Thursday, April 30, 2026

An Idiotic Universalist Objection

The road that leads to destruction, not eternal torture, is wide, and many travel on it (Matthew 7:13-14), the Bible teaches.  This is not what soteriological universalists think.  They suppose that everyone will eventually be saved, which would contradict both the heretical doctrine of eternal torment in hell and the genuine Biblical doctrine of annihilation in hell for unrepentant sin.  Some of them might think that whether or not the Bible is true, both eternal torture and soul annihilation as punishment for wrongdoing are unjust.  There is no way whatsoever to know if morality exists, although the evidence for Christianity establishes the probability of Biblical morality being true, but only one of these two types of punishment is logically erroneous and thus unjust (if there is morality) by default.

If there is no such thing as morality, eternal torture is still the worst category of thing that a person could experience by far.  It involves pain, and it never would end.  The only aspect that could differ from person to person or moment to moment would be the degree of the suffering.  Only a fool would ever reject this, though I have encountered or heard of people who have.  If there is such a thing as morality, eternal torture is one of the only things that would be inherently unjust, as with punishing an unwilling innocent person for someone else's actions (justice is treating people as they deserve, so doing this could only be unjust if moral right and wrong exist at all).  Eternal suffering for any wrongdoing would be inherently unjust because it is infinitely disproportionate to whatever offense or offenses are in question.

It would be worse than any sin being punished.  This is not true of genuine death, which would end pain, as well as the very capacity for pain [1] (although biological death might not turn out be the same as phenomenological death as far as logical possibilities for an afterlife go, this is not what the Bible teaches [2]).  It would also bring a definitive end to evil by destroying evildoers.  There is nothing about this that contradicts any necessary truth about the nature of justice, though eternal torture could only be unjust if morality exists.  If it does not exist, again, there is still nothing worse than this: some forms of eternal torture would be objectively worse than others, but there is no class of experiences worse.

The final penalty (it could be preceded by some amount of torment and the execution itself will likely be very painful) of the Biblical hell is that of death, the permanent exile from conscious existence and the very capacity to experience pleasure and peace because one has been shut out from life itself.  Ezekiel 18:4 says that the soul that sins will die.  John 3:16 and Luke 13:3 and 5 say that those who do not repent will perish.  Romans 6:23 says that death is the fate contrasted with eternal life (with Daniel 12:2 and John 3:16, among other verses, necessitating that if the righteous receive eternal life, the wicked do not).  Matthew 10:28 says that the wicked will have their soul and body destroyed in hell, while 2 Peter 2:6 says that the wicked will be burned to ashes.

Plenty of other direct or indirect affirmations of annihilationism are found in the Bible, including how Revelation 20:15, speaking of hell when the resurrected masses of the unrighteous are sentenced, calls the lake of fire "the second death."  This is very obviously the justice of Yahweh, and it is absolutely untrue that there is an inherent philosophical problem with annihilation as there is with eternal torture.  It is not that death such as the killing of wicked people in hell is just another unjust distortion of Yahweh's character like eternal punitive torment.  Universalists and general theological emotionalists who happen to oppose annihilation on moral grounds just as they do eternal torture are very lost indeed inside and outside the context of Biblical philosophy.



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