Topic

Conditional Immortality

The view that immortality is not native to human beings but is given by God through Christ, so that those who are finally lost do not live for ever but perish.

Also called: CI, conditionalism, evangelical conditionalism, conditional immortality

Conditional immortality holds that continued existence is a gift rather than a possession. Scripture attributes immortality to God alone and describes it as brought to light through the gospel, which locates endless life in what God gives rather than in what every creature owns by nature.

On this view the unrighteous are raised, judged, and punished consciously, and the punishment culminates in death. The position is not a claim that judgment is painless, brief, or a quiet fading away at the moment a person dies.

The name marks what is at stake. What is conditional is immortality itself: it depends on union with the Christ who alone has abolished death. Conditionalists differ among themselves on several details, and this site says so where they do.

What this is not

Terms in this dispute are routinely collapsed into one another. These distinctions are what keep the argument honest.

Conditional immortality is not the claim that there is no hell and no final judgment.
It is not universal reconciliation, because those who are lost are not finally saved.
It is not the claim that the wicked simply cease to exist when they die, without judgment.
It is not a position on whether the dead are conscious before the resurrection.

Principal passages

1 Timothy 6:15-16Listed in the Scripture index
2 Timothy 1:10Listed in the Scripture index
Romans 2:7Listed in the Scripture index
1 Corinthians 15:50-54Listed in the Scripture index
John 3:16

Where this is argued in the case

S22 The Biblical Case for Conditional ImmortalityThe synthesis: 1 Corinthians 15 read through, and the short chain of reasoning from perishable bodies to the fate of the soul.
RB2 Does the Image of God Make Humans Immortal?Why the image of God does not entail an indestructible soul, and where Scripture locates immortality instead.
S21 The Tree of Life and Conditional LifeWhat Genesis says the tree did, where it stands in Revelation, and which part of this argument is inference.
S11 What Scripture Contrasts with Eternal LifeThe full list of contrasts, and why reading one of them as unending conscious life requires redefining the other nine.
RB1 Is Conditional Immortality a New Teaching?What the earliest Christian writings actually say about the fate of the wicked, how confident we can be about each one, and why antiquity settles nothing on its own.

S30 Is Annihilation Really Punishment?Two answers: finite experiences genuinely matter, and exclusion from eternal life is itself the ultimate loss.
S31 Would God Destroy His Image-Bearers?The good instinct behind the objection, taken seriously, and why it does not lead where the objection supposes.
S28 Are the Wicked Still Present After Revelation 20?The recapitulation reading, the promise that righteousness dwells in the new creation, and the tree-of-life argument for anyone who reads it literally.

Sources for this topic

Joseph Dear. The Bible Teaches Annihilationism. 1st edition, PDF version. 2016. approximately 590 pages View original of The Bible Teaches Annihilationism (opens in a new tab) Details
John Wenham. The Case for Conditional Immortality. 1996. approximately 18 pages View original of The Case for Conditional Immortality (opens in a new tab) Details
God Alone Is Immortal. Afterlife (afterlife.co.nz) View original of God Alone Is Immortal (opens in a new tab) Details
Phil Welch. My case for Conditional Immortality/Annihilation (CI) instead of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). Working document, revised through 2026. 2023-03-01 Details

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