Topic
Destruction
The dominant biblical vocabulary for the end of the wicked. The words cover ruin as well as cessation, and the texts add language of completeness that ruin alone does not explain.
Also called: destroy, destroyed, ruin, olethros, apoleia
Across the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels and the Epistles the fate of the wicked is described as being destroyed, consumed, cut off, burned up, made to vanish and brought to nothing. This is the ordinary language of Scripture on the subject, and it runs in one direction.
Defenders of the traditional view answer that destruction can mean ruin: a wrecked building is destroyed and still stands. That is a real sense of the word group, and conditionalists do not deny it.
The reply is that several texts add a finality ruin does not account for. Not a root or a branch left, consumed until they are no more, as though they had never been, ashes underfoot. And the same word is used of the wicked and of irrational animals, which nobody supposes are tormented for ever.
What this is not
Terms in this dispute are routinely collapsed into one another. These distinctions are what keep the argument honest.
- Destroying a person is not the same as removing every particle of matter from the universe.
- Ruin and cessation are both possible senses, and context rather than etymology decides which is in view.
- That ashes remain is not evidence that anyone consciously remains.
Principal passages
- Psalms 37:20Listed in the Scripture index
- Malachi 4:1-3Listed in the Scripture index
- 2 Peter 3:7
- 2 Thessalonians 1:9
- Matthew 10:28
- Philippians 3:18-19Listed in the Scripture index
Where this is argued in the case
- S08 The Wicked Will Be DestroyedThe weight of the destruction vocabulary taken together, and why redefining it requires the traditional view to be established first from elsewhere.
- S04 What Does “Eternal Punishment” Mean?Why Matthew 25:46 pairs two permanent outcomes rather than two continuing activities, and what 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says the punishment is.
- S13 What Fire Does in ScriptureThe ordinary function of fire in the biblical texts, the marked exceptions, and what fire paired with sulphur signifies.
- 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.
- 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.
Objections that turn on this
- 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.
Related topics
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
- Bible Gateway View original of Bible Gateway (opens in a new tab) Details
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