Swift

Irreversible

Total

Devoid of anything like long-term, continuous torment! (very important!)

…and GIVEN that this is a 'model' of hell, THEREFORE we should structure our understanding of "suffer the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7) and "what is going to happen to the ungodly" (2Peter) along similar lines (or bullet points, hehe).

Voila - Annihilationism.

Responding to some paras by DC (a die-hard critic of anything resembling deviation from Reformed orthodoxy, smile):

Therefore, I'd propose that the model of Sodom and Gomorrah does indeed exemplify 'everlasting' (as in eternal fire) and 'conscious torment' (as in 'suffer the punishment') It is indeed telling that Jude used precisely the language that strongly suggests perpetual suffering, which Alwyn claims is 'lacking'. " 

This is, frankly, remarkable.

To state that S&G exemplifies 'everlasting' and 'conscious torment' is, in my view, to completely miss the point of 'modelling' - the historical event of the destruction exemplified NO SUCH THING! Quite the opposite, in fact(!), as a relook at the ACTUAL judgment of S&G will show easily!

DC then writes:

Eye-brows should already be raised here: DC seems to be implying that we understand S&G by looking at 'eternal' - he seems to be REVERSING the method I described above. This is confirmed below:

Notice what our brother has done:

And yet, as I've argued above, the historical fire of S&G was CLEARLY 'qualitative' - no further investigation in other texts needs to be done here. This de facto suggests - given that the understanding must go from S&G to hell - that the destruction of hell is powerfully swift and hardly 'long-term'.

Therefore, DC's method of examining elsewhere in Scripture the meaning of 'eternal' can only be said to be irrelevant, that is, if we are looking to S&G to clues about hell! (Important: his quoted passages MAY help us understand more about 'eternal', but I submit they are 'out-of-topic'[!!] in dealing with S&G as a 'model' of hell)

In conclusion:

DC's argument fails to explain how S&G is an EXAMPLE of post-mortem judgment. He taken the wrong direction of a one-way street.

The 'eternal flames of hell' is a connotation of the quality of hell's fires. This is best conclusion if we are to look to S&G as a model.

This connotation can be transported to OTHER passages containing 'eternal fire', 'eternal flame', etc. This is at least possible given that S&G is so dominant an example.

 The case for the traditional view must lie elsewhere, not in S&G.

"While at a restaurant in Genting Highland, I saw a model of KLCC Twin Towers made out of 100% spaghetti! It was brownish in color, but you could still tell it's KLCC by the shape, design and unique
contours. For someone who's never seen the 'real thing', the spaghetti model provides helpful ideas on what it looked like... but... he should not conclude from it, that the real KLCC is only 5 feet tall! Now, let's imagine that the architect of KLCC walked by and add a disclaimer that the spaghetti model is not drawn to
scale... and clearly specify the actual size of that building... then it is unwise to disregard his information and reinterpret his statement in light of the spaghetti model.

"I felt that Alwyn's methodology has suffered from a similar problem... His whole argument operates on this faulty assumption that Peter and Jude limits the 'real thing' by its model. For example, "...if Peter and Jude understood 'eternal fire' by looking towards S&G, and if S&G's fire is a largely QUALITATIVE one, then we must understand 'eternal fire' likewise"

"We can't limit the real thing by the model, which is by definition a lesser version of it. Just because there is a couple of thousand casualties in Sodom & Gomorrah, would Alwyn thereby conclude that a similar number of sinners would be wiped out in hell? If not, then he has clearly abandoned his own methodology...
and for good reason as well! That seems to me a crucial methodological flaw in Alwyn's argument from S&G, which if carried to its strict conclusion, 'hell' is localised to the geographical vicinity of the Middle East!"

I need to thank DC for his interesting analogies (smile). Naturally, as DC says, there are right ways and wrong ways of using a model. DC wrote a lot about the wrong way of using models and attributes these (frankly, silly) mistakes to my view. What he hasn't done is:

• explain why my views are like the mistakes he mentions (e.g. if I think that S&G exemplifies a swift judgment in hell, WHY is that like thinking that the KLCC towers are only a few feet tall?)
• explain how he correctly uses the model of S&G

To save time I will only restate my notion that if something, A, purports to be an example/model of something else more ambiguous, B, then the structure of understanding must flow from A to B, not vice-versa. That the distinction between the model and the 'real thing' remains (i.e. the two are not identical) is, I thought, a matter of common sense.

If the issue at hand is how many towers KLCC has, then obviously we need to look at the number of towers in the model to refine/develop our picture of the real thing. If the issue is the number of floors, then let's count the number of cream lines on the spaghetti towers. If the spaghetti structure has the sky-bridge as being somewhere in the middle of the two towers, we shouldn't conclude that there is no sky-bridge, that there are multiple bridges, or a bridge balanced between the pinnacles. And so on.

Likewise, unless we wish to argue that we can learn NOTHING of the duration/intensity torment of hell from any given model - something which heavily impacts the meaning of 'eternal punishment' - then GIVEN that a model exists in Jude /2Peter, we need to see what the model depicts, and NOT decide on the issue prior to looking at it.

On the other hand, I cannot see how DC has even used the model at all! What does the model tell you about hell which you haven't already concluded from elsewhere, DC?

A few things I think our brother needs to do to make his case stronger (mainly a recap over the above):

Two things:

1. I have NOT stated that Jude/Peter understood hell exhaustively from S&G nor have I suggested that they've LIMITED hell by S&G - this is, in fact, irrelevant (and thus so is the charge of unwarranted assumptions, etc). The issue is: what DO they understand from S&G? To repeat: if we have already decided what 'eternal flames' are PRIOR TO looking at the model, then why even bother with a model at all?

2. To insist that - in this passage - 'eternal' refers to everlasting duration is to deny that the model can teach us anything about 'eternal'. The annihilationist, for obvious reasons, will repudiate this approach. Remember, the issue at hand is finding out what 'eternal punishment' means based on the example of S&G. DC rejects this method altogether; he DIVORCES the model from the reality entirely. Can this be right? Annihilationists will say No. They'll insist that if a model has been given, let's learn from it and at least take it into account when deciding on the 'everlasting-ness' (or lack of, whatever this means) of eternal punishment.

Read the conclusion carefully: Based on the fact that S&G is an example of what will happen(!!) to the inhabitants of hell, annihilationists will find it strained to conclude that 'eternal punishment' involves everlasting consciousness. That 'eternal' may mean everlasting-ness in another context is not the concern here; here we're dealing with understanding 'eternal punishment' based on S&G (how many times need I repeat this?).

This is something DC, after two longish mails, have yet to show us - how, again, does S&G serve as an example of hell?

Lastly:

What he 'clearly' said was that S&G was an example of 'eternal punishment'. What we 'clearly' need to do, therefore, is look at elements of S&G to firm up our understanding of eternal punishment and NOT assume we know so much prior to looking at the model.

To rephrase DC: Jude's model is deliberately disallowed to tell us anything about 'eternal punishment' because it doesn't fit our preferences of what reality should be like!

I have already responded to the argument. In the context of the model, importing word-meanings from OUTSIDE the model is illegitimate, especially if the model claims to point to the reality behind the word. The annhilationist charge is that DC has created a schism between the model and the word (analogous, I might add, to looking a miniature model of KLCC - spaghetti or otherwise - and concluding that there are really three towers and they are spherical in shape!).

Suffice for now, annihilationists would insist that their theological argument (based on S&G) obtains regardless of the word-study. At best it is not compelling to say that since other texts denote 'eternal' as everlasting-ness that THEREFORE we have nothing new to learn about 'eternal punishment' from the proposed example. At worst, this is out-of-topic.

The model/example, in fact, should serve as PRIMARY data for our views.

Alwyn