Clark H. Pinnock on the Gravity of Annihilationism

        [W]hatever hell turns out to be like, it is a very grim prospect. Though annihilationism makes hell less of a torture chamber,[1] it does not lessen its extreme seriousness. After all, to be rejected by God, to miss the purpose for which one was created, to pass into oblivion while others enter bliss, to enter into nonbeing—this will mean weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hell is a terrifying possibility, the possibility of using our freedom to lose God and destroy ourselves. Of course we do not know who or how many will be damned, because we do not know who will finally say No to God. What we do know is that sinners may finally reject salvation, that absolute loss is something to be reckoned with. I do not think one needs to know more about hell than that.

 

Clark H. Pinnock, ‘The Conditional View’, in William Crockett (ed.), Four Views on Hell, 1st edn, Counterpoints: Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 1996), p. 165

Copyright © Clark H. Pinnock, 1996. All rights reserved.

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Notes

        1. That is, ‘less of a torture chamber’ than the conventional view of ‘hell’. The traditional understanding of the future and final state of the unrighteous is that they are to experience endless bodily and soulish suffering in Gehenna/the lake of fire, along with the Devil and his angels.
        2. Twenty years after the release of the first edition of Four Views on Hell (1996), an entirely new edition of this volume has been released under the same title with four different contributors contending for four discrete perspectives on the doctrine of eschatological punishment. See Preston Sprinkle (ed.), Four Views on Hell, 2nd edn, Counterpoints: Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2016).  —J. D. Gallé

(Revised second note on Thursday, 28 October 2021.)

Addendum (21 Sept. 2022).  Clark H. Pinnock (1937–2010) died on Sunday, 15 August 2010, aged seventy-three.

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The Remonstrants on the Nature of Faith: Simon Episcopius Expounds upon Salvational Faith

        [K]nowledge alone of the divine will does not suffice for true and saving faith, or understanding of all the concepts [which] are contained in the gospel. For this is possible without assent and trust. Indeed, it really is in the demons, and in many of the ungodly and unbelieving. Nor indeed is it any assent whatever, namely sudden, perfunctory, implicit, brutish or blind, ungrounded in reason and yielded without judgment. For this by itself, taken alone, is not saving, nor can it ever sufficiently move the will to any rational and free obedience. And therefore [assent] is not rarely found in those who live little like Christians, but it must be entirely firm and solid, strengthened by the command of a deliberate will.[1]

        Finally, assent which is faithful and obedient is called faith, not just an absolute confidence of special mercy, almost as if already secured, namely, by which I believe that my sins are already forgiven me (for this is not the essential form which constitutes justifying faith, but only a certain additional consequent[;] indeed it necessarily presupposes saving faith itself, as its prerequisite condition), but by which I firmly establish that it is impossible that I should escape eternal death and to the contrary obtain eternal life by any other means than Jesus Christ, and in any other way than by that prescribed by him. And hence this has always had joined to it our debt of new obedience to Jesus Christ, that is, not some sterile purpose of obeying or feelings without effect, but which continually brings forth of itself true and actual obedience itself.

Simon Episcopius,[2] ‘On faith in Jesus Christ’, in Mark A. Ellis (trans. and ed.), The Arminian Confession of 1621, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2005), pp. 78–9

Copyright © Mark A. Ellis, 2005. All rights reserved.

In order to purchase Ellis’ The Arminian Confession of 1621 (2005),* see the links to the following websites:

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Notes

        1.  In order to enhance readability, I have added a paragraph break (not found in the original). 

        2.  Simon Episcopius (1583–1643), protégé of Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), is attributed as the author of the Arminian/Remonstrant Confession of 1621 (i.e. the ‘Confession or Declaration of the Pastors which in the Belgian Federation are called the Remonstrants, on the principle articles of the Christian Religion’). See Ellis, ‘Introduction’, in Tbe Arminian Confession of 1621, p. ix, par. 2. Ellis’ translation of the confession is from Latin to English. (As an aside, the Dutch names of Episcopius and Arminius are Simon Bisschop and Jakob Hermanszoon [respectively].)  —J. D. Gallé

Revisions:  Emended the title of post on Saturday, 30 October 2021; added a note on Saturday, 28 September 2024.

* Unless otherwise indicated, I do not earn commissions (or favours, for that matter) for the purchase of books recommended or referenced on this website. For further information, see my web page, ‘A Word on The Neo-Remonstrance Blog’.