Matthew 18:8's reference to eternal fires of hell tells us nothing about how long any particular beings inside it will last. At first, this might seem odd, but it might then become very obvious why this has to be the case. Hellfire is not synonymous with any person or spiritual entity damned to it, after all, or else the two could not be distinguished. Therefore, a Biblical description of the fire having no end does not demonstrate that the Bible teaches that the unsaved will be tormented in hell eternally. Other verses do address what the Bible predicts will happen to the unsaved as a whole. Here, my focus is instead on why seeing references to eternal fire alone cannot establish that the Bible teaches eternal conscious torment. For those who might struggle to understand how this logical distinction could not be any other way, an example involving a room might illuminate the matter.
As I have emphasized before, hypothetical or even practical examples are not even necessary to understand or communicate philosophical points like this. All it should take for someone to realize that the phrase "eternal fire" does not mean everything thrown into the fire is eternal or will be preserved eternally is simply reading Matthew 18 and thinking about it without making assumptions. No input from others or analogies are needed to comprehend the logical fact that the latter does not follow from the former. Nevertheless, examples can be helpful for both individual thinkers and those they might communicate with, and they can be especially helpful when dealing with people who are so accustomed to thinking of practical examples that they have difficulty reasoning out abstract truths apart from specific examples.
Suppose a room will stand for 20 more years, and an item is thrown inside while both decades remain. Then another object is tossed inside, and another. After five years, there is no macroscopic physical trace of the first item because it is degradable. The room itself still stands, but the physical objects it contains have started disintegrating because they have such a nature that they naturally break down independent of their larger environment. This is ultimately how the Bible describes hell--compare Matthew 18:8 with 2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28, and Ezekiel 18:4, to list just some verses clearly teaching general annihilationism. Even if the Bible only called the fires of hell eternal without specifically addressing the fate of anyone who goes there, it still would not follow that every unsaved person must automatically exist forever in the fire.
The example of the room can illustrate how this concept without invoking even a single Biblical passage. Science is irrelevant to the nature of this example as well, as the exact kind of item thrown into the room is not important in any way; the point is merely to show that just because a physical area lasts a certain amount of time (including an infinite amount of time) does not mean whatever is placed inside that area will last just as long. Even Biblical support is irrelevant to this example. The issue at hand is the pathetic assumption on the part of anyone who truly thinks it follows from a realm existing for a finite time or forever that everything inside it will exist for that same time.
Again, no one needs this example of a room and its physical contents to read the Bible and realize that eternal fire, eternal bodies, and eternal souls/minds are all distinct. It does not logically follow from any of these things existing eternally that the other two must as well. Those who cannot easily distinguish pure logic from Scriptural or scientific examples, as pitiful as this state can be, might need the light of an analogy to clarify just how this does not follow. There might be other analogies that work very well, and none of them are theological necessities, but a room and the objects inside it does relate to the exact reason why a realm and the beings inside it are not logically required to share the same fate.
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