"A Philosophical Case for Conditional Immortality"-Daniel Sinclair (Rethinking Hell) This paper was presented at the Rethinking Hell Conference 2015 at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA).
Just a quick comment on his comments about Arminianism and Universalism having a contradiction... He's essentially saying that Armenians need to ask "is there a morally acceptable way for God to 'coerce' people into choosing him by torturing them in hell?" ... but I don't think this is really the way an Arminian would phrase that question (note: I lean towards Molinism myself)... However, I don't think that many people who believe in the freedom of human will would actually say that it would be IMMORAL for God to coerce humans. God COULD have made beings without freedom if he wanted to. I'd say most of us just believe that God WOULD not coerce the will of humans (in regards to their acceptance or rejection of Him) because He values genuine love and worship.
33:44 - And yet traditionalists who say eternal conscious torment is undeniable and absolute Biblical truth, do not see this obvious inconsistency they put forth in order to make Scripture fit their doctrine.
As a image of GOD it is blasphemes to say we are omnipotent,omnipresent,omniscient,infinite and indestructible. Why is it? because as a creation with conscious we can truly determine we are only potent, present,scient,finite and destructible. Then why we but a image declare ourselves immortal just as GOD is? #keepGODabove
Exactly. I have honestly wanted to bring this up to people I have argued with who fully believe eternal torment, that at the very least they imply that they are equal to God in some attributes when they say that man's soul is undeniably immortal with or without Christ, or say that the punishment in Gehenna consciously lasts forever because God made His creation to be indestructible. The Bible says none of those things, and we need to learn our place below God as fully, lowly mortal creatures who He still loves but requires our worship of Him as being above us.
I was intrigued by the Thomas Hobbes quote so I looked it up in Leviathan to read the whole context. It turns out Thomas Hobbes held (at least speculatively) to a very strange form of conditional immortality. He seems to be arguing that while no one sinner experiences torment in hell eternally, because they are mortal, the damned, somehow (and this is the really weird part), continue to engender offspring, eternally bringing forth new denizens of hell continually. And that's how he makes sense of the "eternal torment" that he reads in his English translation of Scripture. Hell is eternal because it is always being populated, but it's not eternal for any one individual.
When the Bible does not make sense, we are making some error in our hermeneutic...And we are not doing God and ourselves any favors not making corrections...
