Topic
The Second Death
The phrase Revelation uses for the outcome of the last judgment. It names the lake of fire, and it is distinguished from the death every person dies before the resurrection.
Also called: the second death, deuteros thanatos
Revelation supplies its own gloss: the lake of fire is the second death. The phrase appears where Death and Hades are destroyed, where those not written in the book of life are thrown in, and in the list of those whose portion is the lake that burns with fire and sulphur.
For the phrase to mean anything, something must happen that did not already happen at the first death. The unrighteous have already died once and have already been separated from God by sin, so a second death that only continues that condition is hard to account for.
The traditional reading takes the second death as permanent separation from God, consciously experienced. The conditionalist reading takes it as a real death following the resurrection, permanent because no further resurrection lies beyond it.
What this is not
Terms in this dispute are routinely collapsed into one another. These distinctions are what keep the argument honest.
- The second death is not the intermediate state, which precedes the resurrection.
- It is not physical death, which the righteous and the unrighteous both undergo.
- Revelation applies the phrase to the lake of fire itself, not to a separate place called hell.
Principal passages
- Revelation 20:14
- Revelation 21:8
- Revelation 2:11Listed in the Scripture index
- Revelation 20:6Listed in the Scripture index
- Romans 6:23
Where this is argued in the case
- S03 Revelation 20: The Lake of Fire and the Second DeathWhere the clause about unending torment sits in the passage, what the lake of fire does to Death and Hades, and how much weight the placement can carry.
- 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.
- S24 No More Death, Mourning, Crying, or PainThe verb in Revelation 21, what it is applied to, and how far the argument reaches.
- 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
- 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.
- 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
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