Three Views of Hell, Part 6 - Conditional Mortality

The doctrine of Conditional Immortality is the final of the three views of Hell left to examine. Like the other two, it has a surprising amount of scripture in it’s favor and should not be brushed off without some serious consideration.

Conditional Immortality, as the name suggests, rests on the idea that human beings are not immortal by nature. This would be opposite to the Eternal Torment view that clearly implies that we are all immortal (if we live forever without the sustaining life of Christ following in us, then we must, by our very nature, possess immortality). Which is right? The Biblical evidence is completely unequivocal.

Only God is immortal:

1 Timothy 1:17
To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

1 Timothy 6:13-16
I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

Human beings do not possess immortality, but receive it as a gift from God, through Christ:

Matthew 19:29
And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

John 5:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

John 6:40
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

John 6:47
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.

Romans 2:6-7
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:53-55
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

1 John 5:11-12
And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

This is a short list of passages that teach us that eternal life is a gift of God, and that immortality is God’s own possession, which He bestows only on those who seek after Him. On the other side of that coin the Bible has a great deal to say about the fate of the lost; and it isn’t necessarily that they will spend eternity in Hell.

Genesis 2:16-17
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Ezekiel 18:4
Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

Matthew 10:28
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 hell.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 10:28
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 5:12
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The implications of the teaching that immortality is God’s alone, to my mind raises a disturbing dilemma for those who hold to the Eternal Torment view. If it is true that man is, by nature, mortal and can only live an immortal life if God sustains him, then that would mean that God would, unnaturally, have to sustain all those in Hell for eternity. Why would God do such a thing, seeing as He frequently tells us that He takes no joy in the destruction of the wicked? Why would He continue doing something that apparently brings Him pain long after He supposedly has set all things right and all creation is exactly as He intends it to be? I don’t have an answer for that question.

God says repeatedly that those who are guilty will die, perish, be devoured, destroyed, or consumed. The problem is, that when many evangelicals see these words in the context of the passages above what they read instead is “Hell.” This is somewhat understandable given two verses at the end of Revelation:

Revelation 20:13-14
And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

Revelation 21:7-8
The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

“There you go,” say many Christians, myself included until recently, “eternity in the Lake of Fire is called the second death.” On these grounds, so the argument goes, it’s justified to refer to an eternity in Hell as perishing, death, being devoured, etc. The problem is, as I wrote in an earlier post, while Revelation certainly says that those who aren’t numbered with the saints will be cast into the Lake of Fire after the Judgment, nowhere are we taught that those lost individuals stay there for eternity. It is quite possible that those lost individuals are sent to Hell for a finite period of time in order to pay for their sins and that upon the completion of such a time and lacking the gift of eternal life they simply pass out of existence.

Simply put, until the Book of Revelation was penned there was not the least reason to assume that when God said, “the soul that sins it shall die,” He meant anything more than that. With the acceptance of Revelation into the canon we gain a little more information, but problems in understanding exactly what to make these two passages still exist, as they fall within very apocalyptic sections of the most hyperbolic, apocalyptic book in the Bible (to learn a little more about the apocalyptic style, click here).

Let’s imagine that you tell your child, “If you disobey me you will die;” and then he does disobey you and does indeed die. Then you meet him on the other side and say, “You know, I told you you would die if you disobeyed me. But what I didn’t tell you was that you’ll never actually die but live forever and ever being tormented every moment from now on.” If God had wanted to communicate that the fate of the lost was eternal torment in Hell, say those in the Conditional Immortality camp, then He had a very strange way of doing it. Those who find this view appealing simply say, “God meant what he said about sinners, and we believe He meant what He said.”

As always, there is a great deal more that could be said in defense of this position, so consider this a jumping off point if anything you read here promts you to look into this position more carefully.

Three Views of Hell, Part 5 - Universal Reconciliation

I realize that many, particularly Calvinists, will take considerably greater exception to the view of Universal Reconciliation than either of the other two views. Given the nearly total acceptance of Eternal Torment and that most who advocate similar doctrines are clearly outside of Christian orthodoxy, it’s not hard to understand why. It wasn’t always like this, though. If you would travel back through the first six centuries of Christianity you would find things turned almost completely on their heads in favor of Universal Reconciliation.

According to the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Vol. XII, Pg. 96) there “were six known theological schools, of which four (Alexandria…, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa…) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality; one (…Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked.” In the first few centuries following the ascension of Christ, the majority of Christianity, or at least Christian scholarship, taught Universal Reconciliation – leaving the view of Eternal Torment in the small minority!

If you wonder how the widespread acceptance of these two views could have changed so dramatically between then and now, note that the school at Rome was the major institution teaching Eternal Torment in the year 500 A.D. With the rise of the Catholic Church, many views which were widely accepted in the early church were replaced by those of the “Universal Church.” I don’t point out this fact as a smear against Catholicism, it may be that Eternal Torment is the most correct of the three extant views of Hell. However, this information may give some Evangelicals pause in their rejection of Universal Reconciliation were they to realize that most of them hold the view they do largely because the Roman Catholic position overwhelmed the early and more widely accepted view of Universal Reconciliation.

Now that the history lesson is over…

This view begins with the assumption that God wants nothing less than that all people should be saved. The Bible, taken at face value, appears to communicate such a desire on the part of the Father:

Ezekiel 18:23
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?

John 3:16-17
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

1 Timothy 2:1-6
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Nearly all non-Calvinists believe that God would prefer that all people would turn to Jesus and be saved, yet believe that most will never come to such a saving faith. Most people will be lost to Hell, beyond the reach of Salvation. This belief, however, may be the result of a persistent bias for the Eternal Torment view. Not only does the Bible make apparent claims that God desires all men to be saved, but it seems to hint in places that everyone will eventually be saved.

John 12:31-32
Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Ephesians 1:7-10
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him,
things in heaven and things on earth.

Colossians 1:16-20
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

It is important to note the distinction between Universal Reconciliation and other forms of universalism. All non-evangelical universalists that I am aware of make claims that all people will be saved regardless of the path they choose to take to God. You want to be a Muslim? Great! You want to be a follower of Buddha? Fantastic! You want to be a atheist? God honors you too! Apparently, according to standard universalists, God is just too nice a guy to punish anyone for anything.

Not so, says Universal Reconciliation. While God may eventually save all men, all men, when they are saved, will be saved by faith in the work of Christ on the cross. In this view, Hell exists for those who die without Jesus, but Hell is not a place of eternal torment but a place of torment which is the final tool that God uses to break the hard-hearted down and bring them to repentance and acceptance of Christ.

In addition to the Biblical statements like those above, there are also concepts taught in the Bible which appear to support Universal Reconciliation.

All Christians agree that even Mao Zedong, or Joseph Stalin, would be saved if they experienced genuine repentance on their death beds. The Universal Reconciliationist asks, “What is it about death that makes it the cut-off point?” If God is willing to accept our repentance just minutes before we die, why wouldn’t he be willing to accept repentance just moments after we die? Does God really say, “You're too late; I wanted to forgive you five minutes ago but I don’t want to forgive you now?” Where is it taught in scripture that one can’t repent after death?

I can think of two passages, off the top of my head, that could be raised in response to this question. The first is the often partially quoted Hebrews 9:27 – “…it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” I have cited this particular verse myself to justify the belief that death cuts off repentance. However, as I look at it again, with a Universal Reconcilationist cap on, this verse says nothing of the kind. If eternal torment is true, and the judgment of God on each of us is final and Hell is eternal, then this passage would confirm that death is the apparent cut-off point for repentance. However, if these assumptions are not true and if Hell is a place of torment used by God to bring the lost to repentance then this verse tells us nothing about the final destination of the lost; only that they are judged; which we knew already. If the Universal Reconciliationist is correct, then this judgment is temporary until the judged turn to Christ. It seems to me that Hebrews 9:27 could be used to support the idea that death is the cut-off point for forgiveness, if one has already concluded that the Eternal Torment view is correct, but if one is attempting to make up his mind about which view to hold then this verse doesn’t help.

I would also point out that the purpose of this passage at the end of the ninth chapter of Hebrews was not written by the author to inform us about the ability of sinners to repent after death. This brief sentence is used within a larger explanation of why, under the Old Covenant, animals had to be sacrificed repeatedly, yet it was only necessary for Christ to die on the cross once. To use it, as I have in the past, to justify death as the cut-off point for forgiveness is to yank the verse somewhat out of context.

The second passage that could be raised against Universal Reconciliation is at the very end of John’s first epistle:

1 John 5:16-17
If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.

I know that this passage is very confusing to many, and is somewhat controversial. To keep this short I simply say that, for very interesting reasons that I hope to cover in another post, I have come to believe that John is telling his readers that they should pray for those who are still living and trapped in their sin, but not to bother praying for the salvation of those who have died. If I am right about this passage, then this would seem to be strange advice to give if those who have died are still capable of repentance, as Universal Reconciliation suggests.

That said, I try to hard to be realistic and thoughtful about all the views I hold, and would be negligent if I did not repeat that this passage is very mysterious and controversial. It would be advisable to take any person’s interpretation of this passage with a grain of salt (including mine), recognizing that there is no clear answer available to us today as to what exactly the Apostle is referring to.

There is one more argument in favor of Universal Reconciliation that I haven’t touched on yet, and in my mind it is the most powerful of them all. If Christ truly desires that all men should be saved and He paid the price for all men, yet because of Satan’s interference the majority of humanity is lost forever – then who is the real loser and who is the real winner for all eternity? Satan may be cast into the Lake of Fire at the Judgment, but even then he would be able to rejoice that he took the vast majority of men, the pinnacle of God's creation, made in His image, with him into that place to be separated from God forever. God wanted them saved, but the work of the Devil destroyed them, which seems to go against the teaching of scripture.

1 John 3:8
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Hebrews 2:14
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

Christians believe that in the day Christ returns he will raise everyone to judgment. Once judgment has been passed and the sheep have been separated from the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), the creator of all things will remake heaven and earth (Revelation 21-22), restoring what was lost at the fall, reclaiming what the Devil had taken – restoring both Heaven and Earth to their original glory and more (God is not in the business of simply fixing broken things, but of making them better than they ever were before). If God will restore all things, if every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, if all things both in heaven and on earth will be reconciled to Him through the blood of Jesus, then mightn’t God save all men, who are His greatest creation, made in His image, through that blood as well?

I don’t know.

But it certainly seems that such a sweeping salvation, such an incredible, complete restoration of all things could be the ultimate and grand plan of the Almighty God.

Three Views of Hell, Part 4 - Eternal Torment Critique

When we look at the last post and the list of passages cited there, it certainly looks as though the Eternal Torment view is the only possible interpretation that is Biblically justifiable. However, the case is not as iron-clad as it looks at first glance.

Before I continue, I just want to give credit where it’s due: Several teachers and theologians have made me aware of many of the things that I will be writing on over this and the next several posts, John Stott, Steve Gregg, and Clark Pinnock foremost among them. I would not have been able to see much of what I will be writing about from here on out without reading their work.

Our preconceptions about what the Bible teaches often prevent us from recognizing good alternative theological views and prevent us from seeing problems with our own beliefs. Additionally, legitimate alternative views suffer because most of us don’t know the Bible as well as we should (I most definitely include myself in this). Both of these problems work in favor of the Eternal Torment view of Hell.

Let’s start with the word “eternal,” the backbone of the Eternal Torment view. The regular appearance of this word in describing various attributes of Hell has, understandably, led many to the conclusion that the suffering of the lost in hell lasts forever.

It should be pointed out that the Greek word “aion” or aionios” which is most often translated in these passages as “eternal” is defined by Vine’s Expository Dictionary as,

“Duration, either undefined but not endless, or undefined because endless.”

Right out of the gate, we find that the word we’ve always understood to mean everlasting may not mean that at all. Of course, “eternal” or “everlasting” could just as likely be the proper translation; I am not a Greek scholar by any means, and so far all Greek scholars involved in translating these passages have concluded that “eternal” is the best word. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to judge how justified their choice of translation is, except to say that translators are not free of their preconceptions and are just as capable of being swayed by them as you or I. It also seems that translators believe a great deal in precedence; that is, since aion was first translated as “eternal,” they will also translate the word as “eternal” unless they have a very good reason not to. Since we don’t have an ancient Greek scholar available to us, for the rest of the post let’s assume that “eternal” and other words that imply eternality are translated correctly.

As it turns out, the word “eternal” and similar words only appear eight times in the passages said to be describing Hell, and most of these passages are apocalyptic in style – that is, among other things they make use of hyperbole to make their points. This is the case for what are probably the two strongest passages supporting Eternal Torment: Revelation 14:11 and Mark 9:47-48.

Revelation 14:10-11
…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 sulfur 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 worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.

To anyone who has studied the Book of Revelation in light of the rest of the Bible, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Apostle John is borrowing imagery directly from the Old Testament. In Isaiah 34 the prophet records a judgment against the nation of Edom:

Isaiah 34:8-10
For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.

While John is not quoting this passage directly, his imagery is borrowed from it. In both texts the picture of judgment brought against the lawbreakers makes use of fire, sulfur, and smoke ascending eternally. But is the unending state pictured in these passages meant to be understood literally? In Isaiah 34, I believe the answer is unquestionably no.

Edom was utterly destroyed by the Nabataeans just as God predicted through Isaiah. The land of Edom is no more, there are no more Edomites (the last known Edomite was Herod the Great), there has not been a descendent of Esau on the face of the Earth for 2000 years. Yet, if we were to travel to the former land of Edom, on the southern shore of the Dead Sea, we would not find the smoke of the Nabataean conquest still rising into sky, yet this passage speaks of the smoke from their burnt land ascending forever. This is a word picture, poetically written, meant to convey the message that Edom would be destroyed and never recover. Smoke is what is left after what has been burned is consumed. That it “go[es] up forever” might be understood to mean the Edomites will remain consumed forever. They are dead and gone two millennia ago, and will never cease to be consumed. Is this the way John means to use this imagery? I can’t say that I know for sure that he does, but it does seem possible.

However, if eternal torment is not what’s in view in verse 11, then why does the end of that sentence read, “and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name?” No rest seems to imply continued consciousness throughout the process that lasts “forever and ever.” While that might be the case, if we read just 2 verses down from this statement it appears that John himself explains:

Revelation 14:13
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”

The rest that John writes about Revelation 14 appears to be another description of Heaven. The saints that die in Christ enter their "rest," those that perish without Him never enter that rest. It is entirely possible that by saying they will never experience rest day or night John is implying that they will not enter Heaven - not that they will remain conscious forever.

Interestingly, the other passage most often cited as teaching that Hell is a place of eternal torment, Mark 9:47-48, is also borrowed from the very last verse of the last chapter in Isaiah:

Mark 9:47-48
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell [lit. Valley of Hinnom], ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

Isaiah 66:24
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

No matter which view of the final six chapters of Isaiah you hold to (these chapters are very controversial) this last verse of the book makes it clear that the prophet is not referring to souls or people in hell eternally suffering worms and flames. The prophet is referring to the bodies of the dead which experience these things, not their conscious souls or their resurrected bodies.
It also appears that undying worms and unquenchable flames should not be taken literally. As I pointed out in an earlier post, in Mark 9:47-48, Jesus refers in the passage specifically to the Valley Hinnom, which was a garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem. When Jesus spoke about Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom, his audience would not have thought about a distant future judgment after death, but simply of the valley just outside of Jerusalem's wall. The fires there burned day and night and the worms constantly consumed the garbage, refuse, and the bodies of criminals disposed of in that place.

We in the west make very similar statements all the time, yet for some reason we insist on holding the Biblical writers to a woodenly literal use of language. When you have a problematic ant infestation that you have tried to kill off unsuccessfully, it would not be unusual to complain that these ants “just won’t die.” No one would take you literally and conclude that you were saying these particular ants were immortal or would infest your house for eternity. In this light it is probably safe to say that neither statement about the flames and worms have anything to do with eternity, but are simply common expressions about what one would find in the Valley Hinnom at any given time.

The Valley of Hinnom was also mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah, who spoke of it several times while proclaiming the coming judgment on Israel carried out by Babylon in 586 BC.

Jeremiah 7:31, 32
And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.

Jeremiah 19:6-9, 11-12
…Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its wounds. And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them’…and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's
vessel, so that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there
will be no place else to bury. Thus will I do to this place, declares the Lord, and to its inhabitants, making this city like Topheth.

The question is, in citing the passage of Isaiah and referring to the place which figures somewhat prominently in Jeremiah’s prophesy of destruction upon Israel, could Jesus be warning of something similar occurring again? It is very possible. The similarities between the Babylonian destruction of Israel and the Roman destruction 600 year later are striking.

Josephus writes extensively about the siege and eventual destruction of Jerusalem in “The Jewish Wars,” and he records that during the height of the Roman siege there were rotting bodies laying in the streets of the city and bodily fluids running in the gutters. The people of Jerusalem cast so many bodies over the walls that they filled the Kidron Valley. While Josephus never mentions the Valley of Hinnom, it may well have seen the same result from this war, especially seeing as this was it’s general use anyway.

These ancient prophets may provide us with a better understanding of these two passages which have long been cited as the support for the view of eternal torment, but they don’t shed any light on Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10:28 that we should “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell [lit. Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnom]. One explanation that has been suggested is that Jesus is simply saying that when the offending individual is dead God is not done with them yet. I don’t know of any other possible explanations of this particular verse, which I find quite mysterious.

A number of the scriptures that are generally cited in support of the Eternal Torment view of Hell talk about eternal fire. The argument is that the fire of Hell is eternal and so the suffering and torment of those condemned there must be eternal as well. While one can easily see how descriptions of eternal fire would lead one to assume an eternal Hell, the fact is that neither suffering, torment, nor punishment are mentioned in these passages; only eternal fire.
An explanation of this could be that the modifier “eternal” actually refers to something other than duration of torment. It’s quite possible that in describing eternal fire the author is not saying that the fire itself lasts forever but that the fire has it’s source in eternity, which is an attribute solely of God. This idea is not without some scriptural support.

Genesis 19:24
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

Jude 1:7
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

As I pointed out before regarding Edom, if you were to travel to the west bank of the Dead Sea, where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are believed to have been located, you will not see a fire continuing to burn. Genesis tells us that these cities were destroyed with fire “from the Lord out of heaven.” While the fire that burned these cities has long since gone out, the source of the fire is the God who holds eternity in His hand. If this is the case, then to say that the condemned suffer eternal fire would not be saying anything more than that they suffer the judgment of God.

One final point is that the Bible does not say anywhere, that I am aware of, that unbelievers live forever. We often assume it because we understand that those who enter into the New Heaven and the New Earth will reign with God forever; but eternal existence of the damned isn’t taught in the Bible to the best of my knowledge.

Like I said at the beginning of this series, I don’t know what position to believe at the moment. While I have been critical of the Biblical arguments offered in support of the Eternal Torment view Hell, nothing I have laid out is concrete. I have simply offered what I believe to be reasonable questions about the traditional interpretations of the passages used to support the view of Eternal Torment.

Three Views of Hell, Part 3 - Eternal Torment

What is the nature of Hell? Many of us have heard about it since we were small children in Sunday school. It’s lampooned regularly in the old “Far Side” comic, and references to it are common in English literature and in film. Chances are that even the most theologically uninformed individuals know that Christianity teaches that “bad people go to Hell forever.” But what does the Bible teach about the place that has been set aside for those not found in Christ?

As I stated in my introduction to this series, until last year I would never have given a second thought to this subject. I “knew” that the Bible taught what is referred to as the “Traditional View” or the “Eternal Torment” view and that any other understanding of Hell was straying into the realm of cults and theological liberalism. But when I honestly assessed what I really did know about what the Bible said on Hell, I discovered I knew a lot less than I thought.

I’m going to start with an examination of the Eternal Torment view of Hell. To be clear, this view is the common one, held by the vast majority of conservative Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, which says that those who die without accepting the substitutionary atonement of Christ will be separated from God in Hell and will suffer torment for eternity.

It should be noted beforehand that one of the primary assumptions of those who hold the Eternal Torment view of Hell, whether they know it or not, is that man is by nature immortal. The case for this belief is made by pointing out that the Bible teaches that man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) and one of our shared attributes with the Creator is immortality. Thus, even when man becomes separated from God in Hell he continues to survive forever.

I’m going to spend the rest of this post quoting every passage in the Bible which is generally accepted as saying something about Hell. I won’t need to make the case for this view so much as lay out the passages that are cited for it – most of us in the West, even non-Christians, have grown up with this view so embedded as part of our shared cultural knowledge that we will immediately recognize the view from the following passages.

Matthew 5:22
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:29-30
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Matthew 10:28
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 hell.

Matthew 23:33
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Matthew 23:15
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land
to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Mark 9:43,45,47
And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire… And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell… And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.

Note that in each of these quotations the word rendered as “hell” is the Greek word "Gehenna."

What can we learn from these passages? Hell (or specifically, Gehenna) is a place for people who say “You Fool;” it is better to mutilate yourself (cutting off various body parts) than to go there; it is a place of bodies and souls; and it is a place that people are sentenced to go to. While these passages convey the idea that this place is terrible and not one any person would choose to go to, they don’t really give us any specifics, they don’t tell us about the nature of Hell. For that we need to look elsewhere.

None of the following passages explicitly mention hell, however, just because they don't use the word doesn't mean they don't have anything to teach us about it. They also represent the totality of Bible teaching on the subject. Outside of these passages the Bible has nothing else to say about damnation (that I'm aware of).

Matthew 3:12
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Matthew 7:23
And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30
I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:40-42, 50
Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth…The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:41,46
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Romans 2:8-9
…but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and
distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,

2 Corinthians 5:10
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

1 Thessalonians 5:3
While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

2 Thessalonians 1:9
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Hebrews 6:1-2
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

Hebrews 10:27
…but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

2 Peter 2:12, 17
But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction…These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.

Jude 7
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Revelation 14:10-11
…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 sulfur 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 worshipers of the beast and its
image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.

Revelation 20:10
…and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

These verses refer repeatedly to separation between the righteous and the unrighteous (the lawbreakers). The unrighteous receive the due sentence for the works that they did “in the body” (that is, while they lived on earth). They will be forced to depart from Christ and be cast into a fiery furnace (called the "lake of fire" in Revelation) where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are placed to suffer torment “forever and ever.” This fire is said to be "unquenchable" or "eternal" and it has been prepared for the devil and his angels. In addition to fire, “gloom” and “outer darkness” are also referred to. It is place of torment, and the smoke of that torment ascends day and night and those who sufferer it will have no rest. Those who obey unrighteousness will suffer wrath and fury, tribulation and distress. This destruction will be sudden, is called eternal, and will consume the adversaries of God.

After all this, is there any question that the Eternal Torment view has good Biblical support? The fact is, from this list of passages, the traditional view of hell appears unassailable to many and is easily justified. However, we will examine whether this is actually the case or not in the very next post.

Three Views of Hell, Part 2 - Translation Problems

Before I begin an exploration of what I now consider to be the three Biblically acceptable views of Hell, we need to clear a few misconceptions and problems out of the way. Unfortunately, when it comes to this subject, there is one tremendous roadblock in particular that prevents many people from coming to a clear understanding of what the Bible actually teaches about Hell: The King James Version of the Bible.

No offense to those who love the King James Version of the Bible - for its time it was a marvelous feat of scholarship and it still is the most beautifully rendered of all Bible versions - but we now know that there are a quite a few places where the translation is misleading or simply flat out wrong. This is the case with the KJV use of the word “Hell.” Unfortunately, the wide familiarity of the KJV rendering of many passages has led to quite a few misunderstandings regarding what the Bible actually teaches about Hell (among other subjects).

As we go through these posts on Hell you must keep in mind that no matter which of the three views you accept Hell is place where the unrighteous are condemned to go following the judgment of Christ at His second coming. While there are places described in the Bible that look similar to our understanding of Hell, some of these are described as existing before the Judgment, and therefore cannot be what Christians understand to be Hell. They might be precursors to Hell, but not Hell itself.

If you look up the word “Hell” in the KJV you will find that it appears exactly 31 times in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word that the translators chose to render as “Hell” in the OT is “Sheol,” which scholars now know is a severe mistranslation. Sheol literally means “the place of the dead;” it either refers to the place where everyone, both the righteous and the unrighteous, go when they die or it refers to the physical state of death. There is no notion of suffering or separation from God in the word at all. Few, if any, of the modern translations even attempt to translate sheol, as there is not a good modern English equivalent, most just leave it as it is. Later on, as I go through all the verses that are generally cited as telling us something about Hell, you will notice that none of them come from the OT, which apparently (and interestingly) has nothing to tell us about Hell.

In the New Testament, there are three different Greek words that have been translated as “Hell,” particularly in the KJV, and “Hades” is the most numerous of the three. If you’re familiar with the Greek myths, you know that Hades is the land of the dead. Just like sheol, it is either the place where both the good and the bad go or it is simply the state of physical death. It has no equivalence with Hell, as Christians understand the word, but is instead a direct equivalent of sheol. This is most apparent in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) into Koine Greek made between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, which translates all instances of "sheol" as0 "hades."

The second Greek word translated as Hell in the New Testament is “tartarus.” Tartarus only appears once in the entire Bible, in 2 Peter 2:4 which reads:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into [tartarus]
and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

This might sound like the Lake of Fire described in Revelation but it can’t be. The verse tells us that the angels who are held in Tartarus are waiting for the judgment day (it’s a temporary prison) while the Lake of Fire in Revelation 19 and 20 appears to be a final holding place for the beast, the false prophet, and anyone whose names are not found in the Book of Life. Unfortunately, little else is known about Tartarus – it could be the name of the location that the rich man, from the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, found himself in; although there are several dissimilarities between the two places. Or it could be somewhere else completely. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be Hell.

The third and final word often translated as Hell in the New Testament, “Gehenna,” is also the one which is most justifiably translated as "Hell." The word appears several times in the teaching of Jesus and once in the book of James (3:6). Gehenna literally refers to a narrow ravine just outside of Jerusalem, known also as the “Valley of Hinnom” or “Topheth” (pronounced: toff-et) where a number of unsavory things occurred throughout Jewish history.

In the time of the Jewish kings Ahaz and Manasseh the Jews were conducting ritual infant sacrifices to the demon-god Moloch in the Valley (2 Kings 16:2-3, 2 Chron 28:3; 33:6). When King Josiah took the throne of Judah he put an end to this practice by making the Valley unclean through the disposing of bodies of executed criminals and dead animals there and draining the sewage of Jerusalem’s upper city ("Bethso") into it. The fires of Gehenna were kept burning day and night without end to destroy the carcasses and garbage that were dumped there. Apparently, brimstone (that’s sulphur to us) was also used in the valley to assist in the burning of the garbage as well as for it’s disinfectant qualities.

The singular Jamesian reference to Gehenna tells us nothing about the word, other than it has bad undertones. James writes that, “The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by [Gehenna].” While this is a strong warning against undisciplined speech it really doesn’t tell us anything about Hell or Gehenna, as James understood those words.

While the word Gehenna is used by Jesus only 7 unique times (11 times total among the synoptic Gospels), the ways in which it is used lend themselves far better toward being translated as Hell then any of the other three words I covered above. Of course, whether this translation is appropriate remains to be seen; I will go over all the passages that appear to say something about Hell in my next post, which will make the argument for the Eternal Torment view.

Three Views of Hell, Part 1

Recently, I have been studying the Biblical doctrine of Hell, and have come to a surprising conclusion: I don’t know what to believe about Hell.

As I studied the passages that most Protestant Christians believe speak about Hell, I discovered that the Bible has far less to say on the subject than I ever thought. You’ve probably heard it said that Jesus spoke more about Hell than about any other single subject; I have heard it said countless times in my life, but in studying the subject I found that Jesus either rarely, or never (depending on how you understand several vague passages) spoke about Hell. In reality, He spoke most often about the Kingdom of God, but that’s a subject for another time.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this subject, and as my views are now up in the air, I would like to present what I have found and see if any readers have any comments. This will probably take three or four posts (or six or seven), and I imagine that each will be pretty long. That said, I hope this interesting for all.

Three Biblical Views of Hell?

Like most Christians, I grew up believing in what is generally known as the “Eternal Torment” view of Hell. We’re all familiar with it - In brief, it says that all people who die without having accepted the saving work of Christ are judged and then cast in Hell, or more specifically the Lake of Fire, where they are separated from God and suffer torment for eternity. While I was aware that liberal Christians and some groups I would call cults had different beliefs about Hell, I never for a moment considered that anything other than the Eternal Torment view was Biblically justifiable.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in “Annihilationism,” that the soul of the unbeliever is destroyed upon death so that there isn’t any hell at all. For the JW, there is only Heaven and non-existence. The Unitarians believe in “Universalism,” that there are many ways to God, and that all people will be accepted into God’s presence upon death. For them Heaven is the only destination. These are not the only pseudo-Christian cults and groups that hold such alternative doctrines about Hell, but they are two of the most prominent.

Neither Annihilationism nor Universalism, as stated above, has any grounding in scripture. Both views primarily emanate from a strong distaste for the eternal torment view – a distaste that most Christians can probably empathize with. I have never been particularly comfortable with the eternal torment understanding of Hell myself, but I have defended it on internet forums and in the High School Sunday School classes I taught because I believed it was what the Bible taught. That said, in conducting a more focused study of the Biblical teachings on Hell I was very surprised to come to the conclusion that two other views, very similar to Annihilationism and Universalism, do have as much Biblical evidence in their favor as the view of Eternal Torment does.

“Universal Reconciliation”

I imagine that most conservative Christians will have a bad reaction to this view instinctively, as on it’s surface it appears almost indistinguishable from Universalism. Like Universalism, Universal Reconciliation teaches that all people will bow the knee, be reconciled with God, and join Him in Heaven. While the end result is the same, there are three key differences which make Universal Reconciliation, I believe, tolerable to Biblical Christianity while Universalism is not.

1. There is a Hell in Universal Reconciliation.
While Universalism teaches that all men go to heaven because God is too loving to send people to hell, that He is pleased with us no matter what we do, Universal Reconciliation teaches that men who die without Christ suffer judgment and Hell for their sins against God.

2. All men will be saved, but that Salvation is only through Christ.
While the god of Universalism loves everyone so much that he will overlook any sin in accepting people into Heaven, Universal Reconciliation holds that it is only because of suffering and Hell that the damned are brought to a place of repentance and repaired relationship with God through Christ.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Universal Reconciliation.
Universalism is based on a negative emotional response to the doctrine of Hell. Those evangelicals who consider themselves Universal Reconciliationists hold the view not because they hate idea of Hell but because they believe the Bible teaches it.

“Conditional Immortality”

Like Annihilationism, this view teaches that all men not found in Christ when they die, will cease to exist. The ultimate final destination is either Heaven for the saved or non-existence for the lost. Many evangelicals would call this view Annihilationism, and it is very similar to that heretical position except for three points.

1. There is a Hell in Conditional Immortality.
Like Universalism, Annihilationism gets rid of Hell completely, as those who hold to it choose not to believe that a god of love could punish people in Hell. Conditional Immortality recognizes the Biblical teaching of Hell and the requirement of judgment upon those who reject God before they are extinguished from existence.

2. Human Beings are mortal by nature.
Annihilationism holds that God destroys the soul that dies without Christ, that ceasing to exist is the sum total of the punishment that God meets out. Conditional Immortality says that human beings are not innately immortal, and thus there is no need for God to destroy them. Immortality, it is argued, emanates from God, and without God to sustain the soul it passes away.

3. There is a surprisingly (to me) strong Biblical case for Conditional Immortality.
Like Universal Reconciliation, the Biblical argument in favor of Conditional Immortality is surprisingly good. Those who support the view do so not because they hate the idea of hell, like the cultist and the liberal, but because they believe it is taught in the Bible.

Let me reemphasize that I am up in the air, no longer leaning toward Eternal Torment, Universal Reconciliation, or Conditional Immortality. I am totally undecided. As that is the case, I want to present each of the views and the arguments both for and against them as best I can. Because I am undecided, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and want to know what everyone thinks about each view. I hope everyone will find this interesting.

Nowhere Else to Go

Have you ever considered whether you could come to a place of total unbelief in God, a place where you could walk away from your Christian faith? I have pondered that question numerous times. Recently, Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason gave the best short answer to that question that I have heard:

"I have never doubted so strongly...that I have been tempted to walk away. And the reason is because I think I know too much. What am I going to walk to?

Am I going to walk to atheism? I couldn't be an atheist if I tried! There's too much evidence for the existence of God. I would have to buy all these atheistic conundrums: everything came from nothing; life came from non-life; consciousness came from matter; morality came from nowhere; law came from chaos. All of these are wildly counter-intuitive.

Maybe some other religion? What other religion doesn't have the same kind of problems I'm facing right now? Whatever it is that I might be disappointed with God about, there is no other religion that is going to offer me something more. I could be a Hindu, I guess, and say that it's all just an illusion anyway, but that doesn't ring true.

I have doubted, I have been challenged, I have been hurt, I have questioned God, I have disbelieved God's goodness many times. But in all I have never been tempted to walk away because there's nothing [else] to go to."