Topic

Death

The end of life. Scripture names death as the wage of sin, and uses the word both of the death every person dies and of the final loss that death pictures.

Also called: dying, mortality, the first death, thanatos

From the garden onward the penalty Scripture names for sin is death. Because those in Christ still die physically and the unrighteous also die physically, the penalty in view cannot be only the first death. Revelation gives the final penalty its own name: the second death.

Defenders of eternal conscious torment generally read death in these texts as separation from God rather than the end of life, so that the second death is permanent separation consciously experienced. Separation is genuinely part of what death means, and conditionalism does not deny it.

The reply offered here is that separation from the one in whom all things hold together does not leave a creature sustained. And death is a thing every reader already understands, which makes it a strange word to choose for unending conscious life if that is what was meant.

What this is not

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

Physical death is not the second death, which follows the resurrection and the judgment.
Death as separation and death as the end of life are not mutually exclusive readings.
Spiritual death before conversion is a present condition, not the final sentence.

Principal passages

Romans 6:23
Genesis 2:17Listed in the Scripture index
Ezekiel 18:20Listed in the Scripture index
James 1:15Listed in the Scripture index
Revelation 20:14

Where this is argued in the case

S07 The Wages of Sin Is DeathThe consistent biblical wage of sin, and why death here cannot mean only the death every human being already dies.
S18 Physical Death as a Picture of Final DeathThe parallel between the first and second deaths, and why the separation definition leads to the same place.
S17 What Jesus’ Death Says About the Penalty for SinThe substitution argument, the foreshadowing in Genesis 22, and the way Jesus’ final day traces the shape of judgment.
S16 What the Sacrificial System Says About Sin’s PenaltyWhat the sacrifices actually did, and what that establishes about the penalty they stood in for.
S10 Can God Destroy Both Body and Soul?Matthew 10:28 in its own terms, the use of the verb elsewhere in the Synoptics, and a technical appendix on two-part and three-part anthropology.

S30 Is Annihilation Really Punishment?Two answers: finite experiences genuinely matter, and exclusion from eternal life is itself the ultimate loss.

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

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