Jason Lisle’s Defense of Eternal Torment of the Dead
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I came across this article recently, and it’s obvious that the person he’s responding to doesn’t present the best arguments.
https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/apologetics/has-the-word-eternal-been-correctly-translated/
At the same time, it’s clear that Dr. Lisle overlooks the important distinction between “perpetual” and “permanent”, and doesn’t even mention “age-enduring” as a possible meaning for aionios at all. He also cites Thayer’s Greek Lexicon as saying “eternal” is the primary meaning of the word. Did you get your most-frequent rendering of “age-enduring” from a more up-to-date lexicon (Thayer’s is from the 1880’s, after all)? And how accurate are his claims about the consistency in meaning of whether certain Hebrew constructions involving owlam refer to finite or infinite time? Because I’ve come across counterexamples while analyzing the “Day of the Lord” passages (e.g., Isaiah 34:10 using leowlam (which he claims ALWAYS means “forever”) for “for an age” and lenetsach for “for perpetuity”, as made clear by the smoke going up (which owlam is qualifying) from greater Edom <b>eventually ending</b> (I presume at the end of the Millennium, unless you have any better ideas), as implied by 35:1-2, further into the major train of thought).
I can tell that Lisle (who I know is otherwise very well-versed in logic) is coming at this from some strain of Protestantism, and I’ve read enough of the LGV & your other articles to immediately spot most of the mistakes with his proof-texts and some passages he’s overlooked (e.g., Jude 7, Jeremiah 31:40) that require aionios to mean “permanent” instead of “everlasting” in some critical passages (e.g., Matthew 25:46; I presume something similar is going on with the use of owlam in Daniel 12:2, but could you please confirm?). But I’m not entirely sure what the proper rebuttal to this argument is:
Our view of hell says a lot about our view of God. We know from Scripture that sin is not only determined by our actions, but also by whom our actions are against. A person who kills an animal for food has not sinned at all (Genesis 9:3). No punishment is due. Yet, a person who kills another person for food is wicked and deserves the death penalty (Genesis 9:5-6). The same action has a much stricter punishment because it was committed against a being of greater inherent value. A man who murders another man has sinned against someone of equal value to his own life. Such a sinner has earned the death penalty. He has forfeited his own life by taking the life of another person of equal inherent value.
Now imagine sinning against an infinitely Holy God (Revelation 4:8) – the very God who created you. This crime is infinitely heinous because God is of infinite value and is the one who gave us life. The right punishment would therefore have to be infinite. It would take eternity for any finite being to pay an infinite debt. The biblical teaching of hell therefore presupposes that God is infinitely righteous and is just in His judgments. It follows logically that any view of hell that does not involve eternal punishment for the wicked must either hold that (1) God is not infinitely righteous, or that (2) God is unjust. Either position is a very low view of God and contradicts Scripture.Is the logical problem essentially that comparing an action that isn’t sinful at all (killing an animal) with an action that is sinful (murdering a human) doesn’t really demonstrate that the appropriate punishment for “sin is not only determined by our actions, but also by whom our actions are against”?
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Karl,
The lexicons contain theological bias just as the translations also do. There is no ancient Greek lexicon. They are made by modern linguists who examine biblical words in context. The meaning they assign comes from how they understand the passages that use that particular word, filtered through their own theological paradigm. There are many examples where aionios clearly cannot mean “eternal.” The same is true of olam. But in passages where they assume that eternal torment is meant (because of their theological bias), they then assign the concept of “eternal” to their definition of words like olam and aionios, or clauses like “unto the age” (eis ton aiona). This is not objective because it ignores the many examples where such terminology cannot refer to infinite time.
“Aionios” is the adjective derived from the noun “aion,” which means an “age.” The word “age” is finite, confined by TIME, and is not infinite. It can refer to as little as one person’s lifetime, or a period of thousands of years, depending on context. Often it is the equivalent of the Hebrew “olam” in the LXX, which leaves the end of the limited time-span open and undefined. But undefined is not the same as infinite. The etymology of “aionios” as well as its usage in Scripture merely reflects what adjectives do. It adds a prominent quality of the root word “aion” (age) to whatever noun this adjective modifies. This simply suggests that the modified noun has a quality of enduring for an extended period of time. It potentially could be unending but is not necessarily so. In other places it is clearly a relatively short time. For example, when a slave chose to remain with his master after the Sabbatical year, his ear was pierced with an awl, and he would then serve that master “olam” or “eis ton aiona.” It clearly does not mean for all eternity. Same with the fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah in Jude 1, which was swift and completed in a very short time, yet uses the clause “aionios pur” (perpetual fire, not eternal fire). Even apart from this verse’s use of “aionios,” since Jude says Sodom and Gomorrah present an “example” or “sample” of aionios fire, and since what that example proves is that its fuel is utterly consumed until absolutely nothing is left, our take-away should be that the “fire” of Gehenna utterly consumes those corpses thrown into it (Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:43-48).
Regarding the last argument about God being ‘infinite’ and therefore sin against an infinite God requires infinite conscious torture, that is just fabricated nonsense. In the Law of Moses, just as with the Law of Christ, all “sin” was against God. Yet it is more accurate to say that sin is against God’s commandments. And those commandments were given in “time,” and require “time” to keep them or disobey them. Many commandments in the Law of Moses were temporary until the Law of Christ” superseded them. Therefore, the commandments are not “eternal,” so how can the punishment be eternal? All of the punishments in the Law of Moses were limited, the most extreme being death. The NT says that “the wages of sin is death,” not eternal conscious torment. “Death” is considered permanent unless God intervenes by resurrection. Does not the “second death” last forever? If the punishment is PERMANENT (ceasing to exist), then it is infinite in the sense of its results. It does not require torture eternally because God Himself is eternal. Lisle is using faulty logic.
Besides, how does that stack up with how the Bible compares and distinguishes between the fate of the righteous vs. the wicked? If the “wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life,” yet both groups live forever, then there is no distinction. One has to redefine both “life” and “death” in such passages from their ordinary meaning in order to maintain that doctrine.
The supposed logic presented for his argument is a non-sequitur. It does not follow logically that because God is eternal that punishment must be ongoing eternally. First of all, the claim that God is “infinitely righteous” is poppy-cock. God is the epitome of what is right and just. He sets the standard by who He is, HIs character. He is the PERFECT standard. “Perfection” is a complete, fixed, unchanging standard. “Epitome” is the same. Conversely, “infinite” is always incomplete because there is always more. Lisle is playing word games, conflating the RESULT of judgment and punishment being eternal with the suffering being eternal. This is all to allow for Plato’s “immortality of the soul,” which is pagan and not Christian.
Infinite torture is not taught in Scripture, just the opposite. Scripture claims repeatedly that God is JUST, a righteous Judge. The same Greek word is translated “justice” and “righteousness.” Thus the punishment for sin is equitable and always fits the crime exactly as the Law of Moses demonstrates. That Law was intended to demonstrate God’s JUSTICE according to Paul (Rom. 3:21; Rom. 9:31). So, if the worst punishment according to the Law of Moses was physical “death,” and if the Law demonstrates God’s justice and righteousness according to Paul, then permanent death (ceasing to exist, no hope of resurrection) remains the JUST punishment for sin from the eternal God’s perspective. God does not give and enforce a double standard. The false claim that judgment for all unredeemed humanity must infinitely exceed the justice portrayed in the Law of Moses and must infinitely exceed God’s JUST character portrayed in Scripture, this makes God an UNJUST TYRANT, a TERRORIST, a TORTURER.
These people are doing the same thing that Calvinists do, who, in order to maintain their heresy, turn God into a sadistic and evil, yet all powerful, monster. No wonder so many reject Christianity and the true Gospel. The biblical Gospel is about how much God LOVES humanity, not about how much He decided to torture humans unjustly, based on a standard that is not biblical. God nowhere asks mankind to be “infinitely righteous.” He asks us to obey His commands. “Eternal torment” plus “Calvinism” are THE most deadly heresies which circumvent the true Gospel simply because they turn God into someone that no human in their right mind can actually LOVE without checking their brain at the door.
Grace & Peace, Tim
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