A Response to Paul Griffiths’ Annihilationist Proposal

In his recent influential theological work, Paul Griffiths, the esteemed Buddhism scholar and Anglican convert to Catholicism, proposes, among other things, that annihilationism is a viable option for Christians, including Catholics, despite apparent magisterial prohibition. He argues, in effect, that every creature must be naturally mortal because bodily, including the angels. Therefore, de facto immortal creatures are not immortal by nature, but by a positive act of God in addition to the creative act. Accordingly, it makes no sense to assert the existence of an eternal hell. Rather, since sin is fundamentally corrosive, those who opt to continue down the rabbit's hole of sin literally become nothing. Hell, then, is a no‐place and a no‐time. Hence, as long as the damned continue to exist, they have the opportunity for eventual redemption as for eventual self‐annihilation. Griffiths attempts to defend this thesis in dialogue with Augustine, in particular, to the neglect of Aquinas, except to argue that Aquinas’ own arguments for the natural immortality of the human soul are incoherent. I will argue instead that spiritual being exists, that it is naturally immortal, that Aquinas demonstrates both, and that even an Augustinian such as Joseph Ratzinger recognizes Aquinas’ theological insights and builds on them.