In Christian theology, conditionalism or conditional immortality is a concept in which the gift of immortality is attached to belief in Jesus Christ. This doctrine is based in part upon another theological argument, that the human soul is naturally mortal, immortality is therefore granted by God as a gift. This viewpoint stands in contrast to the more popular doctrine of the "natural immortality" of the soul. Conditionalism is usually paired with mortalism and annihilationism, the belief that the unsaved will be ultimately destroyed and cease to exist, rather than suffer unending torment in hell. The view is also connected with the idea of soul sleep, in which the dead sleep unconscious until the Resurrection of the Dead to stand for a Last Judgment before the World to Come.
Protestantism
During the Reformation, Luther, "Tyndale" In 1520 in response to Bull of Pope Leo X Luther rejected the doctrine of natural immortality. The BritishEvangelical AllianceACUTE report states the doctrine is a "significant minority evangelical view" that has "grown within evangelicalism in recent years". In the 20th century, conditional immortality was considered by certain theologians in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Proponents of conditional immortality point to and, where the Tree of Life is mentioned. It is argued that these passages, along with teach that human beings will naturally die without continued access to God's life-giving power. As a general rule, conditionalism goes hand in hand with annihilationism; that is, the belief that the souls of the wicked will be destroyed in Gehenna fire rather than suffering eternal torment. The two ideas are not exactly equivalent, however, because in principle God may annihilate a soul which was previously created immortal. While annihilationism places emphasis on the active destruction of a person, conditionalism places emphasis on a person's dependence upon God for life; the extinction of the person is thus a passive consequence of separation from God, much like natural death is a consequence of prolonged separation from food, water, and air. In secular historical analysis, the doctrine of conditional immortality reconciles the ancient Hebrew view that humans are mortal with the Christian view that the saved will live forever. Belief in forms of conditionalism became a current in Protestantism beginning with the Reformation, but it was only adopted as a formal doctrinal tenet by denominations such as early Unitarians, the churches of the English Dissenting Academies, then Seventh-day Adventists, Christadelphians, the Bible Students and Jehovah's Witnesses. Mortalist writers, such as Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, have often argued that the doctrine of natural immortality stems not from Hebrew thought as presented in the Bible, but rather from pagan influence, particularly Greek philosophy and the teachings of Plato, or Christian tradition. Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright noted that teaches "God… alone is immortal," while in it says that immortality only comes to human beings as a gift through the gospel. Immortality is something to be sought after therefore it is not inherent to all humanity. These groups may claim that the doctrine of conditional immortality reconciles two seemingly conflicting traditions in the Bible: the ancient Hebrew concept that the human being is mortal with no meaningful existence after death, and the later Jewish and Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead and personal immortality after Judgment Day.
