Well, okay, so maybe it's not the last word on hell, but this post represents the final remarks by both Chris Date and Jerry Shepherd. I want to extend my thanks to both contributors for their tireless attention to the biblical text and, most of all, their devotion to the Author of the text. I've learned much from this dialogue and have appreciated the cordial, yet direct, tone in which it was handled. 

This is Chris Date's second rebuttal to Jerry Shepherd's presentation of eternal conscious torment. Here are Jerry's FIRST, SECOND, and THIRD posts. Chris's first two posts can be found HERE and HERE. We'll wrap things up next week with a short conclusion by both Chris and Jerry. ABUSING THE ANALOGY OF FAITH Jerry leaves unaddressed the vast majority of the texts

Jerry Shepherd offers his second rebuttal to Chris Date's argument for the annihilation view of hell. Jerry focuses on the apocalyptic language of the book of Revelation and the statements that refer to the wicked being tormented forever. 

Chris Date continues our dialogue on the duration of hell by responding to Jerry Shepherd's initial post, which argued for eternal conscious torment. 

Eternal, immortal, resurrected life—albeit in torment. This is how most Christians have thought of the final fate of the unsaved, from second-century Tatian to the Reformation’s Belgic Confession and through to today’s theologians like Wayne Grudem. This now-traditional view of hell is not one of disembodied spirits, but of resurrected, living people whom God has rendered immortal so as to endure physical and emotional torment for all eternity.

My thanks to Preston Sprinkle for inviting me to participate in this exchange with Chris Date. And also my thanks to Chris for his expressed desire, which is mine as well, to have a very amicable discussion. This should actually not be hard, inasmuch as I have already gotten to know the heart of my brother through our communications the past few days. And besides, he’s Reformed. How could we not get along?!

As many of you know, I’ve been wrestling with the concept of hell for quite some time. It started back in 2011, when Francis Chan and I wrote Erasing Hell, which explored and defended the traditional view that hell is irreversible.

The following post is written by my friend Joshua Ryan Butler and it's the second of three that he'll write this week. (His first one is HERE.)  Josh has written a killer book titled The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, and the Hope of Holy War. In this second blog, Josh looks at God's judgment through a different lens.

Many people fear hell is a skeleton in God’s closet, an underground torture chamber that makes God look like a sadistic torturer. But I’ve found many people have a caricature of what’s actually happening in the biblical story.

I’ve tried my best to show that there are good, compelling, biblical arguments in favor of terminal punishment and that the eternal conscious torment view of hell, while possessing some biblical merit, is not the only clear way to interpret the biblical text. 

In my previous post, I summarized some of the strongest biblical arguments in favor of terminal punishment. In this post, I want to summarize the best arguments for eternal conscious torment (ECT)—the traditional view of hell where the wicked will experience never-ending punishment. Let me begin with some of the weaker, though common, arguments that are often given for ECT.

In my previous post, I said that while I am not an “Annihilationist,” I do see enough biblical support for this position to qualify it as an Evangelical option. I have not yet had the time to clear my desk to engage in prayerful, thorough, painstaking exegesis to have landed on this position. But from what I have seen, there’s a good deal of sound, biblical arguments for it. Before we examine these, we need to know what it is we’re even talking about.

When I was nearing the end of Seminary back in 2002, I’ll never forget hearing that the great Evangelical leader John Stott was an “Annihilationist;” that is, he believed that hell does not consist of everlasting conscious torment. I remember thinking, “What? I thought that John Stott was a Christian?”