Albert Mohler Calls Kirk Cameron’s Annihilationist View on Hell a ‘Fatal Error’

Revising the doctrine of hell equates to “tampering with the gospel,” warned Dr. Albert Mohler, and trying to make the gospel conform to human expectations is “a fatal error.”

Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, responded to controversy sparked by a recent discussion on “The Kirk Cameron Show.” Evangelist Kirk Cameron and his young-adult son James shared their opinions about hell on a Dec. 3 podcast episode. The pair said they lean toward the teachings of annihilationism or conditionalism, which hold that unbelievers and the wicked will cease to exist rather than suffer eternal torment.

That view, said Kirk Cameron, “fits the character of God in my understanding more than the conscious eternal torment position, because it brings in the mercy of God together with the justice of God. It doesn’t leave judgment out. It is to die and it is to perish, not live forever in an eternal barbecue.” Son James concurred, saying he believes more in “eternal destruction rather than eternal torment.”

Since that episode aired, numerous Christian leaders have responded to the Camerons. Some said their views are “dangerously wrong,” while others called the opinions unorthodox but not heretical.

RELATED: Kirk Cameron Takes Heat for His Annihilationist View on Hell

Albert Mohler: Revisions of Hell Don’t Mesh With Scripture

Dr. Albert Mohler said he made a response video about hell because “as Christians, we have the responsibility to get all biblical knowledge right” and to be “fully accountable to the biblical text.” Revisionist teachings on hell are “one of the big, major signal developments in the emergence of liberal theology,” he said.

Conditionalism holds that wicked people don’t receive immortality, Mohler explained, while annihilationism holds that “the subjects of God’s wrath are simply annihilated…as if they had never been.” Neither teaching makes biblical sense, the seminary president argued, because they are “foreign in particular from the New Testament logic.”

In his Dec. 11 YouTube video, Mohler addressed Kirk Cameron’s main arguments. First, Cameron holds that eternal conscious torment “would be unjust…punishment for finite sin by finite sinners,” Mohler explained. But that view is “a misunderstanding of sin,” he said, which “is infinite in its consequences.” Sin is “an infinite insult to the infinite justice, righteousness, and holiness of God,” he added.

Mohler also said Cameron ignores the context and parallelism of Jesus’ teachings on hell, which are more numerous than Jesus’ teachings on heaven. Pointing to Matthew 25:31-45, Mohler said, “Eternal punishment and eternal life are set as dual destinies. Two different destinies. The one for the righteous, and the other for the wicked.”