Matthew 10:28 — Fear him who can destroy both soul and body

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”

Matthew 10:28

Context: the missionary discourse and the horizon of martyrdom

Matthew 10 is the second great teaching discourse of Matthew's Gospel (the so-called missionary discourse). Jesus sends out the Twelve to announce the Kingdom, and at the same time prepares them for hostility, betrayal, flogging and deadly persecution (vv.16–23). The immediate context of v.28 is the threefold exhortation not to fear (vv.26, 28, 31). V.28 is the theological centre: not because men were harmless, but because their power is in principle limited (they kill only the body), while God's power is comprehensive (he can destroy soul and body in Gehenna).

Literarily, the missionary discourse is framed for the Jerusalem-time mission (vv.5–15), but in vv.17–23 it clearly reaches beyond it into the post-Easter mission of the Church (Sanhedrin, governors, kings, Gentiles; floggings in synagogues). V.28 belongs to this wider persecution-situation. Whoever stakes his life in the mission must know that outward killing does not have the last word; the last word belongs to God, who in judgement can destroy soul and body in Gehenna.

The parallel Luke 12:4–5 sharpens the picture: there it says that God has the power “after killing, to cast into Gehenna.” In Matthew the formulation remains doubled: kill + destroy. Both versions presuppose that the human soul is not per se indestructible, but can be brought to a place of final annihilation. Both versions know exactly one fear that is theologically legitimate: fear of him who can carry out this destruction.

The Greek verb apolésai (from apóllymi) means in Koine “to ruin, to destroy, to lose, to cause to perish.” It is the same verb used in John 3:16 (“that whoever believes in him should not perish”) and that appears in Matthew 18:14 (“that one of these little ones should perish”). The consistent meaning in the NT is perishing and destruction — not endless conscious torment in an everlasting state.

The Gehenna itself, in its OT background, is the Hinnom Valley south of Jerusalem (cf. Jer 7:31–32; 19:1–13; 32:35), a concrete topographical reality where under Ahaz and Manasseh child-sacrifices had been offered, and which the prophet Jeremiah makes into the image of the eschatological judgement of punishment. In intertestamental apocalyptic (1 En 27; 90:26–27) Gehenna becomes the image of the final burning of the godless on the Last Day, not a Hades of shades. Jesus takes up the Jeremianic image and deepens it: Gehenna is a place of destruction, not a place of continuing existence.

The Socinian core thesis

Socinianly, Matthew 10:28 is one of the central exegetical texts against the Platonic-Aristotelian heritage of the traditional anthropology. Plato teaches in the Phaedo that the soul is simple, indivisible and therefore by nature immortal. Augustine, Anselm, Thomas and most of the Reformers take up this doctrine and combine it with the Christian hope of resurrection into a double-nature anthropology: mortal body + immortal soul. At death the soul separates from the body and remains in a conscious intermediate state (heaven, purgatory, hell), until the body is raised on the last day.

This construction collapses at Matthew 10:28. If God can destroy the soul in Gehenna, it is not indestructible. If it is not indestructible, it is not by nature immortal. If it is not by nature immortal, the Platonic premise that underlies the traditional doctrine of the conscious intermediate state and of eternal torment collapses.

The Racovian Catechism (1605) draws the anthropological consequence with full clarity: man was from the beginning created mortal, that is, as a being who — left to his own nature — was bound to die. Immortality was never an element of his essence, but always a gift of God, access to which was tied to the tree of life and to the grace of God. What began in the garden is consummated in the saving work of Christ: immortality is the reward of believers led through Christ to the resurrection, not a property of human nature as such.

From this follows a consequent eschatology: believers receive immortality on the day of resurrection (1 Cor 15:42–54); the godless do not receive it, but are destroyed in Gehenna, that is, annihilated (Matt 10:28; Matt 7:13; John 3:16; John 10:28; Rom 6:23; 2 Thess 1:9; Rev 20:14). The main opinion of both the Reformation and patristic tradition, that the reprobate burn eternally, is, Socinianly, a construction that draws upon the Platonic premise of an in any case indestructible soul. Lay aside this premise, and the necessity of eternal conscious torment disappears; what remains is final destruction.

This reading does not stand in contradiction to the biblical “eternity” of fire, but understands it as eternal in effect (irreversible, without return), not as eternal in execution (endless suffering). In the same way the destruction of Sodom in Jude 7 is “an example of eternal fire,” although Sodom does not burn today; the fire was eternal in its consequence, not in its duration. On this line stand the Polish Brethren, the Brevis disquisitio of Andreas Wissowatius, and the whole later tradition of Christian annihilationists.

Core statement

Exegesis: key terms and word-field

Four terms philologically decide the interpretation of Matthew 10:28:

apokteínein — “to kill”

The verb apokteínein designates the violent ending of bodily life. It is ascribed to men (“those who kill the body”) and in a restricted way also to God (“cannot kill the soul” in the sense of bodily killing). Decisive is the asymmetry: men can only kill the body; their reach ends at the boundary of biological existence. The soul — in the Hebrew background náphesh, the entire principle of life that makes man a living person — is unavailable to them. That is consolation for the disciples: their ultimate worth is withdrawn from human reach.

Important: from “they cannot kill the soul” it does not follow that the soul is per se indestructible. It follows only that human violence cannot reach it. The immediately following statement shows that God indeed has power over it: he can destroy it — and the body too — in Gehenna.

apolésai — “to destroy, to ruin, to annihilate”

The verb apolésai (aorist of apóllymi) is, throughout the NT, a term of loss and destruction. It designates the bursting of a wineskin (Matt 9:17), the going-astray of a sheep (Matt 18:14), the perishing of a people (Matt 8:25). In soteriological contexts it stands explicitly in contrast to eternal life (John 3:16: “not perish, but have eternal life”; John 10:28: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish”).

If now Matt 10:28 says that God can apolésai soul and body in Gehenna, then by the Greek verb itself it is said that it is not a matter of endless conscious torment, but of an end, an annihilation, an irretrievable perishing. The doctrine of penal substitution and the doctrine of eternal infernal torment cannot think through the vocabulary of Matt 10:28; they must read apolésai non-literally (“to ruin but not to destroy”) — a semantic violence that the verse itself does not yield.

psychê — “soul, life, person”

In Hebrew-biblical usage psychê is not the Platonic soul (immaterial, indivisible, immortal), but náphesh: the principle of life that comes from God's breath into the lump of earth (Gen 2:7: “and the man became a living náphesh”). Man has no soul, man is a soul. It is not the immortal element set over against the body, but the person as a whole, in his vitality. Therefore it is also not by nature indestructible; its livingness depends on God's preservation.

That psychê in Matt 10:28 cannot be meant in the Platonic sense is shown by the very fact that Jesus speaks of its possible annihilation. In Hebrew usage this is entirely coherent (cf. Ezek 18:4, 20: “the soul who sins shall die”; náphesh tamut), in Platonic usage it is impossible. Socinianly it follows: Jesus argues on the ground of Hebrew, not of Greek, anthropology.

géenna — “Hinnom Valley, place of destruction”

The Gehenna is a loan-form from the Hebrew ge'-Hinnom — the Valley of Hinnom (or Son of Hinnom) south of Jerusalem (Josh 15:8; 18:16). Under Ahaz and Manasseh, a place of Canaanite Moloch-sacrifices (2 Kgs 23:10; 2 Chron 28:3; 33:6); desecrated by Josiah (2 Kgs 23:10); stamped by Jeremiah as the image of the eschatological judgement of punishment (Jer 7:30–34; 19:1–15; 32:35). Intertestamental apocalyptic (1 En 27:1–3; 90:26–27; 4 Ezra 7:36) makes it the image of the eschatological annihilation of the godless on the Day of Judgement.

Important: Gehenna is not Hades. Hades (Hebrew She'ol) is, in OT/Jewish understanding, the place of the dead between death and resurrection; a shadowy, non-active existence. Gehenna, by contrast, is the place of final judgement after the resurrection — and precisely in Matt 10:28 the destruction of soul and body is localized there. The traditional fusion of Gehenna and Hades into a unified hell-place is a later — and, Socinianly, inappropriate — simplification.

Comparison of interpretations

Reference to Fausto Sozzini and the Racovian Catechism

The Racovian Catechism (1605), the theological summa of Polish-Brethren Socinianism, treats the question of the natural mortality of man at length in the section “The mortality of man” (in the opening part on the matter of the knowledge of salvation). To the question “Why is man subject to death?” the catechism answers with a twofold grounding. The first, decisively Socinian, is natural mortality:

“From a twofold ground. The first is that man from the beginning was created mortal, that is, as one who not only by his nature could die, but also, if he were left to his nature, must inevitably die — though through divine grace he could be continually preserved in life.”

Racovian Catechism, chapter “On the way of salvation,” section “The mortality of man”

This definition is the actual key to the Socinian interpretation of Matthew 10:28. If man was from the beginning created mortal, then Jesus' statement about the destructibility of the soul is no shock and no contradiction to the nature of man, but a confirmation of biblical anthropology. What is by nature mortal can also be finally destroyed — and that is precisely the capacity of God before whom Jesus teaches his disciples to fear.

The catechism proves this teaching with a dense series of arguments, in which the whole Socinian anthropology is condensed. To the question “Whence do you prove this?” it answers:

“Firstly from this, that he was formed from earth; then, that as soon as he was created, he needed nourishment; thirdly, that he was appointed by God himself for the begetting of offspring, which would have no place in an immortal nature. Moreover, if Adam had been created immortal, it would have made no sense to grant him the tree of life, whose fruit had the power to continue life. And finally: who would doubt that his nature was such that he could be pierced, suffocated, burnt by fire, crushed by collapse, and killed in many other ways from himself?”

Fausto Sozzini / Racovian Catechism, section “The mortality of man” (proof of the natural mortality of Adam)

The five-fold series is classically Socinian: earth-boundness, need for nourishment, ordination for procreation, the meaning of the tree of life, and the simple bodily vulnerability of Adam. Each single point implies: man is constitutively mortal. From this it follows immediately that the Platonic thesis of a naturally immortal soul is unbiblical; Scripture knows no soul that does not at the same time hang upon the life-breath of God.

To the traditional objection that man was “created for immortality” (Wis 2:23) and that death came only through sin (Rom 5:12), the catechism answers with philological precision — and in a formulation that classically sums up Socinian hermeneutics:

“It is one thing for man to have been created for immortality, and quite another for him to have been created immortal: the former can indicate only the end for which man was created; the latter, however, indicates his natural constitution. Indeed, if man was created for the purpose that he should at last become immortal, how could he have been created immortal?”

Racovian Catechism, section “The mortality of man,” reply to Wis 2:23

This distinction — created for immortality vs. created immortal — is the hermeneutical key of the entire Socinian anthropology. It at the same time resolves the apparent tension between the biblical destination of man (to eternal life) and his factual constitution (mortal). Man is created toward immortality, but not formed out of immortality. Immortality is end and promise, not initial endowment.

On the question of Rom 5:12 the catechism adds a further fundamental distinction, which directly prepares the understanding of the Gehenna of Matt 10:28:

“The apostle in that place is not treating of mortality, but of death itself, and indeed of eternal death. Immortality, however, differs greatly from death, even from eternal death, since someone can be mortal and yet never have to die, much less be necessary that he remain eternally in death.”

Racovian Catechism, section “The mortality of man,” reply to Rom 5:12

Here the whole logic of Socinian eschatology is condensed. There are two concepts of death: natural death (mortality of nature) and eternal death (the punishment of judgement). Human nature is from the beginning mortal in the first sense; in judgement it is either raised to immortality (Christians) or delivered over to eternal death (the godless). Eternal death is not endless conscious torment, but the state in which someone “remains eternally in death” — that is, is definitively and irretrievably dead. That is precisely the destruction in the Gehenna of Matt 10:28.

Finally the catechism mentions that the resurrection too goes in a twofold direction: believers are led by Christ to immortality, the godless to final destruction:

“...that we also, though we are mortal and shall die, nevertheless in his time shall rise from the dead and shall enter into the fellowship of that same immortality of which he himself has already been made partaker, if we have followed in his footsteps.”

Racovian Catechism, section “The corruption of the true Son of God” (on the meaning of the resurrection of Christ for our immortality)

In his Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount as well, Sozzini treats Gehenna repeatedly. On Matthew 5:29–30 (the tearing out of the eye) he comments on the theological function of the Gehenna-discourse with notable precision:

“For it was already, as we can also understand from this passage, commonly accepted among that Jewish people that whoever commits adultery is worthy of the Gehenna of fire... Christ therefore does not prove that the one who has committed adultery will be cast into the Gehenna of fire, but, since this was commonly believed and it is likely that such men deserve the punishment of eternal fire, he could simply affirm it and assume it as conceded.”

Fausto Sozzini, Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, commentary on Matthew 5:29–30

Sozzini thus treats Gehenna not as a matter of speculation, but as a linguistic-juridical self-evidence of the contemporary Jewish audience. Christ uses the image without defining it — the definition must be taken from the Hebrew scriptural background, not from Greek-philosophical doxography. That is exactly what the Racovian Catechism does systematically: it reads Matt 10:28 from the Hebrew náphesh, not from the Platonic Psyche.

Overview of Sozzini's writings

Logical arguments

From Matthew 10:28 the following logical and linguistic-philological arguments result against the doctrine of the naturally immortal soul and against the traditional doctrine of eternal infernal torment:

1. Argument from the vocabulary apolésai. The Greek verb for what God does in Gehenna to soul and body is apolésai — a consistently loss- and destruction-verb (John 3:16; 10:28; 17:12; Matt 18:14). Whoever reads Matt 10:28 as eternal conscious torment must metaphorize the verb against its own NT usage. The plain reading is annihilation.
2. Argument from the asymmetry of capacities. Men can kill only the body; God can destroy both, soul and body. The asymmetry between human and divine power presupposes that the soul is accessible to one power (God's) and not to another (man's). A naturally indestructible soul would be accessible to no power — but that is precisely not what Jesus says.
3. Argument from Ezekiel 18:4, 20. “The soul who sins shall die” (ha-náphesh ha-chotét hi tamut). The prophetic text says directly that the soul (náphesh) can die. If the Hebrew confession contradicts the immortal soul and Jesus speaks against this background, then Matt 10:28 is the natural peak of this Hebrew anthropology.
4. Argument from Genesis 2:7. Man becomes a living náphesh because God breathes the breath into him. The soul is not a pre-given indestructible substance that enters into the body, but the life-principle that arises from God's breath. It is from the beginning gift-dependent, not autonomous.
5. Argument from the natural mortality of Adam (Racovian Catechism). Adam was mortal: formed from earth, needing nourishment, ordained for procreation, pierceable and burnable. An immortal soul in a mortal body would be anthropologically absurd; either the whole man is from the beginning mortal, or the double-nature construction is artificial.
6. Argument from “God alone has immortality” (1 Tim 6:16). Paul writes explicitly that God alone possesses immortality. If God alone is immortal, then not man by nature; human immortality is always received, dependent, gifted immortality.
7. Argument from “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). Paul expressly sets death over against eternal life, not over against eternal torment. If the wages of sin is death — and not a conscious endless existence in torment — then the punishment is destruction, not torment.
8. Argument from the Greek import-history. The naturally immortal soul is a Platonic theorem; it enters Christian doctrine only through Hellenistic theology (especially Origen, Augustine). The NT itself does not know it and does not need it. Matt 10:28 makes that unintentionally clear by treating the soul as destructible.
9. Argument from the Sodom-analogy (Jude 7). Sodom is “an example of eternal fire,” although it does not burn today. The “eternity” of fire in the biblical statements is eternity of consequence (irretrievable destruction), not eternity of duration of burning. This hermeneutic carries also in Matt 10:28: the destruction is final (eternal in its consequence), not endless in execution.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages are essential for the right understanding of Matt 10:28 and weave the Socinian anthropology into a consistent picture:

Genesis 2:7 — Man becomes a living soul

“God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” The náphesh here is not a pre-given, autonomous element, but the result of earth and the breath of God. It is constitutively dependent. With this the Platonic premise of an indestructible soul is already rejected in Genesis.

Ezekiel 18:4, 20 — The soul who sins shall die

“Behold, all souls are mine... the soul who sins shall die.” The prophetic sentence ha-náphesh ha-chotét hi tamut is directly parallel to Matt 10:28: the soul can die, it can be destroyed. The Hebrew confession knows no immortal soul in the Platonic sense.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 — The dead know nothing

“The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward.” The Preacher sums up the Hebrew view of death as the cessation of consciousness — not as the transition of a soul into another sphere. Socinianly important for determining what “death” in Matt 10:28 means.

Psalm 146:4 — On that day his plans perish

“His breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that day his plans perish.” This too is classic Hebrew anthropology: no conscious intermediate state of the soul, but return to the earth, with expectation of resurrection at the end.

1 Timothy 6:16 — God alone has immortality

“Who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light.” Paul reserves immortality grammatically and exegetically for God alone. Human immortality is always derived and gifted, never possessed. Cf. the deepening on 1 Timothy 6:16.

Romans 6:23 — The wages of sin is death

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.” Paul sets death and eternal life over against one another as the two eschatological possibilities — not eternal torment and eternal life. This Pauline dichotomy carries the Socinian reading of Matt 10:28.

John 3:16 — That they should not perish

“...that whoever believes in him should not perish (mê apólêtai), but have eternal life.” The same verb apóllymi as in Matt 10:28; the same opposition of perishing and eternal life. Socinianly a consistent verb-pair logic in the NT.

2 Thessalonians 1:9 — Punishment of eternal destruction

“...they shall suffer punishment, eternal destruction, from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” Paul specifies the punishment of the reprobate as ölethros aiônios — eternal destruction, not eternal torment. Ölethros is destruction-language, not a term of torment.

Revelation 20:14 — The second death

“And Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” The punishment of the reprobate is explicitly identified as second death — not as eternal conscious existence. Cf. Revelation 20:14.

Objections and Socinian replies

Objection 1: “But then hell is no longer a punishment — an atheist and a murderer both end simply in nothingness.”

The premise that annihilation is “no” punishment is anthropologically false. For a being created for immortality, the refusal of immortality, the final perishing, is the heaviest losing of all. The punishment is not small because it is not endless; it is precisely weighty because it is the final and irretrievable failure of the goal of life.

Furthermore, the objection overlooks that the biblical image of Gehenna does contain a component of torment and remorse (“weeping and gnashing of teeth,” Matt 8:12), which can precede the actual annihilation. What the Socinian position contests is not any torment, but the endless torment of an in any case indestructible soul. Torment before the second death is compatible with the reading; endless torment instead of death is not.

Theologically the annihilation reading is in fact more consistent with the justice of God: finite sins do not per se draw endless punishments after them, but a just and definitive answer of the Creator. The Racovian Catechism shows that this logic is already laid out in the OT idea of “remaining eternally in death”: not endless torment, but final expulsion from life.

Objection 2: “But Mark 9:48 speaks of the worm that does not die and of the fire that is not quenched!”

Mark 9:48 is a direct quotation from Isaiah 66:24: “And they shall go out and look on the corpses of the men who have rebelled against me; their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched.” In Isa 66:24 it is explicitly corpses (Hebrew pegarim) that the worm eats and the fire consumes — not endlessly conscious persons. The image stems from the reality of the Hinnom Valley, where worms and fire irretrievably destroyed the corpses of fallen royalty.

“Not quenched” and “does not die” refer to the process of consumption, not to the state of the consumed. As long as there is still something to consume, the fire burns; as long as there is still carrion, the worm lives. What is consumed is the corpse, not the continuing person. Socinianly, Mark 9:48 is therefore not a proof of eternal torment, but an image of irrevocable, complete annihilation.

Cf. the same hermeneutic in Jude 7 (Sodom as an example of eternal fire, although Sodom does not burn today): the adjective “eternal” designates the consequence, not the duration of burning. That is the consistent biblical form of speech.

Objection 3: “If the soul is destructible, how can Jesus then say that men cannot kill it?”

The objection confuses two levels: the statement “men cannot kill it” does not mean “it is absolutely indestructible,” but “human violence does not reach it.” These are factually different claims. A thing can be withdrawn from one power and accessible to another, without being therefore indestructible.

That is precisely what the second part of the verse says expressly: God can — both soul and body — destroy in Gehenna. If the soul were absolutely indestructible, God too could not destroy it. But since Jesus designates precisely this as God's possibility, the soul is not absolutely indestructible, but only inaccessible to human violence.

The exact statement is therefore: human violence ends at the biological-bodily boundary; God's power reaches beyond it and can destroy the person himself (body and soul) in Gehenna. That is consolation for the disciples (your ultimate identity cannot be reached) and warning at once (but God can).

Objection 4: “Luke 16 (Lazarus and the rich man) teaches a conscious intermediate state clearly!”

Luke 16:19–31 is a parable, not a doctrinal teaching-piece about the state of the dead. Jesus works with the contemporary Jewish conception of Hades / Abraham's bosom in order to make the moral point: whoever does not hear Moses and the prophets is not convinced even by a risen one. The actual theological argument is the closing point, not the cosmographical topography.

Moreover the parable plays in Hades, not in Gehenna. Hades, in OT usage, is the place of the dead between death and resurrection; Gehenna is the place of the final judgement after the resurrection (Rev 20:14: “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire” — Hades is here itself annihilated). The parable therefore says nothing about the final hell.

Finally the parabolic character is betrayed by the absurd element that a dying man, from the threshold of Hades, seeks to warn his five brothers — a narrative construction, not a doctrinal picture. The Socinian tradition knows how to handle this passage: it reads it for what it is — an ethical admonition in the figurative language of its time, not an anthropology.

Objection 5: “But Paul says: to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Phil 1:23). So there is a conscious intermediate state.”

Phil 1:23 is compatible with the Socinian resurrection-anthropology as soon as one considers the time-dimension from the perspective of the dead. For the one who has died there is no consciousness of the intervening time (cf. Eccl 9:5; Ps 146:4); in subjective experience the awakening and the being-with-Christ follow immediately upon death. From the inside-view of the dying it is therefore literally “dissolved and with Christ,” without pause.

Moreover the remark is embedded in a letter-context (Phil 1:21–26) in which Paul weighs between continuing to live in the mission and going home. It is not a dogmatic doctrinal treatise but a personal confession. To extract a comprehensive anthropology from a single adverbial phrase (analysai kai sýn Christôi eínai) over-burdens the passage.

Finally the NT knows no disembodied blessedness as final state. The biblical final state is always bodily: resurrection of the body, new heaven and new earth. A pure intermediate-state theory is in danger of marginalizing the bodily resurrection — which Paul himself decisively rejects (1 Cor 15: without the resurrection of the dead all is vain).

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast the interpretation presented here:

• Ezekiel 18:4 — The soul who sins shall die (direct parallel to the destructibility of the náphesh).
• Genesis 2:7 — Man becomes a living soul (Hebrew anthropology as foundation).
• Ecclesiastes 9:5 — The dead know nothing (cessation of consciousness in death).
• Psalm 146:4 — His breath departs, on that day his plans perish.
• 1 Timothy 6:16 — God alone has immortality.
• Romans 6:23 — The wages of sin is death, not eternal torment.
• 2 Thessalonians 1:9 — Eternal destruction (ölethros aiônios), not eternal torment.
• Revelation 20:14 — The second death (lake of fire as final annihilation).
• Matthew 25:46 — Eternal punishment (kolasis aiônios), eternal in consequence, not in duration.
• Matthew 7:13–14 — The wide way leads to destruction (apôleia), not to eternal torment.

Summary

Matthew 10:28 is the sharpest New Testament statement against the Platonic-Augustinian doctrine of the naturally immortal soul. Jesus himself says that God “can destroy (apolésai) both soul and body in Gehenna.” What can be annihilated is not indestructible. With this collapses the Platonic premise on which the traditional doctrine of the conscious intermediate state and of eternal infernal torment rests.

The Racovian Catechism (1605) draws from this and from parallel findings the anthropological consequence: man is from the beginning created mortal. Immortality is not an initial endowment of his nature, but goal, promise and reward — granted to believers through the resurrection of Christ, withheld from the godless. The closing formula of the catechism on the matter is classically Socinian: “someone can be mortal and yet never have to die, much less be necessary that he remain eternally in death.”

Sozzini's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount too reads Gehenna not in the scheme of the Platonic double nature, but as a Hebrew image of final destruction (ge'-Hinnom as topographical and apocalyptic reality). With this the consistent doctrinal line of the Polish Brethren is named: conditional immortality — conditional, gift-dependent immortality; annihilatio — destruction of the reprobate, not endless torment; náphesh — Hebrew anthropology, not Platonic Psyche.

The ethical point of Jesus in Matt 10:28 remains untouched, indeed it gains in sharpness: the disciples are not to fear men, but God, in whose hand life and annihilation truly stand. He who has created the whole man can also deliver him whole over to final destruction. This fear is not a slavish fear of endless torment, but the holy reverence before him who alone is truly Lord over life and death — and who alone has immortality (1 Tim 6:16) and bestows it according to his counsel.