![]() I am sorry that you use in reference to God the emotive expression ‘the Eternal Torturer’, because it implies a sadistic infliction of pain, and all Christian people would emphatically reject that. You rightly say that I have never declared publicly whether I think hell, in addition to being real, terrible and eternal, will involve the experience of everlasting suffering. The significance of this argument in the face of tradition is highlighted by Stott’s words of response to Edwards on pages 314-15: ![]() John Stott’s argument against universalism, but in favor of Scriptural support for annihilationism is found in an excerpt from Essentials by clicking here, John Stott discusses Hell I commend this passage to the reader as a courageous and powerful Scriptural case for annihiliation as the fate of the lost over the traditional dogma of eternal torment. ![]() I obtained a used copy of the 1988 British version, and read the controversial section written by John Stott on “Judgement and Hell” in response to Edwards liberal universalist view that all mankind is eventually saved by God. The name change must have been made for marketing purposes because of the larger Evangelical market in the U.S. The American version changed the title to Evangelical Essentials, even though Edwards positions were not Evangelical, and John Stott responded to the liberal view with the Evangelical view. David Edwards, the liberal, had credit as the author “with” John Stott. as Evangelical Essentials – A Liberal Evangelical Dialogue. The Christianity Today obituary calls Stott “an architect of twentieth century evangelicalism shaped the faith of a generation.” Reading the interview in 1996, I was surprised to find that he was agnostic on whether the Bible taught “annihilationism” or “eternal torment.” In February, I started my study reading Stott’s controversial statements in a long out-of-print book he wrote with David Edwards, Essentials – A liberal-evangelical dialogue, published in England in 1988, and a year later in the U.S. ![]() I first discovered in 1996 that there was another view besides “Traditionalism,” the doctrine that the lost suffer eternal conscious torment in hell, when I read an interview with John Stott, the saintly British Evangelical theologian/evangelist /writer, who died this year. I began to study this - beginning with the controversial writing of John Stott. “ Annihilationism is the view that eternal life is the gift of God, and that those who do not receive this gift will not live forever.” Arguing that hell-fire was consuming, I was reminded of the annihilationist interpretation, and wrote about it to my classmates, who I suspect had never heard of that concept. ![]() Is Hell endothermic or exothermic? While some argued hell was endothermic, absorbing heat, as the only Christian in the discussion, I argued from Scripture, and what I recalled from physics, that hell was exothermic, oxidizing all that was thrown into the consuming fire, and giving off heat. This past February 2011, some college classmates of mine from the 60s were having a good time arguing the physics of hell on our class email discussion listserv. ![]()
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