In I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus (2nd ed., 1988), Stephen Travis outlines the following case for conditional immortality (‘annihilationism’):-

First, immortality of the soul is a non-biblical doctrine derived from Greek philosophy. In biblical teaching man is ‘conditionally immortal-that is, he has the possibility of becoming immortal if he receives resurrection or immortality as a gift from God. This would imply that God grants resurrection to those who love him. but those who resist him go out of existence.

Secondly, biblical images such as ‘fire’ and ‘destruction suggest annihilation rather than continuing conscious existence.

Thirdly, New Testament references to ‘eternal punishment’ (Matthew 25:46; cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Hebrews 6:2) do not automatically mean what they have traditionally been assumed to mean. ‘Eternal’ may signify the permanence of the result of judgment rather than the continuation of the act of punishment itself. So ‘eternal punishment’ means an act of judgment where results cannot be reversed, rather than an experience of being punished for ever.

Fourthly, we must recognise that such New Testament language is picture-language. The fact that Jesus can speak of hell in terms of both ‘darkness’ and ‘fire’ surely makes it clear that such language must not be taken too literally. This of course does not remove our responsibility to take it very seriously, but it indicates that we should be very cautious about pressing such language into service in de-fence of eternal punishment.

Fifthly, eternal torment serves no useful purpose, and therefore exhibits a vindictiveness incompatible with the love of God in Christ.

Finally, eternal punishment requires that we believe in heaven and hell existing for ever ‘alongside’ each other. It seems impossible to reconcile this with the conviction that God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28). As we saw earlier, in Jesus’s teaching the emphasis is not on hell as a place into which the unrepentant are thrown, but rather on the kingdom of God as a realm from which the unrepentant are excluded. So we are back again to the concept of relationship or non-relationship to God. That is what matters.

(Italics added)