By Chaplain Mike
Yesterday’s Gospel story of Lazarus and the rich man raised some of the usual questions about the afterlife, the judgment, heaven and hell, and the eternal destinies of humans.
Today, over at Jesus Creed Scot McKnight is hosting some discussion the subject and I thought we might do the same. At this point, I would like to keep our discussion focused on two questions:
- What are you hearing in your church about final things? There is a sense that these subjects, especially the teaching of hell and eternal judgment, is out of vogue and not being emphasized. I’d like to know what your experience has been in your own faith communities.
- How has your thinking developed over the years regarding these doctrines? I’d like to hear about your journey of thinking about these things before God and what he says in the Bible has developed over the course of your Christian life.
Warning: this is one of those subjects where emotions can run hot, so to speak, so be careful.
- Stick to the two questions above, and keep it civil.
- Remember, this is a discussion, and although we may strongly disagree with what someone says, we want them to have the chance to say it. This is NOT the place for church discipline, it is an open forum discussion!
- Don’t send links. If you have something you want to reference, give the information as fully as possible, and we can look it up.
And so (he said, trembling), let the discussion begin.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Jason,
I think a good summary of out discussion would be your statement:
“I don’t believe it does. But that isn’t where we have our difference?”
I think we understand the basics of each others position.
I’ve enjoyed the “discussion,” although I admit concern for those whom you are teaching.
You would probably same the same thing about me.
God’s blessings,
Chris
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Chris: {{First, Phil 2:9-11 does not identify the confessors as saved or unsaved.}}
The word ‘saved’ or ‘unsaved’ doesn’t show up there, no. The word ‘incarnation’ doesn’t show up in the paragraph previous to it either, but the contexts still add up to an incarnation of the Son.
I gave extensive reasons for why the confessors should be regarded as saved. I can give some more though!
The term being used in Phil 2 (which I translated “acclaimâ€) is always used elsewhere in the NT (not even counting the Septuagint, or comparison with contemporary Greek usage), in a sense of cooperation and faithful agreement (even when God is absolutely not who is being agreed with). There is certainly no context of Phil 2 which would count against it meaning the exact same thing there. It’s a specially emphatic version of a word which has several varieties in the NT–none of which involve mere technical acknowledgment, so far as I recall offhand; but I can verify that this particular term never means that anywhere else.
It’s used for penitent confession of sins (Matt 3:6/Mark 1:5, Acts 19:18, James 5:16; all of which have salvation and returning to loyalty with God in positive view, not confessing sins in some rebellious way); the pagans glorifying God for His saving mercy (thus converting from their idolatry, Rom 15:9-12, using the term v.9 while quoting Psalm 18:49); warning against judging our brother in Christ since we all shall confess and praise God before His seat of judgment (Rom 14:7-12 plus contexts; using the term v.11 in quoting that same Isaiah 45 statement as he does in Phil 2); Christ praising the Father (Matt 11:25/Luke 10:21); and, for that matter, Judas teaming up in agreement with the Sanhedrin (Luke 22:6)!
Put more simply, if the term everywhere else (even with Judas in regard to enemies of God) means agreeable cooperation in loyalty; and if nothing in the context of Phil 2 goes against that; and if Paul is quoting OT scripture there concerning loyal praise of God (not merely technical acknowledgement); then it’s going to be hard to find a reason to even suppose the term means merely technical acknowledgment there at Phil 2 (such that saved and unsaved both could be said to be doing it).
As it happens, you appear to agree with that, too! {g}
{{Looking at this verse [Matt 5] along with the verse you note [Phil 2] it seems to me that Paul is speaking [in Phil 2] of true confession, not just words as Jesus notes [in Matt 7].}}
So we agree Paul is speaking of true confession there. (Maybe it’s the scope you disagree about…???)
We also agree that this isn’t the same kind of technical acknowledgment Jesus is talking about in Matt 7. (About which several other similar testimonies could be referenced, too.)
{{Second, on your first point, check out Matt. 7:21. Jesus – “Not every one who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…â€}}
A text I am extremely well aware of, thank you! {g} Adducing it certainly has no bearing against Phil 2 meaning a lot more than mere technical acknowledgment.
Put another way: if Phil 2 (and some similar texts) are talking about absolutely everyone eventually confessing God loyally, this does not in the least contradict Jesus’ warning that not everyone who calls Him Lord (even with the double-deity emphasis occasionally used in OT forms, and even when they have done many miraculous good deeds in His name!–thus apparently bearing ‘good fruit’ by typical standards) is actually loyally following Him. They might still be in rebellion against Him, and slated for being thrown into the fire. But if that isn’t the end of their story, then they can eventually arrive at the fulfillment of Phil 2.
One text warns that technical acknowledgment (and mere technical service, even where empowered miraculously by God) can still be done in rebellion; the other text prophecies that eventually absolutely all souls will be loyally professing God. One state of affairs logically precedes the other state of affairs. Either the ones who are cut down and burned for rebellion eventually repent and become loyal to God, fulfilling the prophecy of Phil 2 (and Isaiah 45, not incidentally); or God decides that those who are in fact loyally praising Him are not in fact loyally praising Him and so throws them into the fire where they will never loyally praise Him, basically voiding the whole prophecy of Phil 2 at every level.
I say go with the one that makes the most logical sense. I recommend the first option. {g}
{{Third, your second point strengthens the point I have just made.}}
Obviously I agree. {g}
{{Fourth, the scripture you quote in your third point is awesome. There is no question that Jesus has reconciled “all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.â€}}
I am willing to point out, by the way, that the most grammatically accurate translation of the Colossians verse is “through Him the entire complement [of deity, per 2:9] delights to dwell, and through Him to reconcile the-all into Him.â€
It’s about God’s intentions and actions. The verse itself doesn’t say God has already reconciled everyone to Himself, nor that He certainly will one day, only that He delights to do so. But it shows the total scope of God’s intentions and action through the cross, and what the goals are (making peace through the blood of the cross). The total scope was why I reffed it; not as testimony that it had been completed or will be.
{{Does that negate the “narrow road†verse?}}
I don’t believe it does. But that isn’t where we have our difference. I don’t believe the destruction of Matt 5:13 is hopeless; but rather that, under God (and as applied by God) it can and does and will lead the sinner to repentance and reconciliation with God, thus to the fulfillment of (among other things) Phil 2.
{{If you continue reading, verse [Col 1:]23 states “if.†It is a big “if†in my view.}}
That’s the human side of the relationship, yes. Those who don’t persist in God’s reconciliation will be estranged from God (even estranged from Him again) and so not in reconciliation with God. But human unfaithfulness doesn’t affect God’s fidelity one iota. It is sinners who refuse to act in reconciliation, or who stop acting in reconciliation. God, the One Who is good, doesn’t refuse to reconcile, and doesn’t stop acting to reconcile.
{{There is no clear evidence in scripture that eventually all will wind up in heaven.}}
Well, you ended up not disagreeing at all with the exegesis of Phil 2 (as far as I can tell), so I don’t know why you’re saying that that doesn’t count as clear evidence. You may think it’s trumped by testimony elsewhere, but that’s rather different than Phil 2 itself being clear evidence (so far as it goes). And you didn’t explain how or why any evidence elsewhere trumps it. Matt 7 is talking about something very different (as we both agree), which can easily fit within the clear testimony of Phil 2 (and which is exemplified by the quote from Isaiah Paul is making at Phil 2, not incidentally); whereas it can only trump Phil 2 if it completely voids the clear meaning of Phil 2 that you yourself agreed about.
Other things being equal, I prefer the exegesis that doesn’t annihilate big parts of itself. {g}
JRP
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Mark, I don’t have actual references, but isn’t that the basic calvinistic interpretation of romans 9:22-23?
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jonthechristian – I am a lifelong Christian meandering on my way and what you said here stopped me short. I have not, in fact, heard it all. Thank you.
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There’s no such thing as a day in eternity . . .
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Chris: {{What does it matter if the goats are baby goats or not?}}
Even on an explicitly non-universalist interpretation, it at least indicates that the people aren’t mature members of the flock. (Much like the distinction between the wise and foolish virgins a couple of parables back in the same sequence.)
The distinction can also imply that they still have some maturing ahead of them.
It also results in a picture where mature members of the flock are rewarded (even when they’re surprised to be found as members of the flock) while immature members are punished. That makes plenty of sense, too.
Also, it fits the reversal-of-expectation judgment theme again: those people are surprised to learn that they weren’t serving Christ, so would have expected themselves to be strong servants. Turns out they’re weak baby goats. Moreover, they’re being judged for having no pity on those who are weak and defenseless, including in prison; now they are revealed to be the weak and defenseless ones, being sent into imprisonment.
But then the question becomes: what kind of action and attitude should we, as (ostensibly??) mature believers have, toward those weak and defenseless ones in prison?! Should we have the attitude of baby goats toward the baby goats? Or the attitude of the mature flock?–healing them, feeding them, visiting them in prison, giving them water, etc.
Baby goats are known for being soft and vulnerable, which was why they were (and still are) also prized for tender eating at a feast! (This context is in fact the other use of the term in the NT, during the parable of the prodigal son.)
But unless cannibalism is supposed to be in view, where the judge and/or the mature flock are expected to roast and eat the baby goats due to their being specially good eating as baby goats, then a hopeless punishment interpretation for the baby goats still involves weak, tender, defenseless objects being wiped out of existence or permanently tortured as weak, tender, defenseless objects. This seems rather the reverse of ethical! Parents discipline their weak children in love for their weak children so that the weak children will grow stronger–this is a key biblical principle, too.
{{It’s what happens to the goats that is, in my mind, the important thing.}}
That’s certainly one important thing. Another is why what’s happening to the baby goats is happening to the baby goats. And yet another important thing is, what actions and attitudes should we have toward those baby goats? And if we should have the attitude of the mature flock toward those baby goats, are we to expect as much or more of our Lord toward those baby goats?–or less from our Lord toward those baby goats?
So putting it yet another way: does it make more sense to interpret the parable so that the judge of the baby goats acts like a baby goat (or worse) to the baby goats?–or so that the judge of the baby goats acts like one of the mature flock (or better) to the baby goats? And do the details of the parable and word-usage fit better one way or the other?
I think it makes most sense for the judge to have the attitude and actions of the mature flock (or better) toward the baby goats. Most interpreters, however, think it makes most sense for the judge to have the attitude and actions of the baby goats (or worse) toward the baby goats.
You should of course go with whatever makes the most logical and ethical sense of the data. If you think it makes the most logical and ethical sense for our Lord to treat the baby goats as a baby goat Himself, and never as anything better than a baby goat Himself, then that’s what you should believe. I believe something else makes more sense of the data, myself. {g}
{{That puts you, and those who think like you, in a unique position.}}
In the position of accounting for more of the data than typical translators and interpreters, for one thing. {wry g}
{{It is not a position with which I can agree.}}
You haven’t really said why yet, though.
You don’t actually dispute any of the points I brought up. At most, you seem to be claiming you just don’t see why those points make any difference; but neither do you really comment on my rationales in putting together the data.
{{Do you know the historic background of your position?}}
Which position? I mean at what level, or in regard to what particulars? I know a lot of various historical backgrounds, but it would take a lot of time and effort to dig things up.
I know that scholars and commentators throughout Christian history who interpret the parable as hopeless, practically never mention the things I’m talking about, even though those facts are basically indisputable. I don’t know to what degree they were ignorant of those facts, or whether they were suppressing them because that would blow their thesis. It’s theoretically possible that it’s most proper to avoid or discount those facts in order to make sure the parable gets properly interpreted in line with established doctrine elsewhere; but then: (1) we’re no longer performing exegesis on this text but totally and completely relying on eisegesis (meaning at best there’s exactly no point referring to this text as scriptural testimony in favor of any position!); and (2) there ought to be a coherent explanation for why this text should be read in light of other texts instead of vice versa.
JRP
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Max,
Not bad points. True, most people are a mixture..(of course they are). None of us are perfect. “Selfishness for our own protection” is not selfishness. That’s being healthy. There is a difference. Perhaps, I should’ve used the word “greed”? Again, this is almost too heady a subject to volley on a blog. A face to face over a couple of beers would be far more appropriate.
Ghandi and Dalai Lama? Good point, too. I am not their judge. I will not say they don’t/didn’t know God. Besides, they live(d) for others, as I mentioned before. Ever read “the Last Battle”, C.S. Lewis?
Is oblivion “nicer” than torture? Are you kidding? Of course it is.
Regardless, I get the sense you’ve already made up your mind on the subject. You want to argue against the “Christian” point of view because you feel that it is unjust. Am I correct? That is actually admirable, if justice is what you’re really looking for. However, as I stated in a previous post, you cannot see everything. Even if you lived to be 1000 years old, you would not, could not have an all inclusive view of our universe, even if you just narrowed it down to a scientific perspective. Since you don’t see all, you cannot know the bigger picture. It almost seems to boil down to a matter of pride. Do you know more, have a better understanding, than all those who have lived before? I’m sorry to report that chances are good that you do not (nor do I). If that’s the case, and a God actually exists how can you know more than him?
Now let me shoot me argument down for you…(see how nice I am?) If we step outside the Christian construct of the universe, then my last point is moot….at least to a degree Ok, then why were we speaking within the construct in the first place? Because I believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that is where I am coming from . If you do not believe what the bible says, then why ask the question? My point is this: If you believe in the bible as the word of God, then you will harmonize all these things within yourself, and if you can’t, then you trust in the fact that God will show you truth.
If you don’t believe, then we have something else to talk about.
…which takes us in a full circle.
Philosophy is fun, isn’t it? But that’s why belief plays such an important part. It stops the circular reasoning and points in a definite direction.
From where I perceive you to be, I admonish you to do this: search earnestly for God, anywhere and everywhere. Pray all the time. Call out to God. Be angry if you need to, but don’t stop searching. Know that the most important thing that there ever was or will be is LOVE.
…and I want you to know that I learned this from the example of Jesus.
Otherwise, I sincerely pray peace and happiness for you. Bless you, Max.
To the moderator: I realize I have typed far too much for a comment space. My apologies. I’ll try to keep it shorter next time…but only if you promise not to start a discussion on such an intense subject.
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Are there only two choices–“selfishness” and Christianity? What about Gandhi and the Dalai Lama? (Honorary Christians…?)
Most people are a mixture of selfishness and caring. On one hand, as social animals who rear our young we need altruism to survive as a species. On the other hand, we need a certain amount of selfishness for our own protection. Children are typically more selfish than their parents, not because they are evil, but for sound developmental reasons. Will God send them to hell?
A lot of people argue for oblivion rather than hell, as if that makes God seem nicer for not actively torturing them, but just letting them disappear. In that case, let us consign God to the oblivion which he intended for us!
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Jason,
I think I understand the case you are making. I think that the scales are tipped quite heavily towards the other opinion.
What does it matter if the goats are baby goats or not? It’s what happens to the goats that is, in my mind, the important thing.
You have quoted three sources and what you would view as their incorrect leaning. As Cipher mentioned, all of the English versions that He found translated the Matt. 25 verse the same way.
That puts you, and those who think like you, in a unique position.
It is not a position with which I can agree.
A question…
Do you know the historic background of your position?
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I had a recent argument with someone about their claim that the lack of eternal punishment undercuts morality, since “there would otherwise be no reason to fear God “ (i.e., we fear God out of self-interest). Personally, if the only reason you are not hunting down and killing me is because you are afraid you will be caught and roasted eternally, you’re not “moral†in my book.
It is true though that this argument of morality as self-interest is echoed to some degree in the Bible, in Job 1:9. This potential Satanic accusation against God is actually a major explanatory model in Seventh-Day Adventism (the Great Controversy); God disproves the accusation through Jesus, showing the watching universe by sacrificial love that He is a God of love and not a tyrant who rules by force, bribes, or other shows of power. Somewhat correspondingly, Adventists are annihilationists.
I think that gets back to the original question of what I hear about Hell. I don’t, per se, though some SDA preachers can make pretty scary threats even without mentioning eternal torment. And I’ve decided that I don’t know enough on the general topic to feel strongly one way or the other. I will say that if God (through the finished work of Jesus on the cross) decides of His own inscrutable mercy, in some mysterious way, to save someone who didn’t profess a sincere, theologically-perfect, smoke-and alcohol-free faith before they died, I hope I won’t take it like the first-hired workers in the vineyard or the older brother of the prodigal son .
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Chris: {{I think you have gone to great lengths to avoid the obvious. You admit that: ““It can mean that the object of the adjective keeps going forever.†This explanation fits the text very well. I don’t understand why you have gone to such trouble to see a different meaning.}}
The text you’re referring to, if I recall (checking back through the thread-trail here to be sure {g}) is the judgment of the sheep and the goats at the end of GosMatt 25.
I pointed out to Cipher that there were some curious characteristics of that judgment, which when accounted for in the exgetics of the text do NOT fit so well with an interpretation of eonian as ‘going on forever’ in regard to the punishment.
No, those characteristics aren’t obvious. But they’re still there. And I went into some detail about them. I don’t see what can be gained by ignoring those details even if they aren’t immediately obvious!
To remind you of those details (so you won’t have to go back and read them once again… {g}):
1.) the goats are actually baby goats. This, while usually ignored by commentators, is grammatically indisputable.
2.) the baby goats are sent off for {kolasis}, a term for punishment based on an agricultural analogy that, in the culture of the time, was supposed to be hopefully favorable to the object. (Similar to the analogy used by Christ for cleaning the apostles when commenting on His washing of them in GosJohn. Also to the analogy used by Paul in Rom 11 regarding branches being grafted out of the vine and grafted back in.)
3.) the baby goats are still treated as part of Christ’s flock, and so still belong to Christ.
4.) the baby goats are being treated, especially in punishment, as being the least of Christ’s flock.
5.) the baby goats are being imprisoned and punished for refusing to serve Christ by giving hope to the least of those who belong to Christ, including visiting the least of Christ’s in prison.
6.) the term ‘eonian’ can in fact be used for something that is not endlessly ongoing; and can even be demonstrably used in scripture in very close context for an ongoing and an ending object both.
So, which explanation fits these facts of the text very well?
That this imprisonment of the least of Christ’s flock is hopelessly unending, so that a refusal to hope for and save them (which is what got the baby goats punished) is now a good thing instead of something worth punishing?
Or that the brisk cleaning from God for those baby goats is hopeful, salvific, and may (unlike the life from God for the righteous) come to an end?
{{It seems to me you are up against more than a few translators.}}
Those same translators usually forget to mention that the term being used for the punished group is baby goat, too. (And also forget to mention that the term being used for ‘sheep’ is actually more generically broad, referring to a flock of any mixture of animals.)
So, who exactly is being ideologically convenient about the translation here, in order to avoid difficulties?
Moreover, those same translators are very well aware that ‘eonian’ doesn’t always mean eternal, and can even be used in regard to something that isn’t “eternal†in close contextual proximity with something also described as ‘eonian’ that certainly is “eternal†in the most maximum senses possible. When pressed they’ll admit this, because they have to; and they’ll volunteer the technical information, too, if they’re being honest. But even then, they sometimes salt the pizza pretty strongly.
I’ll give three examples off the top of my head, very conservative and well-respected ones (and resources which I also often use). If you look up “eternal†in Vines, in the Strong/AMG concordance edition of the NASB, and at the BlueBook Bible site, you’ll find that each of them (in their own way) heavily and strenuously emphasize that {aio_nio_s} (the Greek adjective I’m transliterating as eonian for English convenience) means everlasting, ongoing, without ceasing. They’ll each spend effort stressing this–and then they’ll mention at the end, like a brief afterthought, that it also refers to times which end. Only they won’t quite put it that bluntly (the way St. Paul does!); they’ll describe them as ‘ancient’ times. Sometimes they’ll allow that the objects continue for an indefinite period–that allows for the cases where the objects of the adjective definitely END. {g}
If they give a list of things which certainly continue ongoing, they’ll include the punishment terms. But there’s nothing in the definition itself which requires that the punishment be treated like the life and kingdom of God Himself, instead of like hills or the times of the secret of Christ Jesus.
They would most likely answer, “The context determines the meaning.†I entirely agree, let’s go to the context! Here are a bunch of contextual details for the judgment of the sheep and the goats. They aren’t details which are usually brought out; but neither are they very disputable. So, what does the exegesis add up to?
JRP
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He is God, who deserves only worship and everything good. Instead, God’s wrath was poured out on Him. The physical events are irrelevant.
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Uhm, Jesus was seriously beat on for a day or so and then killed. He certainly wasn’t tormented for an eternity. If Jesus’ sacrifice is the yard stick; that alone destroys utterly any idea of ‘eternal damnation’.
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Max, the difference is easy. This may also answer some of the comments made by Fish as well.
The difference is in the essence of who each of them are.
The embodiment of evil, the devil, satan, whatever you wish to label it, pulls things inward, like a black hole. It is negation. It focuses on self and self only.
The essence of God and his power sends things forth, as light shining from the sun. It focuses on all else, quite the antithesis of the aforementioned. God works as unselfish love does, spreading health to everything that it encounters; hence God is Love.
I didn’t get this from a book, at least all of it anyway. This is what I’ve learned from earnestly searching for spiritual truth all my life. Yes, I even left church for a time and looked at different religions. I came back to Jesus because he is the one that loved the most of all the prophets, even unto death.
So if this is true, and established, and we know that God is the epitome of goodness, then we may deduce that he is “right”. If that is case, then what He says is right, just, true, etc. Who are we, as a creation to question our creator? This question may offend you, but look at it as a matter of perspective. There are things we don’t see, don’t know, can’t feel, etc. There are energies that exist that we don’t understand, even if we can quantify them. You get the point. God can see these things. In addition to being Love, he can also see the big picture more clearly.
Now, the problem comes when man says, “God says this….” I don’t, at this time anyway, believe in a hell where human souls are tortured everlastingly. I believe in a lake of fire that consumes the souls of those that don’t want to be with God. They do not see eternal torture, but oblivion. They will cease to exist. Why would God do this? This is something that is hard to answer, and the discussion is probably best saved for a place other than a comment on a blog. However, there is no place beyond good or evil, regardless of what you have heard, and those that choose to serve self are answered with, “If you cannot live for others, then you cannot ever truly live.” If you live for self, then you don’t live for love, and if you don’t live for love, then your purpose, in the ETERNAL scheme of things, is questionable.
This brings us full circle to our life now. Jesus not only saved us from this oblivion, but also empowers us to do the things asked of us. Faith is all it takes. How this appropriated is how so many Christians get tripped up. They keep getting in the way of God. They live, “according to the flesh” meaning, they try to follow the law on their own steam. Just TRUST. Ugh..again, I digress. Sorry. It’s just that this is NOT a simple subject, and must be addressed holistically to be answered completely.
I realize this may not at all speak to you. Trying to explain the taste of a food that someone has never eaten is difficult. I agree with the other poster. Taste and see God is indeed good. Open your heart to God’s essence, his spirit, and you’ll answer harder questions than these.
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Consider the price Jesus paid for sin. That is the price that must be paid.
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I have to admit, personally, I am a hopeful Annihilationist. The dillema I have is that I’m convinced that the Bible really does teach that the lost will be resurrected to experience the second death. Eternal, conscious torment; physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological. It is far too much for me to comprehend or even consider.
I wouldn’t want even my worst enemy to suffer like that. If I have even the tiniest bit of love and compassion for the lost then I know that God’s love for those who reject Him must be perfect in every way. And his compassion far outweighs mine. Knowing that God IS love, leads me to conclude logically that the lost will not suffer for eternity.
This is my hope based on what I know to be true about God’s love and compassion…….that God will not allow the unrighteous, even the worse of the worst, to suffer forever without end. Again, its my hope—my hope that those passages on hell were more figurative all along.
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Let us not forget that we are literally god’s children. What parent would condemn his child to everlasting burnings? Actions brings consequences. Some may be forgiven immediately others may require another course of action which remains to be experienced in the life ahead.
My feelings about HELL is that for most it will be a conscience matter of what could have been achieved and was lost. I believe God in order to be God is just and therefore everyone will at some point in their existance, have the opportunity to accept or reject Jesus Christ as their Saviour.
We must learn not to judge God as man judges. No one will miss the blessings he has in store for them simply because of where or when they were born.
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Yes, JoeA, that’s what I hear too. 🙂
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Amen to that. If people saw a ruthless human dictator who tortured every person who disagreed with him they’d call said dictator a monster and justly condemn him. But suddenly behavior much, much worse is attributed to God and it becomes holy and justifiable. One of the few reasons that I’m grateful I was raised in the Seventh Day Adventist church is that they completely and vehemently reject any notion of a hell of eternal torment. And also, thanks for mentioning the nonsense of Divine Command theory. I was highly fortunate to take a college ethics class where it was used as a discussion point, and easily torn to shreds, on the first day. Immensely helpful with continuing escape from fundamentalism.
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Yes–join the heavenly chorus. Pay no attention to the screams of the damned.
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More like “the divine command theory of ethics is no longer plausible.” Also not a new idea, but hey.
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Jason,
Verses 43, 45, and 47 tell me that we are to do anything to avoid the unquenchable fire. Do you not agree?
You wrote:
“So, how many unquenchable fires are there, beside God? If I say “noneâ€, I think I’m being extremely faithful to the unique and total superiority of our God, the consuming fire!â€
Where is God described as an unquenchable fire? “Consuming fire,†yes, but “unquenchable fire?†Please show me.
Please don’t put words into my mouth, so to “speak.â€
You wrote:
“Excellent! So you in fact agree that God continues seeking to save sinners in Gehenna, then? Including in regard to Mark 9/Matt 18?â€
By throwing in the words “in Gehenna,†you have completely changed the meaning of my words.
You wrote:
“But put very over-simply: yes, I believe how a person interacts with the unquenchable fire (of God’s Holy Spirit) determines whether or not they go to Gehenna; and whether or not they come out.â€
Again, you have used a term that I don’t see in scripture. Where is the Holy Spirit called the “unquenchable fire?â€
And here is a major disagreement…There is no place in God’s Word, to my knowledge, where anyone escapes hell once there. If you know of an example, please share it with me.
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Jason,
First, Phil 2:9-11 does not identify the confessors as saved or unsaved.
Second, on your first point, check out Matt. 7:21. Jesus – “Not every one who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…†Looking at this verse along with the verse you note it seems to me that Paul is speaking of true confession, not just words as Jesus notes.
Third, your second point strengthens the point I have just made.
Fourth, the scripture you quote in your third point is awesome. There is no question that Jesus has reconciled “all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Does that negate the “narrow road†verse? May it never be. There is no question that the cross has the power to remove “all†sin. Why some reject that power is a mystery. If you continue reading, verse 23 states “if.†It is a big “if†in my view.
I agree with much of what you say in the rest of the post, except for where you are going with it.
There is no clear evidence in scripture that eventually all will wind up in heaven.
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Jason,
I think you have gone to great lengths to avoid the obvious. You admit that:
““It can mean that the object of the adjective keeps going forever.”
This explanation fits the text very well.
I don’t understand why you have gone to such trouble to see a different meaning.
I’ve read over your explanation a number of times and I think you are working to hard to find something that isn’t there.
You write:
“While most of the times when ‘eonian’ is used for something that indisputably isn’t everlasting…”
I have to concede that you may be correct about the various meanings of the term since I don’t know Greek and since no one else has piped in to try and explain the word.
However, I have to go back to Cipher’s original comment:
“I don’t know Greek, but each of the English translations I found had the word ‘eternal’ in there.”
It seems to me you are up against more than a few translators.
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Fish,
You think that God is not just, but punishing?
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Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven?
(Milton, Paradise Lost)
It’s not a new idea, I’m sorry to say.
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Rick,
The term “gehenna” was the Valley of Hinnom, just south of Jerusalem. This was used as the city dump, and Jesus used this as a metaphor to get across the idea that hell is a horrible place. A dump was filled with fire, smoke, rats, vultures, dung, bones, and all manner of stink.
It’s hard to dismiss the Bible’s teaching of hell, because it was Jesus himself who developed the idea. The Old Testament didn’t deal with it much. I think the Hebrew “sheol” meant “grave” or “shadowy place” or “place of the dead”, or something non-committal like that. The OT does talk about the wicked getting their judgment, but it doesn’t elaborate as much as Jesus did.
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From my understanding of Christian Universalism, it is not that everyone will be saved anyway, it will be that everyone will be reconciled to the father BECAUSE of Christ’s work on the cross.
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I hear Hell is bad.
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Chris: {{I guess my question would be with your conclusion in the last sentence. Where did you get your idea of this “better translation?â€}}
How about from Paul of Tarsus?
While most of the times when ‘eonian’ is used for something that indisputably isn’t everlasting occur in the (Greek version of) the Jewish scriptures, St. Paul in Romans 16:25-26 speaks of two things he describes as ‘eonian’: the times in which the secret of Christ Jesus was hushed, and God Himself.
‘Eonian’ wouldn’t mean less than always-ongoing-and-never-even-possibly-stopping for God, of course. But Paul also uses the term for times that have absolutely and definitely come to an end: the times of the secret of Christ Jesus being hushed. Those times are past and done with, never to be returned to. Now the time has come to openly proclaim the revelation and the evangel of Christ Jesus.
Paul says something similar in 2 Tim and Titus, when talking about our salvation in Christ being prepared from before eonian times. That could be a rhetorical emphasis of extension, of course (although in conjunction with scriptural testimony elsewhere that the existence of natural time depends on God, not that God inherently exists within natural times, it would be better to think of that as being ‘above’ or ontologically ‘prior to’ natural time.) But a theory of rhetorical extension doesn’t fit Paul’s use at the end of Rom, because his point is emphatically that those times are done and over with. They may stretch back beyond sight (though not infinitely so!), but they’ve ended. That which can stop or start is not itself properly and inherently everlasting or eternal.
So either Paul is flatly contradicting himself about not-ever-ending-times having an end (for comic effect??), or he is saying God can cease and end (which would be even more ridiculous), or he is using the adjective in some way that makes sense in regard to both the times that do emphatically end, and the God Who emphatically doesn’t end. Some principle greater than mere extension of existence of the object is in view. (Which is why impenitent sinners can be raised to ongoing life and yet not raised to ‘zoe eonian’.)
A comparison of all the uses of ‘eonian’ in scripture (which I’ve personally done, by the way) will, fortunately, turn up the fact that the object of the adjective is always directly from God. That includes God Himself sometimes!–which may be confusing for a modalist or a unitarian, but fits perfectly well into trinitarian theism. Who makes the eonian hills which will pass away and melt? The eonian God. Who makes eonian times that come to an end? The eonian God Who does not end. Where does eonian fire, chastisement, whole-ruination come from? It’s always directly and personally from God. (Even setting aside whether the eonian fire is itself the Holy Spirit of God!) Obviously the same is true of eonian life: we cannot receive that life from anywhere else but from God directly.
I can put it another, maybe more pertinent way. RevJohn (14:6) calls the gospel itself ‘eonian’, in a scene where people are busy rejecting the eonian gospel (proclaimed by an angel though the air of the world). I could point out that this scene is preceded by a flashforward that, in context, shows what the final result of this eonian gospel is going to be, but my point about the use of the term ‘eonian’ doesn’t require that.
It only requires noticing that if the term’s meaning is restricted to mere unbroken sequence, then either the gospel is proclaimed forever unendingly (which would be technical universalism even if there was an unending stalemate as well–which, by the way, is not what the preceding scene of Rev 14 reveals!), or the gospel absolutely and completely ends. Which is what all non-universalistic soteriologies inevitably involve.
Thus, an appeal to eonian merely as unbroken sequentiality, leaves non-universalists in the peculiar position of insisting that the various punishment terms described by ‘eonian’ never end and go on in unbroken sequentiality, while also insisting that the gospel described as ‘eonian’ absolutely, definitely, finally and irrevocably ends. (Or denying RevJohn’s canonicity, perhaps. {g})
Applying the term as meaning ‘uniquely from God’ or otherwise in relation to God’s uniqueness, transcending Nature (and natural time), provides a way of reconciling the tensions of usage, while fitting the exegetical testimony of the scriptures; and is also neutral as to whether God’s punishment is hopelessly unending or not. And neutral as to whether God’s gospel is hopefully unending or not.
(This will admittedly be a problem for any non-universalism built primarily on insisting that ‘eonian’ must necessarily mean an unbroken sequentiality; but as I’ve shown, this simply ignores cases of an ‘eonian’ object or concept which indisputably does/did not exist that way, or which non-universalists themselves insist will not in fact exist that way–namely the eonian gospel itself.)
JRP
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Yes, it is a slanderous charge. Where does he state in his sermons or books that he takes great delight or pleasure that there will be many suffering the eternal wrath of God after this age? Instead of somehow deducing what you believe MacArthur feels based on his Calvinism, why don’t you provide some actual references?
I think anyone who believes that all human being will eventually be redeemed should have a look at their bibles because. Jesus, Paul, and the other Apostles taught awfully against such a twisted notion.
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Sorry, but “faith, not works” is a standard platform for most American Christian doctrine. You know, like the bumper sticker says – Christians aren’t better than anyone else, they’re just forgiven.
Personally, I go with James when he says show me your works and I’ll know your faith, and if there’s a hell, Jesus gave us the guidelines for avoiding it in Matthew 25.
My faith does not rest on the Bible, but in Christ. It rests not in a book written, translated, edited and interpreted by man, but in the Word that became flesh.
God can certainly handle a few questions, He being God. And certainly I question how putting a soul in eternal torment for, say, being born in Saudi Arabia, loving God and neighbor, but not believing Jesus was His son, can be called justice by any stretch of the imagination. Punishment, yes. Justice, no.
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Chris: {{Verses 43, 45, and 47 tell me that we are to do anything to avoid the unquenchable fire.}}
So, how many unquenchable fires are there, beside God? If I say “noneâ€, I think I’m being extremely faithful to the unique and total superiority of our God, the consuming fire!
We cannot avoid God, and surely it is not disputable that we should seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit–often represented as the fire of God, including in the scriptures.
We should of course avoid the wrath of God, but I am not disputing that.
So either the unquenchable fire is the wrath of God in and as the Holy Spirit (which is what I believe), or there is some other unquenchable fire beside God (maybe an equally independent fire created by God???)–a position I am going to strongly dispute against as someone who believes orthodox trinitarian theism is true. (Just as I would deny that the Holy Spirit is an entity substantially distinct from God, created by God, yet ontologically equal to God.)
Whether or not the fire is the Holy Spirit Himself, however, the grammar still states very clearly what the fire of Gehenna is for: salting everyone. Of course we should avoid the wrath of God (and take personal responsibility for our sins, not make excuses about them, which is one of the points to the imagery about ripping out eyes and hands and feet). But the wrath still has salting in view. Nor can it be disputed (which I don’t think you’re disputing) that we should have salt in ourselves and so be at peace with one another. How does the salt get there? By the fire!–i.e. by the Holy Spirit. I don’t think this can be feasibly disputed either. (Surely the salt doesn’t get there by some other unquenchable fire than the Holy Spirit!?)
Put more shortly: yes, we should avoid Gehenna, a state of punishment from God for the rebellion. That’s the primary emphasis of avoidance in the text, too, not-incidentally (“than to be thrown into Gehennaâ€). No, we shouldn’t avoid our God the consuming fire. It’s impossible to succeed in avoiding the omnipresent anyway! But the fire (of God) has the same object whether toward the penitent in Gehenna or toward the impenitent who avoid Gehenna: salting.
That’s what I arrive at when I put all the contexts together.
{{Your second paragraph makes it appear (“would add complexity to the exegesisâ€) that you are bending the scriptures to say something they don’t.}}
It’s strange that you should say so, since the paragraph you quoted was about harmonizing together what one scripture says there that the other scripture doesn’t say, and vice versa. If you put the two Synoptics together on this (GosLuke doesn’t mention this part of the scene at all), you’re going to have more data, and so naturally the exegesis of that more-data will be more complex.
If I’m reporting and accounting for more of what the scriptures themselves say about that scene, I don’t see how that counts as bending the scriptures to say something they don’t say. (Except in the trivial sense that GosMatt says nothing about salting everyone with fire, in topical relation to the fire of Gehenna or otherwise; and GosMark says nothing there about the parable of the 100th sheep or Jesus’ smackdown of Peter’s attempt to find an acceptable limit to the hope of forgiveness. You needn’t complain to me about those omissions. {lopsided g})
Anyway, you didn’t mention what it seems I’m bending the scriptures to say about, in that paragraph, so moving on…
{{Regarding paragraph three, one could view the parable you mention in an opposite manner. Those who don’t forgive will be judged.}}
I’m pretty sure that this is exactly how I viewed it. {wry g} And then I put that notion into contextual play: those who interpret what Jesus quotes from Isaiah (in both Gospels; also back at the Sermon of the Mount, of course) had better not do so in a way to deny God’s forgiveness, or they’re going to be in the position at least of Peter (and maybe in the position of the unforgiving servant).
{{Nowhere in the parable [of the unforgiving servant], however, is eternal judgment mentioned.}}
Not in so many words, nope. But the unforgiving servant will be staying in torment until he pays the final cent; and non-universalist interpreters do (rather ironically) have a habit of reading hopeless, eternally ongoing punishment into that parable anyway–denying any hope of forgiveness for the unforgiving servant.
What the parable does say, is that those who refuse forgiveness in regard to others, will not be given forgiveness themselves in regard to their own sins–not until they pay the final cent. The parable doesn’t explicitly say what that final cent is, but it hints as strongly as possible what it is! (“Was it not also required of you to…?!†“So also shall your Father in the heavens be doing to you, each one of you, unless…â€)
{{In no way would I attempt to put limits on God’s seeking to save sinners since I don’t think there is a case in scripture for it.}}
Excellent! So you in fact agree that God continues seeking to save sinners in Gehenna, then? Including in regard to Mark 9/Matt 18?
Because if you don’t, then you are in fact putting limits (“in a wayâ€) on God’s seeking to save sinners.
(Whereas, if you do agree with that, then I really don’t know why you’re disagreeing with me earlier on Mark 9/Matt18. And why you aren’t a universalist.)
{{If I understand correctly, how a person interacts with the fire will determine whether or not a person goes to hell.}}
Keeping in mind that I mean “the Holy Spirit; our God the consuming fire†by “the fire†(because I think, from larger contexts, that’s what Jesus and the apostles mean, too). Even Calvinists agree that how a person interacts with the Holy Spirit determines whether or not the person is punished by the Holy Spirit–when they’re talking about the elect. Of course they’re talking about hopeful punishment when they do so; for the elect, they have no problem distinguishing punishment and so agreeing that if God doesn’t save us from punishment He still will surely succeed in saving us from sin. Arminians generally agree, but extend that to the non-elect, too; in fact they agree even more strongly (beyond what a Calvinist would accept), since they consider hopeless condemnation to hell a result of rejecting the Holy Spirit and (thereby) God’s salvation. (Calvs would usually say God, and so the Holy Spirit, never had anything at all to do with the non-elect, only with the elect–whom God will persist in saving. The non-elect are not condemned, in broadly Calvinistic theology, based on how they interact with the Holy Spirit, but because God never gives them the Holy Spirit to interact with at all.)
Consequently, whether with Calvs or with Arms (though in different ways), I certainly affirm that how a person interacts with God will determine whether that person is punished by God; and with the Arms (though not the Calvs) I would include determination of whether or not a person goes to hell. Rebellion against God’s authority leads to zorching by God in His authority.
I also believe (from the scriptures, too) that how a person interacts with God will determine whether that person will continue being punished post-mortem, either before or after the general resurrection.
What I don’t believe is that the goal of God’s punishment is determined by how a person interacts with God. (In this, the Calvs would agree with me and I with them, as it happens, in principle though not in scope; they believe God has different operational goals of punishment in relation to the elect and to the non-elect, though still within the overarching goals, or goal, of God.) God determines His goals (even from eternity), and will act to carry them out, including in punishment; any alteration of result is not an alteration of God’s goal–indeed the alteration of result (returning to loyalty instead of rebellion) is itself the goal (at least for the elect)–and occurs within the range permitted by God’s sovereignty.
Calvs and Arms disagree with one another on scope and intention (at the operational level anyway, though not at the strategic level, so to speak); but I agree with both of them (including against each other {g}).
But put very over-simply: yes, I believe how a person interacts with the unquenchable fire (of God’s Holy Spirit) determines whether or not they go to Gehenna; and whether or not they come out. I do not believe that how a person interacts with the unquenchable fire determines the goals of that unquenchable fire, whether the person is in or out of Gehenna.
Just like I believe that how the servant in the parable interacts with his king determines (within the sovereignty of the king) whether he will go into prison and torment or not; and whether he will come out.
JRP
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The Roman Catholic Church has always taught that purgatory is a state in which those who are already saved will be purged of self-love and attachment to sin, before attaining the perfection needed to be in God’s presence. Exactly how this will take place is unclear, insofar as it occurs outside of time as we know it.
No one who is destined for hell will go through purgatory. It’s the final “washing up” in preparation for eternity in heaven.
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Jason,
I’ll just explain here. After reading your response to Cipher again, I was wrong. I think you did answer him, but I disagree with your conclusion.
You wrote:
“It can mean that the object of the adjective keeps going forever, but that doesn’t seem to be its primary meaning in the New Testament (maybe not the OT either).
A better translation would be “God’s own†or “from God†for “eonianâ€; meaning the object comes uniquely from God, according to God’s characteristics.”
I guess my question would be with your conclusion in the last sentence. Where did you get your idea of this “better translation?”
Will you quote a few sources?
In my mind, your initial statement, “It can mean…” seems to fit the text well.
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Max,
I hope that someday you see God like I do: gracious,loving, and deserving of praise. I think scripture backs up my view.
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Chris: {{Can you share an example of these scriptures?}}
(I would have answered in topical line of your question, but we seem to have broken blogger’s comment-nesting system!–there was no “reply” button available back up to this point in the thread.)
It so happens that my singles group will be covering one of the more famous examples tonight at church: Philippians 2:9-11; itself an application of Isaiah 45:23 (among other things) to the coming total triumph of Jesus. “For this reason [having humbled Himself to obedient death, even death on a cross], God also highly exalts Him, and in joy freely gives Him the name that is above every name–that in the name of Jesus every knee should [or shall] be bowing, celestial and terrestrial and subterranean, and every tongue should be acclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord, into the glory of God the Father.”
Even non-universalist commenters and interpreters typically agree that this scope is meant to be absolutely extensive with no reservations or holdouts; thus it’s common to find non-universalists (when they remember to reckon with verses like this, of which there are several others, both OT and NT) claiming on the basis of such verses that even those impenitent rebels hopelessly damned will be forced to acknowledge, grudgingly though that will be, that Jesus is Lord. (i.e., they aren’t just sequestered off in some pocket dimension away from God’s omnipresence–as if that was possible–nor annihilated out of existence. Or not yet anyway.)
There are several technical problems with that doctrinal interpretation, though.
1.) Paul himself is adamant elsewhere that only someone in loyal communion with the Holy Spirit (not under anathema) can confess Christ as Lord.
2.) Paul’s insistence on this makes perfect sense, because the term being used here, which I translated “acclaim” (following Knoch, for example), is itself a technical term that tends to be applied in cases where the doer of the verb is praising God as a loyalist. Not as a grudging rebel holdout, still rebelling in his heart. Moreover, the use of the term in scripture typically involves praising God for His mighty saving victories!
3.) When Paul writes on this same topic toward the end of another famous paragraph of scripture (Col 1:9-20), the context is very explicitly God’s reconciliation with all things to Himself, making peace through the blood of the cross. And Paul is also extremely emphatic about just how far “the all” goes–an emphasis that is closely connected to the absolute ultimate deity of the Son in Shema unity with the Father. “For in Him the-all is created, that in the heavens and that on the earth; the visible and the invisible; whether thrones, or lordships, or sovereignties, or authorities… whether those on the earth or those in the heavens.”
Those verses Paul is borrowing from Isaiah involve much the same topical points. The Lord God is calling together the rebels both of Israel and of the fugitive nations, presenting His absolute Lordship as a righteous God and a Savior as something they can reasonably arrive at a conclusion about due to something–at least due to God’s total salvation of Israel in the Day of the Lord to come (vv.16-17)–and though they are now fugitives walking behind the victorious Lord in chains (and making supplication to Israel victorious in God), God still invites them to turn to Him and be saved (v.22). Then He prophecies that this will surely happen: “I have sworn by Myself / the Word has gone forth from My Mouth in righteousness / and will not turn back / that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue shall swear allegience [the connotation of the verb for swearing in Hebrew there]. They will say of Me, ‘Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength!’ Men will come to Him and all who were angry at Him shall be put to shame. In the Lord all the offspring of Israel will be justified and will glory.”
True, some will be put to shame first — the text is quite clear about that. But that includes the rebel offspring of Israel! And yet, they will be saved, justified and glory in the Lord. And the Lord clearly offers the same salvation to all the nations. When He prophecies therefore that all will swear loyal allegience to Him, He is talking about them being incorporated into the total salvation of Israel.
So again the same topical points: (a) salvation even of the worst rebels; (b) the salvation is total in scope; (c) Israel and the Gentiles are ultimately in the same boat, as rebels, as objects of defeated subjugation to God, and as objects of salvation and restoration; and the strongest possible prophecy of God’s total salvific victory. (As the Hebraist notes in chapter 6 of his epistle, also in regard to the surety of God’s salvation, God swears by Himself because He has nothing greater to swear by!)
This could be greatly expanded upon, of course. These sorts of things can be found in other prophets than Isaiah (though he may be the most routinely emphatic about it), and in other apostolic authorities than Paul (including John and Peter, in their own ways). Jesus has some things to say along this line as well, per the Gospel reports.
JRP
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Then you worship power, not holiness. If Satan wins the war and gives you the same choice, will you bow before Him?
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If there is a hell, then the devil was right to raise high the Pitchfork of Accusation saying, “You are a mere tyrant–powerful, but unworthy of worship.”
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I mean that if God sends me to hell, even then I will refuse to bow before him. And if he forces me to my knees, he will be receiving his own worship, not mine. “The mind is its own place…”
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Well, I hope you mention lacking “what” in our own conversation then. {g} (I thought I included quite a bit that isn’t normally included!)
JRP
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I can’t answer 1.) as I’m not a regular church goer. And in the few visits I’ve made, I’ve never heard mention of hell.
While I’m uncertain on the existence of God, I don’t believe in the afterlife. I don’t feel this post is the proper place to write about that, but if so desired, I can expand on that.
One of my former students had this to say when I asked her about hell, “I believe at the end, we will face Jesus and have a final chance to repent. And no one would be dumb enough to reject him then.â€
What I’ve seen in the Bible about hell (granted, I’ve never been able to get through Acts, I always fall asleep – something that irritated an evangelical girlfriend whose name came from Acts) it seems that the eternal reward does not come immediately after death, but instead upon the return of Jesus. That the dead will be resurrected at that point in time, but prior to that will not be enjoying eternal life in heaven. Also at that time, the damned are cast into hell. Am I reading this wrong? Does my failure to finish Acts hurt my comprehension on the subject? There are plenty of places in the Bible where we are told what actions save or damn us (most notably Matthew 5:35-46), but very few places where what heaven and hell are like or how and when one goes there are mentioned. Or am I missing something fundamental here (no pun intended)?
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Er, that was supposed to go into the general comment thread. I’m going to double post- if an admin person sees this, can you delete the above?
Thanks and I appologize for the inconvenience.
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I can’t answer 1.) as I’m not a regular church goer. And in the few visits I’ve made, I’ve never heard mention of hell.
While I’m uncertain on the existence of God, I don’t believe in the afterlife. I don’t feel this post is the proper place to write about that, but if so desired, I can expand on that.
One of my former students had this to say when I asked her about hell, “I believe at the end, we will face Jesus and have a final chance to repent. And no one would be dumb enough to reject him then.”
What I’ve seen in the Bible about hell (granted, I’ve never been able to get through Acts, I always fall asleep – something that irritated an evangelical girlfriend whose name came from Acts) it seems that the eternal reward does not come immediately after death, but instead upon the return of Jesus. That the dead will be resurrected at that point in time, but prior to that will not be enjoying eternal life in heaven. Also at that time, the damned are cast into hell. Am I reading this wrong? Does my failure to finish Acts hurt my comprehension on the subject? There are plenty of places in the Bible where we are told what actions save or damn us (most notably Matthew 5:35-46), but very few places where what heaven and hell are like or how and when one goes there are mentioned. Or am I missing something fundamental here (no pun intended)?
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Andrew,
Your name sounds familiar. Did you attend Concordia, Portland?
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Fish,
We are saved by grace, but our acts are not irrelevant. Paul mentions these two things over and over.
Is that something difficult for your mind to grasp?
You are not alone.
At some point, a Christian must take a step of faith; he/she must lean not on his/her own understanding.
God is Just. It is stated time and time again in the scriptures.
If I understand your comment correctly, you are questioning God. It is something that Job did although my guess is that he was more righteous than you. I know he was more righteous than I.
Your critique seems so much harsher than Job’s.
Either God is Just or He is not. I believe He is because the Bible says He is.
Either there is a hell or there is not. I believe there is because the Bible says so.
Some things cannot be explained. They must be taken on faith.
I hope that, in the end, you see things as Job did in the end.
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Truth is that all those who die in their sins will suffer God’s wrath. Do I know exactly what that punishment will be? No. All I know is that Scripture is clear that there are two destinies after this life is over: one with God and one without God.
And the poster above who brought up the deathbed conversion point. It is possible that Hitler did have a deathbed conversion and was brought into God’s presence. My point being is that there is no chance in hell (no pun intended) that someone will be with God in glory if he dies UNrepentant according to the Scriptural witness.
I don’t know how that biblical point escapes many people here. Perhaps I am reading a different bible version from what many of you read.
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I hope and pray that he doesn’t. I hope that he communes in the Love of God with his countless victims, who he now calls brother, and basks with them in the endless grace of the Father. I hope that his sins are as far from God as the east is from the west, and that he is blessed that The Lord does not hold his transgressions against him.
I hope that someday I may call him my brother and worship my father with him in celebration of the Lamb that was Slain for the Sins of the world.
I do not believe in universal reconciliation, but I do believe in Universal Love, that we are called toward it, and that we should mourn the loss of any man, not relish in it.
Orthodoxy is important, but if we lose sight of Love and Grace, we are pharisees.
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Cipher,
I agree that the Matt. 25 verses seem very clear.
You comment is convincing.
To Jason,
Not making this comment due to our other conversation. I think Cipher makes a good point. I have to add, however, that I think your answer to Cipher is lacking.
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Yes, I think that’s close to what I had in mind. It seems to me that the primary focus is and should be on healing (our own and creation’s) and communion with God and with each other. Of course, both of those are grounded in the Incarnation and Resurrection, and in the promise of the our own Resurrection and the restoration or renewal of all creation. If we are freed from our bondage to our passions and grow in communion, then ultimate realities will take care of themselves. If we ourselves too much as ‘saved’ and others as ‘lost’, we are in danger of being the pharisee in the parable of the publican and the pharisee. The main point is not what happens to us when we die. It’s not that that’s unimportant. It isn’t. But if we live lives focused on things other than love of God and love of others, if we live a life of bondage (even if we call it something else), if we judge ourselves better than others, if we do not grow in communion, then we will have lived a life that says we do not want God. And to our peril, he may allow our heart’s desire to stand.
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I don’t think the implied problem was with your eschatology, so much as with your motivation. Are we following Christ merely because we wanna go to the theme park instead of the work farm?
Or is there a deeper moving of God, one that wants to conform to His Way, and His Image? The majority of the Bible does not discuss the afterlife, positively or negatively. The Bible spends most of its wordage discussing how to please God, how to Love our Neighbor and how to Transform into the Image of Christ.
Heaven and Hell, however you interpret them, are almost an afterthought scripturally, but modern Christianity spends sooooo much time on them. I believe that is what Scott is getting to. But if I’m wrong, I’m sorry, and that’s what I’m getting to.
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We now know how many posts it take to reach internet monk’s own, very special manifestation of Godwin’s Law! Somewhere around post 200, someone will use Hitler in a theological example, in an attempt to win an argument … 🙂
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Jason,
Again, thank you for trying to explain your beliefs to me. I don’t know if I understand them completely, but I have a better picture.
I have two questions and they relate to the hell question.
How do you explain the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:32-46 in light of your view on hell?
A few verses from the selection:
“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for your from the foundation of the world.” (34)
“The He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels…” (41)
And secondly,
Will someone who denies that Jesus is the Christ, the only Messiah, eventually end up in heaven?
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Jason,
Thanks for sharing your position. I don’t agree with it, however.
You wrote:
“In regard to verse 49 referring to the unquenchable fire, this is simply a grammatic inference from the post-positive {gar} in Greek for that sentence, translated in English (quite properly, and commonly) as “Forâ€. It means that the sentence has close topical relation to the preceding one, especially where the subjects overlap. In this case the obvious subject is the fire.â€
Even if this is the case, I don’t see how it changes the meaning of the text. Clearly, at least to me, there is no evidence that:
“We’re supposed to seek to be salted by the unquenchable fire.â€
Verses 43, 45, and 47 tell me that we are to do anything to avoid the unquenchable fire.
Your second paragraph makes it appear (“would add complexity to the exegesisâ€) that you are bending the scriptures to say something they don’t.
Regarding paragraph three, one could view the parable you mention in an opposite manner. Those who don’t forgive will be judged. Nowhere in the parable, however, is eternal judgment mentioned.
In paragraph four, your “in a way†is a very subjective three words. In no way would I attempt to put limits on God’s seeking to save sinners since I don’t think there is a case in scripture for it.
Finally, you write:
“It’s the same fire, with the same operation and the same goals. How people interact with the fire, is the big difference.â€
If I understand correctly, how a person interacts with the fire will determine whether or not a person goes to hell. However, a person will not stay there and will eventually be redeemed.
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I had forgotten about one of my earliest memories of hell, which was being told that all Catholics were going to it.
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Interesting point…. how would we describe a being who who would torture you forever for not believing the right things in the brief moment of time that is this life? Keeping in mind that the acts you commit are irrelevant to this being, who only cares if you acknowledged his son as God because it was in a book.
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As much as I’d love to claim some surfeit of virtue, I don’t think my rather extreme emotional state had much to do with “strength of character.” As far as I can tell, it demonstrated merely that I am capable of being very intense — and maybe of loosing my marbles under the wrong circumstances! 🙂
Your pragmatic approach strikes me as supremely wise — it all comes back to trusting God in the end, doesn’t it? Funny how impossible it turns to be to subtract from or add to that, even after trying very hard to accomplish the task.
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Thank you for sharing your position and that of the “ultras.” I appreciate the effort.
I do have a question. You wrote:
“But I think there is scriptural testimony scattered here and there that God will eventually save everyone from sin; it may take eons of the eons, but it won’t be a permanent stalemate, and God won’t ever give up on it.”
Can you share an example of these scriptures?
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Eagle,
I spend a couple of weeks each year in Ecuador, and sometimes during a church service we gringos will be invited to give a testimonio. It always makes me cringe when somebody says (in English, followed by a Spanish translation) something negative about the Roman Catholic Church. This is always with a microphone (feedback and all) and everyone outside the walls or over the fence can hear it too. And everyone over the fence is a Catholic. And all of the people inside, though evangelico, have Catholic mothers and grandmothers.
The Catholic Church in South Amerca does have its problems, but gringos badmouthing it with microphones does not help the cause of Christ.
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Just to clarify: I am not asserting in any way that God is a “cuddly tooth-fairy,” nor am I asserting that sin does not have dire consequences. Even if you examine the immediate consequences of sin in this world, they are inescapably serious.
What i mean to say is that the only sure hope I see personally is grace even more ‘serious’ in its intentions and its resourcefulness than is sin or sinful creatures. So, certainly not cuddly. As they say, That Dog Won’t Hunt.
As for my gut: I admit readily that it could be wrong. But I find that the thought of God simply allowing billions of people to go totally beyond all aid to be so terrible — and I cannot see any way around that essential moral feeling. So I hope that the end of the story will have a twist, and hope that my own moral instincts are not the polar opposite of God’s. Ultimately that is up to God. But it is my inescapable feeling.
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If it’s not clear …I am replying to the 3rd post by Danielle near top. and thanks for sharing Danielle…I feel and share your frustration…and some people’s glib and confident answers (O just trust and believe) don’t help much either.
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You are not the only one who struggles or has struggled with it… (and yes I got a lot of hell & brimstone preaching/teaching in my youth as well) I too, if I think about it too long and deeply literally feel myself being driven mad – and yes totally paralyzed. What you described in your 3rd paragraph is me too…and it goes around and around in a circle of kind-of-hope and all-out-terror…. To this day I have never ever ‘felt’ that overwhelming ‘warm – fuzzy’ feeling that’s supposed to indicate that I’ve been saved and should therefore have no doubt or fear…I don’t know if it’s some kind of mental defect on my part, but I to date haven’t been able to obtain, receive, conjure…the peace that some other people seem to have…. all I have to fall back on is ‘I’ll keep trying God, and I guess you can do with me whatever you want because I’m powerless to reconcile the tortured conundrums you’ve allowed us to be in.
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{{I appreciate your help with the Daniel, Matthew, and 2 Thess. verses, and your honesty about not being sure about the eternal torment or annihilation.}}
Actually, I’m quite sure that neither ECT nor annihilation is true (including in regard to those verses)–though of course I might be wrong. {g}
However, I also try to be strictly accurate about the data, so I’m obligated to note that in 2 Thess (also in the Matt verse you mentioned; I don’t recall about Daniel offhand) no hope for those being destroyed is immediately in view. But there are plenty of times in the scriptures when a partial doctrinal set is being referenced instead of a fuller set as found elsewhere in the scriptures (or by adding up scriptural contexts). It is not usually normal comparative exegetics to read the lesser in constraint against the greater. (Admittedly, that might be a proper exegetic in a particular case, but I would want to see reasons for why. Surely it wouldn’t be the first option by default, though!)
{{How would you define supernaturalistic theism?}}
In great detail. {g}
But for purposes of this discussion: a metaphysic which claims the foundational fact of all reality is actively rational (that’s the “theism” part); which claims systems of reality exist that are not this actively rational foundational reality (i.e. not-God natures exist); and which claims these not-God systems and entities all depend for their existence on the continuing action of this rational foundation. Consequently, the action of God is continually present, and in full state-knowledge of, all points of any derivative existence, even if that existence is not itself God.
If God created a not-God reality that continued existing without His active upkeep, then He would have created an equally independent self-existent entity substantially different from Himself. Aside from this being self-contradictory (an equally, thus ultimately independent self-existent entity would not be generated by something other than itself, even in a temporal past action), it would also mean that two substantially separate but ontologically equal entities are now sharing a common framework of reality; in which case that common framework is the real IF (Independent Fact), not the entity we were mistaking to be “God”.
The Judeo-Christian scriptures, relatedly, testify that nothing is equal to God, nor does anything exist beside (much moreso above!) God; God depends on nothing for existence, but is the uniquely “Living” God, “I AM THAT I AM”; all things live to Him; He creates all things, all things are for and by and through Him, and by Him all things continually hold together; whether things in the heavens, or things on earth, or things under the earth.
JRP
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Chris,
Thanks for the questions!
In regard to verse 49 referring to the unquenchable fire, this is simply a grammatic inference from the post-positive {gar} in Greek for that sentence, translated in English (quite properly, and commonly) as “For”. It means that the sentence has close topical relation to the preceding one, especially where the subjects overlap. In this case the obvious subject is the fire.
I suspect Mark shortened the historical report there by omitting a recap of the 100th sheep parable, which Matthew (or the Matthean author) retains for that scene while omitting the salting-with-fire saying. The “For” would still link the fire (and the goal of that fire) topically back through that parable to the fire of the previous saying, though. Replacing the 100th sheep parable back into its place would add complexity to the exegesis, but would ultimately reinforce the scope and persistence of God’s salvation. Mark’s account extends the operation of the fire to everyone and explains its goal; Matt’s account extends Christ’s “little ones” to (what appears to be) the totality of fallen sinners, of whom Christ is not willing that even one should perish. Contextually, that would in fact (if unexpectedly) include the ones ensnaring one of the little ones who already believe in Christ.
I think it’s also pertinent that, in GosMatt, after Jesus repeats some instructions about church discipline (which Matthew might or might not have ported over there for topical relevance), and the scene is over, there is an epilogue where Peter comes back and tries to find some limit beyond which he doesn’t have to forgive his brother anymore. Christ’s warning about looking for such limits is one of the harshest denunciations in the scriptures: the parable of the unforgiving servant!
Any theology that interprets Mark 9/Matt 18 (and similar condemnation sayings) in a way to put limits on God’s seeking to save sinners, beyond which He is hopelessly unforgiving, has just this parable to face in answer to, I think. (And Mark 9:50a, which involves a small parable about unsalty salt, could easily be a way of saying the same thing another way: taking the salt out of the goal of the Gehenna fire, rendering it unsalty, makes it worthy of only being trampled underfoot by men!)
{{It cannot be the unquenchable fire since not everyone is going to hell.}}
Not everyone is going to hell; but you might have noticed that a big theme of my answer in some of your other refs was that the omnipresence of God should not be denied!–and will be apparently becoming very intense.
There is no escape from the Holy Spirit–our God the consuming fire. Including to some other supposedly-also-unquenchable fire. (That would be cosmological dualism of some kind.) That part really shouldn’t be theologically debatable, not among supernaturalistic theists. (More on your question there in the next comment.)
It’s the same fire, with the same operation and the same goals. How people interact with the fire, is the big difference.
JRP
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Oh, Headless, indeed! It was after seeing that film that I said “Wow, I never realised that Clive Barker was a Catholic!”
🙂
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Headless, even the Lazarus and Dives sermons I’ve heard have been more focussed on social justice which, yes, but not the whole point of the parable.
I think the last time I heard Hell mentioned as in the Four Last Things was a Redemptorist mission years back.
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Depends, Mark. If he genuinely repented and sought the mercy of God, then he can be forgiven. To think otherwise is (perhaps) the sin against the Holy Spirit (that is, that there are some sins too terrible which means that they are impossible for God to forgive).
On the other hand, committing murder-suicide as one’s last acts does not strike me as a repentant frame of mind.
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Chris,
Some universalists (call them “ultra-universalists”) do deny any existence of hell in the afterlife; and we have some who post at the Evangelical Universalist forum. But neither I, nor the other guest authors (Robin Parry, chief editor at Paternoster Press in Britain; Thomas Talbott), nor the admins, nor most of the mods, are ultra-u’s.
So the short answer is, actually I do very strongly believe in post-mortem hell. I just don’t believe hell is hopeless. (I even acknowledge it’s technically possible for someone never to leave God’s punishment, whether before or after the general resurrection. But I think there is scriptural testimony scattered here and there that God will eventually save everyone from sin; it may take eons of the eons, but it won’t be a permanent stalemate, and God won’t ever give up on it.)
Put another way, yes I agree there are numerous references to post-mortem punishment of the impenitently wicked (both before and after the general resurrection), and I take those very seriously.
Ultra-universalists… well, I’m not sure I’m the best person to try to represent their case, because while I allow they have some good points I don’t think their exegesis of the hell scriptures holds up under analysis. They tend to be preterist, though: they think the prophecies of punishment for all the impenitent wicked were only about mid-first-century Jews in Palestine and were completely fulfilled with the overthrow of the Temple and the sack of the city in 70CE. Alternately, or sometimes along with that, they also tend to be very strong proponents of penal substitution, and so appeal to the idea that the Son has already been completely punished by the Father (despite being innocent) for all sins, so that there can be no more wrath of God.
I don’t hold that notion of penal substitution (which, among other things, I consider technically contrary to trinitarian theology. I’d still say the same thing whether I was a universalist or not, btw.) And I really have no idea how some of them manage to combine both notions in their thinking (that Christ has already paid all God’s wrath through His punishment, and that all God’s wrath has been spent at Jerusalem in 70.)
Fortunately not my problems. {g}
(To clarify: with most conservative commentors (I think) I do consider some of Christ’s prophecies to be about the fall of Jerusalem, maybe some of them solely so; but I also consider them to have a larger scope in view with multiple fulfillments to be accomplished along the way, with the fall of Jerusalem only partially fulfilling those prophecies. Multiple-range fulfillment is pretty standard in biblical prophecy, of course.)
JRP
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Good question, JeffB. I wonder if it is because these are the questions that make people nervous and they want to be assured by having solid answers.
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Why is it that the things that in all honesty we know the least about (what really happened at Creation, what really will happen in the “end times”, what really is the nature of heaven or hell, etc) generate the most comments? I’m as “guilty” as anyone else, but it is interesting to step back and see how hard the positions are that we take and how much discussion there is on the very subjects that are actually the most speculative.
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Eagle,
As a dutch cradle catholic I never cease to be amazed all all the fundamentalist nonsense (fundamentalist not as in: believing in the fundamentals of the faith, but as in being incredibly moronic and self righteous) that is being regarded as the true sign of being a true bornagain believer…
I don’t believe we all “just end up in heaven in the end” but as to the specifics Jesus is the Judge and not us.
To me any biblical verse about judgement is for me to apply to my OWN life and NOT to the lives of others for I don’t know their hearts.
The more us christians succeed in living like that the more “unbelievers” will be attracted to us as agreeable human beings…
as to them converting… that is between them and the Lord.
Humility is key and often seems to be most absent were the teachings seem to be most “biblical”…
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Scott! I think I write something clever and you pick on a little bit of shorthand I threw in, and you do it in a very opaque way, too! How frustrating.
“Going to heaven” is shorthand for having a resurrection body in a new heavens and a new earth after Jesus returns to judge the world and to reign forever.
That wasn’t the main point, and I don’t know if that will satisfy you either.
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Hitler could’ve had that fabled deathbed conversion, in which case he’s in heaven smiling down at Ghandi in hell.
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Jason,
I followed your link to the Christian Universalist site and then noticed that you identified yourself above with the name.
Is it true that you believe in the reality of an afterlife without the existence of a hell?
I found this definition at Wikipedia.
If this is your belief, how can you square this with so many references to hell in scripture?
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I heard a lot about hell in certain ministries and churches. The more evangelical and hardlined they were the more likely I heard about it. I remember one time going to church (mega church in this case) and they had a Q & A session where people could email or text questions. One question had to do with those who never heard of God why would a loving God send them to hell. It was in the context of someone living in Africa before missionaries arrived. I remember one of the pastors boldly and clearly saying that there is no execuse for someone not knowing God. And that someone on the plains of Africa had an equal a chance as someone living in the west with access to chruch, the internet, etc.. It didn’t bother me at the time, today though I am more of an agnostic who doesn’t believe in God. The issue of hell blows my mind and the certainity of which it has been preached.
Another tipping point for me was hearing evangelicals say that Catholics are not Christians. I remember time and time again in different churches, ministries such as Campus Crusade, etc.. people would say, “Catholics are not Christians.’ Well this issue also hit me hard when my family and I had to bury my Irish Catholic grandmother who I was very close to. I heard stories after her death that simply amazed me, stories of love, grace and concern about those around her. Meanwhile I began to think about all that I heard about Catholics over the years and began to get upset. So again this is another problem for me.
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Jason,
Thank you for your opinion and for trying to help me understand.
I am in disagreement with you over Mark 9. Yes, everyone is salted by fire per our Savior’s Words in verse 49. It cannot be the unquenchable fire since not everyone is going to hell. The fire of verse 49 has to be a different fire than the fire of verses 43,45, and 47.
When you write:
“We’re supposed to seek to be salted by the unquenchable fire”
you have concluded something that I don’t see. In fact, I see exactly the opposite, since we are told it would be better to lose a hand, foot, or eye than to be cast into hell (v.43,45,47).
You also wrote:
That could still be eternal conscious torment, or annihilation, but it would be due to the concentrated presence of God. Again, as someone who considers omnipresence (and supernaturalistic theism) to be established doctrines, I’m not going to willingly go with an interpretation which denies that.
I appreciate your help with the Daniel, Matthew, and 2 Thess. verses, and your honesty about not being sure about the eternal torment or annihilation.
One question: How would you define supernaturalistic theism?
Thanks…
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On the rare occasions it does come up, it is usually in terms of everlasting conscious torment. Personally, I’ve read a couple of Edward Fuge’s books and seen some of the attempts at refuting them and finally had to come to some conclusions.
John 3:16 means that those who don’t have eternal life will perish. Sounds like conditional mortality to me.
Christ himself tells us that we should not fear those who can destroy the body only, but the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell. It is the ECT folks who have to explain away why perished souls are still alive and how destroyed souls remain conscious. Yet, whenever I get into a discussion with them on this, they get emotional and say that I am the one misinterpreting scripture and “reading into” it.
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Libby,
That idea could get you into trouble. Purgatory was the first uniquely Catholic teaching that I believed, and then as I explored the rest of them, i got to the point where I chose to convert.
But, I do think that it is a good topic to discuss, since so many people think that it is a second chance state.
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Rick C…this was a very good comment for your first comment here. Keep them coming!
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And for you John Piper fans, he also has a clip at that outofur website about hell too. His is the longest so far at over 5 minutes. Geesh, I am listening right now on a second window and he is kind of screamy, but I guess he is passionate about what he believes. But I get turned off listening to loud people. If they can’t tell me something I need to hear without hollering it, maybe I don’t really need to hear it. Just TELL me what you want me to know. But that’s just me.
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Back on the first page of comments, Kenny gave us a link to hear N.T. Wright talking about hell. There is also a clip at that outofur website of Tim Keller talking about hell and also Erwin McManus. I wish I could find all the clips in one place. I found Keller’s by doing a search on his name and I just happened to find the McManus clip. It says they did weekly clips of well-known people talking about hell.
I liked the comment that someone made after Wright’s clip. The commenter said if Jesus rebuked his disciples who wanted to bring fire down on some people who had rejected him, then surely Jesus would be against the eternal torment of people.
Chaplain Mike: we will have to add “hell” to the list of things that get people commenting: women as religious leaders, homosexuality, evolution, and now hell. 🙂
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Hi Justin,
Examples would include all those (sometimes sad, sometimes smug) “After they die, the sinners will realize the error of their ways, but it will be too late….” warnings. One might also ponder those mysterious verses about “through a glass darkly” and seeing him “face to face.”
This isn’t a personal doctrine; I’m brainstorming.
I’m also not sure that everyone will come to Christ, but I’m not so impressed by the reasons I heard as a child, anymore, particularly this whole Hell construct.
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In my current church, which I’ve been attending for about a year and a half, I can recall once that the pastor brought up hell, and it was a mention in context (i.e., not an entire sermon on the topic). In general, the pulpit in my church is not used to preach the idea that salvation is all about getting to the right side of things after you die. Salvation is about being taken into and as a result participating in the renewing activity of God, which eventually culminates in earth and heaven being one. That gets a lot more “press time.”
As far as my own beliefs, I spent my very early childhood in a church that had an overly vivid, Jack Chick-like obsession with the topic. Never sat well with me, even as a six-year-old. I then spent most of my childhood into my college years at a church that preached what probably most evangelical churches preach: a literal, ECT view, but one that was softened by descriptions of heaven and how much Jesus really, really wanted to save you from hell. I can’t say I was ever 100% comfortable with that, but I certainly embraced it much more than the original view I was taught. Toward the end of college, I quit going to church for about ten years, during which time I underwent a serious of questionings and changes and revisions and re-revisions.
At present, I’m most inclined to a view probably closest to NT Wright’s (of those who have been mentioned) but I’ve not ruled out annihilationism or universalism either. As a rule, I think Tom Wright has done the best thinking and writing on this subject in recent years, both in terms of what heaven/hell actually means, and in terms of what place these subjects should occupy in our theology (i.e., not as the primary goal of “fire insurance” salvation).
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“A theology that puts more emphasis in the present life than the future life – whether in the liberal or conservative form – is not a theology that deserves the title “Christian.—
your opinion.
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{{In the story-frame, they weren’t destroyed, only lost; but theologically their state amounts to the same thing.}}
Followup: ditto for the prodigal son, who once was destroyed (lost) but now is found!
In the story itself he wasn’t dead, but he was going through a hellish punishment for his sins, which led to his repentance and restoration with his father. (Which his elder brother had serious trouble about!) At any rate, in the analogy of the parable he was “dead” but now is “alive”.
JRP
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why not. It means “not knowing” after all.
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1. What are you hearing in your church about final things?
Not a whole lot, but our pastor does preach on hell occasionally (NEVER on the “rapture” or a Left Behind/Hal Lindsey version of eschatology–in fact, he hasn’t even acknowledged its existence). One of the memorable things he has said is that this life on earth is the closest that a believer will ever get to hell, and the closest that a non-believer will ever get to heaven.
2. How has your thinking developed over the years regarding these doctrines?
I have never been very worried about hell. Before I came to Christ, why would I have worried? And after I came to Christ, why would I worry? As Capon said in Between Noon and Three, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” I think he got that from the Bible 😉
Teaching hellfire and brimstone is not a good tactic for evangelism. I don’t know if it even worked well in the past. When Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” it was unusual for him, not typical of his other sermons. And I can assure you that the same sermon would not be effective today in the same church.
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{{Sorry, but the God we serve is not some nice cuddly tooth fairy.}}
Strongly agree.
{{He is a God of mercy, grace, love AND righteousness.}}
Even more strongly agree!
But then, I keep in mind that the Greek word translated “righteousness”, is literally the compound word “fair-togetherness”. (The Hebrew behind it has much the same connotation, or so I am told.)
Specifically as a trinitarian theist (and especially as an apologist for that theology), I absolutely affirm that (as Peter says in the epistle) “the way of the Lord is fair-togetherness”. Also, as John says in the epistle, that God is love.
I am also careful not to turn around and deny that in order to promote some other doctrine: that would involve promoting some other quite different theology, too. (Unitarian monotheism, or subordinate polytheism, or cosmological dualism, etc.)
Consequently, I will go pretty far out of my way to avoid affirming that the Lord acts toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons. That is what sinners do, rebelling against the (trinitarian) source of all existence, God Himself. And so they are justly ruined in punishment. But if trinitarian theism is true, God cannot be ruining them so as to fulfill non-fair-togetherness toward them!
(Admittedly, that might be fittingly ironic; so would temporarily doing to them as they would do unto others. But in order that they might learn to do better and repent of their non-fair-togetherness–not so that God Himself shall be found fulfilling non-fair-togetherness, unrighteousness! Let God be true, though every man a liar!)
Anyway: yay for God’s righteousness, most certainly! No dispute at all here! {g}
JRP
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Mark, even when Jesus wasn’t talking literally about the Kingdom of God, usually he was talking about it.
Think about the trilogy of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost (prodigal) son. Think about the Samaritan woman at the well, or the Syro-Phoenician woman, or Mary and Martha waiting on him in their own ways. Jesus is all about grace, which is what the Kingdom of God is all about.
Doing a bean-count of whether the “Kingdom of God” is overtly mentioned simply won’t work.
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Well, then, I must have an orthodox view of hell, since I have no problem at all believing Hitler is going there. {g}
I also have no problem believing God can and will save Hitler from his sins, and so lead him out of that imprisonment and punishment into reconciliation with those he has sinned against (both God and man).
Whether anyone else will be willing to accept reconciliation with him, under God, is their problem, I guess.
(A problem Jesus Himself warned very strenuously about…! Insert irony as appropriate.)
JRP
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{{Maybe some scholar can help my development.}}
Well, I’m not a professional scholar (I don’t make my living doing scholarship), but…
Rev 20:15 — I addressed this previously in the thread this morning (after you wrote). Details up there. Put shortly, this isn’t the end of the story. I would put this together with the super-important testimony of Mark 9, too. Speaking of…
Mark 9:44 — It’s important to go on and finish out the whole thought with verses 49-50, where Jesus explains what, and who, that unquenchable fire in Gehenna is for. (For whom? For everyone. For what? For salting. So, salting is a hopelessly tragic thing? Nope, salting is the best of things, and leads to being at peace with one another. We’re supposed to seek to be salted by the unquenchable fire.)
Also, as a supernaturalistic theist (and moreso as a trinitarian theist), I would add that there can be only one unquenchable consuming fire, namely our God Himself the Holy Spirit. Anything else amounts to cosmological dualism.
Matt 5:22 — part of material repeated (at a different time and place) in Mark 9, and so is also qualified by the explanation of the fire’s scope and purpose in vv.49-50. (It’s better not to rebel against the fire, and so be punished by it; but the punishment still has salting as God’s goal. Doubtless not the goal of the impenitent sinner!–but I prefer to put my hope in God achieving His goals. {g})
2 Thess 1:9 — the grammar there, in Greek, tends more to the “Godly whole-ruination” being ‘from’ as in ‘a result of’ God, not away from God. This notion has a lot of parallels elsewhere in the canon (especially the OT). Such an interpretation also has the advantage of fitting omnipresence doctrines (if those are properly established elsewhere) rather than contradicting them!
That could still be eternal conscious torment, or annihilation, but it would be due to the concentrated presence of God. Again, as someone who considers omnipresence (and supernaturalistic theism) to be established doctrines, I’m not going to willingly go with an interpretation which denies that.
Since total destruction is not necessarily hopeless in other texts, however (it can even be considered a necessary preliminary for repentance and restoration in some texts!), it need not necessarily be hopeless here either, even though hope for them isn’t being mentioned in this particular text.
Dan 12 vs Matt 10 — the Hebrew term translated “everlasting” has much the same range of meaning as the Greek term applied for that word afterward, “eonian”; the safest broad interpretation would be that the object of the adjective is uniquely generated by God, or comes from God’s unique characteristics. It might continue on forever, but it might not either; still it comes from God Who does go on forever. (The use of the term is similar to using “Everlasting” as a euphamism for God.)
In any case, the term “destroy” in Matt (and the Lukan parallel) has a pretty broad range of meaning within the concept of ruining. People living in (hopelessly) eternal conscious torment would still be destroyed, within that range of meaning. Then again, God can raise and restore those He destroys; which is a big theme in the OT. He can also save those who have been destroyed (whether by Him or by someone or something else); which is used as a pun (it works the same in Hebrew/Aramaic and in Jewish Greek) in the famous parables of the 100th sheep and the 10th coin. The exact same term is used there to describe the sheep and the coin. In the story-frame, they weren’t destroyed, only lost; but theologically their state amounts to the same thing.
Anyway. Once the broad range of some key terms is acknowledged, there isn’t any conflict between Jesus (via report in GosMatt and GosLuke) and Daniel’s prophetic report. But that same broad range opens up options other than a hopeless result for the destroyed rebels, too. (A result like that of the lost sheep, for example, which the good shepherd goes out after and keeps after until He brings it home and completely restores all His flock. {g})
JRP
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Hey Keo,
I’m glad we can keep talking.
Can you give any examples of the church rhetoric? I’m not sure there’s anything in the Bible to this effect (if there is, please let me know), so I’m hesitant to embrace it.
That being said, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. I hope that every single person comes to Christ, either in this life or (if possible) in the next, having been persuaded that what they’re rejecting is true love. But I think this may be beyond the scope of what Scripture teaches.
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Why wouldn’t he speak delightfully of hell? His doctrine says that hell is one of the reasons why the elect are so happy that they’re saved. His doctrine says that God ordained most people to torture to make the elect happy that they received mercy. And you have to be pretty sick to be happy about that. I don’t know why that would make anyone want to worship. But that’s what he believes and teaches. Why is that slanderous?
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In regard to those people still outside the New Jerusalem in RevJohn 22, fondling their sins?
It doesn’t say they will always continue to do so. It does say “let those who do injustice continue to do injustice” (and continue to be filthy), but it also says “let those who do justice continue to do justice” (and continue to be clean)–and it says this right before a strong evangelical appeal to those outside the NJ.
The rhetorical effect (I would say) amounts to: the unjust may continue to be filthy, but the just will continue to be just by doing what fair people do, which is to evangelize the unjust with hope that they will slake their thirst and rinse their filthy robes (in the water of life, freely given without cost, coming out of the never-closed gates of Jerusalem) and so obtain permission to enter the city to be healed.
RevJohn actually ends with a vision of the risen Church hopefully evangelizing those still outside the New Jerusalem.
Will it be successful? According to the end of chapter 21 (where Christ Himself, figuratively as the light of the NJ, is the primary evangelist), yes indeed it will!–the kings of the earth themselves (who have previously in RevJohn been Christ’s staunchest human enemies and servants of the Beast) will be leading their people into the NJ in loyalty now to Christ.
When was the last time we saw the kings of the earth? Back in chapter 19, where they were getting their bodies scattered for the birds as a result of going up against Christ in rebellion at His return. An action that is described as Christ shepherding them (the term in Greek is very clearly “shepherd”, everywhere else a good thing for the object of the verb) with the rod of iron.
What is the most famous verse in the Bible talking about shepherding with the rod of iron? The end of Psalm 23, the shepherd’s psalm–where the verb “follow me” (as in “surely goodness and mercy will follow me”) is much, much stronger in Hebrew: it’s actually “pursue” or “hound”, and is typically used in the OT in regard to a victorious king routing enemy armies with an intention of overthrowing them (and, where possible, bringing them back into tribute to him!)
That portrait of the kings of the earth getting their butts soundly kicked in Rev 19, turns out to be an application of the same world-famous Psalm we all commonly pray for hopefully in regard to ourselves! (And following out the thematic and narrative logic in Rev 21 and 22, it works for them and is expected to work for others, too.)
There’s quite a bit more of this sort of thing in RevJohn, too; obviously it isn’t very obvious, but then the text is written in prophetic dream imagery, so… {shrug}{g}
JRP
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And what would that test look like, Mark? Real Christians think that Hitler’s sins are too bad to be forgiven by the shedding of the Son of God’s own blood?
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Hi Justin,
I guess I have to reply to myself at this level of indenting.
I am raising that question, yes, speculating that we will understand reality more clearly when we are not saddled with our present state, that our baggage and ignorance will be removed as we move from the physical to the spiritual plane. I know there’s almost nothing in the Bible that speaks to this, but there sure is a lot of church rhetoric to that effect.
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There is the idea that sin is its own punishment. By choosing sin, we neglect the greater things available to us, and we are left to deal with the path we’ve chosen.
On another note, I really don’t like the phrase “go to heaven”. I really don’t the New Testament describes the goal of the Christian life as going to heaven. The end of the book of Revelation describes heaven coming to earth. The question is whether or not we will participate in the Kingdom, and that question is as relative now as it will be in the future.
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Actually, I liked how you phrased it originally. 🙂 The wisdom of God is foolishness to men, so the “fool” who believed God turns out to be wise. I just assumed you were starting a new thought. 🙂
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Just a technical point, but the Apostles Creed only says that Jesus “descended into Hell” (I just found out last week that ‘Hades’ is not used there but the Greek word for “the depths” or “the lowest”). It is I Peter 3:18-20 which says He “preached to the spirits in Prison”.
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Michelle, I felt the same way about “soul-winning” and sharing my faith growing up. If I hadn’t led someone to pray the prayer of salvation yet, how could I be a real Christian? It was not something the Christian adults around me taught blatantly; but it was a necessary conclusion based on the whole package. My passion for sharing my faith has certainly grown, but my understanding of what constitutes “sharing my faith” has also changed. If you’re interested in the topic, I would recommend the book “Irresistible Evangelism” as a starting point. I have just a few negative critiques of the book which I won’t list here, but it is a good book. It opened my eyes to a different way of looking at “sharing my faith”, and allowed me to accept the idea that maybe I’m only one step in that other person’s journey, so it’s OK if I don’t “lead them to pray.” If the job of saving belongs to God, then that’s should be OK, anyway. I can pray (another thing the importance of I’ve become increasingly aware), and I can love. And I can wait and listen for God’s timing, not my own.
Blessings to you on your journey.
Erin
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What do I hear in church about final things?
Thankfully, not as much as I did in youth group growing up, where we had the whole “Thief in the NIght” thing going, and hard-line “say the prayer or be tortured forever” beliefs. I was quite stunned to find clergy and laity who felt it was more important to focus on “The Kingdom of God is at hand” sayings, to consider that salvation is now, not after you die, and that what happens now and the choices you make every minute are worth way more consideration than fussing over what happens after you die.
How has my thinking evolved on it?
Pretty much like a lot of the posters here–I’m aware of the role it plays is the aspects of Christianity dealing with social control, and I don’t think the fire and brimstone rendition of it is necessarily accurate. I take a great deal of comfort in realizing that your relationship with God NOW is far more important than what happens afterward.
(Though I always remember the scene in Southpark where everyone’s standing in Hell and Satan says, “For those of you who were wondering, the correct answer was C), Mormonism…” That pretty much captures a LOT of the problems with classic views of Hell. 😉
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‘First post on iMonk. ‘Been following a while.
I was raised in a small Pentecostal denomination that taught the “traditional view” of ET: (“eternal torment,” which says souls are created immortal, and all will spend eternity in either heaven or hellfire). A few years ago I studied this more in-depth and came to “lean” toward CI: (“conditional immortality,” also known as annihilationism, or more recently, conditionalism). I also studied UR: (“universal reconciliation,” aka, universalism, which teaches “post-mortem salvation”). Of the three views I found UR with the least biblical support, ET with not much, and CI the most. However, I currently say “I’m convinced of conditionalism about 95% due to a couple problem passages.” One verse in particular has me leaning toward the CI view: Matt 10:28. This, plus the rest of the teaching of scripture. Someone mentioned, “The wages of sin is death.” Thus, I currently hold that immortality is conditional and do not believe souls are created immortal.
I haven’t heard much about “hell” in years, as I haven’t been to any fundamentalist churches in a long time. It was “read” from a scripture at a UMC church I was attending for a while not long ago. The pastor was reading from one of the gospels where Jesus mentioned it. (*Note, the English word “hell” is not used in most modern translations. Most translate directly from the Hebrew (sheol) or Greek (gehenna, hades, tartarus).
I was hoping N.T. Wright might ‘enlighten me’ in some of his more recent writings. But what he seems to have come up with is a mixture of rabbinical views of the NT and Intertestamental eras, mixing it in with the traditional view. A ‘syncretistic theory’ of sorts.
Right Now – I’m not exactly sure *what* to think!!! The reason being is that when Jesus spoke of “hell” (the NT word “gehenna” is the Greek word, though he probably spoke Aramaic), he seems to have been pointing toward the coming judgment of rebellious Jerusalem in 70CE, where the souls (“the very lives”) of his listeners might be destroyed.
Winding this down: I don’t know to what extent Jesus himself taught about “hell.” To his contemporaries, you can’t miss it (if “gehenna” is understood to be a literal judgment which would happen soon upon his unbelieving (wicked) hearers).
Paul preached to Gentiles that Jesus would be the “man whom God appointed” as the judge of the secrets of men, and of all humanity (Ro 2:16, Acts 17:31). Jesus and Paul taught bodily resurrection and final judgment.
But I don’t know what the details are…and haven’t heard much in church (but I’m not really going to any “church” much—just visiting a couple places from time to time). This is an incredibly DEEP topic! Thank you for reading.
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I am not offended. I just think your gut assumption is wrong. Sorry, but the God we serve is not some nice cuddly tooth fairy. He is a God of mercy, grace, love AND righteousness.
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One of the ways we can test someone who holds to an orthodox view of hell is whether one believes that Adolf Hitler is going there or not.
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That is such a slanderous remark against John MacArthur. Never does MacArthur delight in the idea that non-believers will suffer eternally in hell. The reason why he preaches the way he does is because so many so-called Christians these days are moving away from traditional beliefs of the church for more perverted teachings of the modern age which promise freedom when it actually puts people in bondage.
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“The people who believe in the “eternal torment hell†seem seem to take great pleasure in the idea of it, imagining that people who are not of “them†will suffer greatly.”
Oh, so you’ve heard John MacArthur preach, too, huh? 😉
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What I am hearing about hell comes from American Conservative Churches, and it distresses me.
The people who believe in the “eternal torment hell” seem seem to take great pleasure in the idea of it, imagining that people who are not of “them” will suffer greatly.
I don’t believe in Hell, because Hell is something that I would some up with. The vengeful, spiteful me. The “fire and brimestone God” would be a monster.
What happens to “bad” people?
I think they are given one more chance to repent, to understand what they did, maybe even make amends somehow. (The creeds say Jesus preached in “hell”..) If the do not, at the Final Judgement, they simply cease to exist.
The wages of sin is death, Paul wrote. He did not write the wages of sin is eternal torture.
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Thanks, Phil. I get your point.
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Well, those who are right are clearly right. And the others are clearly wrong.
It’s so simple, don’t you see?
🙂
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Thank you for this, I’m not sure that I have anything to add. I admit to not having the strength of character to wake up crying for that long. But I also took the pragmatic approach of ‘stepping back from the brink’ and leaving the whole question up to God – for my own sanity’s sake.
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Ditto. I love Jesus but I can’t bring myself to beat people over the head with infernal threats. And I refuse to feel guilty about that. I’m not hiding in the closet, but I’m not going door to door or standing on the corner with a megaphone either.
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wait wait wait! I thought Jesus taught more about MONEY than anything else… I suppose we all come to Jesus and hear what we want.
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I’m sure dwelling on it could have that consequence. But I also think that if you refuse to consider it’s possibility, then you already are insane.
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I’m not sure what you mean, but I pray that you get to understand the vast difference.
I’m not sure if your judging God based off the actions of His believers, but don’t let any of us put a bad taste in your mouth; experience Him for yourself!
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I understand your dilemma (to put it lightly). I experience the same kind of wonderings on a regular basis. I understand that a good and righteous judge by nature must exact justice on evil, but then there’s Jesus on the cross. But somehow that is only the remedy for a few certain people, and nobody can agree who, how, or why. The search for the “one true church” and all. I sometimes wonder of the Orthodox ever wonder about this. My agonizing over the issue hasn’t been as severe, as my trite answer has to some degree been able to comfort me in times of doubt: Anyone who possesses within them a fear of damnation and helplessness has the evidence of their election right there. That sort of contrition MUST be the work of God, and it proves our heart’s submission to His justice and plea for mercy.
Whether or not hell exists for others is another matter entirely. I certainly don’t live like I believe it is true. But I can’t bring myself to proselytize out of fear or threaten sinners with damnation: It just doesn’t seem intellectually honest. I like when Piper says (forgive me if this has been quoted in this discussion 100 times already): “Heaven is a place for those who love God, not those who are afraid of hell.” But if hell is real, how are we rationally NOT supposed to be afraid of it?
There are some matters of faith I fear that I will never understand. But at least I know I belong to Jesus. I think. I’m pretty sure… As R.C. Sproul says, nobody loves God with all their heart and soul, the way they ought to. But if you find that you love Jesus just a smidgen, barely noticeably at all, then that can only be the result of a regenerated spirit and thus you are elect. Or, not going to hell if it does exist.
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“An atheist may be raging against a false shadow of God, in which case they may well be acting in cooperation with the witness of the Spirit in their hearts!”
Excellent point! I have several friends who have been scarred by extreme fundamentalism who are now agnostics/atheists. They are working through their anger towards that “false shadow” that for years they believed was the one true God.
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I can at least understand your sentiment, even if I disagree with your conclusions. I take that sort of “God knows, I don’t” stance on certain issues also. I think that we can both agree that God is just and will judge everyone correctly. We probably just have different ideas about what that means. =)
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“The end-of-days focus I grew up with which has turned into the LaHaye series never gave me that passion.”
You know how sometimes you’re reading through something and a sentence just jumps out at you . . . this one jumped out at me. I grew up with the hellfire-and-brimstone-wretched-urgency, where how many souls you lead to the Lord determines your worth as a Christian. Sharing our faith became an ugly thing–a competition and a guilt-ridden thing. I’ve never had a passion for sharing my faith, and have felt tremendous guilt over that, and this comment helps me see why I felt that way. The faith I was taught wasn’t a living faith, it was fire insurance.
Thanks, Erin.
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majority rules?…….nup
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I would tend to say that your formulation of salvation as ‘going to heaven when you die’ is at least as much a problem as any idea of hell you might hold and is very likely more of a problem.
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I grew up going to SBC churches in the 60s and 70s–didn’t hear too much about hell. I attend a UMC church now, and the word “hell” is uttered from the pulpit maybe once every three years.
I have a couple of touchstones in my thinking about hell.
First, if I don’t believe that I deserve hell, then I don’t need a Savior. Jesus didn’t need to die for my sins because I’m going to heaven anyway, and I can spend my time pleasing myself (which is mostly what I do anyhow).
Second, if I don’t believe I deserve hell, then I don’t have a Savior, because I haven’t really repented of my sins.
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Danielle,
Thank you for sharing your story. Your experiences ring very true, and the place where you have come to in your thinking also mirrors my own journey.
God bless,
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Rick, I never said that Jesus did not spend an awful lot of time talking about the Kingdom of God. In fact, Jesus’ ministry was about the Kingdom and calling those he ministered towards to repent and believe so that they will not miss out in participating in the Kingdom, now and in the future.
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I’d like to respond to your question, but first can you clarify something? When you wrote “and not just through our mortal and fallen veil”, do you mean that people would have a clearer view of God’s love after death than before it?
Sorry, but I don’t want to try and answer your question if I’m not sure I’m on the same page as you.
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To answer the question directly, I heard about Hell fairly frequently as an E. Free Church teenager. My pastor did not take the fire-and-brimstone approach, but he did mention it. There was never a feeling that the topic was being avoided. That said, I am sure I heard it more often on the radio, and our youth group went to various youth evangelistic events where Hell was most definitely the main topic. I remember one fellow in particular discussing how much Hell would hurt and that it was eternal — something like being set on fire and dropped into a bottomless pit, which would be something like 1000 times worse than having cancer. Naturally this terminated in an altar call.
Since college, I’ve been hiding out in mainline churches and the topic comes up but is never commented upon. For example, my current pastor will invoke the sheep and the goats parable, often by playing a recording. But she doesn’t interpret it. She lets it dangle, so I guess we’re supposed to come to our own conclusions.
My own perspective is not as informed as it should be — I can only say that Hell troubles me as almost no other issue does. It always made me uncomfortable as a young person sure of my beliefs. Later, it brought about a major mental … crisis, I guess you could call it. Right after I discovered how many theological perspectives there were, and started to wrestle with questions like “what is the true church?” and “how can I know I am saved?,” it went from a troubling thought to a completely paralyzing. No matter what I did or thought, there would always be some dim possibility that I was wrong and lost — or simply reprobate. (I had just discovered hyper-calvinism, so I considered my own doubts possible proof that I wasn’t saved simply because God didn’t want it that way — and yes, I know that’s not the the thought double-predestination, but to my mind it’s always been a logically possible conclusion.) And if there was even a one percent change that I was outside grace, how could I stand it? What if I was accidentally not only going to Hell but making other people go there because I was a leader in the youth group? What if I had kids someday, and I misled them, and it was all my fault? Can you take even one step forward, with the possibility of something that terrible hanging over you? I mean, its eternity, how can you stop thinking about something so vast and frightening? I was completely terrified, and I very much wanted to die rather than face it — well, un-exist, not die. (Dieing sounded like probably the worst possible idea, considering the nature of the dilemma!)
I eventually learned to keep these kinds of thoughts under tight control to avoid falling into this spiral of thinking. How many nights can you really wake up crying? (Answer from personal experience: about a year.) You have to find someway out or give up.
Oddly, all this had the opposite effect on my husband: he got such a heavy dose of it as a child (largely due to raiding his father’s chic tracts comics and books) that he’s almost totally desensitized to it.
I know this will make me sound a bit wishy-washy, but think I’ve backed into a bit of an agnostic position on Hell. Part of this is entirely practical: the idea seems only to have negative effects on me. I can’t seem to get anywhere unless I simply make the leap to believe that if God is the kind of God that chooses to die on the cross, then God will somehow not let me fall completely outside grace by accident — even if I turn out to be wrong on major doctrines, or am too psychologically turned around to understand my own heart or motives and how evil they really are …. or … well, insert your favorite misgiving here!
I guess I would push even further than this to admit, frankly, that I find the idea of anyone going to an eternal Hell, let alone most of humanity, to be almost to terrible to contemplate. I am not prepared to say that Scriptures that discuss Hell are wrong or not describing something real …. but on a basic, gut level, I also find myself compelled to believe that God doesn’t want (let alone predestine or otherwise engineer) creation end up in such a state. I have no idea what lies beyond, but I have to believe …. I guess I hope …. that God’s gracious purposes in the world are too wonderful to imagine and that somehow, someway God’s purposes will be realized, perhaps in ways no one imagines or suspects. I do not know if that makes me a universalist: I guess it means that I pray very earnestly that God is a universalist and that in the end sin will somehow be conquered completely.
BTW, I hope no one is offended. Please understand, this is a really hard topic for me.
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That’s odd. Lately Camping seems to be espousing some sort of annihilationism…
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Well, as long as we get really cool uniforms.
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That is a very low view of sin.
Jesus Christ died to pay the price for sin. Those who reject His payment must pay a similar amount.
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Wright affirms some version of hell, but it’s not the hot, burny version.
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Well, obviously many of those who are posting here do, so I wonder how clear the supposedly “clear” teaching is.
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I’m not really talking about divine impassibility. I do believe God emotes and feels pain (although, historically, saying the Father suffered on the cross is known as Patripassionism, and is generally considered heresy).
What I’m reacting against is the notion that God can somehow be wronged in a way that He requires reimbursement or repayment of some sort. I just don’t see any support for that view in Scripture. Sin isn’t “ripping God off” in some way. Sin is primarily destructive to us.
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Sometimes it’s hard to tell God apart from the Devil.
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I think there’s a lot more truth in this than people realize.
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Well put. The use of eternal damnation as a threat seems to turn God into nothing more than a cosmic protection racket.
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What are we saved from? Irrelevance. Uselessness. Finiteness. A short, violently ended personal history in which all our labors to make things better matter no more than a season or two after our deaths. Before the Cross we were born merely to die. After, we are all connected in an unbreakable chain with God.
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Chaplain Mike,
“There is a sense that these subjects, especially the teaching of hell and eternal judgment, is out of vogue and not being emphasized.â€
I am one who has this sense. Once the focus of much discussion these topics, particularly hell, get little pulpit time.
The pastor at the church I attend handles these topics in a balanced fashion. I haven’t heard a sermon about hell for awhile, but the topic is discussed in a correct proportion.
Everyone likes to talk about heaven.
Most churches that I’ve been in speak of hell too little or too much. It seems like “too little†beats “too much†by a long shot these days.
On the second question…
Maybe some scholar can help my development.
Regarding the eternal nature of hell, the first two verses in those listed below seem to conflict. They are from the NASB.
“Everlasting†is in Daniel’s verse and “destroy†is in Matthew’s verse. Is there an answer for this?
The 2 Thess. verse seems to be a toss up.
Can anyone help me here?
The last three verses seem clear. Hell is described as a place of fire away from the presence of the Lord.
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. – Daniel 12:2
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. – Matt. 10:28
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might… -2 Thess. 1:9
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. – Matt. 5:22
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. – Mark 9:44
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. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. – Rev. 20:15
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Until today, I had no idea you could be “agnostic” on a particular subject.
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So if my daughter makes a bad grade on her test, I should set her on fire, slowly and cruelly, and make it last as long as I can before she dies?
That seems to be approximately your concept of God’s justice. An infinite punishment for a finite offense.
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Hell is literal and eternal.
To deny that is to deny Scripture.
Blunt, brash and frank all rolled into one I know, but we cannot deny this clear teaching in Scripture.
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I wonder if that is one of the bases of the idea of Purgatory…
Heard somewhere that one of the Orthodox Church’s theories about Hell is similar to the one Lewis used in The Great Divorce — that Hell and Purgatory are both the same state; the difference is, if you are able to grow out of it and enter God’s presence, it was Purgatory. If you never grow out of it, it’s Hell.
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The tiniest sin warranted eternal separation from God, and the punishment wasn’t just bad, it was infinite. Only the smallest fraction of people who ever lived would become saved.
Sounds like Camping was the archetype of the Hellfire and Damnation preacher.
Wonder if Mark on these comment threads was influenced by him…
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Cipher, I believe it is only through Jesus and because of Jesus that any of us will be in God’s presence. And I do think that there will be suffering for the sins we have committed. How that all works, I don’t know. I guess Jesus is going to have to answer your questions. He knows these things, not me, as I obviously did not make clear.
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A sane attitude, Libby. I like what St. Ireneus of Lyon said: “We know nothing of God’s judgment, only his mercy.” I’m paraphrasing.
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It seems to me that the Neo-Reformed love Hell– and nice and hot and literal. For those “other” folk, those reprobates of course. Whew… thank God that GOD chose to display his GLORY and his PLEASURE by choosing me. Amazing grace! Too bad about that other poor sap who’s roasting for all eternity to display God’s glory. Oh well, I’M SAVED!
If I recall Jonathan Edwards even suggested that one of the pleasures of the Elect would be watching the sufferings of the Reprobate.
Besides, Jesus spoke way more about Hell than he did about Heaven– if you use a really un-nuanced English translation and don’t do any of those liberal word studies.
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Traditionally the answer is sin and death. Even if there were no hell, sin and death would continue to torment us and destroy any chance of peace. I’m not saying I think there is no hell — I think there is. But my immediate concern, right this minute, without considering a distant future, is to be saved from my sin nature and from the fear of death.
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As far as God suffering, and suffering loss, surely we have to believe that he did in the person of Christ crucified. It’s appalling that he did, and it seems wrong to us, but that’s the scandal of the cross. An impassible, impervious god is a Muslim idea, not a Christian one. Or perhaps I’m not understanding the issue you raise, Phil. If so, forgive me for misrepresenting you.
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Um…so Jesus came to save us if we grab the hand he offers us, but people who don’t still go to heaven? Our actions matter, but there isn’t punishment for sins?
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The problem with the idea of universalism is that the bible seems to show more often a future of damnation for different people than salvation for all at the end, from time to time the apostles use the word damnation.
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I think you are mistaken in one think, the ¨net value¨ you are referring is extrinsic to the self, the ¨net value¨ of God is intrinsic to himself, even our value is intrinsic to him in some way, when we sin we deny our value denying him, so i think your example doen´t follow.
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Nah, your not alone, I’m with you.
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I agree with much of what you said Joshua. I’ve also come around to a Hebrew understanding of hell. God doesn’t force people to align themselves with him. “Hell” is that seperation, I think when Jesus talks about it he’s mostly using metaphors to describe how terrible that seperation from god really is. Do most people come around, probably, do they have to, of course not.
I’m not sure Justice requires punishment. Sure people who don’t believe in Jesus have done bad things, but so have the people that do believe, does justice require them to be punished too
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Clarification: I would tune into Camping’s show in the middle of it, not at the beginning.
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Chaplain Mike,
Okay, Harold Camping again, as I was converted through his ministry. Camping taught about hell probably twice as much as all other doctrines combined, no exaggeration. The tiniest sin warranted eternal separation from God, and the punishment wasn’t just bad, it was infinite. Only the smallest fraction of people who ever lived would become saved. It was utter torment to sit under his teachings on hell. Later on, after I parted ways with him, I would tune in to his radio show to see what the first word out of his mouth was. An amazing amount of the time it was hell, or eternal damnation or lake of fire, or judgment day, etc.
Later, through mostly Reformed-ish Baptist-ish churches, I heard about the same doctrine of hell, namely that all unbelievers and false Christians (i.e. all the non-elect) would spend eternity in hell. But the frequency and strength of that doctrine did lessen over the years. It’s been a few years since I’ve heard any real pointed teaching on hell.
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Chap Mike, You said: “And so (he said, trembling), let the discussion begin.”
You are so funny.
Now, I’ll read the comments and see if I am still smiling.
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Sure, it could mean that. The bigger question would be whether that is even possible. Last Battle aside, would God’s creation really reject him, really reject pure love, if they saw it / felt it / knew it clearly and not just through our mortal and fallen veil? Could God’s discipline and his self-revelation be that ineffective?
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I don’t dispute that there will be a class of people who will not experience God’s salvific grace; vv 16-17 seem to me to be referring back to vv 5-9 and is referring specifically to those in leadership positions who will “receive a harsher judgment” (James 1-2). Those who lead their flocks astray might well face the judgment of Matthew 7:21-23.
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I think it’s all a matter of justice.
Why did Christ die?
Saludos de Chile, con una preciosa primavera, gracias a Dios.
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J. Random, I like your analogy very much!
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Actually, I see it more as an Urban Park- yeah, there are crystalline abodes, but there is also the ever-present River of Life flanked by the Orchards.
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You think good Christian folk here would watch a movie like HELLRAISER 2???
“Now, all we need…. is skin.”
“Decieve us again… and your agony will be legendary~ even in Hell!”
😉
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I was wondering what you meant by “All-Enveloping Fire of YHWH/Jesus”. However, after looking it over again, I see what you meant. Oh, the woes of different terminologies. LOL
However, I myself take issue with the phrase “All-Enveloping Fire of YHWH/Jesus”. Not so much the “All-Enveloping Fire” part, but rather the “YHWH/Jesus” part. We are to be in communion the Triune God- Father, Son, Holy Spirit. While the referencing YHWH is perfectly understandable, to then go and say “/Jesus” can have the unfortunate side-affect of seemingly disregarding the Holy Spirit. Now, I’m sure you did not mean this at all.
I apologize again for being picky.
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Where do ya think I got my “All-Enveloping Fire of YHWH/Jesus” concept from? *G*
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My favorite interpretation is the “New Jerusalem” as a flying Borg cube, 1000 miles on a side. Cruising the universe with Cpt. Jesus!
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Thanks for sharing, JoanieD.
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“And can we assume that the purpose of this story? parable? historical account? was to clarify our understanding of how Roman Catholic / Protestant hell works? That seems doubtful, at least.”
Hey, Keo! I don’t think that was the point of the parable, either. I think Jesus, in this instance, is much more focused on a person’s actions (and by extension, the state of their heart). Given that the rich man seems to hold fast to his sinful actions, even in torment, I think it’s still fair to raise the question, with the understanding that Luke 16 wasn’t meant to be a behind-the-scenes look into hell. I think even my question is focused more on the state of people’s hearts, not where they’ll exist after death.
Also, another related question: If people keep sinning in hell and their refusal of God is not just limited to their time on Earth, then wouldn’t that mean that eternal, conscious hell is not an over-reaction on God’s part?
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My introduction to Christ was through Jack Chick tracts and Pin-the-Tail-on-The-Antichrist hellfire preaching. After that intro, I find I have to push any thoughts of afterlife completely out of my head just to be able to function without falling into despair.
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“What can be injured can be killed” – not necessarily. An infinite God might take an infinite amount of damage. Is this not evidence of the great wrath building up, which will be poured out to devour the world in fire?
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How can God be just and not punish? Jesus died for sin. If someone rejects Jesus’ payment, they must pay. How great was the payment made by Jesus? To devalue Hell is to devalue the payment of Jesus.
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Re the image of New Jerusalem:
Has anyone noticed the final image in Revelation is Heaven coming down to Earth, not us “Going to Heaven”? And that what comes down is symbolized as a CITY? An urban environment?
So then why do contemporary Evangelical images of Heaven (TM) always show a rural-to-small-town envirorment? (Example: Left Behind: Volume whatever shows either the Millenium or Heaven itself as a never-ending Small Town America, with endless flat prairies speckled with eternal Pleasantvilles & Mayberries.) Especially when the words “pagan” and “heathen” originally meant “country hicks” because Christianity first spread to the citites, then out into the countryside?
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1. I hardly ever get to church any longer (I am Catholic, so that is not good at all!) so I can’t say with any certainly what my local priest says about Hell, but from having heard him maybe 40 times, I don’t think it’s a topic he would spend a lot of time on. He is more apt to point out the love of God for us. He is more apt to encourage us to forgive one another, pray for one another. Spend time listening to God in private prayer.
2. I grew up with the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment for those who reject Jesus. The details on how one was tormented were not clear. This became a problem for me as I tried to make sense of an all-loving God allowing this to happen. I came to understand that it was the person’s own choice to go to this Hell, not wanting any part of God. But then, I thought, this person must have never really known God because if the person had known God, it would seem impossible that he or she could reject that loving presence. So, if in their lives they had not known God, would they then know God at the moment of their deaths? Would they then be given that last chance to say, “Yes, God, I see your love for me and I accept your love for me.†I hoped so. So, then, I ask myself, “But what about the people who did such evil on the earth? Do they just go straight to be with God?†That helped me to understand why Catholics have the concept of purgatory. These people would experience some kind of painful purging, based on the evil they had done. I understand that Pope Benedict has spoken of purgatory as something that could be instantaneous.
I think our problem is that we don’t understand the nature of eternity. If at death we pass into eternity, then it’s possible that at death the person goes into eternity which means EVERYTHING is done and over. Eternity would mean that the person goes into an existence where you, me, all of us are done with our lives on earth too. So, this leaves the possibility of there being some people who would STILL reject Jesus even at the time of the death. What happens to them, I wonder? There is one of Jesus’ parables that could lead a person to the thought of purgatory, when he talks about a person having to go to prison UNTIL they have paid their debt. That UNTIL would indicate that after the debt is paid, they get out of prison.
I read a book within the past year recommended and reviewed by Scot McKnight which led to me considering myself to be a “hopeful Christian universalist.†IF everyone is with God in the end, it’s because of Jesus. I am only “hopeful†because I cannot know that this will happen. The book also made some good points about annihilation as well. It’s also possible that at the end of time, the only thing that is forever eliminated from existence is evil itself. There are passages of the Bible, however, which make it appear that some people just will not be a part of this new world, though. Even as late as Revelation 22:15 we have a list of people who will remain outside its gates. I have read N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope and I know he believes that there still may be people who reject the Good News of the love of God. He also believes that our idea of heaven is incomplete and that we have forgotten that God will make all material things anew. We will have resurrected bodies and somehow all of creation will be different. It is hard to imagine how that will all work out, but since Jesus did resurrect with a physical body, I do believe that God has a plan in mind!
In the end, it’s a mystery to me, and I guess that is how it should remain. I am not going to guess who will be in and who will be out. I remember reading a story (it may have been on the Parchment and Pen blog) about a Christian who went into a bar. A man in the bar told the Christian that if the Christian really believed that non-Christians were going to be tormented for eternity, then if the Christian really loved people he would spend every waking moment trying to convince people to become Christians. Since Christians were NOT doing that, the man said that Christians either did not really love or didn’t really believe what they taught. It’s something to consider.
To the people who say, “Well, if EVERYONE is going to end up with God, in heaven, etc., what was the point of Jesus’ death and what is the Good News?†my answer is that the Good News is that God DOES love us, no matter how badly we have acted. We don’t have to EARN our way into heaven. Jesus’ perfect life and perfect death “paved a path†so to speak for anyone who grabs onto the hand that Jesus proffers to us. His perfect love is here now to conquer the evil around us, within us. How could this not be Good News? How could this not be the most amazing news ever!!
It does seem from many passages in the Bible that people will be rewarded differently, depending upon what their conduct was like on earth. Again, as late as Revelation 22:12 we have, “I bring with me the reward that will be given to each man as his conduct deserves.†So, for those who say if we are all going to be with God just for believing in Jesus and doing nothing more…think again. What we do matters to Jesus.
I don’t usually write such long comments. Sorry about that, and thank you to anyone who got all the way through this!
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Does anyone remember the character of The Doctor in Hellraiser 2? The one who, after he is pulled into the Hell of the Labyrinth and turned into a Cenobite, says “And to think… I hesitated.” THAT one like says it all — he ENJOYS being Damned in Hell; he has made himself so twisted that Hell is the only place he can ever feel at home. Forever.
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Not to put words in his mouth, but what I think he’s asking why a just God would punish a finite being for infinity. Someone is punished for billions of years for what they did in the blink of an eye?
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A couple of things about that parable:
1.) Yes, the adjective “eonian” is used there in the text, including with {kolasis} for punishment. It can mean that the object of the adjective keeps going forever, but that doesn’t seem to be its primary meaning in the New Testament (maybe not the OT either). See my comment above about John 3:36 to give one example–the resurrected wicked keep on living (if annihilationism is wrong, and I would say it is), but certainly not with life eonian. They live in eonian crisis instead (which is the term typically translated “judgment” in English.)
A better translation would be “God’s own” or “from God” for “eonian”; meaning the object comes uniquely from God, according to God’s characteristics.
2.) {kolasis} is an agricultural analogy, which would be better translated as “brisk cleaning”. It’s a type of punishment with the goal of improving the object. (The author might or might not have meant it that way, but the broader sense of the term leaves it open to contextual interpretation.)
3.) Those goats being given brisk cleaning from God’s own unique nature, are most certainly baby goats in the Greek. Whereas the other term, though typically translated ‘sheep’, really means “flock” more broadly. (It’s used very often in the NT, and often translated sheep, but ironically could just as easily mean “goat” or any other small herd animal.)
4.) I think it’s worth pointing out that those baby goats being sent off for some brisk eonian chastisement, are being judged this way because, among other things, they refused to visit (and so give hope) to the least of those who belong to Christ in prison. So now they’re the least of Christ’s flock in prison! Which is quite typical for expectation-reversal judgments in the Gospels, especially the Synoptics, of course.
However, should the sheep (or the mature flock) now become like the baby goats, and do that which got the baby goats punished with eonian kolasis?!
(I’m thinking that at least one coherently theological answer is, “NO!” {g})
JRP
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I want to look into the concept of hell more deeply (perhaps by reading the book mentioned by EricW).
I find it interesting that even Christians holding the most conservative/traditional views on hell are willing to make their views more tolerable by adding to what is revealed in the Bible. For example, most Christians claim that children and the mentally handicapped will avoid hell, regardless of whether they consciously accept Jesus.
Personally, I hope I’m pleasantly surprised by the magnitude of God’s grace and love when I reach eternity. I guess I’m a hopeful universalist.
Chap. Mike, I’d love to hear your perspective.
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The erratic movement of squirrels is because they have evolved to be tough to catch by predators. It is now working against them with automobiles.
Anyway, I make no point about the moral being of rodents. I question that God is capable of being injured by humanity.
What can be injured can be killed. Collectively, if man’s sin injures God, He’s surely dead by now.
The creation injuring or killing its creator is nothing new in science fiction or religion, but it’s a new concept to me as far as its application to Christianity.
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Ned,
Certainly, he who is continuing to be stubborn as to the Son (that’s a more literal translation of the Greek) shall not be seeing life, but the wrath of God is remaining on him. But…
1.) What life will he not be seeing? By context, “life eonian”. This certainly means something much more than merely life that keeps on going forever, because (unless he’s annihilated) the one who continues to be stubborn as to the son will get that kind of life anyway! He’ll be seeing resurrected life, too, yet not life eonian; so life eonian means something much more than to be resurrected, too.
2.) The text doesn’t say that the situation is hopeless for the one who continues to be stubborn as to the Son. But obviously (I might even say ‘naturally’!), so long as someone continues stubborn as to the Son, they cannot receive (much less share in) the “zoe eonian” available through the Son.
It may be worth noting that immediately before this, the Baptist (or maybe the Evangelist, commenting on the Baptist) testifies that the Father has given absolutely everything (simply “all”) into the hand of the Son. So those people who are stubborn as to the Son, do still belong to the Son. The best place for them to be, terrifying though it can be, is in the hand of the living God.
They may only be baby goats, not mature members of the flock (borrowing the image from the judgment of the goats); but they’re still His baby goats. {g} (The Greek in that parable is definitely and emphatically “baby goat”, btw. You may have heard of that already, but it was news to me; I hadn’t even noticed until about a month ago…)
JRP
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Interesting question, Justin. Of course, we have “Hades” here for some reason, not his usual “Gehenna.” Who knows what word Jesus actually spoke, since he probably wasn’t speaking Greek to that audience, right? And can we assume that the purpose of this story? parable? historical account? was to clarify our understanding of how Roman Catholic / Protestant hell works? That seems doubtful, at least.
For that matter, what if some of Jesus’ references to Gehenna or Hades are simply the equivalent of our “A man walks into a bar” or “A man approaches St. Peter at the pearly gates” stories, rather than exposition on what we should understand about the afterlife? 😉
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Here’s a link to a teaching by Greg Boyd on the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, which is often used to prove “eternal conscious torture.” It is well worth the download and listen.
http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/tormented-by-the-flames
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44″They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45″He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46″Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” -Matthew 25
I don’t know Greek, but each of the English translations I found had the word ‘eternal’ in there. Anyone more educated than I care to check?
To me, it seems like if everyone were saved, even eventually saved after some time in Hell, then God’s judgment isn’t such a big deal that He himself had to die to satisfy it. Our sin is an offense to God’s infinite honor, and so we are given an eternity of shame as a result.
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There are reasons to understand this as using temporal punishment as an analogy for eschatological (post-mortem) punishment, too, however.
It’s worth noting that in the related versions of this saying, particularly the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king does retain the possibility of the unforgiving servant leaving the torment, if he’ll pay the final cent.
I think the related parable is tolerably clear enough about what the king required the servant to pay, too.
(Hint: not the freakishly large debt of cash. That had already been forgiven. Even if it was technically reinstated, it was reinstated due to the unforgiving servant’s refusal to do that which transcended the king’s concern about the monetary debt. If the servant does what is required of him, the king will let him go. So what must the unforgiving servant pay?)
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Oops! typo: the fool is one who believes that God canNOT see.
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We need to consider the appropriate context for preaching hell and judgement. As Christians, we should be mindful that we will stand before our Master, our Groom, and give an account for our actions. Even taking hell out of the picture, that is a sobering thought.
Following the theme of hell back to the old testament prophets shows that there has always been a stark warning of judgement against those who claim to be God’s people but act in a way contrary to God’s will and perfect law. Today, people can rob others blind and still call themselves conservative “Christians”, because what is now passing as Christianity is a bizarre spiritual entitlement. The only unjust scales are those which deny me of one penny of what I have coming to me. Guilt is what one feels for not taking every opportunity – ethical or not – to get all that one can. The phrase, “God helps those who help themselves” takes on a whole new meaning: help yourself; no one is looking; no on is going to stop you; no one of importance will be hurt. The fool of the old testament, who believes that God can see what he does, is now the hero. People need to know that God hasn’t changed, that right is still right, evil is still evil, and self-gratification, self-actualization, and ego-boosting are no justification for sin.
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Ok, so what is the judgment in John 3:36?
“He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him”
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I grew up with the teaching that hell is a place of eternal torment, where the Devil, his demons, and the unbelievers are consigned for all eternity. It was a physical place (post-resurrection), where the truest torture would be absolute separation from the Presence of God.
However, my thoughts on this subject are changing slightly. The more I’ve read Eastern Orthodox literature on the subject (can anybody say “River of Fire”?), the more my view on Hell has changed.
It has been said by some that all shall experience God and His Love in the Age to Come. For those who believed in Christ, they shall experience His Love as Paradise and eternal Communion. For those who did not believe, however, they shall experience His Love as fiery torment, for they rejected Him so.
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Yes, Libby. Love C. S. Lewis and George Macdonald.
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1. nothing really at all, the Methodist church tends to view the topic as rather irrelevant
2. my views have gone from not caring growing up, to a brief affair with fundamentalism in high school, to Universalism up until now. Once you free yourself from worshipping the scriptures and studying the history of the Bible you begin to realize how unreliable it really is. I think of the Bible less as the inspired word of God and more as the inspired word of man about God, as best as we can perceive him. So from all that I completely dismiss the notion of hell as pure fantasy, a middle age-Dante’s Inferno myth. So what how does heaven/hell all work? I have no idea, but I’m learning to be content in not having answers.
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{{If there is a Hell, it doesn’t stop being real and terrible if God successfully accomplishes his will to save everyone through Jesus.}}
Especially if that includes saving people out of hell! {g}
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Speaking as a Christian universalist, I would answer Preston’s question: our salvation is first and foremost from sin. Not necessarily from punishment–there are promises of salvation from punishment, too, but that isn’t the main thing.
Jesus was named “Jesus” after all (“The Lord is salvation” or “The Lord saves”, depending on the Aramaic/Hebrew original form) because He would save His people from their sins. Not necessarily from hell, from His wrath, or from His punishment.
(Indeed, His listeners already agreed in principle that Israel was already suffering God’s punishment, so they hadn’t absolutely been saved from that! But many of His listeners seemed more anxious to be released and saved from God’s punishment, than to be saved from their sins. I think theological commenters from all schools of salvation theory usually agree that this led to some serious problems for everyone involved. {wry g})
JRP
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I think it’s worth pointing out that, in the idiom of the time, this was often an expression of sympathy and pity about the condition of a person, and an appeal that this condition should be healed or otherwise improved somehow.
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Sorry, one more thing! Chaplain Mike, how about a post on the concept of purgatory? I think that concept has legs … even at the risk of being accused of Reformation heresy!
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So much virtual ink over a concept that is well outside our job description! It’s like pre-determinism. We can spend hours debating it, and it’s pretty much in God’s job description, not ours.
The part of hell that IS in our job description is what we believe and how we live that out. We can choose heaven or hell. In whatever form it takes, I want to avoid hell at all costs. Life without God is just sadder than sad.
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Ned,
1.) Like CSLewis, and some other theologians, I don’t believe God considers mere atheism per se a problem. An atheist may be raging against a false shadow of God, in which case they may well be acting in cooperation with the witness of the Spirit in their hearts! This has some bearing with the judgment of the sheep and the goats, where the sheep seem very surprised to discover they were serving Christ all along. (Whereas the goats are surprised they were serving Him. As Lewis once quipped in regard to that parable, “There will be surprises!”)
One doesn’t have to be a universalist to believe this, of course. (Lewis wasn’t.)
However, I will suppose you meant (and certainly meant to include) the impenitent sinners raging in favor of their sins over-against the Lordship of God: i.e., ethical anti-theists either now or in the age the come. That latter distinction is important, because most of what Jesus has to say about hell is aimed at lazy and/or uncharitable servants of His who already know God to some extent.
(In which case, I think it’s also worth noting that those tend to end up outside the kingdom, weeping and gnashing their teeth–in impenitent anger, in other words, not sorrowing, or not yet anyway–as a result of denying God’s salvation of other people!)
2.) I don’t doubt there are final moment conversions; in fact, people who study near-death experiences record numerous conversions after final moments weren’t so final after all. Including conversions where ‘hell’ is experienced. However, when the scriptures (infrequently but occasionally) talk about post-mortem conversion, it tends to be after the general resurrection. Offhand I don’t know any scriptural example of post-mortem but pre-resurrection conversions; but neither do I think such things are impossible.
JRP
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Sarah,
Have you read C.S. Lewis’ Great Divorce? He espouses a similar view. I shudder to think of the despair caused by eternally being separated from God. Whether it’s something like a literal lake of fire or just a dreary place, it really doesn’t matter! I choose life!
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“I suppose you’re referring to Paul use of terms like “credit†and “reckoned†in Romans.”
Exactly. Also, the term used for Abraham (“he believed and it was credited to him as righteousness”).
“I’d say it’s best not to see those as referring to some sort of heavenly balance sheet, but rather statements about our new reality in Christ.”
I don’t understand, please elaborate.
“If humanity owes a debt, who is it to?”
To God.
“How could we pay it?”
We can have Jesus pay it, or we can pay ourselves, in Hell.
“What would the payment look like? I don’t believe these are really the core questions that Paul was addressing in Romans.”
The payment is in the form of punishment by God’s wrath. Romans is “Paul’s Gospel”. What is the Gospel besides the Good News of salvation? What are we saved from?
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Has anyone addressed the idea that people are in hell not only because they rejected God in the previous life but because they continue to do so after death? In Luke 16, the rich man in Hades seems to retain the sin that earned him a spot in torment (on earth: his refusal to help the poor, suffering man; in Hades, the idea that Lazarus should enter torment in order to serve him by bringing him water).
I guess my question is, why do we talk about hell as if it’s only a punishment for past crimes and not on-going ones?
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Without speaking for Phil, I’d like to offer an example. In Matthew 5, Jesus warns us to reconcile with our brother before they drag us before the court and we’re thrown into prison. This punishment is not eternal hell but the present consequences of one’s actions.
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Hello Jason,
How do explain the presence of God-hating people in Heaven? People who go to their graves speaking out against God. Do you believe everyone has a conversion in their final moments, or is it something after death?
Thanks!
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Mark,
I’m not sure every reference to punishment in the gospels is meant to refer to hell or consequences in the afterlife. It would help to see which verses you’re referring to (and I agree with Phil; you need to back up your claim before you ask others to do so) so we can better discuss it.
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Pardon my ignorance, but what of Judas, the betrayer, of whom Jesus observed it would have better for him had he not been born? It seems this implies that God has an especial degree of eternal torment or punishment for him, and perhaps others who reject Christ in some extraordinary way.
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I more and more think that heaven and hell is a matter of getting what you want. If you want the God who meets us in the crucified and risen Jesus, that desire leads you to Him, and to heaven. If you want anything other than the God who is there, that desire betrays you–no matter how noble it may be–because we’re desiring the temporal rather than the eternal, and that desire leads you away from God, who finally gives you over to your desire, and that, as C.S. Lewis pointed out somewhere, turns out to be hell. The key text for me here is Romans 1, where the wrath of God is described as God giving idolatrous people over to what they want. To be given over to what one desires (or “lusts” for) means that whatever else hell is, it is filled with addicts. I think what you desire matters more than what you think, and only God knows hearts. (What you really wants always skews how you think!) In this sense, hell makes sense to me because it seems fair–you get what you want. However, I want to believe that those, like my Advent friends, who believe in annihilation, are right.
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I suppose you’re referring to Paul use of terms like “credit” and “reckoned” in Romans. I’d say it’s best not to see those as referring to some sort of heavenly balance sheet, but rather statements about our new reality in Christ. Even if you do see them as some sort of financial metaphor, metaphors break down at a certain point. If humanity owes a debt, who is it to? How could we pay it? What would the payment look like? I don’t believe these are really the core questions that Paul was addressing in Romans.
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To the actual subject-
1.) I’m a member of the Assembly of God. You do the math. *L*
Eternal Conscious Torment in some form for all who deliberately reject the Gospel (and just maybe for those who have never been reached with the Gospel- that’s really hinted at during Missionary Emphasis services.)
2.) I believe in the All-Enveloping Fire of YHWH/Jesus~ Eternal Glory for those open in love & surrender to Him, Temporal Purging towards Eternal Glory for those struggling to love & trust Him, Torment to those refusing to love & trust Him- perhaps resulting in eventual reconciliation or annihilation or just perpetual self-absorption, I can’t say.
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1.) depends on how you define hearing of hell – i hear alot about people lost – but the word hell is used much more seldom – nothing about the description of hell (fire, torture, devils, etc…) & I think that is a good thing because it is all guessing – to me hell is ‘absence of God’.
2.) I used to be a predestined goats & sheep kind of guy until I read CS lewis & George Macdonald.
now I believe:
– we have free-will,
– no one “slips through the cracks & end up in hell” only those who reject God’s love thru Jesus
– hell is locked from the inside – I have ‘hope’ that souls will be able to accept Jesus in after-life
– our human minds cannot understand what ‘eternity is’ – I have hope that is the end of ages all will bow before the Lord no matter how much hell (literally) they have been thru.
– I might be wrong on all accounts – SO might you!
peace
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Saved from death, both physical and spiritual, the sentence handed down in Genesis 3. We who are children of Adam share in his corruption and follow in his rebellion. Christ came to establish a new creation, which He called the Kingdom of God. Those who do not enter in will face judgment, wrath and final destruction.
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1. Can’t recall hearing much regarding hell in any church I’ve ever attended, and especially not iwith the “Jesus as guest appearance” mentality of my the congregation I’m currently affiliated with.
2. Have leaned towards annihilationism ever since reading The Fire That Consumes, by Edward Fudge. Among other things Jude 7, which states that Sodom and Gomorrah are undergoing a “punishment by eternal fire,” puts a different spin on the things. The current lack of flame at the sites of these 2 ancient cities indicates the punishment is eternal in its affect, rather than in its duration. This would certainly be consistant with eternal destruction for sinners (aka annihilationism) – not that they will be eternally being destroyed, but that they will be destroyed for eternity, just like Sodom and Gomorrah were.
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That keeps getting repeated in various forms – Jesus taught more about Eternal Hell than He did about Heaven or about this or that or anything else. What IS true is that Jesus taught more about Aionion Fire/Hades/Gehenna/Judgement than had anyone else- His Apostles or the OT Prophets (they would have talked about Sheol and the World to Come).
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I try not to be too controversial, but Mark you might want to re-read the Gospels. Jesus spends an awful lot of time talking about the Kingdom of God.
In Mark 1, Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming “The time has come, the Kingdom of God is here/near. Repent and believe the good news!” He came proclaiming the Kingdom (and that was good news).
In Matthew 10 he sends out his disciples, telling them to “preach this message: ‘the Kingdom of heaven is near.”
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I’m afraid I don’t see the difference…
We are not at peace (shalom) with God because we have an outstanding balance with Him (demerit). That is the analogy Paul uses. We must have that debt wiped out in some way – either by having it paid by Jesus, or paying it ourselves.
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As a followup: seeing as how (if I’ve read the comments correctly) I’m the only Christian universalist in the comments so far, perhaps I should take questions?
JRP
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Okay… my impressions added to this long list of posts…
To me the doctrine of hell is a sign of God’s love and mercy. Yes I am NOT joking. What good is it if all end up in heaven regardless? Where is the freedom of human beings created in the image of God?
Only where God risks everything i.e. losing those the Son died for the Father suffered for in having to have his Son die in utter agony and the Holy Spirit sollicited manifold times only there the love of God is most apparent to me.
Living in a country, the Netherlands, where almost no one is christian, this may sound harsh but I don’t think it isn’t.
Just one final remark: Jesus is Judge not me. So in the end where we end up will be according to divine mercy and justice. That is why it doesn’t scare me.
As to evangelization to keep ppl out of hell fire… I don’t think it works and it’s a bit arrogant: only the Holy Spirit can convict.
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I agree w/ Keo – and what makes this a ” damnable heresy” if you believe Jesus died for your sins & is your savior but get the logistics of hell wrong you to hell???
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1.) I have attended three Southern Baptist churches throughout my life, and each of them has talked about hell (in the sense of eternal conscious torment) to some degree from the pulpit with some regularity. It isn’t talked about as much as some other things, perhaps, but anyone attending for (say) two months at a go will likely hear it affirmed; and the doctrine is clearly presupposed even when not specifically mentioned.
2.) I grew up believing in eternal conscious torment, into my adult life, although I came to accept the kind of post-mortem evangelism hope promoted by CSLewis. (And I appreciated his attempts at pulling together scriptural testimony on both ECT and annihilationism, specifically in “The Problem of Pain”.)
Back in the winter of 1999/2000, however, I was working out a very long and detailed analysis of metaphysical claims, and by the time I added things up to orthodox trinitarian theism I found I was concluding that (if ortho-trin was true) God would necessarily always persistently act to save all sinners from sin.
This was, to say the least, a little surprising. But the logic didn’t mean that God would necessarily succeed in saving all sinners, only that He would continually act to do so. And that fit well enough with exclusive elements from both Calvinism and Arminianism: respectively, God persistently acts to save those He intends to save from sin, not quitting until He succeeds; and God intends, and acts to save everyone. I had grown up respecting those positions from both sides, thinking they both had good Biblical warrant–and obviously I still do today. {g}
So I fully expected that this still comported with scriptural witness; I didn’t think, at the time, that the scriptures revealed God’s eventual success at this. However, increasingly more detailed studies of scripture (OT and NT both) led me to conclude that the scriptures do sometimes testify to God’s eventual victory in saving all sinners from sin. At the same time, I found more and more often that interpretations otherwise tended to require denying some point of trinitarian theism.
And so here I am today, an apologist not only for trinitarian theism (up to and including the filioque, by the way!) but also for Christian universalism (of a particular sort–not the kind that denies any post-mortem chastisement by God, for example, although I do know Christian universalists who do.)
JRP
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Hi Preston,
I think “ourselves” is what’s being saved, and what Jesus would deliver us from is the corruption of ourselves. As far as your other points, we are saved, being saved, and will be saved from both the actions, consequences, and penalties for our sins, as well as from sin itself.
Also, I think there are some universalists who affirm the existence of hell but deny that anyone who goes there is trapped for eternity. They can still be saved if they repent and believe in Christ. (I’m not a universalist, but this is what I’ve heard some of them argue.)
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Mr. Ross,
I’d have to re-read both Lewis and Wright, but I’m not sure how “agnostic” they were about hell. I’m pretty sure Wright affirms it in his book “Surprised by Hope,” but I could be wrong and you’ll have to double-check me on that.
And anyone, please let me know if I’m wrong about that.
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I think Keo’s response is more accurate, as this is what I’ve heard from other universalists.
Mark, I was hoping you could clarify your statement, as you seem to argue that more people getting saved would actually diminish the work of Christ. Here’s the part about which I’m asking:
“If everyone will be eventually redeemed then what Christ did for us was not a true death-dealing sacrifice on our behalf but a token gesture says that all will be well for everyone – even if they violently oppose the gospel and our Lord.”
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I’m still not really following the train of thought. To say someone suffers injury is saying they can suffer loss. I’m not sure how to square suffering loss with God. When we sin, God doesn’t lose anything. I suppose we could say it is dishonoring to Him – it’s not giving the honor ad glory He’s worth. But our sin doesn’t subtract from His being.
I really think seeing justice as a way to bring reconciliation or shalom to a situation makes a lot more sense than seeing it in payment/restitution terms. Restitution is intended to make the wronged party whole. God, by definition, is lacking nothing. So in what sense is He being made whole?
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Well if you lose your head, you lose your heat soon after…. he he.
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That should be “subscribed,” not “ascribed.”
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But to answer the two questions:
1. Not much has been said that I can recall for the year and a half I’ve been meeting with these folks (it’s a home church).
2. I have some problems with the standard eternal burning punishment doctrine, partly due to reading things like Bernstein’s book, but also from reading the Scriptures as well. In other words, I’ve moved away from the typical accepted (but probably not fully analyzed) beliefs about Hell that most Evangelicals have, or maybe I never fully ascribed to them in the first place.
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“I can injure God like I can a squirrel? God had better watch out for my dog, then.”
A dog is not a moral being, not created in the image and likeness. It makes no proclamation of the character and nature of God.
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Eric, I don’t understand. You have to provide some reason or support.
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Sure, I hit my first squirrel last year. Thing ran out into the road, I swerved to pass over him, then he dodged back and forth right into my tires. I was off balance the whole day.
Sin is deliberate and intentional. I think we agree on that. God is the primary target – Psalm 51:4
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I can injure God like I can a squirrel? God had better watch out for my dog, then.
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I have never heard very much preaching about hell in any church I have attended. It’s more likely to be a topic at apologetics conferences and similar gatherings.
I have several opinions on the topic. I’m not going to bother sourcing everything because this is just me offering an opinion on a blog, and I’ve no desire to turn it into a thesis, but they do represent where I have arrived after well over a decade of philosophical and theological reflection on the topic.
1. I believe that if there is no hell, and if hell is not eternal, then all human activity and certainly all human moral choices are meaningless. Here are the possibilities and how I think they measure up:
No afterlife = Moral choices are meaningless. Life is without meaning altogether.
Universalism = Moral choices are meaningless. In the long run, all get eternal bliss.
Annihilationism = Moral choices significant for some. Situation for those who reject God is the same as if there is no afterlife. No real consequences for those who reject God, because they will get what they expect, which is no afterlife.
Eternal life in Heaven, eternal death in hell = Genuine reward for those who love and obey God. Genuine consequences for the rejection of God.
2. The principal of hell, like the principle of death, is separation. I don’t believe that hell is necessarily a place of active torment, but rather the eternal quarantine of evil. In hell, the damned, be they human beings or fallen angels, will exist eternally outside of the presence of God. This is something that no living person can now experience, since God is present everywhere in His creation. Even the most persistent atheist does not truly know the experience of actual separation from God.
3. People end up in Hell because they do evil and reject the mercy of God. I don’t think hell will be populated by nice people who just didn’t walk the aisle. Hell will be populated by the wicked. Character is the issue, not doctrinal correctness. However, people are not saved by their good actions. Rather, God has provided an atonement though Jesus which is sufficient for all, and He gets to decide how to distribute its riches of grace. Yes, I believe that non-Christians will make it to Heaven. It’s about what you do with the light you are given. As a guiding principle, remember that it is God who will ultimately define who are “the wicked.” He will not err.
4. The necessity of teaching about hell is not an issue of practicality but one of truth. Same as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Just because we may reason (as I do) that some people may be saved despite experiencing authentic Christian conversion in their lifetimes does not justify failing to proclaim the Gospel. The Gospel must be preached because it is true. If the doctrine of hell is true, it must be proclaimed as well. Anyone who will be saved, will be saved because of the atoning work of Jesus Christ. The mission of the Church is to proclaim this Good News, but we are not ultimately the distributors of God’s grace. God is. We must trust that He will do the right thing, regardless of what anyone says, especially me.
I must stress that I am a layman, not a clergyman, and although I am not an ignorant person, I am not a trained theologian, and my opinions represent no one but myself.
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I want to clarify my phrase, “Not being a catholic.” I am not saying I think Catholics do not talk about reaching “all souls†for Jesus and how to shine the light of Jesus into the darkness. I was merely saying that, not being Catholic myself, I don’t talk about purgatory.
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As I mentioned at the Jesus Creed thread, maybe read this book:
The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds by Alan E. Bernstein
I have the book and read it several years ago. IIRC, it’s interesting and perhaps uncomfortable reading for some re: the influence of other societies on Biblical concepts of the afterlife.
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At my church we don’t hear about Hell much. The last time it came up was as part of a “tough questions” series (we do those once a year). My pastor didn’t preach a specific conclusion, but instead recommended some books that tackled the issue.
I’m personally drawn to annihilationism, although there are arts of scripture that challenge that view. I’m not entirely sure what I believe.
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A finite being should not have to suffer an infinite punishment. Finite remains finite, infinite remains infinite.
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That would depend on intent. If you accidentally run over a squirrel, you will probably regret it and any children with you will feel badly. If you intentionally run over a squirrel and it can be proven that it was intentional, you can be charged with cruelty to animals. The same with the Divine, no? It you intentionally injure it then that is more serious than an accidental injury.
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I think Luke 16 is the only passage where “hades” is referred to as the place of torment. Elsewhere in the NT “gehenna” is used.
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I read through the comments first… One comment on the comments: I see the word “should” pop up at least once, and that language seems to run counter to the idea of open discussion. Just an observation.
To answer #1, my church in the heartland of Missouri mentioned hell on a regular basis, but rarely have I heard a sermon preached on the topic. Hell comes up when talking about salvation, and my church talked about salvation A LOT.
#2, My own idea of hell is deliberately limited. I don’t believe God gave me an imagination so I could spend it dwelling on things that aren’t lovely, holy, pure, and good. I have read in the Bible about someone apparently in hell that was really thirsty, so I guess there’s no water there. “Weeping and gnashing of teeth” seems to be a description I’ve read also, so I guess it’s a pretty agonizing place to be.
Maybe I seem overly simple and under-educated, but that’s my “idea” of hell.
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If you run over a squirrel no one cares. If you injure the Creator of the universe, you are liable for eternity.
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“The punishment for an offense reflects on the value of the one offended.”
Seriously? It is hard to think of something more out of square with the gospel. What you are saying is that the first are worth more than the last.
Are you suggesting that if someone breaks into my car, the penalty to the criminal depends on my net worth?
Or that if I accidentally run over a child with my car, my penalty should be smaller if it was a homeless child and greater if the child was the rich progeny of a CEO?
Wow. I’m speechless.
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And ask why Jesus didn’t preach it to everyone else and all the time, focusing on tithing and anxiety instead….
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“By the way, I care very little about my afterlife.”
I don’t think about it much either. I know that Christ rescued me. Whatever comes after this life, I trust Him. His wisdom is right.
Really. I don’t know what else about the afterlife I should dwell upon. We are here now. If we desire to spend an eternity with God, it only makes sense to get to know Him better right now.
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The law is an expression of God’s character, is it not?
If we lie, we proclaim God is a liar. That is defamation.
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I hear about Hell at church. There isn’t frequent fire and brimstone sermonizing, but it comes up contextually in sermons, bible study, etc., whenever it needs to. It really isn’t the frequency I care about but the lack of graciousness to Believers like me who think Hell-only-as-conscious-eternal-torment is a foolish point upon which to turn away fellowship to other Believers in Christ. Like some other posters have voiced, I’m also comfortably uncertain on the matter, though I agree that Scripture seems clear that separation, death and destruction are common metaphors by which to say there is no eternal reality apart from what God wills it to be.
I think annihilationism and some versions of universal salvation are a more cogent exegesis of scripture and recognition of God’s character, but allow that conscious torment may be the form destruction could take. I just don’t see why Believers in the latter are so quick to brand Believers like me as heretical or weak in faith, when really all we have is culture war, infighting, and ungraciousness as the only important reality on this topic no matter what God’s universal plan of forming eternal, just, redeemed creation unto Himself actually is (or will be). Why is it not enough to merely affirm trust in His control, His Love, and in His sovereignity?
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I’m with you. My afterlife is in the hands of God. My focus is on following the commands of Christ, to love God and neighbor, in this life.
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#1 Is simply false. If you don’t believe me, here’s a quick and dirty proof. Every time Jesus talks about damnation, he also talks about the Kingdom of God. (eg Matthew 8:11-12). He says that some will enter the Kingdom and others will be damned. He never just talks about damnation by itself.
On the other hand, he teaches about the Kingdom in many parables without mentioning damnation at all. Think of the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast (Matthew 13:31-33).
This makes sense if you think about it. True damnation can only be understood as a rejection of or exclusion from God’s Kingdom. Without God and God’s KIngdom, Hell doesn’t make any sense. On the other hand, God’s Kingdom makes sense whether or not Hell exists.
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Saved from self is huge!
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I agree with N. T. Wright and others of similar thought.
Notice in the Luke 16 parable the wealthy man does not ask to leave hell. Yes, he wants to be comforted. He wants to warn his kin. He never says let me out of here. When people live for self they choose separation from God. I think the parable is connected with the verse before, 18, about divorce. When we choose to love all the absorptions of self, we choose estrangement from God.
Christ always seeks reconciliation. But what if the person does not want reconciliation? If this is hell, eternal separation from God, I can think of no worse version of hell.
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Origen is not a church father (at least according to the criteria of Orthodoxy) and had some questionable views. (Later extensions of some of those were later denounced as heresy and Origen with them, though it’s an open question whether he would have agreed with the directions later people took some of his ideas.) However, you assertion is incorrect. St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Isaac the Syrian certainly were in the minority who believed that God would eventually save all — mostly because they were incredulous toward the idea that the love of God would not eventually win over and warm even the coldest heart. However, the majority view has always been that there will indeed be those who so turn their will against God that they make themselves almost ex-human beings. I doubt any of the first millenium fathers, though, believed in what you call the “double-destiny view” if I understand what you mean correctly.
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The whole concept of being saved has never entered my mind when it comes to my Christian journey. If my only rationale for following Christ is to avoid hell, then I am not really following Christ.
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I don’t hear Lutherans talk much about hell. Considering how terrified Luther was about his eternal destiny, that is puzzling.
Not that puzzling if you figure that Luther actually burned out on it and subsequent Lutherans are trying to make sure to avoid his burnout.
I don’t believe fear of hell will scare anyone into the kingdom. It also won’t make lazy Christians try harder. Fear of death should drive us to the cross.
Then get a clue-hammer and start using it on all the Hellfire-Damnation-“If you can’t Love them into the Kingdom, SCARE ‘EM INTO THE KINGDOM!” Christians out there. There’s still a lot of them.
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1) I never hear anything about hell in my church.
2) There are several people here saying “what C.S. Lewis thinks” , and their remarks are very puzzling, given that I’ve read everything published by the man- he’s my favorite. He seems to think very much that there IS a hell, but wishes he could believe there wasn’t (read: The Seeing Eye, and God in The Dock books of his essays). He doesn’t, however, view God as someone who vengefully or gleefully tosses people into hell. This is evident in the doorway scene in “The Last Battle”, and his book “The Great Divorce”. He’s very clear that his belief is thus: If a person refuses to say to God, “Thy will be done”, then God sadly concedes, respecting the human’s free will, and says, “Alright, then thy own will be done”. The concept is of a willful person who is rejecting God; Heaven is where God is. Hell is where God is not. If you reject God, you have by default chosen Hell.
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Heard about it at St Boniface this past Sunday Mass. Not in the sense of Hellfire & Damnation, but it WAS the subject of the homily.
With this week’s Gospel being the parable “Dives & Lazarus”, it was a natural.
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1. What do I hear at church? Well, I attend a fairly normal SBC Church, so what we routinely hear is pretty much that standard, modern evangelical spiel, typically expressed as some variation of “eternal separation from God.”
2. How have my beliefs evolved? Hmmm. Given that it took me 12 posts on my blog just to work through what I believe to be true on this topic, that’s a tough question to answer in any summary fashion. But I’ll try.
I grew up in the South in the US. Even though my childhood formation included Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, as well as a number of more “new age” (not a term I remember being used in the 70s) sorts of things along with a healthy dose of humanism, it was impossible not to also absorb the cultural images of hell and the devil. The gist of those often portray God and the Devil as more or less equal combatants trying to win the “souls” of good and evil people respectively. The George Burns movie, “Oh God, You Devil” is actually a pretty good portrayal of that idea.
After the long process of my journey into Christianity had reached the point where I self-identified as “Christian”, I encountered the standard evangelical idea of hell. Even based on what I knew of the Christian God at that point, my gut reaction to that idea, along with my reaction to some other common themes like the Augustinian idea of “original sin,” was that it felt wrong. It didn’t fit. I did as I normally do on any issue I ever encountered in any religion or spirituality that had no urgent need for an answer. I set it aside as a curiosity while I learned more and practiced more. I also did the sort of thing I normally did — I searched for credible authorities.
It didn’t take long for me to recognize the highly divided state of the church today and the plethora of contradictory would-be authorities. I’ve also long been interested in history and have always tended to push back toward older sourced. So it didn’t take too many years before I had pushed back to Christian writings from a time when Christianity was much more unified in its belief than is true today. So I began absorbing the perspective of St. Athanasius, the two Gregorys, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Maximos the Confessor, and many others.
So, to try to summarize what I believe today, I guess I would say two things. First, God has already rescued the whole of mankind from “Sheol” or “Hades”, which is to say death. When the Son fully joined his divine nature to our human nature in every way, even voluntarily into not just death, but the lowest and cruelest form of death imaginable, he defeated death, shattered the gates of Hades, and healed our nature. It is no longer the nature of man to die. To use a common patristic image, like a fish biting a baited hook, hell (or hades or death) thought it had swallowed a man and discovered too late it had swallowed God. God has accomplished all that is necessary for our salvation. It is finished or complete. Moreover, God is a good God who loves mankind. He is not willing that any should perish. Moreover, he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He is not a changeable God who treats some with favor and torments others.
The question then is not about God, but about us. All creation is filled with the glory of the love of God today, but for our salvation the fire of that love is presently in some sense veiled. (It’s the tension between Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 11 — repeated in Habakkuk.) One day it will no longer be veiled. All of us will experience that unveiled fire of God’s love. God will not treat any of us differently. However, the fire of God’s love is a consuming fire. Will we be the sort of person who experiences that fire as warmth and comfort? Or will we experience it as pain and torment? In that sense, “hell” (perhaps correlated with gehenna or the lake of fire) will be the experience of the love of a God we cannot escape and whom we do not want or love in return. Mixed in with that will be the torment of passions in a reality in which we can no longer express them outwardly.
A little long, but I was summarizing an awful lot.
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Dallas Willard said something like “maybe hell is the best thing God has for some people.” Meaning, if you reject and despise a God who is Lord of Heaven, then heaven would actually be more of a torment than hell.
Nate
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What about 1 Corinthians 3:16-17? Sounds like there will be another class of human beings who will not experience God’s salvific grace.
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If the coast guard saves every person from a sinking ship, does that mean that their heroic act is meaningless? The ship was sinking; that was a very real and terrible danger. The coast guard doesn’t have to let a few people drown just to prove that the danger was real.
If there is a Hell, it doesn’t stop being real and terrible if God successfully accomplishes his will to save everyone through Jesus.
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I’m looking forward to watching the N.T. Wright video about Hell. Thanks, Kenny Johnson.
(1) Officially, not much. The fact that it’s to be expected is mentioned occasionally, but I can’t remember the last time I heard a full sermon actually devoted to eschatology. I’m actually fine with that. Not because it shouldn’t be taught. My problem is that most Christians (in my personal experience) who complain that their pastor/church doesn’t talk enough about eschatology, are really complaining that they’re not talking enough about Premillenial Dispensationalist timelines. I think many pastors avoid the “details” b/c they realize they have a lot of people in their congregations with a lot of differing viewpoints, and if it’s not a necessity (and seriously, if we can’t know what will happen–and we can’t because it’s future and God tells us we don’t know–how can it be a neccesity?), why stir up trouble? So they teach the basics (Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, we will be resurrected and live forever in the New Heaven and the New Earth with Him), and focus on holy living so that we may be one of the resurrected ones.
(2) My journey began just after college. In high school while reading through the book of Revelation, with all the premil-dis knowledge I had been taught in my private non-denominational school engrained in my head, I realized I had no clue what Revelation was saying. I’d not experienced that before with any other book, even the “confusing” passages. God’s Spirit spoke to me in everything else I read in Scripture; but Revelation felt empty. So, when I came to Revelation again, probably in college (at the time I read straight through from Genesis to Revelation for my daily reading, and it usually took a few years), I decided to skip it, and read it later “when I knew more.” When I came to Revelation a third time, and was once again determined to skip it, it dawned on me that it was probably inappropriate to just keep skipping an entire book of the Bible due to lack of understanding. So that’s when I started reading, and deliberately sought out sources outside of the premil-dis tradition I’d been taught. By God’s providence, my husband had just signed up for a 2-week summer class on Revelation at his seminary, and bought all the books. He ended up never taking the class b/c our daughter was born just before the class began, but he kept the books. Richard Bauckham’s book changed my outlook forever. I never knew how full of theology Revelation actually was, and that’s sad.
I’ve continued to study, and I could recommend numerous useful resources: Keener, Koester, Rossing, among others. The most important thing is that it’s helped me to have a passionate faith again. The end-of-days focus I grew up with which has turned into the LaHaye series never gave me that passion. Knowing Jesus, and who he is, and understanding what Revelation has to say about who he is and who We (the Church) is and what we’re supposed to be doing–THAT created a passion in me. And one of the most exciting days for me was when I picked up the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, and was actually able to understand it. I felt God speaking to me in it, like I should.
It’s led to pursuing a better understanding of Daniel, since those prophecies are often interconnected (I recommend Gurney, even though I differ with him on the last few details.)
It’s also led to my creating a liturgy for All Hallows’ Eve which focuses on sin, death, evil and the 2nd coming. I’m aware that sounds odd, but I think the church misses out by not talking about these things; All Hallow’s just happens to be a time when “darkness” seems prevelant (in themes and movies and costumes) and the light needs to be shone. Plus, then with All Saints, I created a liturgy to talk about saints, holy living, and witness and martyrdom. Not being a catholic, I use All Souls’ to talk about reaching “all souls” for Jesus and how to shine the light of Jesus into the darkness. I love halloween and I take my kids out in costumes to get candy; but I also use the time as an opportunity to talk about fear and evil, and all those scary things, and what the Bible teaches us about them. It proved to be quite helpful when my father died; my 5 year old was able to cope quite well; and I think it helped me, too. In my experience, Christians only hear about death at funerals, and then it is only about the person’s life. I don’t discredit that, as I think that’s important, and that’s a necessary part of grief. But when do we in the low-church protestant traditions hear about death outside of funerals except at Easter? And then it’s always just about *Christ’s* death. I don’t mean “just” as in it’s not important; I just mean we skip over *our* death part, and hell, and all that, and leave it at “we will be resurrected.” And then people think of heaven and stop there, even though heaven isn’t our final hope (OK, now I’m into N.T. Wright).
Re. hell, I like the annihilist idea, but I think I’m with N.T. Wright when he says that the Scripture is clear that there is some sort of punishment so we can’t just wish it away. I can’t buy his conclusion, which he specifies is a personal thought and doesn’t teach as fact, that people are transformed into something we couldn’t have compassion for if we tried to; though I appreciate where he’s coming from. That just seems like adding as much to Scripture as Dante did. The fact remains, I can’t know what hell is like; I can only guess. Just like I can really only guess what life after death is like, as well as what life-after-life-after-death is like (resurrection). But I am assured of judgment, and for me, I like the thought that ultimately, it’s God leaving us to our own independence which we have so desperately tried to obtain by rejecting Him.
Jesus talked about the Last Day and judgment and punishment, so we shouldn’t ignore it. But Jesus DID NOT focus on it (much of his teaching about the coming of the Lord actually referred to Jesus’ first coming–I do think N.T. Wright is correct on that point), and Jesus tells *us* to not focus on it but to live out our lives for him and share the good news with those around us. The good news isn’t judgment; the good news is the imperial proclamation that Jesus is King and is bringing salvation, vindication and redemption.
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Only person that comes to mind is Origen. The rest of the early church fathers believed in a double-destiny view (as per Scripture).
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1) I grew up hearing that hell was very real and eternal, and that it is a place of retributive judgement for those who did not accept the sacrifice of Christ.
2) I still believe hell is real. I do not think that you can make the case definitively that it is eternal or that it is a place of retributive punishment rather than possibly a place of corrective punishment where the end goal is to bring the reprobate to a point of faith in Christ. I don’t see much evidence for annihilationism, but I do see room for a distinctly christian universalism even if I cannot dogmatically affirm it.
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One of the wisest questions asked of me by four long-time missionaries in preparation for my confirmation at age 16 was, “when does eternal life begin?” The answer of course is that for the Christian, eternal life begins not in some future “afterlife,” but here, in this life, at the moment we become followers of Jesus. So this dichotomy between the present and the afterlife that gets so much play in evangelicalism is really just not there.
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I have trouble understanding what the term “destructive to God” even means or how He can actually suffer injury. I’d say in many ways, when we sin, we are actually injuring ourselves. Even when we cause harm to another person, we are making ourselves less than human – less than God created us to be.
I too have a hard time with this metaphor as a way to describe why hell has to exist. It almost puts the law above God.
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Mark–
I think I understand why you made the comment that you did about universalism, but it actually isn’t neccesarily a heresy. I agree that some forms of universalism basically deny the work and sacrifice of Christ, but those aren’t the only forms of universalism and you can believe in a very distinctly Christian universalism that holds that all people will come to salvation only through Jesus.
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You might be missing something, indeed. It sounds like you’re starting with an assumption that God didn’t plan for dying for the sins of the world, rather than starting with the Scriptures and seeing where they lead you. Or, you’re starting with the assumption of an “eternal punishment” interpretation, and then reading any other interpretation out of the Bible. This approach to interpreting the Bible could very well lead yo to miss something that is there in Scripture but that your own church / background didn’t prepare you for.
And I would hope that we are being saved from all of the above, rather than hell alone!
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I don’t agree with all of Origen’s conclusions, but his commentary on 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 along with some other passages will make you think.
Origen thought that the fires of Hell were to be a “purifying fire” that was to meant for correction rather than punishment. At least that is what I am picking up on so far. I am still reading Origen and trying to follow all of his thoughts on the subject.
I will say that I tend to think that Origen had a better understanding of things than Tertullian. According to Tertullian, the righteous would savor the view from Heaven into Hell, and take enjoyment in watching the torments of the damned!
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Wrong thinking about different classes of humans shouldn’t obscure the fact that God is infinitely good and deserving only goodness.
When an innocent person is violated, we are rightly angry. God is the most innocent, having never done anything wrong. Sin is destructive to God, and we should be angry. Instead, we love ourselves, and deny injury to God.
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Consider to whom Jesus preached hell: the religious leaders. As far as I am aware, none of the religious leaders – except for Nicodemus and Paul – repented. Both men repented out of their encounters with Jesus, not out of fear of hell.
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But do all those phrases equal a literal, eternal hell?
Mark 1:14-15 seems to mean that Jesus’ message was more about the kingdom and the good news, yes? And aren’t many of the parables set up with a phrase like “What is the kingdom of God like?” rather than “What is hell like?”
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“I care very little about my afterlife.”
That’s interesting. I feel the exact opposite. I would find this life to be almost meaningless if there wasn’t something beyond it.
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Agreed. When I read the Gospels, I see it filled with Jesus teaching about the Kingdom.
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“By the way, I care very little about my afterlife. I want to live for God and for my neighbor in THIS life, not be drawn to some abstract esoteric understanding of golden gates and mansions and changes of address. A life lived in love and faithfulness is its own reward.”
As Christians our hearts should primarily be focused on our Lord’s return and spending eternity with him and the saints in the New Jerusalem. That focus should influence the way we live our lives in the present before God and for our neighbors. A theology that puts more emphasis in the present life than the future life – whether in the liberal or conservative form – is not a theology that deserves the title “Christian.”
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I’m not a universalist, but I don’t see how believing Christ’s sacrifice saving all makes a mockery of his sacrifice.
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I think a universalist might suggest that you don’t properly understand the mechanism or the timeline for how God accomplishes salvation. I believe some universalists believe that the literal hell is part of the process of punishing those who don’t hear of and voluntarily submit to Christ before the time of their own death. Is hell eternal, however, or can a sinner be punished in hell and still realize their error or ignorance, leading to repentance and then salvation?
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Oh, and I must also say that the Anastasis icons are absolutely my favorite bits of Christian art. Hands down. I’m sure there are implications for my views on hell there somewhere, too.
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You’re the one who made the original assertion. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on you.
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I would like to hear your argument why judgment does not always equal eternal damnation in the four Gospels.
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“emotions can run hot” *giggle*
Lessee, we occasionally hear about hell at Church, but it’s usually in the context of being mentioned in passing as one of our priests is exhorting us to evangelize. I don’t recall either of our priests going into details about it. I think the description they tend to use is something along the lines of “eternal separation from God” or “eternal death.”
As far as my understanding goes, I’ve come to realize that some of the more archaic English translations that we Anglicans tend to dig often translated “Hades” or “Sheol” as “Hell.” This is something that made sense at the time of those translations, but is a misrepresentation in today’s popular understanding of hell. I’m thinking, for example, of the bit in the Apostles’ Creed that says Christ “descended into Hell” or the Anastasis icons being called “harrowing of hell.” That’s not hell as we popularly understand it.
Now as a place of punishment or damnation, I affirm it in as much as I see the concept taught in the Scriptures. But beyond mere affirmation, I can’t really say. I can say, though, that I’ve come to really appreciate the ancient “Christus Victor” concept of the atonement over the penal substitutionary version. And that may have some implications for how I tend to view hell.
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I would like to see your side of the evidence for this. The four Gospel narratives are filled with Jesus talking about damnation, outer darkness, being rejected, being cast out, etc.
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I don’t believe universalism was ever condemned as heresy, despite it’s prevalence in the early church. You might find it heretical. Perhaps that’s what you meant?
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I don’t hear Lutherans talk much about hell. Considering how terrified Luther was about his eternal destiny, that is puzzling.
I grew up very afraid of death in general, but also hell. In highschool, I added fear of the rapture on top of that. After getting “saved”, that fear didn’t diminish, due to influence by performance-based sanctification. I found in Luther courage in the face of death. I am thankful that Lutherans still hold to the view that death is the great intruder, that come heaven or hell, there is nothing natural about death.
I don’t believe fear of hell will scare anyone into the kingdom. It also won’t make lazy Christians try harder. Fear of death should drive us to the cross.
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I’m not saying that the atonement is NOT extended to all. I just don’t believe that it is applied to all. Only those who have appropriated the gospel message of salvation by genuine faith will appropriate the benefits of Christ’s work on the cross. Regarding those who never hear the gospel, only God will judge rightly about them. But as for those who reject the gospel till the very end, there is absolutely no hope.
Universalism is a damnable heresy because it makes a mockery out of Christ’s work on the cross. If everyone will be eventually redeemed then what Christ did for us was not a true death-dealing sacrifice on our behalf but a token gesture says that all will be well for everyone – even if they violently oppose the gospel and our Lord. Universalists don’t understand the great significance of the Incarnation and Christ’s death. They also do not understand the Scriptural demands placed upon human beings to believe and repent.
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1) Like a lot of people posting here, I haven’t heard much in church lately about hell.
2) I was troubled by the concept of hell for a long time. Then in college I realized that the ancient Jews had no real concept of hell to speak of (just read Ecclesiastes). So I think for a long time I just didn’t believe in hell. But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the “sheep and goats” story in Matthew 25, and what it means to truly have justice for the poor and the hungry and the naked. Jesus says pretty clearly that it will be the people who remain apathetic (or worse, hateful) toward their neighbors in need that will face eternal punishment. As to the criteria of judgment, he offers no more, and no less. Whether this involves flames and demons with pitchforks, I have no idea. But for me, I’ve come to conclusion that if we take care of each other in love and grace and faithfulness, we’ll be just fine.
By the way, I care very little about my afterlife. I want to live for God and for my neighbor in THIS life, not be drawn to some abstract esoteric understanding of golden gates and mansions and changes of address. A life lived in love and faithfulness is its own reward.
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I meant this reply to be in response to Mark’s last comment. I’m not sure how I messed it up.
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that should read “head”, not “heat”
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I’ve heard this assertion a number of times in my life, but I’ve never seen anyone actually provide facts to back it up. It seems to me that Jesus continually spoke about the Kingdom. The only way that the statement you provided could be true is that every mention of the word judgment is taken to to equal eternal damnation. I find the evidence for that to be very weak.
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The issue I have with this way of justifying the eternality of hell is that it is based on a feudal perspective of justice. Example: In the 1300’s, if I spit on a fellow peasant, I’m a jerk. If I spit on the supervisor of the field I work in, I get smacked. If I spit on a lord, I get thrown in prison. If I spit toward a king, I lose my heat.
Today, we do not see justice in this light. We are equal, no matter the status of the person.
Anselm, who came up with this justification of an eternal hell, as a scholastic, was in the thick of feudalism. It’s understandable that he see justice in this light. However, it makes no sense for a 21st-century westerner to see justice in this light.
I’m still convinced that the Bible teaches eternal separation from God in a place that is dark, shadowy, gnashing of teeth, etc. And I’m also convinced that people like John Stott (who had some marvelous writings on the cross) or Clark Pinnock, do a some hermeneutical gymnastics to make the Bible “not” teach an eternal “hell”.
So that leaves the question of justice wide open…
But what do we know? We know that God is good and compassionate, and became flesh in order to suffer, so that we may live with Him for eternity.
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I think you’re wrong about #1. I don’t think Jesus taught more about Hell than the Kingdom of God.
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I still don’t understand how one can square Origen’s optimistic view with Scripture.
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I’m sorry, but I disagree. How do you deny Jesus’ work just because you extend it to everyone?
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1) My church talks about it time to time. I wish there was more emphasis on this doctrine. Jesus taught more about eternal damnation than the Kingdom of God in his earthly ministry.
2) Never have moved from the core essence of eternal damnation for the lost. Though I have moved away from a more literalistic understanding of it (like Dante’s Inferno) I still believe that it is eternal, conscience torment in both body and spirit.
Source: the inspired Scriptures.
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I am in the middle of writing a series of posts about Hell on my blog. I have been blogging about it off and on for the last month, starting with the Old Testament and then moving through the Intertestamental books like 1 Enoch, occasionally referencing Greek ideas that became infused with Jewish thought during the time between the testaments. I am going to start blogging through the New Testament writings on Hell this week, and will then move to the Patristics.
What started out as a brief survey has turned out to be probably well over 100 hours of research and reading of a lot of obscure texts, and I have been somewhat described what I am finding. I’ve got the feeling that I will probably have another 100 or so hours of reading by the time that I am finished with the series.
My conclusions so far are that much of the orthodox view of Hell was the result of the cultural diffusion (Hellenization) that impacted the writings of the Jewish Apocalyptics. These were combined with a misunderstanding of Jesus’ pronouncements of judgment on Israel and the Temple by the Early Church Fathers to give us a vivid picture of Eternal Conscious Torment.
By the time of the Council of Constantinople (533), The Catholic Church had come to the conclusion that a graphic Hell was necessary to control the masses and maintain morality.
Per your request, I won’t give a bunch of links (I have hundreds), but you can drop by my blog, From Damascus To Emmaus, an follow along if you care to. I have a sidebar that lists the posts on Hell so far, and as I am just now getting to the Gospel writings and hence the words of Jesus Himself, I figure that I’ll be blogging about Hell for at least another month or so.
I will say that I currently lean toward a view of hell that combines Origen’s optimism coupled with annihilationism for those who ultimately reject Christ.
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Sadly, many will not be rescued because of their continual rejection of Christ’s deliverance from their perilous state.
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That is why those who hold to universal salvation are heretics, not just falling into doctrinal error.
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Annihilationism is not heresy. Some notable evangelical scholars like Phil Hughes, John Stott, Stephen Travis, etc. held to this position or something similar to it.
Universalism is a heresy. And anyone who holds this position denies Jesus Christ and his work.
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The eternality of Hell follows from God’s holiness and righteousness.
A simple analogy:
The punishment for an offense reflects on the value of the one offended. God has infinite value, and there must be infinite payment. A finite human takes an infinite amount of time to make this payment.
There are orders of infinity (basically, infinite area (x^2) or infinite volume (x^4). Jesus, being God (thus exceeding Ackerman(infinity) – infinity to infinite power infinite times), can pay the infinite penalty quite easily.
If Hell is not eternal, then the payment must be satisfied by human suffering, which means that everyone is welcome in Heaven. Further, there is no need for Jesus to die.
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I grew up in an indepedent fundamentalist Baptist church, went from there to Southern Baptist, and from there to Calvinist/baptist/Bible Church, so you know what I’ve been taught and have believed for most of my life. That doen’st make sense to me anymore. In fact I think if you really think about eternal punishment, you will go insane.
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Thanks. I think you’re right. I’ve not read the Book of Enoch, but I believe I’ve heard that before.
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I’m on par with all the comments so far.
In our church, we haven’t really taught about hell since i’ve been there (3 years), but there have been some references to eternal punishment / torment / etc sprinkled in a few sermons, though that’s even rare.
I have done some of my own preliminary studies and exegesis on the various images used for what happens to the wicked after this life… I lean towards annihilationism, Keo (first comment) gives a nice clean summary of my initial thoughts.
But, i’m also still very unsure, so I remain mostly agnostic about it.
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I do think the term salvation is broader than just eternal consequences, but to answer your question directly…
Quite frankly I find the idea of annihilation of the self to be downright scary and I certainly want to be saved from that — and given eternal life. So I don’t need Hell to feel saved. 🙂
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The red hot, fiery image certainly became prevalent in the middle ages but the imagery goes way back to pre-Christian Jewish writings like the book of Enoch. (or the OT itself)
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(1) Not hearing a whole lot about it ever. Can’t remember when I last heard it preached on. Funerals are more and more becoming celebrations of the deceased and less about the need for the mercy of God and fear and trembling. Nothing wroing with celebrating the deceased, but that’s what the wake (at least in Irish culture) was for.
(2) God doesn’t put us in Hell, we put ourselves in Hell. Older I get, the more I come to this. Yes, there are those who will ask “How can a merciful God condemn any of His creatures?” or “How can you believe in such a God?” “Easily” is the answer, since I experience my own hard-heartedness, sinfulness, turning away from grace and deliberate choosing of my wants of the moment over the will of God. I have no excuse – I’ve been baptised into a church, I’ve heard the Gospel preached, I’ve been instructed, the sacraments are there for me to avail of. The choice is mine, and God gives us all free will.
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I grew with some vague evangelical version of eternally being in a place with a lot of fire. It was hot and painful, where you go for your sins, and made you want to say a little prayer so you could go to heaven instead.
That’s progressed over the years. I still not sure what I think now. But I do think a lot of the imagery we have in the church now comes from Dante’s take on things from the middle ages. And actually, imagery like that for hell were apparently around as early as the early church, with the Apocalypse of Peter (not the gnostic one). I don’t know if anyone knows anything about that document, as I’ve only heard bits and pieces, but if wiki’s right, Clement thought it was Holy Scripture. It was a controversial passage not in all the versions, that has God eventually forgiving everyone, including those in hell, because of the prayers of the saints for mercy. And then, as the story goes, the church shut up this writing to keep people from sinning more, thinking there would be forgiveness for everyone.
I don’t actually believe all that, but was wondering if anyone else knew more about it, or more of the early church’s perspective.
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Here’s a video of N.T. Wright talking about Hell:
http://www.outofur.com/archives/2010/01/ur_video_nt_wri_1.html
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I think C.S. Lewis got it right, mainly.
Personally, my thinking on hell has changed over the years. I think mainly it’s because my thinking of how I view salvation has changed. I tend to not think of salvation in juridical terms nearly as much anymore, and I think more of Christ’s work for us as deliverance or rescue. I see hell not something so much that’s a place of punishment for sins committed against God, but more of a state that Christ is bringing us out of.
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1) Not hearing much, thankfully.
2) Stopped believing in hell a long time ago, when I realized none of the ancient Hebrews would have believed in it, as they seemed to propound a belief in a shadowy, underworldy Sheol. I can live with that kind of afterlife a lot better than eternal torment, which makes God into little more than a battering husband.
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Serious question…
Without hell, what are we being saved from? Wrath? Sin? Ourselves?
Seems like without hell, you either lean toward universalism, purgatory or just utter destruction.
I must be missing something.
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I am an annihilationist, but am open to being convinced of otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism
John Stott is also an annihilationist. It’s interesting that wikipedia says N.T. Wright and C.S. Lewis are both agnostic about hell. Maybe it’s because they are both British and both have initials for first names.
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“I don’t take the physical descriptions of hell.” is supposed to have literally at the end.
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Honestly, I don’t know what to think. I don’t take the physical descriptions of hell. So then what is it? I heard one idea that was intriguing. It suggested that there will be a time when we all face refining by God to live in His presence. Those who are forgiven by the sacrifice of Christ will welcome this refining and surrender to it. We will then enter the Kingdom completely renewed. Those who don’t accept it will reject it and will suffer.
I’ll be honest here. I’ve been open to annihilationism. I know, heresy, right? I have a hard time understanding what is just or merciful about eternally punishing someone for something they did for 20-70 years. But I’ve also seen some pretty good exegesis on this too. I’ve heard that Hell wasn’t really talked about much in the church until the Middle Ages. It was there that the modern images of a red, hot, fiery started.
This is one area that I remain relatively agnostic though.
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1) The literal, eternal torment hell, referenced from time to time and occasionally even getting a full sermon.
2) My understanding of hell started with being troubled by, yet assuming the truth of, the eternal torment hell for almost everyone ever born. Currently, I’m stuck on the facts that 1) we don’t have any clear OT doctrine to inform a NT understanding of hell, 2) Jesus uses several different words and phrases but they all get reduced to the same English word, “hell,” perhaps incorrectly?, and 3) that Paul says nothing of hell.
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