makesends said:
When I wrote it, I almost said that if a person ceases to exist, then—as God sees apart from time, as opposed to how we see from within time—that person never did exist. This is almost incoherent to say, as it necessarily uses human language and human concepts, but there is something to it. However, I do think God makes some things "to be no more" that do exist during this temporal "envelope."
Thank you for the explanation. And I would challenge your argument with a couple of thoughts that may be worth considering.
First, does God create anything that goes to waste? I don't think so. I would say that even temporal things that are here today and gone tomorrow play a role in accomplishing his purposes. So, I cannot agree with your notion that those who cease to exist might as well have not existed from God's eternal perspective. If they played a role in accomplishing his purposes, then their existence was notable—and even crucial in many cases, I believe (like giving birth to his elect). And this is to say nothing of the seriousness of their sin, even "as God sees apart from time."
I agree completely that God does not create anything that goes to waste, even though I can't reconcile all applications of the principle. That those temporal things that I described as made to "be no more" are not wasted, to me, has to do also with the fact that I assume, that the things of this earth are not "the real", but only pictures of "the real" things of Heaven. (And by that, I don't mean to say that those temporal things are not real).
But I like the idea of them being of value, simply as playing a role in accomplishing his purposes.
But this is wandering from my point, I think. When I said "there is something to it", I did not mean it was a valid statement that a person who ceases to exist never did exist. To me it is a bogus statement, because it is ludicrous, to me, that anything can cease to exist, and particularly that anything made in the image of God can cease to exist. But all that is, depends on God for its existence, and God can do as he pleases with it, being Lord over very existence.
Second, if the unrepentant who have sinned against an eternal, infinite God are punished with an eternal punishment—and that is what annihilationists believe—then it's an inaccurate caricature to say they are punished "merely temporally." Sure, they are punished temporally, here and now, but then also eternally in the hereafter. Their punishment is death, and that punishment is forever. Unrepentant sinners are first spiritually separated from God and later metaphysically separated from God. As Cornelius Van Til recognized, a man who is metaphysically separated from God is effectively destroyed; to be "cast out from the presence of the Lord is the idea at the root of eternal death" (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary).
My bad. I didn't know annihilationists believe in 'an eternal punishment', as such. To them, does eternal death = eternal non-existence?
Third, there is the problem of conditional immortality. God alone possesses immortality (1 Tim 6:16), which Jesus Christ brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim 1:10), so the promise that this mortal body will put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53) is for those whose belief in the gospel endured to the end. There is an implicit belief among Christians (which the Belgic Confession states explicitly) that the damned "will become immortal," but there are no scriptures attesting to that. My observations of scriptures is that immortality is not intrinsic to human nature but rather a salvific gift.
To my thinking, it is a sloughing of terms to say that the damned "will become immortal". We do that a lot, though. We say that they will live in a continuing death, or words like that. I think all it means is that they will not entirely cease to exist.
I like the thought that the separation from God is the antithesis to our unity in Heaven with God who is our very sustenance. But I know that He is the very sustainer of existence itself, so it would seem to be not a perfect antithesis. I expect if I was to show this observation to an annihilationist, they would delight in the notion that theirs is a more perfect antithesis.
I'm not sure of your meaning: "intrinsic to human nature". In the common worldview, humans, and all other things, are, once-existent, intrinsically so, creator-irrelevant. Obviously, I don't hold to that. So I will agree that immortality is not intrinsic to the human nature. But "mortality" does not equal "subject to final annihilation."
As I read it in Scripture, the lake of fire is not just judgement —it is suffering.
makesends said:
Above all other things, ... humans are made in the image of God. Implied by that fact, I think, is that ours is not merely a temporal but a "permanent" existence.
That would involve a discussion on the image of God, as I think we disagree on that. The royal-functional view of J. Richard Middleton and virtually all Old Testament scholars, which I also affirm, does not seem to imply a permanency to human existence. If you have seen that it does, then please feel free to explain the connection. On the other hand, if your view on the image of God differs from Middleton and others, well, that would account for our disagreement.
makesends said:
Humans, being made in the image of God, are therefore of moral accountability; morality, being rooted in God, is of a permanent nature.
To be morally accountable before God does not obviate the punishment for sin, which is death, which is forever. And good and evil being defined by God is a theological proposition, not an anthropological one; it tells us nothing about human nature.
I see I have violated my own precept, "Don't apply math to the spiritual". But I think I did say something to the effect that this is how it seems to me —not that this is the truth.
You say, "...the punishment for sin, which is death, which is forever". Unless you are an annihilationist, I don't know what you are saying, quite.
We make sense of eternal life and eternal punishment by reference to God, his gracious love on the one hand and his just wrath on the other. Love is an eternal attribute of God, but what about wrath? Surely not. It seems to be contingent upon the existence of sin and the violation of divine principles, which God intends to eliminate from all of creation until at last God may be all in all. As we see all throughout scriptures, and especially on the cross, God's anger can be satisfied. Imagine a God whose wrath is never spent! No, when God's fierce anger is kindled, it is an unquenchable fire that burns against people until it is spent or complete. In
The Cross of Christ (1986), John Stott put it this way:
A cluster of words seems to affirm the truth that God must be himself, that what is inside him must come out, and that the demands of his own nature and character must be met by appropriate action on his part. The chief word is kālah, which is used particularly by Ezekiel in relation to God's anger. It means "to be complete, at an end, finished, accomplished, spent." It occurs in a variety of contexts in the Old Testament, nearly always to indicate the "end" of something, either because it has been destroyed or because it has been finished in some other way. Time, work, and life all have an end. Tears are exhausted by weeping, water used up and grass dried up in drought, and our physical strength is spent. So, through Ezekiel, Yahweh warns Judah that he is about to "accomplish" (KJV), "satisfy" (RSV) or "spend" (NIV) his anger "upon" or "against" them. They have refused to listen to him and have persisted in their idolatry. So now, at last, "the time has come, the day is near ... I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you" (Ezek. 7:7–8). It is significant that the "pouring out" and the "spending" go together, for what is poured out cannot be gathered again and what is spent is finished. The same two images are coupled in Lamentations 4:11, "The LORD has given full vent (kālah) to his wrath; he has poured out his fierce anger." Indeed, only when Yahweh's wrath is "spent" does it "cease."
I think we confuse ourselves with our absolutist notions about our words, as though they are of themselves meaningful as we conceive of them. If wrath is of itself an attribute of God, then it is not without all the other attributes of God. But maybe it is only God's dealing with sin, perhaps just our way of looking at his acts of justice.
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