Two Fates, One Hermeneutic, Zero Evil -- Part 4 of 7

4) Scriptural Teaching on God's Plan to End Evil Itself

One neglected component of the strong biblical case for conditional immortality or annihilationism, which is usually only brought up in more philosophical discussions about God's relationship to evil's existence in the cosmos, long-term, is the category of texts that speak explicitly to the question of the ongoing existence of evil.

In brief, the scriptures teach not only that God will judge all evil-doers in some final way, but that in the aftermath of final judgment, the very way and desire(s)/lusts of the wicked will perish/pass away:

"For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish." -- Ps. 1:6, my emph.

"The desire of the wicked will perish." -- Ps. 112:10c, my emph.

"The world is passing away, and also its lusts..." -- 1 Jn. 2:17a, my emph.

Many other texts are closely related to the same idea. But these are the most explicit and forceful to the effect that, contrary to C. S. Lewis' notion that Hell (conceived of as a place of eternal, conscious torment) is "locked from the inside" due to its inhabitants' persistence in evil and ongoing lack of remorse, repentance, or love for God, in fact God plans to end all evil itself.

Even the most careful, nuanced view of the "lucidity of the wicked" on judgment day--in which the wicked realize, understand, and perhaps even concede the divine justice of their sentence, and perhaps even cease their previous level of highly-proactive rebellion--cannot posit that they cease sinning in Hell, if the least bit of lack of love for and worship of God is to be construed as sin (as it should be, biblically).

Therefore traditionalists must affirm that sin and evil itself continue eternally in Hell, contrary to the prima facie meaning of texts above. And their only strategy for interpreting these texts otherwise is to say that they pertain only to the realm of the new heavens and new earth, such that they mean only that, "...nothing unclean, and no one no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into [the New Jersualem]" (Rev. 21:27a). The wicked and their evil is gone forever...from the new creation, but not necessarily from the entire cosmos if Hell is considered.

However, this does not reckon with the seeming absoluteness of the above texts. Nor does it sit squarely with the case made so far about the scriptural view of life and death, natural human mortality, or the general scriptural pattern of final judgment on evildoers. Another problem is that the traditional view, allowing for the ongoing existence of evil in Hell forever, gives unnecessary ammunition to the universalist who would use texts about or related to the idea of the "reconciliation of all things" (e.g., Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20): if the scriptural view of the final, eternal state of the cosmos is one of perfect reconciliation, and evildoers aren't eternally slain/consumed in final judgment (per annihilationism), isn't it reasonable to assume that those who are lost at the day of final judgment will eventually repent and be redeemed? But of course, if evildoers are done away with by means of their final judgment, there is no possibility of post-mortem conversion, and there is an ultimately reconciled cosmos.

That final point is primarily a biblical one, but it does touch on a philosophical discussion worthy of brief mention here: Is a wholly good God's victory over evil truly complete if evil continues to exist everlastingly, albeit in a separate, confined realm of punishment sealed off from the new heaven and earth enjoyed by the righteous? If scripture pointed us in that direction, we would need bow to it, whatever our other philosophical or emotional "intuitions" or desires about reality may be. However, I am fairly convinced scripture points in another direction, and I see as a philosophical fruit or side-benefit of that direction--the conditional-immortality view--that God's justice in the judgment of evil is completely satisfied in the total destruction and consumption of the wicked and their very desires, forever. There is no eternal waiting for the full enactment of the divine sentence upon evildoers to have been finished at an unreachable, always-eternally-future point in time.

Lutheran Confessions GPT Chat About Christology

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