In recent decades, annihilationalism (the doctrine that the finally impenitent cease to exist, rather than that they suffer eternal conscious torment) has continued to gain ground in evangelical circles.

Over the past century, those committed to (or, at least, sympathetic towards) this doctrine include: Harold E. Guillebaud, Basil Atkinson, J. Stafford Wright, Norman Anderson, John Stott, John Wenham, Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, E. Earle Ellis, John Stott, F.F. Bruce, Michael Green, I. Howard Marshall, Stephen Travis, Edward Fudge, R. T. France, Richard Bauckham, Christopher Date, John Stackhouse, Glenn Peoples, Preston Sprinkle, David Powys, Scot McKnight, David Wilkinson, Ernest Lucas, Paul Marston and Ian Paul.

To the above list might be added the names of William Temple, G.B. Caird, LeRoy Froom, Clark Pinnock, Nigel G. Wright and Greg Boyd, but I am not quite convinced of their credentials as spokespersons for evangelicalism.

One argument against annihilationism runs as follows:

Many, or most, advocates believe that the impenitent wicked cease to exist immediately after death.  There is, in their view, no resurrection of the wicked to final judgment and no divine punishment beyond cessation of existence.  This is plainly unscriptural and therefore constitutes a major flaw in the annihilationalist position.

So, for example, in Themelios Vol 23:3 (June, 1998), Craig Blomberg wrote:

‘A flurry of discussion continues in response to John Stott’s famous admission…that he wondered whether the data of the NT might direct one to the annihilationíst perspective. This has normally implied that the unbeliever simply ceases all conscious existence upon death, although Stott seems to allow for people to suffer temporarily in a conscious state of hell.’ (Emphasis added)

Blomberg offers, as one of the main reasons for rejecting annihilationalism:

‘Several texts seem to demand a bodily resurrection of the unrighteous to a conscious existence of eternal separation from God, occurring in contexts in which they directly parallel descriptions of eternal life (cf. esp. Dn. 12:2; Mt. 25:41, 46; and Jn 5:24-30).’

Another noted scholar, Anthony Thiselton, has written:

‘“Annihilationism” is widely taken to mean extinction or annihilation immediately after death. The unbeliever, on this basis, will know nothing of “the Last Things” except only this-worldly experience of dying, and “hell” would become an empty concept. Numerous books and debates offer only the two extremes of immediate extinction or everlasting torment. We reject both of these alternatives.’ (Life After Death, emphasis added)

Greg Koukl, a Christian apologist from the USA, writes:

‘When someone argues there is no final reckoning and there is no Hell, either because of annihilationism (nonbelievers cease to exist when they die)…’ (Emphasis added)

Is such a belief ‘normal’ or ‘widely’ accepted within the annihilationalist camp?  We shall see.

But, first, let me try to deal with John Stott’s attempt to distinguish between the terms ‘annihilationalism’ and ‘conditional immortality’.

Tony Gray suggests that Stott confused these terms, holding that advocates of the latter believe that the wicked are destroyed at death.

This is what Stott actually wrote:

‘“Annihilation” is not quite the same as “conditional immortality.” According to the latter, nobody survives death except those to whom God gives life (they are therefore immortal by grace, not by nature), whereas according to the former, everybody survives death and will even be resurrected, but the impenitent will finally be destroyed.’  (Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, ch. 16)

Gray comments:

‘[Stott] implicitly accuses conditionalists of believing that no-one survives death except the redeemed—thus the wicked are destroyed at death. However, most evangelical conditionalists do believe in the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked to judgment, and distance themselves from the materialist connotations of the term “annihilation”.’

I agree that Stott’s attempted distinction between annihilationism and conditional immortality is, in regard to the issue under consideration here, unhelpful.

Moving on, then, to the main issue to be investigated: Do advocates of annihilationism or conditional immortality generally believe that the impenitent wicked cease to exist beyond this present life?

Of course, if you look hard enough, you will find proponents of virtually any conceivable belief.  So, for example, a largely forgotten Bible teacher named Oscar M. Baker claimed that there was no existence beyond death for unbelievers.  He wrote:

‘Another question that bothers a lot of folks is this.  What are the dead doing?  If you will read John 11:11,13,14 you will discover that dead believers are said to sleep.  It does not say that souls sleep, but that the dead sleep.  Just for an instance, look at 1 Cor. 15:6,18,20,51.  In these references, dead believers are said to be asleep.  Use your concordance and find other such examples in both Old Testament and New Testament.

So our conclusion must be that believing dead sleep.  In the original languages, this word sleep is not used of unbelievers.  They die and stay dead (Ps. 49:12,20).

Now here is a shocker!  The Bible says that dead folks know not any thing, they are not conscious. Yet in spite of the plain facts of the Word of God, religious men will tell you that there is an eternal conscious torment in hell for the unbelievers.  If there was ever a lie, this is it.’

(Emphasis added)

(See this discussion, from a dispensational/fundamentalist perspective.)

But this is very much a minority view, as I will now demonstrate.

J. I. Packer

Packer was a vigorous defender of the ‘traditional’ doctrine of everlasting punishment of the wicked.  In the process of discussing Jesus’ story of Dives (Lk 16:23ff) J.I. Packer notes:

‘What God ought to do, on conditionalist principles, is annihilate unbelievers at death but, as biblical conditionalists confess, he does not do this.’  (The Problem of Eternal Punishment)

Christopher Morgan

Co-editor and contributor (Ch. 9) to Hell Under Fire, a collection of essays critical of annihilationism.

‘According to some annihilationists, [ultimate destruction] occurs at death. Most of its proponents associated with evangelicalism, however, hold that this destruction will take place after a period of punishment in hell, which will pass away at the new creation.’

David Holborn

Editor of The Nature of Hell: A Report by the Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth Among Evangelicals (2000).

‘The doctrine of conditional immortality…teaches that although they will face final judgement and some degree of divine punishment after that, the unredeemed will eventually be destroyed, or annihilated.’  (Evangelical Review of Theology (2002) 26:1, 23–44.  Online)

Rethinking Hell

The web site ‘Rethinking Hell’ defends ‘evangelical conditionalism’.  Here is an extract from their ‘Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism’:

5. We Believe the Unsaved Will Be Raised from the Dead for Final Judgment

Evangelical conditionalists affirm the future, bodily resurrection of both the saved and the unsaved: those who are saved, to the resurrection of eternal life with God; those who are unsaved, to face final punishment, consisting ultimately in the destruction of body and soul, a permanent end to life and conscious existence.

The same website, responding to the claim that ‘you believe that the unsaved go to the grave and cease to exist’, says:

‘Actually, evangelical conditionalists hold to a resurrection for the wicked who are to face final judgment. Afterwards, they will be utterly destroyed in what the Bible calls the second death. It is really not all that different from the traditional view; the main area of difference has to do with the duration of conscious torment.’

Harold E. Guillebaud

Harold E. Guillebaud was a leading light of the evangelical movement in the UK in the first half of the 20th century.  While eschewing dogmatism, he concluded that:

‘It does seem to us that the general trend of Bible teaching on future punishment points to destruction in the sense of the ending of conscious existence, though the process of destruction will involve penal suffering, which in certain cases, notably that of the devil, may be awfully prolonged.’ (Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, ch. 11)

Basil Atkinson

Basil Atkinson was another early proponent of conditional immortality in 20th-century UK.  He wrote:

‘Though Scripture teaches…the extinction of the unrepentant sinners in eternal destruction, it does not lead us to think of an instantaneous snuffing out of their lives without exaction of full and complete retribution for wrong done to others by hateful and wicked lives and years of unbroken sin against God. ‘  (Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, ch. 8)

John Wenham

A leading spokesperson for annihilationalism, John Wenham (Facing Hell, p255) goes so far as to say that the assumption that

‘the first death is the end and that there is no Day of Judgment and that we are not judged according to our works…is plainly unscriptural and not the view of any conditionalist that I know.’

John Stott

Craig Blomberg (see above) concedes that John Stott ‘seems to allow for people to suffer temporarily in a conscious state of hell’.  Actually, Stott stated his opinion more strongly than that.  Referring to Jesus’ story about the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:23ff), and the firy agony experienced by the rich man, Stott says:

‘The natural interpretation would be that Jesus was referring to the so-called “intermediate (or interim) state” between death and resurrection. I myself believe that this will be the time (if indeed we shall be aware of the passage of time) when the lost will come to the unimaginably painful realization of their fate. This is not incompatible, however, with their final annihilation.’

Clark Pinnock

While I do not regard the late Clark Pinnock an altogether reliable spokesman for evangelicalism, I note that he makes pretty much the same point as Stott concerning the ‘parable’ of the rich man and Lazarus:

‘Did not the rich man suffer torment in the flames in a famous parable of Jesus? (Luke 16:23ff.). Yes, this is part of the Jewish imagery Jesus uses. But one should keep two things in mind here: first, the mention of Abraham’s bosom (v. 22) should alert us to the fact that we are dealing with imagery, not literal description; and second (and more importantly), the story refers to the intermediate state between death and the resurrection.’

‘Hell is not a place of eternal conscious torment in fire but an ultimate, final encounter with God. The lost do not simply cease to exist when they die physically; they are not quietly liquidated after the judgment when they have been restored to conscious and personal existence. The torment of hell consists in beholding God at the last, looking upon his beauty, majesty, and infinite love and knowing that through one’s own deliberate fault all of this has been made forfeit and lost.’

Glenn Peoples

Glenn Peoples (Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, ch. 2) distances himself (and, by implication, all other evangelical conditionalists) from any denial of the resurrection of the lost:

‘It is possible, of course, to argue for conditionalism—or for any other biblical or orthodox doctrine—in a manner that could not be called evangelical. To appeal to extra-biblical revelation or to require commitment to points of view that clearly fall out of the bounds of historical orthodoxy (for example, denying the bodily resurrection or the resurrection of the lost) would place an argument or the resulting conclusion outside of what could reasonably be called evangelical.’

More briefly, and more explicitly:

‘Annihilationists certainly believe in the resurrection of the dead and the final judgement, after which people receive their fate.’ (Source)

Edward Fudge

Towards the end of his important book, The Fire That Consumes, Fudge concludes:

‘According to the Scriptures, the redeemed will be raised immortal, receive God’s public acknowledgment and verdict of acquittal, and live forever with God in new heavens and new earth.

‘The wicked also will be raised, but “unto condemnation” and not unto “eternal life.” They are not immortal by nature, and God does not give them immortality in the resurrection. Instead, God expels them from his presence to a place where there is weeping and grinding of teeth. Scripture calls this place hell and the lake of fire. It is the site of the second death, that ultimate, infinite capital punishment that destroys the whole person forever. Here Jesus’ warning becomes reality: God indeed destroys both soul and body in hell.’

(Emphasis added)

Elsewhere, Fudge states:

‘The Bible does teach ongoing punishment following the judgment. That is the punishment of everlasting destruction, the second death. The person who suffers this fate will truly “die,” “perish,” and be “destroyed”-forever and ever without end. That destiny – not eternal conscious torment – is the eternal punishment of which Jesus solemnly warned.’ (Source)

Tony Gray

Tony Gray, in his survey of relevant issues, states that:

‘Annihilationism is to be distinguished from the humanist belief that there is no life after death, and thus all persons cease to exist once life in this world has stopped. Evangelicals believing in annihilation wish to distance themselves from this belief, and generally accept that destruction occurs after judgment and appropriate punishment.’ (Themelios, Vol 21, No 2)

John Stackhouse

Writing in the 2nd edition of Four Views on Hell, Stackhouse clearly envisages a finite period of post-mortem punishment:

‘The punishment fits the crime: God does not keep rebellious angels and humans alive forever, but only so long as is absolutely necessary for them to pay their debts and purge their guilt. The view in both Testaments is that when the truly good God finally judges sin, that judgment is truly final. The cosmos is thoroughly purified of all evil — including evildoers.’

Conclusion

This has not been an exhaustive survey.  But I believe it to be a representative one.  We may fairly conclude that most conditionalists (perhaps even the vast majority) believe that the life of the impenitent continues into the intermediate state, that they are raised at the general resurrection, and that they suffer proportionately to their wickedness and only then pass out of existence.