Basil Atkinson on conditional immortality
The redoubtable Cambridge scholar Basil Atkinson (1895-1971) may be said to have kick-started the revival of interest in annihilationalism/conditional immortality here in the UK.
John Wenham (in his autobiographical ‘Facing Hell’, p69) recalls an informal talk given by Atkinson in the mid-1930s. The main ideas included the following:
1. The Bible nowhere teaches that man is immortal. This is a Greek idea.
2. God alone has immortality.
3. Immortality has been brought to light by the gospel.
4. Immortality is received when someone is born again to eternal life and becomes a partaker of the divine nature.
5. Death means the cessation of life, followed by deep unconscious sleep, until the resurrection to judgment of the just and the unjust.
6. The second death in the lake of fire means the cessation of life for ever.
7. The fires of hell burn up what is evil, they do not torment for ever.
8. Aionios, the word often translated ‘everlasting’, means ‘of the age to come’.
9. The doctrine of everlasting punishment is a doctrine of everlasting pain and of everlasting sin, since punish-ment would not continue for anyone who was reconciled to God.
10. In the end God will be all in all, all evil destroyed with no one living in opposition to him.