Conditional immortality

Conditional immortality, or conditionalism, is the Christian doctrine that the human soul is naturally mortal, and that immortality is granted by God as a gift. Immortality, therefore, is conditional; this viewpoint stands in contrast to the more popular doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. The British Evangelical Alliance ACUTE report states the doctrine is a "significant minority evangelical view" that has "grown within evangelicalism in recent years". [1] During the last six decades, conditional immortality has been widely accepted among the theologians of the Eastern Orthodox Church.[2]
Proponents of conditional immortality ("conditionalists") point to Genesis 2 and Revelation 22, where the Tree of Life is mentioned. It is argued that these passages, along with Genesis 3:22-24 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 (often translated "hell", especially by non-conditionalists and non-universalists) 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.
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.