Christian Views on Hell

Are Annihilationism and Conditional Immortality (CI) legitimate biblical doctrines within Christian orthodoxy?

What about Universal Restoration (UR)?

What about the traditional doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) for unbelievers?

Author: Matty Bateson (Assisted with Grammarly, Perplexity and ChatGPT A.I., for succinctness and accuracy, expanding on a 2023 formal theological essay paper and condensing a previous Blog post HERE that has a bibliography).

Structure of This Resource

This publication unfolds in three parts, after the introduction and frameworks:

• Part A: Biblical, historical, and theological foundations for Conditional Immortality (CI) within orthodoxy
• Part B: How the strongest “hell texts” often used for Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) can also be read in light of CI
• Part C: A pastoral teaching companion for churches

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Introduction and Scope

This publication asks a focused but important question:

Are Annihilationism and Conditional Immortality (CI) legitimate biblical doctrines within Christian orthodoxy?

Here, “orthodox” does not refer only to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Rather, it refers broadly to Christians who affirm the historic core of the faith as expressed in the early creeds and the apostolic rule of faith, including:

• Scripture as God’s authoritative Word
• The Trinity
• The incarnation of Jesus Christ as the Son of God
• His bodily resurrection
• A future final judgment
• Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and good works naturally follow true faith

Many Christians think about the afterlife in simple terms: believers go immediately to heaven forever, unbelievers go immediately to hell forever, and that is the end of the story. Scripture, however, places much greater emphasis on:

• The resurrection of the dead
• A future final judgment
• The renewal of creation (also referred to as the new heavens and earth)

The Bible does not primarily describe human beings as naturally immortal souls temporarily housed in bodies. Instead, it presents us as unified, embodied creatures whose ultimate destiny—life or death—is finally settled at the resurrection to come and the day of judgment.

This work argues that Conditional Immortality and Annihilationism are serious, biblically grounded options within Christian orthodoxy. They do not deny judgment or soften Scripture’s warnings. Rather, they aim to read the whole Bible carefully while upholding God’s justice, holiness, and love as revealed in Jesus Christ.

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Frameworks

For more extensive recommended frameworks before engaging in this topic, please click HERE

Using CURE as a framework: Drawing on Dr John Warlow’s The CURE for Life model, this practice encourages believers to approach disagreement in a way that reflects Christ’s character and the Spirit’s work in us.

When Christians discuss sensitive doctrines like CI, ECT, or UR:

• Connect with curiosity:

  • “What led you to reconsider the traditional view?”

  • “How has this doctrine affected your walk with God?”

• Understand with undivided attention:

  • Let them explain their biblical reasons before you critique them.

  • Summarise their view fairly to show you’ve heard them.

• Respond with respect, reason, and kindness:

  • Engage specific texts and arguments, not straw men.

  • Acknowledge what you can affirm in their perspective, even if you disagree on conclusions.

• Evaluate with the Spirit:

  • Ask: “Am I more eager to be right than to be Christ‑like?”

  • Be willing to adjust your tone, admit when you’ve misunderstood, and keep learning.

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Before turning to specific texts, this resource intentionally suggests working through five lenses, in a particular order, to encourage respectful and faithful discussion as iron sharpens iron:

1. Scripture and Interpretation – Hermeneutics
   (Biblical theology/story, exegetical theology, historical theology, systematic theology, and pastoral theology)
2. Experience of God’s Character
   As born-again, Spirit-filled believers who know God personally
3. Church Tradition
   From the first century through today, including creeds, councils, and theologians
4. Reason and Logic
   Careful thinking, philosophical coherence, and moral reasoning—submitted to God
5. Intuition and Emotion
   Our moral instincts and feelings, brought under the lordship of Christ

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In this way, the 5‑lens framework for doctrine is matched by a CURE framework for dialogue:

• Connect with curiosity

• Understand with undivided attention

• Respond with respect, reason, and kindness

• Evaluate while engaging the Holy Spirit

That combination helps Christians handle with grace even deeply contested topics in a way that honours both truth and love.

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Part A – Biblical, Historical, and Theological Foundations

1. Three Views within the Christian Tradition

By the late second and early third centuries, Christian writers described three main ways of understanding final judgment:

Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT)
The unrepentant unbelievers experience never-ending, conscious punishment, tormented forever like Satan and other evil spiritual beings and forces.

Conditional Immortality / Annihilationism (CI)
Immortality is a gift given only in Jesus Christ. Unbelievers are raised, judged, punished according to their sins/deeds, and ultimately destroyed both body and soul in the “second death.”

Universal Restoration (UR)
Judgment is real and serious for unbelievers, yet ultimately restorative after appropriate punishment is fulfilled.

Early Christianity (before the fourth century) did not speak with a single voice on this issue. For example:

• Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Arnobius of Sicca frequently frame the outcome for the wicked in terms of death, destruction, and loss of life, without teaching eternal conscious torment.
• By contrast, Origen of Alexandria taught a form of universal restoration in which judgment and punishment lead eventually to healing and reconciliation.

This early diversity cautions against reading later theological consensus back into the earliest centuries.

Over time—especially through the influence of Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century—ECT became dominant in the Western church. Augustine’s theology was shaped in part by the belief that the soul is naturally immortal, an idea strongly associated with the Greek philosopher Plato. That assumption influenced how biblical language about death, destruction, and judgment was interpreted.

2. God’s Immortality and the Gift of Eternal Life

Scripture consistently teaches that God alone has immortality in himself (1 Timothy 6:16). Human beings are:

• Mortal
• Fallen
• Dependent on God for life

Immortality, in the form of eternal life, is not something humans automatically possess. This is a gift God gives through Christ (Romans 6:23; John 3:16), and the rest will die and perish.

Key biblical themes include:

• Sin leads to death, not to unending life in misery (Genesis 2–3; Romans 5–6).
• Eternal life is received through union with Christ (Romans 6:23; 1 Corinthians 15:53–54).
• Immortality is explicitly linked to resurrection, not to the soul’s inherent nature (1 Corinthians 15; Romans 2:7).

In CI, the unrepentant unbelievers are also raised—not for endless life, but for judgment—ending in the second death of the whole person (Revelation 20:14; 21:8).

3. “Destroy Both Soul and Body”

In Matthew 10:28, Jesus warns:

“Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”

This challenges the assumption that the soul is indestructible. Across Scripture, words like destroy, perish, and die regularly describe the fate of the wicked (Psalm 68:2; Malachi 4:1–3; John 3:16; Romans 6:23).

Conditional Immortality takes this language in its ordinary sense:

God’s final judgment results in the loss of life itself, not in keeping the unrepentant alive forever in torment.

4. Atonement and the Logic of Punishment

The cross of Christ is central to how Christians understand judgment.

Jesus Christ bore sin’s penalty by first suffering and then dying, not by enduring eternal torment. In his divine nature, the Son of God is immortal and cannot cease to exist. Yet in his humanity, he truly died—and through his resurrection, he defeated death.

CI argues:

• If the wage of sin, revealed at the cross, is ultimately death, then it is coherent to see final judgment as culminating in death—the second death—rather than endless conscious suffering.

In short, Jesus died in our place, rather than suffering forever in our place.

5. Reading “Eternal,” Fire, and Destruction

The Greek word aiōnios (often translated “eternal”) frequently describes lasting results, not always an unending process.

For example:

• “Eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12) refers to a completed act with permanent effect.
• “Eternal salvation” is a salvation that will never be undone.

Likewise:

• “Eternal punishment” and “eternal destruction” can describe punishments whose results last forever, without requiring endless conscious experience. Like the capital punishment of the soul and body.

Biblical fire imagery often works similarly:

• “Unquenchable fire” means fire no one can stop until it finishes its work.
• It describes unstoppable, complete judgment, not necessarily endless burning.

In the Old Testament, when God’s fire is “unquenchable,” it burns until its purpose is complete—and then it goes out. And in the New Testament, God is described as a consuming fire, and there will be a day of God’s wrath with judgment and appropriate conscious punishment for unbelievers (Romans 2:5).

6. Historical Trajectory

Conditional Immortality is not a modern invention.

• Theophilus of Antioch and Arnobius explicitly deny that the soul is naturally immortal.
• Tertullian and Augustine adopt Platonic assumptions about the soul, shaping later doctrine.

At the Reformation:

• John Calvin strongly affirmed ECT.
• Martin Luther and William Tyndale questioned the soul’s automatic immortality, and many Anabaptists opposed it.

In the modern era, evangelical thinkers such as Edward Fudge, John Stott, John Wenham, and John Stackhouse Jr. have argued that CI is biblically faithful and within evangelical orthodoxy.

Questions to consider:

• Does scripture seem to show God finally dwelling with his people in a renewed creation where evil is truly gone, as Revelation 21–22 depict?

• Or does it portray a universe where evil is maintained forever in a parallel realm?

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Part B – The “Hardest Texts” on Hell

Comparative Interpretations within Christian Orthodoxy

Part B looks at the Bible passages most often used to support Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). Instead of assuming one answer is right from the start, this section compares three views that all fit within orthodox Christianity:

• Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT)
• Conditional Immortality / Annihilationism (CI)
• Evangelical Universal Restoration (ER/UR)

The goal is to show how each view reads these texts carefully, in line with the Bible’s bigger story of creation, sin, redemption, resurrection, and new creation.

At the heart of this debate is a key interpretive question:

Should a small number of highly symbolic passages control how we read the Bible’s many clear statements about death and destruction, or should those clearer statements guide how we interpret the symbolic language?

Conditional Immortality (CI) chooses the second approach.

1. Revelation 20:10 — “Tormented Day and Night Forever and Ever”

Bible text (ESV):
“And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

ECT View:

• “Forever and ever” means never-ending torment.
• The devil, beast, and false prophet keep suffering consciously.
• Since all unbelievers go to the same lake of fire (Rev 20:15), they suffer the same way.

Strength: Takes the words about time at face value.
Challenge: Has to explain why the lake of fire is called “the second death” and why death and Hades are thrown into it.

CI View:

• Revelation uses lots of symbols—beasts and false prophets stand for evil powers and systems.
• The lake of fire is “the second death” (Rev 20:14)—a picture of total defeat and destruction.
• “Torment forever” shows how serious and final this judgment is, but it doesn’t mean humans literally suffer forever; due to the hyperbolic and symbolic language of the passage, and considering the nuance of the Greek word that is translated into English as eternal.

Strength: Fits with the Bible’s pattern of life vs. death.
Challenge: This verse is seemingly the toughest one for CI.

ER/UR View:

• This shows evil powers being completely defeated under God.
• “Forever” means God’s victory lasts forever, not that suffering does.
• Humans are judged differently, with hope of final restoration (like Rom 5; 1 Cor 15).

2. Matthew 25:46 — “Eternal Punishment” and “Eternal Life”

Bible text (ESV):
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

ECT View:

• The same word “eternal” is used for both, so both last forever as experiences.
• Eternal life = endless happy life. Eternal punishment = endless suffering.

Strength: Follows the verse’s parallel structure.
Challenge: Assumes “punishment” means an ongoing process, not just a final result.

CI View:

• Both outcomes are final and irreversible.
• “Eternal punishment” means punishment with a lasting result (permanent death).
• Other Bible uses of “eternal” work this way (like “eternal redemption” in Heb 9:12).

Strength: Matches the Bible’s usual contrast of life vs. death.
Challenge: Has to show the parallel doesn’t require the same kind of experience.

ER/UR View:

• Punishment here is like discipline to prepare people (unbelievers, unless referring to the idea of purgatory for believers) for eternal life.
• It’s serious but leads to restoration in the end.

3. Mark 9:43–48 — “Unquenchable Fire” and “Their Worm Does Not Die”

Bible text: Mark 9:43–48 (quoting Isaiah 66:24)

ECT View:

• “Unquenchable fire” = fire that burns forever.
• “Worm does not die” = endless suffering and decay.
• Jesus is describing hell literally.

Strength: Takes Jesus’ warning very seriously.
Challenge: Isaiah 66 talks about dead bodies being consumed, not living people.

CI View:

• Jesus quotes Isaiah 66, where there is fire and worms eat corpses.
• “Unquenchable” means no one can stop it until it’s done destroying.
• It’s about complete ruin, not endless pain.

Strength: Stays true to the Old Testament picture.
Challenge: N/A (fits well).

ER/UR View:

• This is a strong warning, but the fire purifies as much as it punishes, leading to healing.

4. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 — “Eternal Destruction”

Bible text (ESV):
“They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord…”

ECT View:

• “Destruction” = ongoing ruin (like a ruined building that still stands).
• They’re forever separated from God’s goodness but still exist.

Strength: Keeps people suffering forever.
Challenge: “Destruction” usually means something ends.

CI View:

• “Destruction” means loss of life or being wiped out.
• “Eternal” means the result never gets undone.

Strength: Uses words in their normal sense.
Challenge: N/A (fits the context well).

ER/UR View:

• “Destruction” is the end of the old sinful self.
• Judgment leads to final reconciliation with God.

5. Revelation 14:9–11 — “The Smoke of Their Torment Goes Up Forever”

Bible text: Revelation 14:9–11 (echoing Isaiah 34:8–10)

ECT View:

• “No rest day or night” = constant suffering.
• “Smoke forever” = torment that never ends.

Strength: Straightforward reading of the words.
Challenge: Ignores the Old Testament background and hyperbolic language.

CI View:

• Isaiah 34 describes a destroyed city (Edom)—its “smoke goes up forever” as a memory, but it’s not still burning today so that can’t be literal.
• “No rest” describes the time of judgment, not forever after.

Strength: Matches how the Bible uses this image.
Challenge: N/A (fits well).

ER/UR View:

• This shows God’s anger before the final restoration of all things.

6. Putting It All Together: How We Interpret

The big again question is:

Should a few symbolic, dramatic passages control how we read the Bible’s many clear statements about death and destruction, or should the clear statements guide how we read the symbols?

• ECT focuses on texts that emphasize never-ending time in judgment.
• CI focuses on the Bible’s main pattern of life vs. death, ending in resurrection.
• ER/UR focuses on themes of God restoring everything in the end.

All three views honor God’s holiness, justice, and final judgment. They just differ on how long and what kind of judgment unbelievers face.

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Conclusion to Part B

These key “hell texts” are not one-sided. The views—ECT and CI—can be read and interpreted carefully and remain faithful to the Bible and Christian orthodoxy, even if there are some misinterpretations. Some scholars take the more allegorical approach of ER/UR. ER/UR will be explored further and carefully critiqued in the future.

Parts A and B together show that Conditional Immortality is a serious, Bible-based view with deep roots in Christian history. It’s worth considering alongside the other options.

This doesn’t make judgment less serious. It reminds the church to:

• Study carefully
• Stay humble
• Love each other even when we disagree

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Part C – Pastoral and Teaching Application

The church is called to teach God’s judgment with truth, humility, and love.

Conditional Immortality:

• does not deny hell
• does not remove judgment or accountability
• affirms that God’s judgment is real and serious

What it proposes is that God ultimately eradicates evil, rather than sustaining it forever.

This is an internal Christian debate, not a test of salvation or orthodoxy. Faithful believers who love Jesus and honour Scripture can be found on different sides.

Pastorally:

• CI helps some believers reconcile God’s justice with his love
• ECT remains meaningful for others
• ER/UR needs further exploration and reflection, but is recognised as another view of the early church
• Churches can discuss these issues without division

Unity in Christ does not require agreement on every doctrine outside the essentials of the faith. It does require love, as Jesus commanded, and the fruit of the Spirit as Paul explained – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

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Conclusion

This publication has argued that:

• Conditional Immortality and Annihilationism are biblically grounded
• They have roots in early Christian thought
• They can affirm all essentials of Christian orthodoxy
• Even the strongest texts for ECT do not decisively rule them out

Whatever view one holds, Christians are called to approach this doctrine with:

• Reverence, because it concerns God’s judgment
• Humility, because “we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
• Trust, in the God whose justice and mercy meet perfectly in Jesus Christ

 

Consider useful tools – i.e., The Five-Lens Framework for Faithful Spirit-led Christian Discernment

This framework does not place experience, tradition, intellect, intuition or emotion above Scripture. Rather, it acknowledges that faithful Spirit-led Christians inevitably read Scripture through all five lenses, and that wisdom comes from rightly ordering them and humbly holding them before God.

Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

Ephesians 6:17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test everything; hold fast what is good.

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

1 John 3:23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

 

For further comparisons of CI and ECT scripture interpretations click HERE

For further comparisons of the early church up to Augustine click HERE

 

Click below for a video from Kirk Cameron following up his apparent controversial video “Are we wrong about hell?” While I don’t agree with everything he says, I think he is making way for this type of honest discussion to take place with a lot of exposure as iron sharpens iron with Christian love and unity in diversity, not uniformity.

 

Click below for a response from rethinkinghell.com – HELL: Is Kirk Cameron WRONG About Conditional Immortality? Chris Date on Questioning Christianity

 

 

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For further help with interpretation of scripture and discussions:

The 5-Lens Framework for Christian Doctrine & Interpretation

A tool for wise discernment: Scripture first, then experience, tradition, reason, and emotion—all in service of Christ.
For any doctrine: hell, gifts, covenants, law/gospel, Trinity, etc.

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Lens 1 – SCRIPTURE (5 Sub-Lenses)

Primary authority: What does God’s Word teach?

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Lenses 2–5 – Secondary Voices (Tested by Scripture)

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How to Use:

1. Start with Lens 1 (A–E) → Scripture shapes everything.

2. Add 2–5 → Reflect, test, refine.

3. CURE Posture: Connect curiously → Understand attentively → Respond respectfully → Evaluate with the Spirit.

One Truth: Scripture is primary. Others serve it.
One Goal: Truth held in love and grace, for Christ’s church.