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.
[1]
Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green, eds., The Encyclopedia of Judaism (Leiden;
Boston; Köln: Brill, 2000), 164.
No comments:
Post a Comment