What Does the Bible Teach About Hell? – Conclusion

We now come to the place where we begin to explore what the Bible is talking about when it talks about hell. The word “hell” appears in the NASB New Testament 13 times. The Greek word translated into the English language is Gehenna. Gehenna was a ravine south of the city of Jerusalem currently known as the Wadi er–Rababeh, running S-SW of the city. It is also, according to popular Jewish belief, a place where the final judgment of God takes place. In fact, the liberal Jewish reform movement said this about the idea of hell in Judaism:

We reassert the doctrine of Judaism, that the soul of man is immortal, grounding this belief on the divine nature of the human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism the belief both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (hell and paradise), as abodes for everlasting punishment or reward.^[1]

This liberal Jewish reform movement is seeking to remove the traditional Jewish teaching on the subject of eternal life for the righteous and eternal punishment for the wicked. In order for the doctrine of eternal punishment to be purged from Jewish tradition, it must exist in Jewish tradition. This indicates that the view of an eternal judgment and punishment of the wicked has a very long and deep history in both Jewish and Christian theology.

The first time we see the use of the term Gehenna in the NT is located in Mark 9:43-48. Jesus is talking about removing things that offend in our lives because it is better for us to enter life crippled than to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire not crippled. The first thing I notice is the Greek expression, εἰς τὴν γέενναν, εἰς τὸ πῦρ τὸ ἄσβεστον, into hell, into the unquenchable fire. Whatever hell is, it is a place of unquenchable fire according to Jesus. The unquenchable fire is quite simply a fire that no one can extinguish. Should we handle this text literally or as some sort of metaphor? If we decide that it is a metaphor we are confronted with explaining what “life” means in the preceding clause. When Jesus says it is better for you to enter life crippled than to go to hell whole. If we take life at face value, literally, eternal life, then we must take this description of hell literally as well.

Now, someone will add that it does not follow that eternal fire means that a person going to hell will burn eternally. They could eventually be released or they could burn up and cease to exist. Let’s take another look at the text to see if Jesus reveals more about this place of fire He calls hell. Jesus tells us ὅπου ὁ σκώληξ αὐτῶν οὐ τελευτᾷ καὶ τὸ πῦρ οὐ σβέννυται. Hell is a place where their worm will not die and the fire will not be extinguished. Now, this is an expression that was used hundreds of years earlier to describe the very same place by Isaiah the prophet. Isa. 66:24, uses the very same phrase. So what do Jesus and Isaiah mean by “worm?” The idea is that the maggots will always have food. In other words, while the fire and the worm usually run out of sustenance because the body is consumed and no more, in this place that will not be the case. This condition is pictured as an unending state, however one might understand that state.

Hell is referred to as a place where one is sentenced to go according to Jesus in Matt. 23:33. It is a place where God has the authority to send people in Luke 12:5. Jesus also uses it to describe the religious hypocrites, calling them the sons of hell. James uses it as a description of the dangers of the human tongue, describing it as set on fire by hell. One can clearly see that there is more than one use of the word hell in the NT. But just as we use words differently to mean different things, so too does the NT. The question around how to understand a word revolves more around how it is used than any it does any lexical data we may look at. Rebecca Trotter’s material is, quite frankly, filled with one exegetical fallacy after another. When she says that a particular Greek noun has one agreed upon meaning, she is exposing her ignorance, not only of Greek and Hebrew, but of how any language works. One has to look no further than how the NT uses “hell” to understand that nearly any word has a range of possible meanings and the best way to understand what a word means is to understand how it is being used. That is the most basic issue in how we should engage in the “word study” step in biblical exegesis.

At a minimum then, we know that the NT informs us that hell, when it is used to describe the future abode of the dead is a place where God assigns people that are wicked. We also know it to be a place with unquenchable fire. What else then does the NT tell us about the future state of the wicked? Will they burn up in this place or will they actually have a chance to be released at some future time?

In Matthew 19, a rich young ruler came to Jesus and asked Him what he must do to inherit “eternal life.” The Greek phrase is zoen aionion. Now, we all understand this expression to mean “life that never ends.” They way Matthew uses the word aionion clearly indicates he means life without duration. It is interesting to me that no one ever questions this construction or the meaning of the word aionion in these contexts where eternal life in heaven is the subject of the conversation.

In Matthew 25:41, Jesus uses this very same construction to refer to an eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. If we take life to be a state without end or duration, we must also take this fire to be the same unless there is good reason in the text, some marker or device indicating otherwise. In this case, no such device is present. In v.46 of this same pericope, Jesus says, “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Once more, this is the same construction we have been dealing with all along. The word punishment here indicates that Jesus means “severe suffering.” He contrasts this severe suffering with the eternal life of the righteous. The wicked, according to Jesus will enter a place called hell, which is a place where the fire is never quenched, and according to Jesus, they will be subjected to severe suffering without duration, without end. Daniel references this state in 12:2, calling it everlasting contempt. John refers to two judgments in 5:29 of his gospel, calling them a resurrection of life and a resurrection of judgment respectively.

The fact is that the Greek word aionios always means eternal, unending, without duration everywhere it is used in the NT with two exceptions. In those exceptions the construction involves the use of the word chronos. This construction appears in Rom. 16:25 and Titus 1:2. Chronos actually can mean a long period of time but it is also used to refer to points in time or a moment in time. It is only when aionios is used with chronos that it is not referring to an unlimited or infinite amount of time. This means that 69 out of the 71 times it is used in the NT, it is used to convey the sense of an unending state.

This data, and I have only covered a tiny fraction of it, clearly indicates that the wicked will be consigned to a place described by unending fire where they will experience severe suffering that is also unending. Since one cannot suffer if one does not exist, this effectively closes off the option that the wicked will cease to exist. Moreover, it also closes off the option that the wicked will be released from this state in the future because the grammar does not support the notion of a “long period of time.” Rather, the grammar clearly indicates the state to be eternal, without end.

The end of the wicked is foretold in Revelation 20:10: And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

If Rebecca Trotter, Ben Corey, Rob Bell, and others are correct, that hell is not eternal after all, then neither is heaven. The grammar that describes heaven is the same grammar that describes hell. Furthermore, the implications of their message for the atonement of Christ are far more significant than one could ever imagine. All one needs to do is simply read the Scripture and they can surely understand why the Church has taught from the very beginning that there is a literal place called hell with literal fire where wicked people will enter and where they will suffer eternal punishment without any possibility of escape or annihilation. So how do we account for this challenge? It is really quite simple: philosophical presuppositions about the kind of God that exists have been employed to displace the divine self-disclosure of God in Scripture for the image of a god that is far more tolerable and much less offensive and certainly must less demanding than the one that actually exists.

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^[1] Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green, eds., The Encyclopedia of Judaism (Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2000), 164.

What Does the Bible Teach about Hell (Pt. 3)

So far, in dealing with the subject of hell, I have pointed out a couple of very basic issues that are foundational. By way of reminder, these posts are a response to some of the information being promulgated over at Patheos by folks like Ben Corey and Rebecca Trotter. I have attempted to show that Trotter enters the conversation with presuppositions about the Bible that are clearly outside the Christian camp. Part of what it means to be a Christian is that we take God at His word. Christians do not challenge that Sacred Writings we call Scripture, aka, the Bible. Trotter has a very serious problem with the historical records of the Old Testament and unwittingly reveals her bias from the very start. This means that Trotter, like many others at Patheos, will take the parts of the Bible they like and reject the parts they despise. If Scripture is our sole authority for what is right and what is true, and this includes information regarding hell, then it only follows that Trotter’s views are unavoidbly suspect. After all, she has displayed a disdain for the only trustfowrthy source we have on the subject of hell. 

You may place your confidence in Trotter’s argument, but you should realize that by doing so, you are placing your confidence in a modern woman, untrained in the languages of Scripture and biblical exegesis, and with a personal axe to grind against certain presentations of God in the Bible. In other words, her idea of God, man, sin, judgment, hell, etc. are informed by some other source than Scripture.

I have also attempted to demonstrated very briefly that the traditional view of hell has existed long before Christ in ancient Jewish culture. Moreover, I have also shown that this view is reinforced by the prophet Daniel in 12:2. In that specific text, I have shown that one cannot eradicate the idea of eternal torment without also eradicating eternal life. Trotter and other’s cannot have it both ways. The conclusion of their lexicographical method not only challenges eternal punishment, it challenges eternal life with God. That is what happens when someone who is clearly untrained in the langauges and handling the text sets out to argue against a view that has stood the test of time for centuries and for good reason. Before moving to the New Testament teachings regarding hell, I think you should look at least one more text in the Old Testament.

“Then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched; and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.” (Isa. 66:24) This is clearly a reference to the future state of wicked men and their lot in the coming eschatological judgment. “This final verse has the rhetorical effect of causing the readers, who may be enthralled with the glorious thoughts of being in the new earth where God will dwell among his servants, to focus their attention on the diametrically opposite destinies that God has prepared for the evil people on this earth.”^[1]

“I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. “My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. “And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever.” (Ezek. 37:26-27)

Ezekiel sounds very similar to John’s apocalypse: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying,

“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:3-4)

My point in drawing your attention to these two verses is really simple. However one understands the duration of hell, that must also be how they understand the duration of heaven, the new earth and the new city in which we are to said occupy in the future coming kingdom. That is to say that if you wish to destroy eternal punishment and eternal torment from your theology, the only way you can do so and remain consistent and honest is to destroy eternal life in heaven as well. After all, these new teachers claim that they want to be transparent, honest, and authentic. But one has to wonder if that is really the case since, as far I know, not one of them has challenged the existence of eternal life in heaven even though the ground of their objection to hell must also apply to heaven, or does it.

What does the New Testament say about the final judgment and eternal disposition of the wicked? After all, any theologian worth his salt understands that Scripture is a progressive revelation moving along a timeline with God disclosing more and more of Himself and His activities to His people.

Jesus spoke about a future judgment often: Matt. 10:15; 11:22; 12:36 and 12:41. These are just a few places where Christ spoke about a coming judgment. Paul spoke of a coming judgment often in his writings to the churches (1 Cor. 5:13; Rom. 14:10; 2 Cor. 5:10). Indeed, it is impossible to take the Bible seriously if one dismisses the concept that a coming judgment awaits us and that the results of this judgment will be a perpetual state depending on the spiritual condition of the person being judged.

I now want to turn your attention to a text in Hebrews that speaks to the issue concerning this series before moving on to the word study fallacies that Rebecca Trotter has engaged in over on her blog in her attempt to not only destroy the Bible’s teachings on hell, but to apparently embrace and espouse the non-Christian worldview known as universalism.

Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permits. (Heb. 6:1-3)

There are at least two points that we should examine in this text as it relates to our discussion on hell. First, we observe that the author of Hebrews classifies these doctrines as elementary teaching about Christ. The idea here is that these are uncontroversial, basic components universally received by the Church. In our time we might call them the basics or the fundamentals. The sense is that these are the first in the order of things and then we move on to more mature instruction. One of the items listed among the very first and most fundamental of Christian doctrines is the doctrine of eternal judgment.

Now, if the traditional Christian teaching on eternal judgment is anywhere near as complicated as Trotter, Corey, and Bell argue, one has to wonder why was it listed as a very basic teaching in the ancient Church? It is clear that the modern attempt to dispense with hell and eternal judgment is any but simple when one reads the arguments of its proponents.

Before closing this discussion, we want to look at the construction of this text to determine how it should be interpreted. What does the author mean to communicate when he uses the construction κρίματος αἰωνίου? The construction is in the fourth attributive position (anarthrous). Aioniou (eternal) is modifying krimatos (judgment). This means that whatever kind of judgment we are discussing, it is defined by the adjective aioniou. This is a common construction in the GNT. In fact, we have the very same construction in John 3:16 when John uses this same adjective with life: ζωὴν αἰώνιον. Here John tells us that the ones believing in God’s only begotten Son will have eternal life. I want to focus on how this construction is used elsewhere in the NT so that you might recognize that the objection to  the traiditonal teaching on hell is far more philosophical than it is exegetical or even historical. Moreover, it seems much more likely the product of personal bias than it is an objective exegetical investigation of Scripture in search of truth. After all, if one disregards the authority of the Bible, they are now free to disregard it when it teaches things that they find offensive or contradictory to the Christianity they prefer to believe.

The construction of mentioned above appears in John 6:68 where Peter responds to Christ saying, “you have the words of eternal life.” Paul uses it in Acts 13:46 of eternal life in his rebuke of the Jews for rejecting Christ. It is used in Mark 3:29 to describe the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, a permanent and unforgivable sin. In is used by Paul in Rom. 16:26 to describe God as the eternal God. Again in 1 Tim. 6:12 it is translated eternal life. It is used of eternal glory in 2 Tim. 2:10 where it refers to the obtaining of Salvation in Jesus Christ and with it, eternal glory. It is used in Tit. 1:2 of the eternal life that God promised long ago. In Heb. 5:9 it is used of eternal salvation. In Heb. 9:14 it refers to the eternal Spirit, and in 9:15 our eternal inheritance. In Heb. 13:20 it refers to the eternal covenant. Finally Jude uses the word to refer to eternal fire. In this construction, the word always refers to permanence, or an unending period.

As I mentioned previously, it is a serious error to transfer word meanings in the NT from one use to another without looking at the thinks like syntax and especially the context of the passage in question. One can read the 15 texts mentioned above and realize immediately that they are being used in an eternal, permanent future sense. God is eternal. The Holy Spirit is eternal. The life that Christ gives is eternal. In the same way, so too is the judgment mentioned in Hebrews and the fire referenced by Jude. Now, these are by far not the whole story. In my next post we will continue to look at specific texts that deal with subject directly to see if there is any way possible to understand them as anything other than teaching eternal, unending, permanent torment in the fire of hell.

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^[1] Gary Smith, Isaiah 40-66, vol. 15B, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2009), 753.

A Christian Understanding of Hell: Part One

This series of posts on hell is a response to some of the things that are being posted over at patheos, a blog site that claims to be Christian but in reality is anything but Christian, in my opinion. And I will be happy to explain why as I go along. Ben Corey and Rebecca Trotter have written several things about why orthodox Christian doctrine is wrong on the subject of hell. This post will address Rebecca Trotter’s posts beginning here.

Now, Christian Doctrine is formed and shaped by Scripture, not by the claims of people professing to be Christians. When we talk about God, Christ, man, sin, and things like hell, we must first ask, “how do we know?” How we do know things about God? How does one come into knowledge and truth about important doctrines like our doctrine of God, of Christ, of sin, and more specifically, of hell? The first thing we must do is to try and remove any preconceived ideas about these subjects that are based on anything other than our source for understanding them. Now, that source of understanding is God’s divine self-disclosure in Scripture. If you find my appeal to Scripture dissatisfying at this point, let me warn you: you will only become more and more dissatisfied with this post. But I encourage you to keep reading.

Whatever we believe about hell then, must be the result of what the Bible says about the subject within that cultural, historical, social, and grammatical context. Christians are not interested in human opinions about the doctrine of hell. What we are interested in is the truth about hell. And the truth about hell can only be located within the text of God’s divine self-disclosure. Moreover, that truth is not dependent upon the interpretation of fallible human men from any era. In other words, appeals to the early church, while they may shed light on the subject, are not authoritative in any sense. It is not difficult to find men so early in the life of the Christian church believing all sorts of things because, well, the Church was immature and learning its way around during this period. We must extend grace on the one hand, but avoid naivety on the other.

Now, I wish to turn your attention to Rebecca Trotter’s blog entitled, “Hell Week – Back to the Beginning.” In the very first paragraph, Rebecca unwittingly tells us something about her philosophy, and subsequently, what forms and shapes her theology. She writes,

“As I read the bible again, I was a bit overwhelmed by a lot of the mucky stuff in it. The guy who sacrificed his daughter to fulfill a pledge. Lot offering his virgin daughters to a mob. Samson killing everyone and cutting off their foreskins. The cannibalism. The commands to kill men, women, children, babes-in-arms.”

What I want to drawn your attention to is the sentence, “I was a bit overwhelmed by a lot of the mucky stuff in it.” The word mucky is a nice way of informing us that Rebecca found the records of Scripture messy, dirty, filthy even. In other words, Rebecca was offended by much of what the Bible had to say about these things.

The first thing I want to address is the philosophical presupposition upon which Rebecca entered Scripture. Rebecca already had a view of God and the Bible in mind before she ever started reading it in order to truly absorb it. Her preconceived ideas of God were based on a variety of things, not the least of which was her own vision of who God had to be and what God had to be like. Her characterization of the Bible in this sentence reveals that what was being revealed about God in Scripture, specifically the OT was not quite in harmony with her preconceived idea of God.

Scripture challenges conceptions of God that consist entirely of human origin. We already know that Paul informs us in Romans one that the sinful human heart naturally seeks to change the reality of God’s nature into one that we find acceptable to our own senses. In other words, we seek to reinvent God to be something that is consistent with our sinful view of Him and our elevated and ignorant view of ourselves. It is this very issue that Rebecca fails to recognize as she embarks, from the very beginning, to study the issue of the doctrine of hell. From the very start she has uncritically accepted her own ideas about God rather than allowing her ideas to be shaped and informed by God’s disclosure of Himself. The bloggers at Patheos repeat this error to a person from what I read over there.

Rebecca even resorts to the filthy “W**” question when she reads about Jael putting a spike through Sisera’s head. I think I am safe in saying that such an ungodly expression has no place in a Christian blog. Rebecca does not seem to understand or grasp the concept of divine wrath and God’s right to punish the wicked when she makes this observation and raises her forbidden question. How dare we ask God what He thinks He is doing!

The next comment Rebecca makes about herself is very interesting and revealing:

Part of the problem was that at the time I was a pretty standard Evangelical. Which means that I was inordinately concerned with who is saved and who is going to hell.

As a Christian I have to wonder what she means by being “inordinately concerned” about the number of people rejecting the gospel of Christ and as a result coming under divine judgment. It seems to me that I will eventually have to direct some comments toward the subject of universalism. For now, I think the focus needs to be on Rebecca’s basic approach. If our approach to Scripture is flawed, it only follows that our understanding will be flawed as well.

Rebecca then shows her hand with this remark,

At any rate, the idea that God could say, “I work it all out” about these crazy stories and thousands of lives that had been cut short didn’t make much sense to me.

There is a very common lack of trust in God to work His plan according to His divine purpose. In addition, the lack of understanding around God’s holy character and man’s sinful nature creates tension that many people simply refuse to live with. You see, this kind of error begins at foundational levels and wrecks havoc on Christian Doctrine.

Rebecca then introduces the concept of universalism and she calls upon three verses in her attempt to create a version of Christianity she can live with. Rebecca calls upon the typical verses which she thinks supports a universal perspective. The first one is 1 Tim. 4:9-10, in which Paul refers to God as the “Savior of all men.” Nothing in this phrase actually suggests that all men have actually been saved or will be saved. As Knight rightly points out, the word soter may be employed in the broadest sense as Preserver and Giver of life for all people. After all, one has to look no further than 2 Thess. 1:7-10 where this same author, Paul, informs us that Christ will return bearing the wrath of God for those who do not know God.

However, Knight brings an even more interesting argument for what Paul is actually getting at in this text. He argues that the word malista in some cases should be understood to further define what follows it rather than being rendered “especially. It is used this way in 2 Tim. 4:13 and Tit. 1:10,11. In other words the phrase should be understood to say that God is the Savior of all men, that is, believers. There is significant evidence for this use in papyrus letters from this time. It seems likely that this is the meaning here since universalism would place the Bible in clear contradiction of itself.

I wish to avoid the distraction of universalism at this time even though I am sure it will be something I have to come back to later. In summary then, Rebecca begins her supposed research on hell from a very specific perspective. She has already made certain decisions about the kind of God that exists. She already has some sort of version of Christianity in mind as she begins to supposedly search for the truth about what the Bible teaches about hell. Most of these folks make these false claims to objectivity in their challenge of orthodox doctrine. The truth is they already know where they want to go. So, they search for any verse they can find that could possibly, in any way whatever, cast even the slightest doubt on the offensive teaching in question or one that could, if even in the most wild hermeneutic imaginable, support their claim. In addition, they desperately search for anyone in church history that may have even a little agreement with them on the matter. Using the flimsiest of arguments, they proceed to think they have made a reasonable case against orthodoxy. What must be kept in mind is that the reason these people are so successful in spreading their false teachings is because false converts are so eager to embrace anything that gives them a weak, watered-down version of Christianity that they find tolerable and worth embracing. In my next post I will begin to investigate what the bible actually teaches about hell. In so doing, I will examine hell in its historical, cultural, social context as we exegete the grammar of the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture.