.” My point is that while this may make intuitive sense, I don’t think the premises necessarily follow from what God says about himself in Scripture. Again, what if eternal punishment is the just response to sin against a holy God? What has to change? Either our definition of cruelty or the way we apply that attribute to God. So it’s not a matter of the words being meaningless, but a mismatch between using them the way we are as a description of God and the way God reveals himself. That’s what I mean by, “he gets to define the terms.”
On a bit deeper level, another thing emerging here is the problem of pitting God’s attributes against each other. You can deduce endless apparent contradictions and quandaries by doing this. Is it loving to be wrathful? Is it just to be compassionate? Etc. Here, I think Thomas is helpful in reminding us of God’s “simplicity.” His essence is one. There is no true division in his nature, but can be in the way we talk about his attributes. So in some ways the discussion of attributes is by nature an approximation or a helpful tool in describing what God is like. I see this as especially helpful in the comment about reducing everything to his sovereignty. We could say the same about his love, or whatever else.
A last point, among so many that could be discussed, the witness of the church broadly is that these things can be reconciled. Across many different languages and settings, people saw a consistency in God’s nature in being merciful in saving sinners and just punishing the guilty. And there are some very rich resources for us to follow. Annihilationism is almost unheard of before 150 years ago. It makes me wonder what changed? I think we have to be doubly careful to lean too heavily on our own conceptual sensibilities on topics like this when we have such a weight of history in the church against it.
Now I’m wishing this were in real time across the table. Thanks for the great conversation on this!