Clark Pinnock on Eternal Torment & Millard Erickson on Clark Pinnock by Peter Lumpkins

   The late Clark Pinnock was one of the more provocative evangelical theologians.* His firey literary style riled his many (and just) critics about as much as some of his theological heterodoxy>>>

Note how Pinnock framed the doctrine of eternal punishment:

"Let me say at the outset that I consider the concept of hell as endless torment in body and mind an outrageous doctrine, a theological and moral enormity, a bad doctrine of the tradition which needs to be changed. How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral standards, and by the gospel itself… Surely the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is no fiend; torturing people without end is not what our God does"

Pinnock embraced what many other well-known evangelicals embrace pertaining to the future after-life of unbelievers--annihilationism. That is, only one future, eternally conscious community ultimately exists--the redeemed community, the reconciled community, the people of God.  All unbelief--including all sentient beings who disbelieve--is utterly snuffed out... erased... eradicated... annihilated... gone.  In this sense at least, both annihilationism and universalism hold the same specific outcome. And, within evangelicalism** some very well known names embrace some form of annhilationism:  Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, John Wenham, John R. W. Stott, and evidently the legendary New Testament scholar and textual critic, F.F. Bruce.***

In response to Pinnock's charge that an eternal hell's existence makes Deity "more nearly like Satan than like God," Millard J. Erickson rightly observes:

“It is one thing to speak emphatically about one’s sense of injustice and moral outrage over the idea of God’s condemning persons to hell. If, however, one is going to describe sending persons to endless punishment as ‘cruelty and vindictiveness,’ and a God who would do so as ‘more nearly like Satan than God,’ and ‘a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz,’ he had better be very certain he is correct. For if he is wrong, he is guilty of blasphemy. A wiser course of action would be restraint in one’s statements, just in case he might be wrong”****

May our Lord grant us grace as we continually work out own salvation in fear and trembling.

With that, I am...

Peter

*Pinnock long ago abandoned his conservative, Southern Baptist theology when he taught theology at New Orleans Baptist Theology Seminary

**I purposely say within evangelicalism proper because Southern Baptists, unlike evangelicalism, have not publicly embraced any other theological position on the future after-life of unbelievers than eternal torment and suffering, what Spurgeon called the "generally-received doctrine" 

***Michael Popock, BSac 156:623 (July 99) p. 359

****both Pinnock and Erickson's quotes are taken from " A Traditionalist Response To John Stott’s Arguments For Annihilationism", Robert A. Peterson, JETS 37:4 (Dec 1994)

Comments

[craig Daliessio]

Peter,
Doesn't this actually play into the argument that Reformed thinkers hold? That God DOES in fact send the unsaved to a horrible eternal torment? Their argument is that this horrendous end somehow reveals His sovereignty. As a free will espouser, I maintain that all who end up in eternal torment, (and I do believe in eternal punishment not annihilation,) will have arrived there under their own power with a broken hearted and weeping God in their rear-view mirror.

[Dr. James Galyon]

Craig:
As a Reformed thinker, my response is this: First, God does in fact send the unsaved to a horrible eternal torment. Revelation 20 states plainly that the wicked are judged according to their works, and then thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Lord Jesus also spoke of being thrown into fire in such passages as Mark 9, where He also declared Hell is a place where "their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched." In other words, the unrepentant don't merely take a trip of their own volition to Hell, they are cast there. Second, those who end up in eternal torment arrive there because they chose freely to reject God and continue in their sinful ways during their lifetimes. God isn't to be blamed for their unbelief and refusal to repent. Rather, every person is responsible for his/her own actions.

[peter lumpkins]

Craig,

Thanks brother. I am uncomfortable with language which so strenuously pronounces "God's glory" rising up from hell's charred carcases of human beings made in God's image. I realize this is not so Edwardsean but it nevertheless is so. When Jesus spoke His most provocative language concerning hell--"where the worm dieth not and the fire is never quenched," the "Gehenna" or garbage dump of the universe, I cannot make an automatic leap as do the hell-"glorifyers" do. In fact though I also have a hard time thinking of God the Father "weeping," as it were, it is spot on to suggest, as you do Craig, that Christ wept and wept profusely (if not outwardly then most certainly inwardly) as He spoke His penetrating language of hell, hell people choose for themselves again as you rightly insist. An obvious example is Christ weeping over Jerusalem...

Grace, brother. Always a pleasure.
With that, I am...
Peter