Will evil finally be eradicated from God’s creation, or is the best we can hope for is that it will be sequestered? Will it finally be no more, or will it be forever confined in some corner of God’s creation?
The question I am posing actually concerns the extent of Jesus’ victory over evil. If, in the end, evil is merely shut away but still existent, that would seem to be a lesser victory than if it were altogether done away with, would it not? Evil would still have a little bit of the victory inasmuch as, though sequestered, it would still exist in God’s good creation. The cross and the resurrection would be mostly successful — but is that the most we can say?
Annihilationism (also known as Conditionalism) is a possible reading of the Scriptures. It is the view that there are some who will suffer varying degrees of punishment and then perish and cease to exist. It seems that a few of the early Church Fathers may have leaned toward that view. The undivided Church never took any dogmatic position on it one way or another (though individual sects and segments have over the years). The late Edward Fudge, who wrote about it in his book, The Fire That Consumes, addresses some of the history of it and the exegetical issues involved. His is a helpful book, and I did take the Annihilationist view for a season, but finally came to a different position on the matter.
The advantage of the Annihilationist view is that it does envision the full and final eradication of sin and evil from God’s good creation — which is more than my former position did or could. But the problem is that it does so at the cost of part of God’s good creation, which God called good. In particular, it comes at the cost of a portion of humankind, which God created in God’s own image and to be like God, and which God called very good. Can we call it a full victory over sin and evil when even a portion of what God created and called good ends up being destroyed? In that case, sin and evil would seem to win at least some victory over those who get annihilated.
My former view — Lord, forgive me — was of a fire that torments eternally; some in the early Church did hold to this view. Fudge referred to Annihilation as a fire that consumes, utterly and completely; and there were some in the early Church who held to this, though not quite as many. But what I see in Scripture is the fire of God as a fire that refines. This view was prevalent in the early Church for about the first five centuries; more in the East than in the West, though not absent from the West. Again, the undivided Church never took any dogmatic position on any of these views one way or another; all three are within the bounds of historic Christian faith and orthodoxy.
In 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, we see the fire of judgment as a refiner’s fire, a purgative fire, a therapeutic fire that burns away in us what is evil, without destroying what God has created; burning away, as it were, the “wood, hay and stubble,” leaving finally only the “gold, silver and precious jewels” (that is, what is created by God). Even those whose works are burned up will be saved, not in spite of the fire but through the fire. Jesus declared that everyone will be salted with fire (Mark 9:49). Salt, like fire, was and is an agent of cleansing and purification.
Lest anyone misunderstand, none of this does away with or replaces the saving work of Christ on the cross but, quite the opposite, is an expression of it, Christ’s saving work being applied to the sinner to free him evil and sin. Without the cross, none of that could happen.
All of this, I believe, is in accord with Paul’s words, that God will be “all in all” — not just all in only some, or even all in whatever is left. Everything that God in Christ created in heaven and on earth in Colossians 1:16 gets finally reconciled to God in Colossians 1:19, through Christ by the blood of the cross. Likewise, in the divine purpose of God as expressed in Ephesians 1:7-10, all things in heaven and on earth (and not merely whatever is left of them) are finally brought into unity in Christ.
