Wishing for Annihilation
On Not Apologising for God
One of my favourite passages in scripture is the end of John 6. It’s a spine-tingling chapter in which Jesus shows his Moses-like power by feeding the five thousand, and then walking on water.
This latter miracle (although John calls them ‘signs’) calls to mind the second verse of the whole Bible when “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. This lines up with John’s opening chapter that the Word was with God in the beginning.
John 6 continue with dispute in which Jesus says:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
A few verses later, the disciples could be forgiven for responding as John records it:
“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offence at this?”
Jesus explains further but here’s the result:
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
Isn’t it astonishing? Disciples walked away. As followers, we can assume they had seen their master miraculously abundantly feed five thousand people, followed by an eye-popping display of his power over nature. And yet, when Jesus talks in these unpalatable terms, they’re off.
But why do they walk away? We are tempted to think that they just found Jesus’ talk about drinking blood and eating human flesh to be gross. It is hard to hear. But their revulsion wasn’t just visceral. It was rooted in their law and scripture. It’s first mentioned in the much-forgotten covenant to Noah in which animals are given for food:
But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (Genesis 9:1-4)
This is expanded and codified in Leviticus 17, and the Israelites need to hear it, since child sacrifice and blood drinking were the practise of Canaanites, into whose land they were to dwell. Those disciples would also have been aware of 1 Enoch 7, which says that eating human flesh and drinking blood is the behaviour of the evil giants called the Nephilim.
So why did these disciples walk away? Because they knew better than Jesus. In fact, in their eyes they were holier than Jesus, who is also a Sabbath-breaker according to his enemies. Most critiques of Jesus in the gospels are that he isn’t up to scratch. He eats with sinners. He touches lepers. He falls short of our own standards, which we think are God given.
It Doesn’t Get More Unpalatable Than This
I mention this because in our latest episode of Cooper and Cary Have Words, we talk to Dane “Gentle and Lowly” Ortlund about Hell including the doctrine, plainly taught by Jesus in scripture, of eternal conscious torment. Yeah. We went there.
What are the alternatives to this view?
Universalism
Universalism is the view that God is so merciful and loving that everyone goes to heaven. What’s not to like? Well, eternal life for mass-murdering dictators along with the holiest saints. Therefore, to quote Madonna, “Nothing really matters. Love is all we need.” But what if we’re not loving? In our hearts, we know this is universalism is not true.
Annihilationism
‘Annihilationism’ is the view that those who are cast into Hell are not punished forever, but annihilated, which literally means, ‘turned into nothing’. The appeal is that we get justice whilst the unpalatable doctrine of eternal conscious torment is averted. Towards the end of his life, the great John Stott was tempted to espouse this alternative doctrine.
It is undoubtedly hard to delight in the doctrine of eternal conscious torment which is obviously even worse than it sounds. But even if one sticks to this doctrine, it is tempting to teach it with embarrassment, as if to say that God is, in our view, disproportionately angry with those who reject him. We might say that if we were God, we’d go with annihilationism, but this is the way God’s chosen to deal with it.
When we present the doctrine in this way, we are essentially claiming to be more merciful than God, just like those disciples were claiming to be more holy than Jesus. It hardly seems necessary to point out that we shouldn’t do that. God is mercy. He defines mercy by his very being and nature – and his Son and his word are the expression of that.
Besides, we have the antidote to Hell: a saviour who has left heaven to be made man, and suffer an agonising death on the cross for our sin and sake. As Jesus himself says to Nicodemus in John 3, anyone, literally anyone, who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
At the end of John 6, after all the talk of flesh and blood, Jesus asks the twelve if they’re hanging round. One can almost hear the quavering voice of Simon Peter as he says:
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Listen to the episode of Cooper and Cary Have Words with Dane Ortlund, the author of the wildly popular Gentle and Lowly, here:
More John, Jokes and Water into Wine
If you’d like to hear me talk about John’s gospel more, with jokes, I’m doing Water into Wine at St John’s Tunbridge Wells tomorrow night, Sat 25th Feb.
And Emmanuel Church in Wimbledon on Friday 24th March. Book tickets here.
And Holy Trinity, Combe Down, Bath on Thursday 27th April.