Confessions of a Would-Be Annihilationist
Colin Sedgwick, “Confessions of a Would-Be Annihilationalist,” Evangel 21.1 (Spring 2003): 11-21. Confessions of a Would-Be Annihilationist Colin Sedgwick [p.11] KEYWORDS: Annihilationism, hell, traditionalist, eternal, punishment, fire, death, sin, immortality, torment, Gehenna, fear, judgement, freedom, moral health WANTING TO BE CONVERTED, BUT NOT QUITE BEING ABLE TO MANAGE IT It’s a strange situation to find oneself in! But I can think of no better way to describe my sensation on attempting a study of the two main views of hell: as ongoing suffering (the ‘tra- ditional’ view); or as extinction (the ‘annihilationist’ or ‘conditional immortality’1 view). The question of hell must gnarl away at the mind of every thoughtful and orthodox Christian; it certainly did at mine. But, to my shame, I shelved it for more than 30 years before eventually deciding to try to tackle it head-on. In common, I suspect, with many, I had taken lazy refuge in what might be called the standard C. S. Lewis line – that hell is the chosen destiny of those who refuse to yield to God, that ‘the doors of hell are locked on the inside’.2 Not, of course, that this line is without truth; but its danger is that it allows one to sidestep the sheer enormity of the doctrine, to shovel it away into the periphery of one’s mind with a sub- conscious ‘So that’s all right, then’, and to focus on more congenial aspects of the Christian faith. Most of us probably regard hell a belief rather than a conviction – something, that is, to which we subscribe out of dutiful orthodoxy, rather than something which grips us as an integral part of our faith.
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