Revelation 14:11 — “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever”: eternal torment or final judgement?

“… he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

Revelation 14:10-11 (ESV / NIV)

Context: the message of the third angel

The sentence does not stand in a doctrinal letter but in the middle of a vision. Revelation 14 shows three angels flying one after another over the whole earth and calling out. The first proclaims “an eternal gospel” and summons to the worship of the Creator; the second cries: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great”; the third speaks the word at issue here, and he speaks it not to all people but to a definite group: to those who “worship the beast and its image” and bear its mark.

That is already a first and often overlooked restriction. The verse is not a general statement about the fate of all the unredeemed, but the announcement of judgement upon one power and its adherents, who play a definite historical role within this vision. Whoever makes it the dogmatic foundation of the general doctrine of hell extends it beyond what it says.

The language of these verses is moreover thoroughly Old Testament. “The wine of God’s wrath” and the “cup” come from Jeremiah 25:15 and Psalm 75:8; “fire and sulphur” have been the fixed expression for the judgement upon Sodom ever since Genesis 19:24; and the formula of the rising smoke comes from Isaiah 34:10. John invents no new images, he assembles existing ones. Whoever wishes to interpret them must go back to where they come from.

And one must take the genre seriously. Revelation is a book of signs — it says so in its very first verse, that God “made it known by sending his angel” (Rev 1:1). In it riders ride upon coloured horses, a star named Wormwood falls into the waters, a Lamb bears seven horns. No one reads these images literally. It would be a strange procedure to abandon figurative speech precisely at the rising smoke and to read there a factual report about the constitution of the world to come.

Finally, the book supplies its own interpretation. Six chapters later the same motif appears once more, and there it is stated outright what the lake of fire means: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (Rev 20:14). Where a book explains its own imagery, the interpreter has nothing to add.

The Socinian core thesis: what rises is the smoke

The Socinian interpretation of this verse begins with an observation so plain that a hasty reading passes over it: it is not the torment that lasts forever and ever, but the smoke. Grammatically this is unambiguous — the subject of the sentence is ho kapnós, the smoke; the torment stands in the genitive and merely determines where it comes from. But smoke is the sign of a fire that has burned. It rises when something has been consumed, not so long as something still suffers.

The second step is the origin of the formula. It is no free invention of the seer but a verbatim prophetic citation. Isaiah 34:9-10 says of Edom: “And its streams shall be turned into pitch, and its soil into sulphur; its land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever.” With that the test case is made: Edom no longer burns. No traveller finds there a smoke that has been rising since the eighth century before Christ. Evidently the phrase never meant an infinite duration but an irrevocable devastation.

The third step leads back into the book of Revelation itself. Exactly the same formula occurs there a second time, and indeed of Babylon: “Her smoke goes up forever and ever” (Rev 19:3). But of this very Babylon an angel had said beforehand that it would be thrown into the sea like a millstone and “will be found no more” (Rev 18:21). Thus it is settled within the same book how the formula is meant: it denotes a judgement whose result cannot be undone — and whose object ceases to be.

Only the fourth step concerns the phrase “they have no rest, day or night.” It describes the torment, so long as it lasts, as uninterrupted — not as unbounded. Revelation uses the same manner of speech for the four living creatures before the throne, who “day and night never cease” to speak (Rev 4:8), and there as here the formula means: incessantly, without pause, without respite. Between “without interruption” and “without end” lies a difference the text does not level out.

What follows from this is no trivialising of judgement but a different determination of it. The Socinian reading does not delete the torment; the text states it, and states it harshly. It denies that the torment is to be conceived as the permanent condition of an indestructible soul — and appeals for this to what the rest of Scripture says about the end of the ungodly: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), “eternal destruction” (2 Thess 1:9), God can “destroy both soul and body” (Matt 10:28). An image from a vision must be measured against these sentences, not the other way round.

Exegesis: key terms and word field

Five observations carry the interpretation. None of them requires the text to be weakened; all of them require only that it be read precisely.

ho kapnós toû basanismoû — “the smoke of their torment”

The sentence has a single subject, and it is the smoke. Had the meaning been that the torment itself lasts forever, the seer could and should have said so; Greek would have offered every means for it. Instead he places the smoke in the foreground and binds the torment to it as a genitive qualifier: smoke that arises from a torment.

In the Bible smoke is throughout an after-sign. Over Sodom “the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace” (Gen 19:28) — when Abraham looked, the city had already been destroyed. The judgement-smoke of the prophets likewise never stands for a burning still in progress but for one that has taken place: the column of smoke over a scorched land is its monument.

The word basanismós itself means torment, torture, originally the testing of gold against a touchstone. It denotes a real pain, and it is not to be defused. The question is not whether the verse means torment — it does — but whether it asserts its endlessness. The subject of the eternity clause is not the torment.

eis aiōnas aiōnōn — “forever and ever”

The phrase is a superlative of Hebrew idiom, literally “unto ages of ages.” In Revelation it stands for God and the Lamb (Rev 4:9-10; 5:13; 10:6), for the reign of the saints (22:5) — and three times for images of judgement (14:11; 19:3; 20:10). Applied to the eternal God it denotes duration without qualification; applied to smoke over a judged land it denotes what the image yields.

Precisely here the Socinian rule applies: the sense of a temporal expression is governed by the matter to which it is applied. The slave who remains “forever” in his master’s house (Exod 21:6) remains so until his death. Jonah was behind bars “forever” (Jonah 2:6) — for three days. The word does not measure seconds; it characterises a state as definitive within its own frame.

Isaiah 34:10 — the origin of the formula

The decisive finding is a citation. “Its smoke shall go up forever” stands in Isaiah concerning Edom, and in the same breath it is said that the land shall “not be quenched night or day.” Both elements of our verse — the eternal smoke and the absence of rest by day and night — stand there together. John does not quote approximately; he quotes exactly.

And in those same verses Isaiah says what the result is: the land becomes a wilderness, thorns grow up in its palaces, ostriches and jackals dwell in it (Isa 34:11-15). A land in which animals make their home is no longer burning. The formula therefore describes a devastation that is not revoked — and not a fire that never goes out.

ouk échousin anápausin hēméras kaì nyktós — “no rest, day or night”

The phrase denotes incessancy, not infinity. This is shown by its use in the same book: the four living creatures “have no rest day or night” and say: Holy, holy, holy (Rev 4:8). What is meant is that their praise knows no pause, not that it is measured by a clock. Likewise the redeemed serve God “day and night in his temple” (Rev 7:15).

It is moreover notable that the phrase speaks of a “day and night” — that is, of the temporal order of this world, which according to the same book is precisely coming to an end: in the new city there is “no night” any more (Rev 22:5). Whoever applies the expression literally to a final state beyond world-time falls into contradiction with the world this book describes.

ho deúteros thánatos — “the second death”

Revelation is one of the few biblical books that expressly resolve their own images. Of the seven stars it says they are the angels of the churches (1:20); of the fine linen, that it is the righteous deeds of the saints (19:8) — and of the lake of fire it says twice that it is “the second death” (20:14; 21:8).

With that the seer himself indicates the matter that stands behind the image. A death that occurs a second time is a death. It is not a continued living under altered conditions. Whoever plays the fire-images off against this express interpretation lets the image rule over the explanation — and it is exactly this that the Racovian Catechism warns against when it requires that in figurative modes of speech “not so much the proper meaning of the words as the matter itself is to be regarded.”

Comparison of interpretations

Sozzini and the Racovian Catechism: obscure passages according to the clear ones

It belongs to the integrity of the Polish Brethren that they did not deal lightly with this verse. They did not deny it, they did not explain it away — they placed it in order. And the first step of this ordering was a statement about the book in which it stands. Sozzini expressly counts Revelation among the writings of the New Testament, but he describes its character with a precision that has consequences for interpretation:

“There is besides a book called the Apocalypse, which contains an admirable vision in which many future things, all of them concerning the church of Christ, are foretold rather obscurely.”

Fausto Sozzini, “On the Authority of Holy Scripture”, ‘Revelation and the Letter to the Hebrews’

Three determinations are contained in this one sentence: it is a matter of a vision, its speech is rather obscure, and its subject is future things concerning the church. None of these determinations devalues the book. But all three together forbid deriving from one of its images a doctrine about the constitution of the human being that appears nowhere in the clear teaching of the apostles.

With that the hermeneutical rule is named which decides the whole dispute. The Racovian Catechism has formulated it in another connection — in the controversy over the kingly office of Christ — in such a way that it is recognisable as a general principle:

“First I answer that so few testimonies, brought forward in improper words and obscure, cannot be set against so many clear testimonies of Scripture, as though those which are both few in number and obscure in sense could explain those which are both so numerous and so clear and plain. Rather, the few and obscure must certainly be understood according to the sense of the more numerous and clearer ones.”

Racovian Catechism, ‘The Kingly Office of Christ’

Let the rule be applied to our case. On the one side stands a handful of judgement images in a book of visions. On the other stands a long series of clear statements: the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23); the disobedient suffer “the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess 1:9); God is able “to destroy both soul and body” (Matt 10:28); sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death (James 1:15); the ungodly will burn “like stubble” (Mal 4:1). According to the rule of the Catechism the few obscure passages are to be read in the light of the many clear ones — not the reverse.

The Catechism supplements this rule with a second, which tells the interpreter what he must attend to in figurative sayings at all:

“And indeed, in these figurative modes of speech not so much the proper meaning of the words as the matter itself is to be regarded, especially when according to the proper meaning of the words something false would be contained, or something that contradicts other passages of Scripture.”

Racovian Catechism, ‘The Kingly Office of Christ’

This is not arbitrariness but the principle every interpreter applies as soon as he meets an image. No one concludes from the word about the Lamb that Christ wore wool. No one infers from the talk of the book of life that ledgers are kept in heaven. But at “smoke” and “fire and sulphur” figurative speech is suddenly abandoned — and precisely at the point where the literal reading supports a doctrine one already believed anyway.

Put positively, the Socinian alternative is remarkably simple: what stands over against eternal life is eternal death. Sozzini stated this in his commentary on the First Letter of John, there in the debate with the doctrine of purgatory, and with a clarity that leaves no third possibility open:

“For since the true and full forgiveness of sins is eternal life, and non-forgiveness is eternal death, who does not see that from the fact that sins are forgiven after this life it must be concluded that eternal life is given after this life, and conversely that from their not being forgiven eternal death follows?”

Fausto Sozzini, “Commentary on the First Letter of John”, ‘Critique of the papal doctrine of purgatory’

The alternative therefore reads: eternal life or eternal death. It does not read: blessed life or tormented life. Precisely this bipartition underlies the Socinian interpretation of Revelation 14:11, and it is what fits the verse into the rest of Scripture instead of setting it against it.

It should be noted here that the Polish Brethren by no means shied away from the language of judgement. Elsewhere the Racovian Catechism speaks quite unembarrassedly of Christ finally visiting the evil angels “with the punishment of eternal fire,” and describes their activity with the same sobriety:

“Over the evil ones, however, he has power, that he may suppress their efforts and designs, which are wholly bent on plunging the entire human race, but above all the faithful, who have the way to immortality appointed for them, into destruction.”

Racovian Catechism, ‘The Ascension of Christ’

Note the inserted qualification: the faithful are those “who have the way to immortality appointed for them.” Here too immortality is a way, not a possession. And if it is a way that only the faithful walk, then it cannot at the same time be the basic endowment that would first make endless suffering possible for the lost. The doctrine of eternal torment presupposes exactly what Socinian anthropology denies.

Overview of the books of Sozzini

Logical arguments

From Revelation 14:11 and its context the following arguments arise:

1. Argument from the subject of the sentence. What rises “forever and ever” is grammatically the smoke, not the torment. The torment stands in the genitive and states only where the smoke comes from. A statement about the duration of the torment is thus precisely not made.
2. Argument from the nature of smoke. Smoke is what a fire leaves behind after it has consumed. Over Sodom it rose when the city was already destroyed (Gen 19:28). As a sign it attests a judgement carried out, not one still in progress.
3. Argument from the citation of Isaiah 34:10. The formula is taken verbatim from the word of judgement upon Edom, together with the addition about not being quenched day or night. Edom demonstrably smokes no more. A formula that found limited fulfilment there cannot prove unlimited duration here.
4. Argument from Revelation 19:3. The same book uses the same formula for Babylon — and says of Babylon that it will be sunk like a millstone and “will be found no more” (18:21). Within one book the same phrase cannot mean annihilation in one place and endless continuance in another.
5. Argument from the book’s self-interpretation. Revelation explains its images itself — the seven stars, the fine linen — and it also explains the lake of fire: “This is the second death” (20:14; 21:8). An interpretation the text itself gives takes precedence over any inference drawn from the image.
6. Argument from “day and night.” In the same book the phrase denotes the incessancy of heavenly praise (4:8), that is, a manner and not a duration. Moreover it presupposes the alternation of day and night, which the same book expressly abolishes for the new world (22:5).
7. Argument from the circle of those addressed. The angel does not speak about all unbelievers of all times, but about the worshippers of the beast and the bearers of its mark. Whoever elevates the verse into a general doctrine of hell extends it beyond the circle it names itself.
8. Argument from the genre. The book calls itself a vision in signs (1:1) and works figuratively throughout. Whoever takes precisely the judgement images literally selects arbitrarily — and does so where the literal reading supports a doctrine already believed.
9. Argument from the rule of the clear passages. The clear doctrinal statements of the apostles name as the end of the ungodly death, destruction, annihilation. According to the principle of the Racovian Catechism the few obscure passages are to be interpreted according to the many clear ones, not the many clear ones according to the few obscure.
10. Argument from the presupposed anthropology. Endless torment presupposes endless existence of the tormented. Tradition does not take this presupposition from Scripture, which ascribes immortality to God “alone” (1 Tim 6:16), but from philosophy. If it falls, the literal interpretation of the image falls with it.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages are essential for understanding Revelation 14:11:

Isaiah 34:9-10 — the smoke over Edom

The source of the formula. Edom’s land becomes burning pitch that shall “not be quenched night or day,” and “its smoke shall go up forever.” Both components of our verse stand here side by side — and both found their fulfilment in a devastation long since completed. A few verses later animals dwell in the ruins; a burning land would be a poor place for that.

Revelation 19:3 — “her smoke goes up forever and ever”

The decisive internal biblical control. The same formula, the same book, a few chapters later — applied to Babylon. But of Babylon it is said that it will be thrown into the sea like a millstone and “will be found no more” (18:21). Here, then, the smoke demonstrably attests an end, not a continuance.

Revelation 20:14 & 21:8 — “this is the second death”

Twice the book resolves its own image and names the matter: the lake of fire is the second death. This is no marginal remark but an express identification, given by the seer at the point where it matters. A second dying is a dying.

Genesis 19:24, 28 — fire and sulphur over Sodom

From there comes the word-pair “fire and sulphur” that Revelation 14:10 takes up. In the morning Abraham saw the smoke rising “like the smoke of a furnace” — and what he saw was the result. Jude 7 calls this judgement “eternal fire” and sets Sodom forth as a warning example; the cities nevertheless burn no longer.

Malachi 4:1 — “they will be stubble”

The prophet describes the day that burns like an oven, and says of the ungodly that it will “set them ablaze” and leave them “neither root nor branch.” The image is the same fire — and its result is expressly that nothing remains. Stubble does not burn forever; it is quickly consumed.

2 Thessalonians 1:9 — “suffer the punishment of eternal destruction”

Paul says in a doctrinal letter what Revelation shows in images, and he says it without imagery: the punishment consists in eternal destruction, “away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” The Greek ólethros denotes ruin, not continued existence in pain. According to the rule of the clear passages this sentence must interpret the images.

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

Jesus grounds the fear of God in the fact that God can destroy both, soul and body, and indeed “in hell.” With that the soul is expressly designated as something God is able to annihilate. An indestructible soul, which alone could bear endless torment, is incompatible with this word.

Romans 6:23 — “the wages of sin is death”

The most concise antithesis of the New Testament: the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life. Paul does not contrast two modes of living but life and death. Whoever reads Revelation 14:11 as endless life in torment inserts a third quantity not provided for in this alternative.

Objections and Socinian answers

Objection 1: “The text says expressly ‘forever and ever’ — endlessness cannot be expressed more strongly.”

The objection is right that it is the same formula. It overlooks that in our verse it is not applied to the torment but to the smoke. The question is therefore not how long the formula lasts, but of what it is predicated. Predicated of God it denotes his being; predicated of smoke over a judged land it denotes that this judgement is not revoked.

That this distinction is not invented is shown by Scripture itself in its usage. “Forever” is the slave in his master’s house (Exod 21:6); “forever” is what Jonah calls the three days behind the bars of the earth (Jonah 2:6); “eternal” is the fire that struck Sodom (Jude 7). In each case the word denotes a duration appropriate to its object, and in each case the matter has in fact been concluded. The term does not measure; it qualifies.

Above all, however, the objection has against it a control passage it cannot circumvent. Six chapters further on, in Revelation 19:3, the formula stands once more — and indeed concerning Babylon, of which the same book says it will “be found no more” (18:21). If the formula compelled endlessness, Revelation would be at odds with itself. If it denotes finality, everything fits together.

Language does not thereby become arbitrary. It is only read as it is used in Scripture — a procedure the Racovian Catechism has raised to an express rule: in figurative modes of speech not so much the proper meaning of the words as the matter itself is to be regarded, especially where the literal meaning would contradict other passages of Scripture.

Objection 2: “If the lost are simply annihilated, that is no punishment.”

The Socinian interpretation does not dissolve the torment. It denies only that the text asserts its endlessness. That a real suffering precedes the judgement, the verse says, and there is no reason to weaken it: the cup is drunk, the fire strikes, rest is absent. The only question is whether this process issues in a state without end or in an end.

Furthermore the objection assumes that annihilation is no evil. That already presupposes what would have to be proved — namely that the human being possesses an inalienable existence, against which ceasing to be would be a mere diminution. According to biblical anthropology life is a gift, and the loss of the gift is the loss of everything. Jesus calls it the worst that can befall anyone: “Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28).

Finally the objection shifts the weight of the proclamation. The New Testament does not primarily threaten with pain, but promises life and sets its loss against it: “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Sozzini frames the same alternative in his commentary on John so that it knows no third outcome: forgiveness is eternal life, non-forgiveness eternal death. Whoever measures the seriousness of judgement by the duration of the pains has already abandoned the standard of the apostles.

Objection 3: “The same formula stands in Revelation 20:10 of the devil — there it is unambiguously endless torment.”

The objection carries weight, and for the Socinian interpretation it is the most difficult passage in the whole book. Three things are to be answered. First, 20:10 does not speak of human beings but of the devil and of two entities the book itself has introduced as images — a beast out of the sea and a false prophet. What is said of these cannot without further ado be transferred to every lost human being, and the Racovian Catechism accordingly speaks without hesitation of the “punishment of eternal fire” with which Christ will finally visit the evil angels.

Secondly, it is striking that four verses later the text supplies its own interpretation: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (20:14). Into the same lake of fire, then, entities are thrown that cannot suffer at all — Death and the realm of the dead. Of them no conscious torment can be predicated; of them it can only be predicated that they cease. Thus within the same passage the image is used in a way the literal reading cannot sustain.

Thirdly, what Sozzini said about the book as a whole holds here all the more: it contains a vision in which “many future things are foretold rather obscurely.” To derive from two figurative passages of a book of visions a doctrine that contradicts the clear statements of the apostles about death and destruction means setting the obscure above the plain. The Socinian answer at this point is not a proof but a reserve — and it openly admits that 20:10 is the strongest point of the opposing side.

Objection 4: “‘They have no rest’ presupposes consciousness — the annihilated have rest.”

The objection reads the phrase as a statement of time; it is, however, a statement of manner. “To have no rest day and night” describes how a process runs, so long as it runs: without pause, without interruption, without respite. The same book uses the formula for the four living creatures who “have no rest day or night” and praise God (4:8) — no one derives from this a statement about the infinity of their song, but about its incessancy.

In addition there is the temporal frame the phrase brings with it. “Day and night” presupposes the alternation of light and dark, that is, the order of this world. Of the city to come the same book says that there will be “no night” there (22:5). Whoever applies the phrase literally to a state beyond world-time must therefore assume a night that according to the text no longer exists there.

Finally one must go back to the origin. The addition “day and night” too is not new but already stands in Isaiah 34:10, where the burning pitch of Edom “shall not be quenched night or day.” John has taken over the model entirely, with both halves. And for both halves the same finding holds: they describe a judgement carried out without respite and without mitigation — and one that nevertheless had an end.

Objection 5: “The Socinians simply reinterpret the inconvenient passages.”

The reproach would be justified if the figurative character had first to be asserted here. But it stands in the text. Revelation calls itself a vision in signs (1:1); it repeatedly interprets its images expressly; and it says twice of the lake of fire what it is — “the second death.” Whoever takes these self-statements seriously does not reinterpret but reads along.

Moreover the rule by which one proceeds here was not invented for this case. The Racovian Catechism formulates it in a controversy over an entirely different question, and it formulates it generally: few obscure testimonies cannot be set against many clear ones; rather “the few and obscure” are to be understood “according to the sense of the more numerous and clearer” ones. All interpreters apply this rule; the Socinians merely apply it also where the result is inconvenient.

Let one also examine who in the present case adds something. The Socinian reading stays with the wording: smoke rises, the formula comes from Isaiah, the book itself calls the matter the second death. The traditional reading, by contrast, must supply two things that are not there: that what is eternal is not the smoke but the torment, and that the judged possess an indestructible nature. Both are addition, not text.

And finally, the Polish Brethren exercised their reserve precisely where it would have been useful to them to be loud. Sozzini could have rejected Revelation as inauthentic, as others of his time did; he does not, but calls it an “admirable vision” while maintaining at the same time that in it things are spoken “rather obscurely.” That is no evasion but the description of a book which any reader who has once read it through can confirm.

Dogmatic consequences

Related verses

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

• Revelation 20:14 — “this is the second death”: the book’s self-interpretation of the lake of fire.
• 2 Thessalonians 1:9 — “eternal destruction”: the non-figurative parallel in a doctrinal letter.
• Matthew 10:28 — God can destroy soul and body: the soul is destructible.
• Romans 6:23 — the wages of sin is death, the gift of God eternal life.
• Malachi 4:1 — the ungodly as stubble, without root or branch.
• 2 Peter 2:6 — Sodom “turned to ashes” and set forth as an example.
• Matthew 25:46 — the “eternal punishment” and its interpretation from its result.
• Matthew 5:29-30 — the Gehenna saying and its origin in the Valley of Hinnom.
• Matthew 7:13-14 — the broad way leads to destruction, the narrow to life.
• 1 Timothy 6:16 — “who alone has immortality”: the missing presupposition of eternal torment.
• Ezekiel 18:4 — “the soul who sins shall die.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:53-54 — immortality as a gift that is put on, not as a natural possession.
• Ecclesiastes 9:5 — “the dead know nothing.”

Summary

Revelation 14:11 counts as the strongest proof for endless torment in hell, and it is worth reading it precisely instead of merely quoting it. Then it becomes apparent: what is eternal in the sentence is not the torment but the smoke; and in the Bible smoke is throughout what a fire leaves behind, not what a fire sustains. Over Sodom it rose when the city had already been destroyed. Over Edom it was to go up “forever” — and today no smoke rises there any more.

The formula itself is a citation from Isaiah 34:10, together with the addition about not being quenched day or night; and the same book uses it a second time of Babylon, of which it says that it will “be found no more.” Within Revelation itself, then, the phrase denotes the finality of a judgement, not its endlessness. And where the book expressly resolves its image, it names the matter outright: the lake of fire is “the second death.”

The Polish Brethren did not make a comfortable doctrine out of this. Sozzini describes the Apocalypse as an “admirable vision” in which future things are foretold “rather obscurely,” and the Racovian Catechism requires that few obscure testimonies be understood according to the sense of the many clear ones, not the reverse. But the many clear ones speak of death, of destruction, of the burning of stubble — and Sozzini knows for the end of the human being only two possibilities: forgiveness is eternal life, non-forgiveness eternal death.

What this interpretation achieves is no mitigation of the judgement but its right placing. Whoever believes that every human being carries an indestructible soul within must think of the fire as an endless place of abode. Whoever holds with Scripture that immortality belongs to God alone and is first conferred upon his own reads the same images as what they are in the prophets: as signs of a judgement that is real, just and not to be taken back — and that sets an end instead of having none.