In brief#
Matthew 10:28 is one of the few places where Jesus speaks directly about what happens to the soul in Gehenna, and it is cited on both sides. The verse ties the fate of the body and the fate of the soul together, sets both alongside what a human killer can do, and then uses a stronger word for what God can do than the word for killing.
Jesus is not saying the outcome in Gehenna is milder than being killed. He is saying it is worse. The question is what a worse-than-killing outcome looks like, when the word chosen for it is one that elsewhere in these Gospels describes putting a person to death.
The passages#
Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
Luke records the same saying with a detail Matthew does not include.
4“I tell you, my friends, don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. 5But I will warn you whom you should fear. Fear him, who after he has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Why traditional interpreters cite this passage#
Defenders of eternal conscious torment (ECT) read the verse as a statement about God’s authority over final destiny rather than about the cessation of the person. On this reading, to destroy body and soul is to consign the whole person to a condition of everlasting loss. The word can carry that sense: to destroy something is often to ruin it, to render it fit for nothing, without ending its existence.
Read that way, the verse warns about who holds the final say. Human beings can end a life; only God determines what becomes of a person for ever. The fear Jesus commands is fear of the one whose verdict cannot be appealed. That is a coherent reading, not a strained one.
The argument step by step#
Jesus ties body and soul together#
Whatever happens in Gehenna, Jesus says it happens to both. He does not describe a body that perishes and a soul that survives, but puts them in one clause with one verb.
That has a consequence for the traditional reading. If the soul of the lost continues consciously for ever, and the fate of the body is tied to the fate of the soul, then the body must continue for ever as well. That raises the question of a resurrection to imperishability for the unrighteous, taken up in The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality.
The comparison Jesus draws is with killing#
The first half of the verse is about people who kill the body. Jesus does not say do not fear those who can torture you. He says do not fear those who can kill you, and then turns to the one who can do something greater. The frame of reference he supplies is the ending of life.
The word for what God does is the stronger one#
Jesus uses one word for what people do to the body and a different word for what God can do to body and soul. There are two possibilities.
The first is that the outcome in Gehenna is less severe than being killed. That seems unlikely, because kill is already the strongest word available for what can be done to a body on earth, and because Jesus is arguing that the second party is the one to fear.
The second is that the outcome is more severe, which fits the shape of the sentence exactly. But if the word marks something more final than being killed, it is difficult to make it mean something less final, which is what reading destroy as ruin-while-continuing requires.
How the verb is used elsewhere in the Synoptic Gospels#
ἀπόλλυμι (apollumi, destroy, kill, lose, ruin)This verb has a wide range: losing a coin, a wineskin being ruined, people perishing. The observation below concerns one narrow slice.
Chris Date of Rethinking Hell points out that in Matthew, Mark and Luke there are nine instances where this verb appears in the active voice and clearly describes one agent acting on another. In the eight besides Matthew 10:28, it refers to literally killing a person: Matthew 2:13, Matthew 12:14, Matthew 21:41, Matthew 22:7, Matthew 27:20, Mark 3:6, Mark 9:22 and Luke 6:9.
[Rethinking Hell]This is a pattern, not a rule. A word need not mean in one place what it means in eight others, and no responsible argument claims it must. What the pattern does is shift the question. If a writer wanted to say that God kills a person, this is a verb he would naturally use, and in this construction these authors use it for nothing else. Reading the ninth instance differently from the other eight is possible, but it is the reading that needs the argument.
Luke adds the order of events#
Luke’s version says that the one to fear is the one who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into Gehenna. The killing comes first and the casting follows. That sequence matches the closing verse of Isaiah, quoted by Jesus in Mark 9, where the objects of the worm and the fire are dead bodies.
“They shall go out, and look on the dead bodies of the men who have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
The alignment is suggestive rather than conclusive, since Luke’s clause can be read as describing the authority rather than a strict sequence. But on the more natural reading, what is thrown into Gehenna has already been killed.
The second death#
Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
Something has to happen at that point for the phrase to mean anything. Unbelievers are presently alive in the body and, on the standard account, spiritually dead in the sense of being separated from God. If the state after the lake of fire is a continuing conscious life, separated from God, in body and soul, it is difficult to identify what died. That state is close to the intermediate state described in The Rich Man and Lazarus, which raises the question of what the resurrection and the judgment changed.
What this argument establishes#
- Jesus ties the fate of body and soul together rather than separating them.
- The comparison he draws is with the ending of life, not with continued suffering.
- The verb he chooses is one that elsewhere in these Gospels, in this construction, describes putting a person to death.
- Luke’s version places the killing before the casting into Gehenna.
What it does not establish by itself#
- That the soul is unconscious in the intermediate state.
- That the verb must always mean cessation. It has a wide range and often does not.
- Which anthropology is correct. Nothing in the argument above depends on choosing between the two set out below.
Full anthropological matrices
The source document works through what each view of human make-up implies at each stage, and tells readers plainly that if this material does not click they should skip it and move on, because more straightforward biblical arguments lie ahead. It is reproduced because it is part of the author’s case, not because the case depends on it.
In the original these tables used green for alive, red for dead, and capitals for immortal against lower case for mortal. Colour is not an accessible way to carry meaning, so every value is written out as a word below. Mortal here means being sustained by God for a time and eventually wearing out or dying. Mortal, sustained marks the body before the fall, kept alive through the tree of life.
The author works primarily with the three-part view and says of the two-part view that it does not make much sense to him, because unbelievers are described as presently dead in their sins and then made alive with Christ, which he takes to require a part that is dead while the person is alive. That is his opinion, offered as such. The two-part view is held by many Christians and nothing here settles the question.
The three-part view: body, soul and spirit#
| Stage | Body: alive or dead | Body: mortal or immortal | Soul: alive or dead | Soul: mortal or immortal | Spirit: alive or dead | Spirit: mortal or immortal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before the fall | Alive | Mortal, sustained | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Living unbelievers | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Mortal | Dead | Mortal |
| Living believers | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Jesus while on earth | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Jesus in the grave | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Jesus resurrected | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Dead unbelievers | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Mortal | Dead | Mortal |
| Dead believers | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Resurrected unbelievers | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Mortal | Dead | Mortal |
| Resurrected believers | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Unbelievers after the lake of fire, on conditional immortality | Dead | Mortal | Dead | Mortal | Dead | Mortal |
On that view the second death destroys body and soul, which is what Matthew 10:28 says God is able to do.
The author then asks what the last row would have to look like on the traditional view, and sets out three candidates.
| Option | Body: alive or dead | Body: mortal or immortal | Soul: alive or dead | Soul: mortal or immortal | Spirit: alive or dead | Spirit: mortal or immortal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Option A | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal | Dead | Mortal |
| Option B | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Immortal | Dead | Mortal |
| Option C | Alive | Immortal | Dead | Mortal | Dead | Mortal |
The author’s objections, in his own order of argument:
- Option A. No death would have occurred between the resurrected unbeliever and this state, since the spirit was already dead from birth. If nothing dies, the second death is not a death. It would also require the body to be raised imperishable, which he argues elsewhere is said of believers rather than of the unrighteous.
- Option B. The fates of body and soul are tied together in Matthew 10:28. If only the body dies, this is what is ordinarily called death, and the second death becomes the reversal of a resurrection that had just occurred.
- Option C. A body without a soul is not a person and cannot suffer consciously, and again the fates of body and soul are tied together.
The two-part view: body and soul#
| Stage | Body: alive or dead | Body: mortal or immortal | Soul: alive or dead | Soul: mortal or immortal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before the fall | Alive | Mortal, sustained | Alive | Immortal |
| After the fall, and living unbelievers | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Mortal |
| Living believers | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Jesus while on earth | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Jesus in the grave | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Jesus resurrected | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Dead unbelievers | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Mortal |
| Dead believers | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Resurrected unbelievers | Alive | Mortal | Alive | Mortal |
| Resurrected believers | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Unbelievers after the lake of fire, on conditional immortality | Dead | Mortal | Dead | Mortal |
| Option | Body: alive or dead | Body: mortal or immortal | Soul: alive or dead | Soul: mortal or immortal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Option A | Alive | Immortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Option B | Dead | Mortal | Alive | Immortal |
| Option C | Alive | Immortal | Dead | Mortal |
The author’s objections here:
- Option A. This is the same state as resurrected believers, and no death is occurring.
- Option B. The fates of body and soul are tied together, and this would amount to killing the body only. It is also the state he assigns to dead believers, and the move from a mortal to an immortal soul is what he takes to happen to believers at salvation, which makes it odd to attribute to the unrighteous.
- Option C. A body without a soul is not a person and cannot suffer consciously.
These matrices are the author’s framework rather than a biblical one.
Related sections and passages#
- The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality on whether the unrighteous are raised imperishable.
- The Wicked Will Be Destroyed on this word group.
- Physical Death as a Picture of Final Death on the first death and the second.
- Mark 9: Undying Worms and Unquenchable Fire.
Sources and notes#
The word-usage observation is attributed in the source document to Chris Date.
[Rethinking Hell] [Dear]The matrices are reconstructed from the source document, its colour coding restated in words. Scripture passages are displayed in the World English Bible.