Why Annihilation Can't Win: A Theological Case Against Soul Erasure

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This is Jerry Eicher from Anabaptist Theological Perspectives,
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and I want to do a short piece at least on,
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some updated information that I have on annihilation or the possibility of the
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annihilation of the soul when death occurs.
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And that route or possibility has been gaining considerable attention and favor in the last while.
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And I have watched that conversation unfold. People have tried to hold the biblical
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view, which I believe is that hellfire is eternal,
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that the soul is, does exist forever.
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Not in the sense that God is immortality, in other words, life proceeding of
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itself, but the soul did receive its life from God at the beginning, as did all matter.
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And I've watched that conversation unfold for those of you who are interested.
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It may not be a subject that interests you, but it continues to be something
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that I am running across. And again, I watched that argument unfold with the great texts and.
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It ends up like all Greek verb tenses and all that stuff. You get into it,
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I am left dissatisfied. It's like you didn't really conclusively prove anything.
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And if you want to see it as there, I mean, it's plain that it is eternal,
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that it is in the presence of God and of his angels, the lake of fire.
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They will be tormented forever and ever.
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I mean, okay, I don't, I'm frustrated with those arguments, so I've never indulged them.
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But the issue of whether annihilation itself is possible is what interests me
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because I think there is where this argument is the strongest.
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So, I want to run two authors past you.
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George MacDonald is an old one for me, way, way back.
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He didn't know he said this, and he was sort of universalist.
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He believed that good would ultimately triumph over evil, that all evil would be turned good.
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And this quote probably is said in that context, but what I got out of it is
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the annihilation itself. He says it's not possible. And this is the quote.
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Annihilation itself is no death to evil.
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And I would say, amen, that's right. I didn't know he said that, but he's right.
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Okay, continues, only good where evil was is evil dead.
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Only good where evil was is evil dead, because then it would cease to exist.
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It would be overcome by good.
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Which ties into his universalism.
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Okay, he continues, an evil thing must live its evil until it chooses to be good.
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Again, that's correct. I didn't know he said that.
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So he's saying that an evil thing must live, it must continue being evil until
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it chooses to be good. That would be the only route to which it can acquire good.
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And I'm not sure how that fits into his universalism, because that would,
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universalism, I think requires God ultimately kind of imposing his will and
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triumphing by overwhelming force or whatever.
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Well, maybe not force, but grace, overwhelming grace.
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Okay, then he ends with, that alone is the slaying of evil.
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So, amen. Didn't know he said that. Agree with it.
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Annihilation does not work on evil. You can't get rid of it.
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He's just saying that. I heard that first whispers of that in The Paradise Lost, where there's a scene,
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oh, that Satan has been cast out, and his third of his angels,
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or third of the angels with them, and they are having a war council as to what should be done,
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and they are afraid of attacking the gates of heaven again because of the damage
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and the wrath that God has already bestowed upon them.
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And they bring up, one of them brings up this idea of what could be worse than annihilating us.
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In fact, he says, I would kind of like that.
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You know, I'm miserable down here in these flames and fires and uncomfortableness.
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Let's attack him and be annihilated, meaning be turned into nothing.
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So what we're talking about is annihilation that produces a return to the state
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of nothing, which was in existence.
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If nothing can exist, it's simply there, nothing.
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That was out of nothing that God created the world. Can matter once called out
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of nothing return to nothing? That's what annihilation requires if it is to be true.
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That is the death, not just a decreasing in the state of being,
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which is what occurs when the soul dies. It just decreases.
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It does not reach the ultimate nothing.
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I know the Eastern religions make a big deal of this, that they believe you can reach nirvana.
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Just don't think it's something that works. Okay, so that was McDonald's.
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Now, I ran across Stephen Hawking's again, which I was somewhat familiar with.
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This is very solid mathematical reality.
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It's not just theory, okay? He did groundbreaking theory on black holes.
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And what is a black hole? It is a star, I think, that has claps on itself, and it's pulling.
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The gravitational force is so strong that it pulls everything into the black hole.
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And it used to be understood before Stephen Hawking did his work.
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That this is a process where annihilation can be achieved to the ultimate state of nothing.
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So the black hole sucks all matter, whether it's a spaceship or anything out of it.
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Another planet, whatever, sucks it into its black hole. So it's sucking matter
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into the black hole and crushing it down with its weight.
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And eventually, the black hole would go into nothing and the matter would go
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with it and it would go back into nothing.
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Stephen Hawkins demonstrated conclusively that this is not what is occurring. In fact, black holes.
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Do not truly annihilate into absolute nothing, but rather dissolve back into
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the universe through a process called Hawking radiation.
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Okay, so this has been, so that's the mathematical just in short census.
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I mean, we could go through the whole thing of how he's saying, if it interests you.
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But theologically, okay, let's say the basics of it.
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So, Stephen Hawking has proved that, and we'll just leave out the process of how it does.
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It takes matter in, but it also begins to, and there's reason for it,
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it begins to throw that matter out in thermal energy.
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It's converted, the mass or the matter is converted to thermal energy,
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and it begins to throw that out.
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But eventually, all the matter within the black hole is turned into thermal energy.
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It is done at the end in a very rapid manner.
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It speeds up, speeds up in a hot kind of flash. It throws all its matter back
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into the universe as thermal energy. Now, it's a lot of argument of how.
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There's still argument how that's done and what occurs with the information
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contained in matter. That's the issue because you also can't annihilate information.
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But my point would be simply to demonstrate, well, that was the issue that I
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was raising, is that evil, first of all, I didn't think it would be allowed to go back to nothing.
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That was more the Paradise Lost idea.
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God just wouldn't allow it because of what that would do to nothing.
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That was my concern but this is showing that it's not even allowed to reach that point and that.
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Because it contains all matter, contains, can we say, the life of God or the
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Word, brought it into existence, so it contains something eternal.
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So it's not going to be allowed to go back. Well, it can't, because God can't
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go back to nothing. And nothing, the theory would be that nothing that contains
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any, even a particle of God's life can go back to nothing.
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So what occurs with it, what Stephen Hawkins demonstrated, what it does,
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it is cast back out into the universe.
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And if evil would be allowed to do that, well, what is the result?
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It's going to pollute things in whatever form, whether it's thermal energy,
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and I don't know what the theological explanation of that is or how you would
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explain that theologically.
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But in some form, evil would then be set out into God's world.
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And that is not going to be tolerated, and that's why I, for a long time,
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have envisioned the fires of hell as containment more than anything else.
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It is the preservation, it is that too, but it is also the containment of evil.
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And it must be fire, because evil is so horribly corrupting,
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and corruption, and it's a protection
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for God's universe, and here it is contained, and it is seeable.
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So I saw, said, yeah, that could be something that God could have in his plans.
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It's teachable material. Look, this is what evil is.
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Don't just talk about it in theory. Let's go look at it. This is what it is.
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This is what happens when you live outside of God and disobey God and turn into
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yourself. So all of that.
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Tremendously strong support for the belief that annihilation is not really possible.
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It's something that evil could possibly desire, would find attractive,
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but sure, let's just get rid of myself, be gone.
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I mean, isn't that, yes, let's just disappear forever, be nothing, but it won't be allowed.
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It's not possible. Therefore, we must make the right choices.
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We are called to that because the choice to not be is not even ours.
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And rage against God if you want to, all you want about that.
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That is the way it is, and that's the way he has chosen because I guess it's
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necessary in order to accomplish the good that he wants and have creatures that
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are like him, choose to be like him.
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You can't have one without the other Would be my way of seeing it So very short, if you're interested,
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in the subject The impossibility of the annihilation of matter That case that
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I was on for a while already Is becoming stronger and stronger So two more,
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George MacDonald and Stephen Hawkins And,
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that's a very interesting process,
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To study Stephen,
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Hawkins' theory on that.
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Man was a brilliant mind truly truly outstanding so whatever that's worth.