Welcome to another episode of Facts.

I'm your host, Steven Boyce.

Today I'm going to do an episode on the controversial discussion that's been going around.

I mean, you've probably seen it everywhere from Facebook to Twitter.

And now we're seeing it in YouTube videos discussing the recent statements made by Kirk Cameron.

A guy that's probably more known for.

What he did in the Left Behind series, which is terrible theology by the way, so we're glad maybe, maybe we're getting him past that kind of theology, if he even ever believed in it himself.

And now he has introduced himself into really the podcasting world.

People want his opinion about things.

People ask his opinion about things.

And recently he and his son were doing a discussion on their podcast and the subject of hell came up, an important subject that all of us should take serious.

All of us should have an open mind and an open heart and really a lot of humility as we discuss things like hell because this has been going on for 2000 years and even longer than that.

But one of the things that was said is he has changed his view on the subject of hell and now he holds to something closer to annihilation, ISM or conditional immortality.

My friend Chris Date, who I had the privilege of meeting a few years ago when I was in Seattle.

We took some time to meet up halfway and a wonderful guy, really kind hearted, very in depth, very smart guy.

Holds his position, has defended his position, has debated prolific scholars on the subject of hell and has demonstrated that it is an orthodox view.

He has held his ground on this.

Many have changed their views on this, and it seems like we're finally coming around to this in the evangelical side of things, particularly when you're getting into the discussion of.

Well, how do we handle?

Those who say that people can be.

Annihilated in Hell.

Is that heresy, or is it just simply error that is not heretical enough to damn somebody to hell for believing a wrong doctrine about hell?

What's the status of the person who affirms annihilationalism?

Conditional immortality.

So these are things I want to talk about today because we're not the first ones to have this discussion.

We're not the first ones to have the debate about what happens to the person who dies apart from Christ, grace and redemption.

Do they burn eternally over and over and over again without death but constant pain of fire and that will never end for all of eternity.

Or will they experience loss and pain and what it would have been and regret and yes, fire, but where God's justice is fulfilled on that person and destroys their very existence that he created to live forever and robs them because of their sin of the opportunity to live eternally.

That is the schism.

That is the discussion.

That is the debate that's happening.

And we're seeing more and more people turn to the position of Kirk Cameron, which is not his position at all.

He's just following suit with many scholars who have come before him.

So what I want to do is I want to take some time.

I brought some church father quotes because you know me.

It's like, all right, well, we act like a lot of things are modern day debates and they're actually not modern day debates.

They've been going on for a very long time.

So why pretend like this is any different?

So what I want to do is I want to look at some early patristics.

I want to start with Ignatius of Antioch.

I want to look at Irenaeus of Leones, and we'll look at a few others.

We're going to talk about how they were three positions that were held within the church, and sometimes it feels like certain figures in the church were leaning One Direction and then the next minute they were leaning in a in a different direction.

It almost seems like they contradicted themselves.

There were some that were very very explicit about eternal conscious torment.

Seems like guys like Augustine of Hippo for example.

And then it seems that there's people that had a weird universalist view of hell, more of like a purgatory but leads to All Souls being saved and some go so far as to say even devil and his angels.

So before we throw on our your heretic hat and we start casting all of the the heretical language about Kirk Cameron or the other side of the argument, what did the early church say about this?

Because they had a lot of views about hell.

And does someone have the capacity to hold to a view like eternal conscious torment or conditional immortality, still be within the boundaries of Orthodoxy, and not violate any kind of dogma or teaching of the Church?

Whether you're orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, whatever your position is, can you fall in bounds within these structures and still consider yourself heterodox or orthodox?

Or you just straight heretical?

What?

Is the position.

When you look at it from the early church.

So what I want to do is I want to bring on the screen couple of quotes that we can look at today.

I think they'll be helpful to us looking at these things, particularly from Ignatius of Antioch.

I want to show you 2 quotes side by side and and show you that there seems to be a little bit of a contradiction if somebody would want to call it that.

But I don't think it's a contradiction as much as attention that was thought through the minds of those who were in the early Church.

For example, in Ignatius's letter to the Magnesians, he says, let us not therefore be insensible to His kindness.

For were He to reward us according to our works, we should cease to be.

Therefore, having become his disciples, let us learn to live according to the principles of Christianity.

Now one.

Of the things.

That you're going to notice right off the beginning of this is that he speaks of abusing the kindness and mercy of God.

He wants us to know that we can continue our Christian life in this world and in the next having received the full mercy of God.

However, if we were to take the opportunity that God has given us in mercy and relinquish ourselves from mercy and continue and say sin, we can forfeit our existence, forfeit an eternal existence.

That's the idea that he has here.

Later in his letter to the Ephesians, he seems to kind of go against that.

Maybe.

He says corrupters of families will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil, teaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified, a man becomes so foul, will depart into unquenchable fire, and so will anyone who listens to him.

Now naturally, you know, Ignatius is fighting against what seems to be forms of a Doe statistic theology that came from those who denied Jesus his physicality.

He seems to to go back in time a little bit and say, you know what, this was established by the teaching of the apostles.

We have continued it.

These people are imposters or creating damnable heresies.

Now here he speaks about those that fall into it intentionally and unintentionally.

The intentional are going into unquenchable fire.

Now, believe it or not, the conditional immortality group will say, sure, we believe that.

We don't deny that even in annihilationalism someone can experience the unquenchable fires of hell.

Because it is final, it is permanent, it is irrevocable.

So they would make the argument that both of these cases can be found within the framework of conditional immortality.

The one that they would highlight the most naturally would be that of the magnesiums, and they would talk about how a person can cease to exist in the theology of Ignatius.

So here's what I'm seeing on the Internet right now.

I'm seeing a lot of this.

I think 1 crowd come in and say all right, conditional immortality is on our side.

We have Ignatius, we have Irenaeus, we have Origin, We and down the line.

They go.

The eternal conscious torment crowd comes in and says, OU contraire, we have Ignatius on our side.

We have Irenaeus on our side.

And so it's turned into.

Well, why don't we all just read the Bible?

I mean, the Bible settles this, folks.

I think we need to lose that kind of argumentation.

And I really think we need to lose it as quick as we can because here here's here's one of the frustrating things that I'm finding on the Internet right now, and I'm finding this amongst Christians on both sides of the argument.

Can we please stop saying stupid things like that?

For the love of God, can we please stop saying, well, have you ever read the Bible?

What would you think they brought the Quran with them?

I mean, did you think they brought the Book of Mormon?

I mean Reader's Digest.

I mean, what did you think they brought to the table when they started the argument for eternal conscious torment or conditional immortality?

Both sides of the argument are bringing a Bible with scripture versus in play.

And so then both crowds are bringing the church fathers into the equation and saying, see, Ignatius agrees with us.

He said it's unquenchable fire and well, well, what about over here to the Magnesians where he says you cease to be?

So at the end of the day, everybody's coming into this debate and they're making these statements of we've got the Bible, we've got church history on our side.

Therefore, your side is heretical view of hell and damnable, but everybody's coming to the table with thoughts.

Everybody's coming to the table with Bible verses.

Everybody's coming to the table with the church Father on their side.

Eastern, western, no matter where you're at.

See, this is the problem.

And when you get into these passages of Scripture, for example, you see the language, it seems to be eternal, eternal conscious torment.

Like what?

That's right there, Revelation right there, and Matthew's Gospel.

The worm does not die.

The fire is not quenched.

Quoting from Isaiah settled, it's done, forget it.

And then on the other hand, you turn around and Jesus says things like, hey, don't fear him who can kill the body, fear him who can.

And the word is destroy both body and soul and Gehenna.

And so now you have the arguments of the conditional immortality people who go see the Bible speaks of destruction of body and soul, the annihilation of body and soul on the other side of that wall.

It's it's eternal unquenchable fire.

And so everybody's coming to the table with their biblical reasoning for the debate.

And by the way, I welcome the tension.

I am not going to pose either side as heretical because both can be found in a scriptural position from from 1 angle or another.

That leaves it open to where even we see Eastern and Western church fathers who also wrote the contention and the tension that came into it.

So we need to stop this.

What haven't you?

What?

The Bible's already settled this.

Thank you.

Thank you for for adding nothing of value to the equation and then listing your 7 verses of conditional immortality or your 7 verses of eternal conscious torment.

As if both sides didn't bring a good argument to the table.

Both do I I would be.

I would be lying to my audience if I didn't tell.

You that I have wrestled with this for years.

I have wrestled with the subject.

I've wrestled it with the subject.

Of God's justice.

Here's some things to consider.

These are things that I've thought about.

To say that I've settlement settled them in my mind would be absolutely ridiculous because I most certainly have not settled some of these tensions in my mind.

But here's some questions I've thought of.

Take for example, you have a 16 year old rebellious child, storms out the door mad at his parents, says things that do not honor his father and his mother.

He's lost.

He doesn't know Christ.

He's living out that example that he doesn't know Christ.

He goes out, he gets into a car wreck that night, he is killed.

He enters into the fires of hell.

Take another example, Hitler, one of the most gruesome, bloodthirsty, hatred filled men that has walked on the planet.

Both enter into the justice of God for sin in the eternal realm.

Hitler and this unknown rebellious 16 year old boy who died in a heart attack died in a car wreck trying to show his disgust for authority and parents.

Both are died, both have died.

Both are in hell.

Hitler and the 16 year old.

At what point is God's justice appeased?

Let's say that I'm going to make up a number.

Let's say that Hitler committed a million sins.

Let's say this 16 year old committed only 1000.

Not that that's a small deal.

I'm like, Oh my goodness, I mean 1000 ones enough to trespass Godzilla.

Thank you.

Thank you for the obvious.

Again, let's keep the obvious in mind.

We, we don't need to share the obvious.

God's satisfaction of condemning and judging those two individuals, the 16 year old no one knows and Hitler that everyone knows.

God's anger is continually poured out never to be satisfied.

That 16 year old is paying for 1000 sins for billions and billions and trillions and trillions and trillions of years where God's anger is never fully appeased on that young man's sin, or Hitler for that matter.

God can never be appeased by fully exercising exhausted judgement on that person.

No, I'm not saying that's the right view, but that's something to think about.

It's something that's bothered me for the longest time because when you talk about it from that perspective, when I look at the Old Testament, God judging a city fire from heaven, Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, or he judges Tyre and Sodom, or he judges these other places.

God is angry with these wicked peak people and by exercising fire or force or power or judgment on these people, He is brought to a state of satisfaction once justice is officially served and final not continue.

Was God still angry after He destroyed the wicked and Sodom and Gomorrah and then continued to pour out more angry in the afterlife after He was satisfied on the temporal life by snuffing out their life on earth and exercising His full anger and fury on them?

And that wasn't enough.

He needed to take it in the next dimension and then do it again for eternity, every moment, every hour, every day, every year, forever and ever and ever.

And that was now still not enough.

Now somebody could argue, as some do, that well, these people in that state of hell are still rebellious to our God and committing more sins.

So God is still exercising more judgement on their continual sins in the state of hell.

They're not just paying for the sins outside of hell, they're paying for their hatred of God and their disgust of God in hell.

So these arguments have been made as well.

So again, everybody is bringing good reasoning, thinking and ideas and church concepts in the past.

Looking at it from a patristic writing standpoint or even looking at it from the area of scriptural interpretation and exegesis.

Nobody is coming to this ignorant in their sight of well, my goodness, let's just bring the Bible in.

Well, yeah, of course.

I mean, who isn't?

Everybody is.

Let's stop that.

Stop that now, please.

Let's not say, well, haven't you read a Bible before?

Of course they have.

Or or haven't you read the church fathers?

Of course they have.

So enough of that.

Let's let's kind of consider that as we continue to go through these these avenues, especially these church fathers.

Ignatius of Antioch here is quite fascinating to me because he seems in one sentence to talk about the ceasing to exist and another, the unquenchable fire that is given to the false teacher and the follower.

But look at the tension continues even in Irenaeus Leone's Irenaeus says this and against heresies, Book 2, Chapter 34.

He who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him and give thanks to him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days forever and ever.

But he who shall reject it and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created and has not recognized Him who bestowed the gift upon him, deprives himself of the privilege of continuance forever and ever.

Those who in this brief temporal life have shown themselves ungrateful to Him who bestowed it, shall justly not receive from him the length of days forever and ever.

Now, it seems quite clear on an initial read that Irenaeus is saying that people cease to exist, not just once.

He actually repeats it in the second paragraph as well as in the first that those who actually and somebody could say, well, that means eternal life like they don't get eternal life instead, right.

But there's a comparison and a contrast to the continuation of forever and ever.

Notice it shall receive also length of days forever and ever as opposed to deprives himself of the privilege of continuing forever and ever and then he repeats it again.

So he seems to believe, at least in book 2, that a person who has rejected God's grace will cease to exist and has forfeited eternal opportunity, not just eternal life, but existence in life.

But then you get to the next section, again, Pharisees book 4.

This one seems to contradict the last one, right?

The penalty increases for those who do not believe the Word of God and despise His coming.

It is not merely temple, but eternal.

To whomsoever the Lord shall say, Depart from me a cursed ones into everlasting fire.

They shall be damned forever.

Now again, it seems like we have a tension even within Irenaeus, as we just saw with Ignatius of Antioch.

Which one is it?

Is the sentence forever an eternal fire that never ends, or do they cease to exist?

So the eternal conscious torment crowd can come to this and give all of their exegesis of why they believe paragraph one at the top is speaking to their position and we're misinterpreting it because of paragraph 2.

And then all the conditional immortality people come in and say, well see, we have a clear reading in this first paragraph.

And we have to keep that in mind because he wrote that first in book 2 before book 4.

And so book book 4 must be interpreted in his understanding of what he had already established.

And Book 2 and see what happens, folks, both sides come to the table.

Both sides use the church father, Both sides have their arguments in place and everybody in their mind wins because they've got the Bible on their side, which seems to compete with ideas, and they both have church fathers on their side which seems to compete with ideas.

This one to me is quite obvious.

Our Nobius of Zika is now one that leaves no doubt he died in the early 4th century.

What's little known of him is particularly preserved through ideas of Jerome, but one of the things that he talks about in the seven books against the heathens that he wrote, he speaks of annihilation ISM quite clearly.

I mean, there's no doubt, he says.

For they are cast in and being annihilated pass away vainly into the everlasting destruction.

For theirs is an immediate state as been learned from Christ's teaching.

And they are such that they may on one hand perish if they have not known God, and on the other be delivered from death that they have given heed to his threats and professed favors.

Or that is the idea of grace, if you would, and to make manifest what is unknown, that is man's real death, this which leaves nothing behind.

For that which is seen by the eyes is only a separation of soul from body, not the last end, annihilation.

Now, if there's any doubt in anybody's mind what's going on here, this one's quite simple to me.

He clearly believes in the idea of annihilationalism.

Are we going to conclude that he is completely unorthodox and a heretic in the early Church?

The answer is no.

He's not a heretic in the early Church.

He's considered orthodox.

He stood against heretics and heathens.

He dealt with the issues that came into the Church and defended the the proper Christology that would soon be established.

Not much after his death at the Council of Nicaea.

He's respected by others that have come after him.

So at the end of the day, here's a Church father in the 4th century who is Orthodox, who has come out and he has been the argument as an apologist that the the bidding of God to those who are cast in hell is to be annihilated.

Now, again, those that are on the camp of eternal conscious torment can come into play here and say, but he's wrong, right?

Sure.

Again, we're not, we're not here to necessarily establish you're right, you're wrong.

The question I want to pose today is that the unfairness that is being pushed out on guys like Chris Date, Kirk Cameron or those that oppose them.

The interesting thing is that what I see is that those that hold to conditional immortality are not reaching across the aisle to those who believe in eternal conscious torment and going, you're a heretic.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen.

I'm sure somebody could go to the comments and say I can screenshot you an example.

There's idiots in every camp.

But you know what I've seen a lot of?

I've seen a lot of people who hold to the eternal conscious torment reach across the aisle at guys like Chris State and now Kirk Cameron say he's a heretic.

He is in damnable heresy.

And what I'm saying to you is that if we're going to go down that road, if that is our, if that is going to be our position, then we need to be ready to condemn a lot of men in the 2nd and 3rd and 4th centuries who defended the Christian faith at a fundamental philosophical level, who have gone before us and have concluded similar ideas.

And then we need to have enough humility to say that there seems to be competing ideas even amongst some of those like Irenaeus and Ignatius, who we gave examples of.

We could list others like Cyprian or Augustine and go through each one and say, look right here it seems like they're saying conditional immortality.

We could look at the Epistle of Diognetus.

I could do the same thing with the two ways that are in the Epistle of Barnabas and in the Dickey and show you where the conditional immortality crowd has a better argument from those two letters, the DDK and the epistle Barnabas, to defend conditional immortality with the teaching of the two ways.

Even in the Shepherd of Hermes, going through that same idea has a better leg to stand on for their position in those texts than somebody who holds to eternal conscious torment.

Now again, I'm not saying that those texts are that explicit because I I really wish they were.

They're more implying an idea that each crowd can come to and say that's my camp.

No, no, that's my camp.

I'm saying as somebody who has studied for a long time, who has finished APHD in the early patristics and has spent hours upon hours upon these texts, especially the ones I just listened to you a second ago and have translated and done the textual analysis on them.

I have poured my blood, sweat and tears into writings like Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hernias and Didikay.

And I love irony.

Irony is my Patreon St.

I mean, I love these writings and I hold them dear and I read them daily.

My thing is this, I wish I could tell you that they were that explicit about either side of the debate and there's and they're just not.

And I'm giving you examples where it's like, oh, that's our, that's that's eternal conscious torment right there.

Oh, well, no, that's annihilation Ilism over here or can conditional immortality right there.

We're not going to solve this debate on the basis of your personal exegesis of the Church Fathers.

There.

May maybe, I mean, I guess we could say for Arnobius of Zika that he's quite clear as his position as opposed to maybe Irenaeus or Ignatius or maybe even how the Epistle of Barnabas lays it out.

But at the end of the day, it's quite clear on some people's radar.

But I'm going to give you a third position too that you need to take into consideration.

Now again, some of the council's have dealt on the subject of hell.

For example, the Council of Florence has dealt with the subject of hell.

It would appear on the surface that they affirm some sort of eternal conscious torment, but at the end of the day, we're not exactly sure because once again, conditional immortality can come into play and go, you know what?

That's actually our position to.

You can't just say, oh, well, you don't believe that.

I think we got to be careful here on a big level.

So the second council of Constantinople seems to condemn an idea of annihilationalism.

Leones, Florence.

I mean, there's a couple of councils that have addressed the subject of hell, but again, a conditional immortality crowd guy can come in or a girl and say, look, pay attention to what I'm saying here, right?

That line we don't deny.

I was talking to even Michael Lofton about this recently, and I said, just out of curiosity, you know, from a Roman Catholic perspective, can somebody be in the Roman Catholic Church and a firm annihilationalism?

He said, well, technically, yes.

It hasn't been definitively defined in the terms of this or that.

It's implied eternal conscious torment, but it's not explicit enough and dogmatic enough to say this is heresy.

And so that creates an interesting perspective that comes into play, too.

There's a lot to put on the table for all of us to look at.

So I want to, I want to pose a third idea.

So you, you, you see in the early Church annihilationalism within Orthodoxy, you see eternal conscious torment, of course, within Orthodoxy as well, None of them are really hostile positions toward the other.

It seems like a lot of people in the church, we're trying to work some of this out in their own minds.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

But let's take Origin and Gregory of, of Nyssa, for example.

These individuals had a weird view of hell and, and let's just let's just go ahead and establish this too, before we get into Origin and Gregory.

When we talk about hell, like some of these people talk about eternal conscious torment.

Even if you find a church father who affirms your position and they make statements that are similar to what you believe, you need to read deeply about what they believe hell actually is in nature, not just in theology.

Because what has become the idea of many of these writers, when they looked at hell, they did not see the worst part about hell is like some eternal BBQ where you're frying from head to toe over and over and over again, and the fire continues to burn through your fingers, your toes and your eyes and your ears and your hair and your neck and your back and your legs and you just don't die.

That's not really the way they explain it, even if you can see the eternality of their their wording.

One of the main places in which they look at hell as the concept of being separation.

The separation idea is that he is or she is completely absent from God's grace, and that they are left to fear and in their own trauma, and that they are in a place of despair and lack and want and never being able to be fulfilled, never able to achieve, never to find success.

When they're looking at hell, a lot of the idea of hell is that they are in a place eternally that is fully consequential to their desires on earth, where God gives them over to those things that leave them eternally empty, eternally separated, eternally dying.

And so when we look at the Church Fathers and we do see the immortality that is given even to the damned, and that they are in pain and that they are lacking, they're speaking more symbolically of the fact that they are desperate for something of fulfilment and cannot find it.

They lack all things, so we need to remember that too when you're looking at the Church Fathers and you get into those.

Oh, say, look.

Eternal conscious torment.

Their idea of eternal conscious torment is not what you're going to hear in your local Baptist Church in the US.

It's just it's not what you're going to find it a Billy Sunday crusade back in the day.

It's not what you're going to find in your local fundamental independent Bible believing King James only hell, fire, brimstone, preaching, sermon, revival, meeting.

So don't use the Fathers in a way that is just merely there to put another line on your support list when you actually haven't read their reasoning behind the nature of hell.

Not just that they have the theology of eternal hell.

So let's let's be careful here before we go any further.

And again, by the way, there's people in the comments who are leaving some things here.

So let me just say this.

Where's Rob Bell?

Places like that.

So the denial of hell is the heresy.

There is no dispute.

It doesn't matter if you're looking at an Eastern father or Western father, there is no dispute as to whether or not there is the doctrine of hell to to deny that anybody experiences eternal judgment in hell, whether that looks like eternal conscious torment or annihilationalism.

Anything that teaches neither of those camps really exist and that no one actually goes there, that is the heresy that is being squashed in many of these councils and these Church Fathers statements.

So somebody like Robel is most certainly a heretic.

He's a schismatic anyway.

He's outside of the true church.

But when you're looking at him from the perspective of his theology, not only is he outside of the church in his existence, he's outside of the church in his theology.

And by every stretch of the imagination, he is by definition a heretic.

So when you're talking about people like that, we need to keep in mind we're not dealing with the raw Bellevue of Hell.

We're dealing with people have different views of the nature of hell itself.

So let's talk about Origin.

He was brought up in the comments.

Let's talk about him as well as Gregory of Nisa.

Let's take a quote.

I've got 1 here from Origin that states this.

At the end of at the end or consummation would seem to be an indication of the perfection and completion of things.

We think indeed, that the goodness of God through his Christ may recall all creatures to one end, even his enemies being conquered and subdued.

What then is this putting under, by which all things must be made subject to Christ?

I am of the opinion that it is the very subjections by which we wish to be subject to him, by which the apostles were also subject, and all the Saints who have been followers of Christ For this, For the name subjection by which we are subject to Christ, indicates the salvation which proceeds from him belongs to his subjects.

Now that's in his principal teachings that he deals in.

What he seems to be saying in his ideas is that God bringing all of his enemies into subjection at the end consummation of all things, is going to bring them ultimately to salvation, either by willingness and obedience to grace or by being made subject into humility, brokenness, and purging.

So in a weird, sick way, Origen doesn't deny the existence of hell.

He denies that hell is a place where people eternally go conscious and stay in pain and and forever and ever remain there, or that somebody's going to be destroyed there.

Rather, it's more of a purgatory.

It's more of somebody's going to come in here and somebody's going to experience some sort of pain, suffering, loss until they learn to bow the knee to King Jesus, till they learn to give up their rights, their wills and their sin.

And that eventually Christ will conquer every single enemy until they are converted.

And then so kind of like in a citrusive way, All Souls that go to hell, some maybe they're longer than others, some may pay a sentence longer than others, But eventually they are purged of that sin and brought into full salvation and Christ conquers them even through the flames of hell.

Now, I will say that at the end of the day, yes, Origen was considered a heretic.

He was removed by his Bishop, and that's why I ended up going to Caesarea.

Now, what's interesting is some of these ideas were not those that were not.

All of these were those that were actually given to him for his heretical removals.

And by the way, a lot of the teachings of Origen were condemned after his death, not while he was still alive, some of which was recent, not recent in our time, but recent in the time of the, the, the writings of these fathers in the ecumenical councils.

Pat and I going through the seven ecumenical councils.

If you missed that episode, please make sure you go back.

We just talked about the second ecumenical, the Second Council of Constantinople, one of the ecumenical councils.

That second one pretty much condemned teachings of Origin, but Origin had been dead for a while before those things were actually condemned.

He was already dead.

So he was already in an eternal state somewhere before they actually brought full condemnation on some of his ideas.

But at the end of the day, I think Origin is dead wrong.

I think Origin is confused.

But Origin had a view that was kind of almost universalism.

So people might wave the hand at him and say, well, I mean, that's Origin, You know, he was seen as heretical.

All right, let's take somebody who was not.

How about another guy?

How about Gregory of Nyssa?

Let's talk about him for just a second and we'll close this out.

By the way, thank you for joining this live stream.

It's good to see some of you in the comments leaving some feedback.

Appreciate your feedback.

Let's make sure once again that we are respectful to each other's positions.

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All right, so let's talk about Gregory for a minute.

I think he's an interesting character because somebody can come in and say, well, Origins, yeah, he's condemned anyway.

Well, how about Gregory?

Gregory takes it a step further.

Not only does he believe the condemned humans may be purged and brought into an eternal state of salvation by subjection, although Origin implied even enemies of God that are in the spiritual dimension, Gregory's quite clear in his writings.

So in the Great Catechism chapter 26, this is what Gregory says.

A certain deception was indeed practiced upon the evil 1 by concealing the divine nature within the human.

It's about Christ.

But for the latter, as himself a deceiver, being the devil, it was only a just recompense that he should be deceived himself.

Seeing the deceiver, of course, the great adversary must himself at last find that which has been done is just and solitary.

When he has, or when he shall also experience the benefit of the incarnation, he, as well as humanity will be purged.

It it appears that Gregory thought that the devil would be punished.

He would eventually be purged of his lying, his deception, his tactics, and saved as a result of Christ's work in the incarnation.

Now I know a lot of you in the comments may be going well.

That's the most heretical thing I think I've ever heard, that even the devil himself would come out and receive salvation.

Who would believe that the devil would would serve a sentence in hell and be purged and restored?

Well, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa certainly held a view that something like that would take place.

So at the end of the day, there are different perspectives in the Church within Orthodoxy.

Either way, you could find one or the other that matter, conditional immortality, conscious torment, or some weird ones like Gregory and and looking at origin, by the way, they're very small fringe views in the early Church with origin and Gregory, that is not a common view that is very minor.

So at the end of the day, I wouldn't spend too much time reaching into that position.

I do not think there is a universalism where hell still exists and people are just going there to be purged.

And it's a confusion of doctrine between that of purgatory and that, particularly of eternal damnation.

But one of the biggest reasons I did this episode to deal with this issue is a lot of people responding.

And, and I know a lot of you've talked about Ray Comfort putting out a video and things like that.

Listen, I have no respect for Ray Comfort.

I mean, I, I, no offense to him, I, I'm sure he's a fine fellow.

You got to understand, like from my perspective, none of these guys are, are working and operating within the framework of the true church.

They're all outside of the church.

And so they're working on the basis of the fact that they have their revival meetings, they all have their ideas in the back that go through these campaigns that they did, that come out of the Billy Graham crusades even before that Billy Sunday, that kind of St.

preaching that led to major revivals, all of which aren't bad things.

I'm not even, I'm not even condemning those things and saying those are bad things and true.

I mean, I, I personally have been benefited in my life from family members who came to Christianity as a result of that kind of thing.

I'm not downplaying it too much.

I, I, I do acknowledge that everybody is sharing an opinion, including me, when I'm asking.

And I haven't even given mine.

I'm not even giving a, a, an opinion because I am stuck in the tension between the two opinions of annihilationalism and eternal conscious torment, because I see everybody's arguments.

I can see and make an argument for either side's position in the Bible and in church history.

And So what I'm doing is asking everybody to chill out, take a step back and stop saying, well, didn't you read your Bible?

The Bible already answered this.

Well, I mean, irony is on our side.

Ignatius is an art.

Everybody's got a church father on their side.

And as I showed you on the screen with the slides, it's not that simple.

It's not that easy.

I wish it was because even when you read them, it seems like one minute you're saying one thing and another one man on the other hand, saying something different, and then a minute he's switching his mind and it's like, wait, did he just contradict himself?

Everybody coming to the table has made their case from the Bible and from history, and all were welcomed Once Upon a time in the church within the realm of Orthodoxy.

So for the love of God, can we please stop reaching across the aisle and calling each other heretics on this issue?

It's not an issue of heresy.

It's an issue of exegesis, not only of the Bible, but of your early church sources.

And you can make a case on either side of the debate for your position and claim your Bible and history on your side.

We see that tension in the early church.

And if they didn't resolve it then, we're not going to resolve it now.

The day it'll be resolved is when eternity comes and God brings His judgement.

We'll know soon enough.

I don't know all the answers to hell.

I've never been there.

You've never been there to act like we're perfecting this doctrine that we have all of the answers.

The Bible does say explicit things about it, but not as much as some of the preachers behind pulpits are saying.

Some of the most horrendous sermons I've ever heard in my life, growing up in a Baptist Church.

We're on hell, people.

I mean, we used to joke about it.

You know, I became a Christian because they literally scared the hell out of me.

I, I know of youth groups that went to hell houses or these fire bomb, you know, these, these bonfires and stuff and brought people around, made students get close to the fire, feel the heat and say, now imagine, imagine spending all the eternity you're outside of the fire.

Imagine being in that fire and that fire doesn't consume you.

And you feel that over and over and over and over.

All right, who wants to go to heaven?

Who doesn't want to go to hell tonight?

Every head down, every eye closed, nobody looking around, nobody looking around.

How many you say tonight?

You know what?

I realize I'm a Sinner.

If I die, I'm going to experience the Hells like this bonfire over here where I'll eternally BBQ myself.

How many of you would say that?

I don't want that preacher.

I just want to know Jesus.

I want to be in heaven.

I want to walk streets of gold.

And then of course, I mean, you got hand over here and a hand over here, and they've made the sinner's prayer for the 12th time.

They've been baptized 2 and three times that that idea is to me, more damaging and destructive than any other position you could possibly have.

People need to come to Jesus, yes, because they know there's a judgement.

But the motivating factor that brings people to Christ and the early church will back this is that they are calling people to repentance so that they could understand what it means to be fully alive in Jesus, to be fully embraced in his love and his grace so that he can sustain their soul.

To continue in a state of relationship with God as it was in the garden, restore that which is lost in the fall, and bring the eternal fulfillment of life in us through the person of Christ.

Yeah, we're not going.

Great result.

You're not going to hell.

That is a byproduct of salvation.

Now, I don't know what Hell's going to be like.

I don't know if people are going to burn forever and ever or if God is eventually going to consume them in His wrath because he is a consuming fire as Hebrew says.

I know this.

I have embraced the Christ, the grace of Christ, and I want to continue in the grace of Christ.

I don't want to ever find out.

So my encouragement that would be for anybody to share the gospel of Christ that teaches us that we can be in a relationship with him and escape the fires of hell, whatever that looks like, and still preach the same gospel message whether you're conditional immortality, eternal conscious torment.

And the result can still be people coming to Christ and believing in him and embracing his grace and be forgiven of sins and continue in the love of goodness and grace of Christ all the days of their life and into eternity.

And both positions can still make that call to somebody who escapes the flames of hell, whatever that looks like in its fullest nature.

So let's stop the you're a heretic, you're a heretic, you're a heretic line when both positions are within orthodoxy in the early church without any major tension.

That's that's that's all I wanted to do today.

Is that resolve the issue because I can't resolve it.

I've never been to hell.

I see everybody's arguments.

I feel the tension.

I feel.

Some days I lean this way, some days I lean this way.

And then some days I throw my hands up and say thank you for the grace of God.

Thank you for your salvation.

Thank you that your your wrath is not aimed at me.

Thank you for grace.

Thank you for the love of Christ.

Thank you for Calvary.

Thank you for the sacraments, thank you for confession and absolution.

Thank you for the gift of the Eucharist, that we can partake of the body and blood of Christ and experience true life now and experience it eternally by taking both body, soul and divinity of Christ.

See, it should put us in a posture of gratitude and humility, not arrogance and debate winning.

The fact that hell has LED us on social media to become arrogant and pious rather than humble and broken and thankful means we really don't understand the doctrine of hell, do we?

Because anybody who's come to believe in the doctrine of hell, regardless of your position, should bring a sense of humility and fear, not a sense of arrogance and pride.

And that you have become the judicial judge of Christianity to now decide who is and who isn't a Christian on the basis of their view of hell.

That is both checked out in all of Church history as Orthodox.

It is time to, no pun intended, ceasefire when we cross this aisle toward each other.

It is time that we as Christians start treating these opposing views that went on long before us.

Who didn't look at each other's heretics when they did have differing opinions like the ones I showed you on the screen?

The Gospel is not hinging on eternal conscious torment or annihilationism.

I'm sorry if you disagree with that.

You are wrong historically and biblically.

If you think different, you may say I think they are wrong.

I think that they have concluded this about hell and they are in error.

Fine, let your position be with conviction if you hold it with conviction, but hold it with humility and the willingness to admit that you might just be wrong and that others have also wrestled with this within orthodoxy long before us.

That's all I ask.

That's all I ask.

Well, folks, again, thank you for joining this episode of Facts.

I I hope it was able to at least encourage you to think differently about your approach and on your position.

Think deeply about these things.

Study it out for yourself.

Study the scriptures.

Read different views than those in your own camp.

Agree to Chris Date.

If you believe only in eternal conscious torment.

Read what he has to say.

He has a whole ministry on rethinking hell.

Watch debates.

You might not change your mind at all.

In fact, you might strengthen your position that at least you heard the other side and can understand where they're coming from.

I think this is a healthy practice.

All right folks, that's all we have time for today.

I trust that this was an encouragement in some way to you and that hopefully it'll help you moving forward as you continue in your journey of faith, learning the facts.

Grace and peace to you.

God bless.