Topic
Perishing
The word set most often paired with eternal life in the New Testament. It covers losing, being lost, and being destroyed, and it is used of people, animals and things alike.
Also called: perish, apollumi, lost, destroy
John 3:16 sets perishing against eternal life, and the same word group recurs wherever the alternative to life is named. It is also the verb Jesus uses in Matthew 10:28 for what God is able to do to soul and body, which ties the two discussions together.
The word has a genuine range. It can mean to lose something, as with a lost coin or a lost sheep, and it can mean to put a person to death. Its sense in any given verse is settled by the sentence it stands in, not by its most dramatic possible meaning.
Traditional interpreters read perishing as ruin, so that the person is lost to God without ceasing to be. Conditionalists read it alongside the destruction vocabulary that surrounds it, and note the company it keeps in the list of contrasts with eternal life.
What this is not
Terms in this dispute are routinely collapsed into one another. These distinctions are what keep the argument honest.
- Perishing in the sense of being lost and perishing in the sense of dying are both attested uses.
- A lost sheep can be recovered; the contrast with eternal life is not framed as recoverable.
- The word cannot settle the question on its own, in either direction.
Principal passages
- John 3:16
- Matthew 10:28
- Luke 13:3Listed in the Scripture index
- 2 Peter 3:9
- Matthew 7:13-14
Where this is argued in the case
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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
- Rethinking Hell View original of Rethinking Hell (opens in a new tab) Details
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