Bart Ehrman on annihilationism and eternal torment in early Christian texts

Bart Ehrman on annihilationism and eternal torment in early Christian texts 

"The History of Eternal Torment and Annihilation 

In such debates Augustine was decidedly in the majority. Christian opinion from the beginning typically maintained that punishment against sinners would be “eternal.” Unlike Augustine, however, in the earliest Christian tradition postmortem punishment for sinners is not conscious torment but annihilation. Jesus himself regularly speaks of the “destruction” of sinners, not their torment (e.g., Matt 7:13–14), and often, like his predecessor the Baptist, in terms of sinners being judged by “fire” (Matt 3:10, 25:41). He sometimes states that the fire is eternal, but he never indicates that the people cast into it eternally suffer. Instead, they appear to be destroyed in the apocalyptic furnace, just as “weeds” that are cast into a fire (Matt 13: 36–43) or “fish” (Matt 13:47–50): once weeds and fish are burned, they cease to exist; they don’t burn forever. Even in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31–46), those who enter into eternal fires made for the devil and his angels are not said to suffer torment there forever; on the contrary, when Jesus summarizes their respective eternal fates, one group is given eternal “life” and the other eternal “punishment” (Matt 25:46). This is an antithesis. The opposite of “life” is not “torture,” but “death.” The goats, then, are destroyed in fire. Why is it called an “eternal” punishment? Because it will never be reversed. 

Paul attests the same view (1 Thess 4:3), as do his followers (2 Thess 1:9: “eternal destruction”). Remarkably to some readers, so too does the book of Revelation, which does have the wicked thrown bodily into the lake of fire (20:11–15), but that is their mode of execution, not eternal torment. Only the Beast (Rome!), his prophet, and the devil are said to be tortured in the lake forever (20:10). That is precisely not said of the humans (= mortals) who follow them there. The only exception to this annihilist view in the New Testament comes in the relatively late Gospel of Luke, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (16:19–31). Notably, however, the passage does not say anything about the duration of the torment, let alone that it is eternal. 

Probably by the second century, at least, the “eternal punishment” of annihilation found in Jesus and the New Testament authors had transmogrified into eternal torment. Thus we have an intriguing riposte recorded in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the martyr’s reply to the proconsular threat to execute him by fire: “You threaten with a fire that burns for an hour and after a short while is extinguished; for you do not know about the fire of the coming judgment and eternal torment, reserved for the ungodly” (11.2). By the mid-third century Cyprian expressed to his pagan opponent Demitrianus the common view, but with unusual enthusiasm: 

"An ever-burning Gehenna will burn up the condemned, and punishment devouring with living flames; nor will there be any source whence at any time they may have either respite or end to their torments. Souls with their bodies will be reserved in infinite tortures for suffering. . . . The pain of punishment will then be without the fruit of penitence; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late they will believe in eternal punishment who should not believe in eternal life." (Demetr. 24)

 This sentiment is echoed later in Jerome’s Homily 86 (396 CE?) on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the latter “held fixed in never-ending torments.” There is no way out for the condemned: “Vain is your repentance in the place where there is no room for repentance.” This is not an occasion of anguish for the rather triumphant Jerome. The unnamed sufferer is getting what he deserves, forever roasting in fire, with an unbridgeable chasm separating him from the joys of paradise. Blessed saints and tormented sinners can observe each other, but their places are fixed. Rather than mourning those suffering in the pits of hell, Jerome and his fellow saints are overjoyed and even gleeful: “We see what we have escaped; you see what you have lost; our joy and happiness multiply your torments; your torments augment our happiness.” This kind of eschatological Schadenfreude did not originate with Jerome at the end of the fourth century; it runs throughout the centuries as a rather abrasive counternarrative to what is found in the katabasis accounts of the saints who weep and agonize over those who are so mercilessly tortured. This alternative perspective of joy at the pain of others is found already in 2 Clement, where the fiery torments of the wicked are a source of hope and praise for the observant faithful above: 

"He calls that the day of judgment, when others see those who have acted with impiety among us and distorted the commandments of Jesus Christ. But those who are upright, who have acted well, endured torments, and hated the sweet pleasures of the soul, when they observe those who have deviated from the right path and denied Jesus through their words or deeds are punished with terrible torments in a fire that cannot be extinguished, they, the upright, will give glory to their God, saying “there will be hope for the one who has served as God’s slave from his whole heart.”"(12.6–7) 

Better known and far more euphoric is Tertullian: 

"What sight shall wake my wonder, what my laughter, my joy and exultation? As I see all those kings, those great kings . . . groaning in the depths of darkness! And the magistrates who persecuted the name of Jesus, liquefying in fiercer flames than they kindled in their rage against the Christians! Those sages, too, the philosophers blushing before their disciples as they blaze together, the disciples whom they taught that God was concerned with nothing, that men have no souls at all, or that what souls they have never return to their former bodies. And then there will be the tragic actors to be heard, more vocal in their tragedy; and the players to be seen lither of limb by far in the fire; and then the charioteers to watch, red all over in the wheel of flame; and next, the athletes to be gazed upon, not in their gymnasiums but hurled in the fire. (Spect. 30)"" (Journeys to Heaven and Hell, chapter 5, pp. 202-205; notes omitted)

The reference to 1 Tess 4:3 seems a typo. I think that Bart Ehrman meant 1 Tess 5:3. 

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