Hell: Fire, Brimstone, or not?/ Annihilation?

[previousm]

Originally posted by Michelle 10/05:

At some point or another most of us have envisioned hell as a place with constant flames, unbearable heat, satan (with his pitchfork of course) and demons. We've seen movies where preachers are zealously shouting from the pulpit about the fires of hell. And undoubtedly we've heard from Christians and non-Christians alike, "How can a loving God sentence people to hell (as described above)?"

While the gospels reference the "fires of hell", some would say that the fire and brimstone of the Bible are figurative and they can't be taken literally. I've heard hell described as an eternity spent out of the presence of God. But is this just "wishful thinking" so that we can paint God in a more sensitive light to not scare away possible believers? I'd certainly like to think that non-believing friends are not literally going to burn in hell for all of eternity, but is that truly the case?

Hell with fire and brimstone...literal or figurative??

[nathaniel]

Originally posted 10/05:

hell flames...literal/figurative? i think maybe both? for instance, right now a person who has died w/ out christ isn't physical and therefore can't literallly be burning in physical flames. but they are seperated from God, which would entail a certain degree of discomfort. and the devil for instance; the devil isn't a physical being (nor are demons) so i don't think his eternal punishment will necessarily be literal fire and brimstone, however, it will be something deservingly horrific. in the same breath though, once the unregenerate are resurrected and rejoined w/ there bodies there will be a certain amount of physical punishment. will it always entail fire and brimstone? maybe? probably? i don't know, but just as we're gonna experience heaven physically the unsaved will experience hell physically. i do think there will be different degrees of punishment though, know matter what forms they come in. this is always a constant reminder that we don't want anyone to end up there, and more, that we want everyone to know the love of God: family, friends, strangers, enemies.

[Josh]

Originally posted 10/05:

Here is a list of metaphors associated with hell and the lake of fire in the Bible:

Gehenna: a garbage heap, a place of child sacrifices, and a mass grave, blackest darkness, fire, torment, dungeons, weeping and gnashing of teeth, everlasting destruction, 'where their worm dieth not', where the 'fire is not quenched', eternal punishment, and last, but certainty the most instructive:

separation from God

I'm convinced that most of the language for hell is metaphorical. Of course blackest darkness and physical fire don't go so well together. The thing is, though, that seeing this language as metaphor doesn't really make hell more tolerable. It actually shows that it is MORE horrible than our language can describe. If you have to use metaphor (which we pretty much always have to do when describing spiritual things), then that indicates that you are only scraping the surface. Probably the most literal statements we find have to do with separation from God (Mt. 7:23, 25:41, 2 Thess 1:9), but even these are steeped in metaphor: 'shut out' implies a giant door somewhere.

I think what CS Lewis pointed out was that the primarily torment of hell isn't some kind of external punishment- the torment comes from being separated from God intrinsically. It is a natural consequence, not some grand torture chamber.

As a side note, there is a school of thought that might be called 'eventual annihilationism': not to be confused with what Jehovah's Witnesses believe (that spirits sent to hell are immediately annihilated). This camp would say that hell (or, more correctly, the lake of fire, lasts for a certain duration until at some point eventually that spirit is totally obliterated (perhaps based on degrees). I once set out to disprove this camp and found that they had some good arguments (mostly about interpreting 'everlasting destruction' etc.) While I wouldn't say I believe in eventual annihilationism, I don't think it's beyond posibility.

Nate: good points about the 'resurrection of the d**ned'. To be honest, I can barely understand heaven in some kind of physical body-- I can't even begin to imagine hell in a physical body. I guess we just have to remember that although physical, our resurrected bodies will be in many ways different than our current bodies. (1 Corinthians 15:35-54)

[hume]

Originally posted 10/05:

"I guess we just have to remember that although physical, our resurrected bodies will be in many ways different than our current bodies."

This strikes me as important. Doesn't a serious belief in God as Creator of our world (including, obviously, human bodies) -- whatever the mechanism(s) -- obligate one to be wary of falsely elevating "spirit" over/against the physical world? C.S. Lewis said (roughly, "God likes matter! He invented it." The Orthodox like to call Christ the "God-man." This has profound implications. Recently I heard a (pretty good) evangelical preacher deliver a mini-sermon on the topic: "the flesh does only one thing: rot!" It was funny (yeah, "the flesh" is messy, inconvenient stuff) -- but there's a danger here I think.

[Josh]

Originally posted 10/05:

I just came across this article on my logos system and was suprised to see that it leaned somewhat toward an understanding of hell as punishment with a certain duration, followed by eventual annihilation. Although it doesn't go into the arguments much, I was interested to read the part about the intertestimental ideas of hell: especially that it was widely held that hell might have a limited duration. Perhaps this was the common assumption of Jesus' day and, interestingly, he doesn't (arguably) challenge it; so he may have implicitly supported it.

HELL. ‘Hell’ in the NT renders the Gk. word transliterated as ‘Gehenna’ (Mt. 5:22, 29-30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mk. 9:43, 45, 47; Lk. 12:5; Jas. 3:6). The name is derived from the Heb. geÆ(ben)(beneÆ) hinnoµm, the Valley of (the son of Hinnom, a valley near Jerusalem (Jos. 15:8; 18:16), where children were sacrificed by fire in connection with pagan rites (2 Ki. 23:10; 2 Ch. 28:3; 33:6; Je. 7:31; 32:35). Its original derivation is obscure, but Hinnom is almost certainly the name of a person. In later Jewish writings Gehenna came to mean the place of punishment for sinners (Assumption of Moses 10:10; 2 Esdras 7:36). It was depicted as a place of unquenchable fire—the general idea of fire to express the divine judgment is found in the OT (Dt. 32:22; Dn. 7:10). The rabbinic literature contains various opinions as to who would suffer eternal punishment. The ideas were widespread that the sufferings of some would be terminated by annihilation, or that the fires of Gehenna were in some cases purgatorial (Rosh Hashanah 16b-17a; Baba MeziÕa 58b; Mishnah Eduyoth 2. 10). But those who held these doctrines also taught the reality of eternal punishment for certain classes of sinners. Both this literature and the Apocryphal books affirm belief in an eternal retribution (cf. Judith 16:17; Psalms of Solomon 3:13).

The teaching of the NT endorses this past belief. The fire of hell is unquenchable (Mk. 9:43), eternal (Mt. 18:8), its punishment is the converse of eternal life (Mt. 25:46). There is no suggestion that those who enter hell ever emerge from it. However, the NT leaves the door open for the belief that while hell as a manifestation of God’s implacable wrath against sin is unending, the existence of those who suffer in it may not be. It is difficult to reconcile the ultimate fulfilment of the whole universe in Christ (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20) with the continued existence of those who reject him. Some scholars have contended that an eternal punishment is one which is eternal in its effects; in any case eternal does not necessarily mean never-ending, but implies ‘long duration exten
The New Bible Dictionary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) 1962.

[hume]

Originally posted 10/05;

"The ancient as well as the late Byzantine position ... was that nothing evil can come from God, not even punishment. The punishment and torments of hell are only inflicted from ourselves, both in this world and in the next one. Hell and its fire is not different, essentially, from the benevolent energy of God, when experienced by sinners ...
Clement of Alexandria was the first Christian writer to speak of the fire of Hell as a "wise" fire, the means by which sinners are purified and, ultimately, saved ... [The early church theologian Origen] did not explicitly say that everybody will eventually be saved, but it seems he believed so ... Origen's position follows naturally after two assumptions: that the power of free will remains to the soul after death, and that God has not created an eternal place of damnation. Augustine, on the other hand, believed hell to be eternal and also created specifically for the punishment of the sinful, and influenced, probably unfortunately, the entire Western Christian tradition." {quoting from an article by Andreas Andreopoulos in the journal Theandros}

It's true this belief is not a mainstream one among Christians. Still, there seems something noble in it. To me it's difficult to accept that, in God's grand final scheme of things, a certain proportion of people are just doomed in the worst way. Wouldn't it seem more fitting to envision a final scenario in which the victory of good over evil is truly complete, leaving no evil whatsoever? (Yes, "annhilation of the damned" would achieve this in a different way ... but I have difficulty viewing that as anything but a reprehensible "final solution").

If nothing else, the attitude of hope for universal salvation certainly seems consistent with the Christ's teachings about how one should think about one's "enemies."

[Josh]

Originally posted 10/05:

My problem with the concept of eventual universal salvation are the ways Jesus and the NT authors describe hell. If phrases like "eternal" and "everlasting" and "their worm dies not" don't correspond to some reality (whether eternal conscious punishment or eventual annihilation, aka 'eternal destruction'), then they seem to lose their meaning entirely.

Is the ancient Byzantine perspective (which sounds a lot like Lewis' perspective, that hell is not overt punishment, but the torment comes from the absence of God) the current position of the Orthodox Church? I'm much more comfortable with this perspective biblically than full on universal salvation.

Note a few more things: Jesus says there are few that will be saved. The only way I can see around this would be perhaps to argue that he was talking about the Jews in the Jewish war, but I don't have that verse in front of me, so I don't know about that.

Also, when Paul says "it is appointed once for men to die, and then the judgment", don't we see in that the idea that there are no second changes? Or is this simply more of a anti-reincarnation statment? (not that Paul would have had reincarnation in mind, but...)

[hume]

Originally posted 10/05:

"Is the ancient Byzantine perspective ... the current position of the Orthodox Church?"
To my extremely limited knowledge, that is a typical Orthodox view; or at least, it's highly consistent with their tradition. Origen did not fare well at later Orthodox church councils, and universalism is definitely not an official position of that church. It's one of those peripheral positions -- not explicitly condemned (apparently Gregory of Nyssa held to it, and he was never dismissed in any official way), but not typical.


"Jesus says there are few that will be saved."

Not sure what a universalist would say to this (unless your suggestion about the Jewish war works); perhaps one could suggest this means that few will be saved in this lifetime; in other words, saved from spending perhaps quite a long and unpleasant stay in hell.


"phrases like 'eternal' and 'everlasting' and 'their worm dies not'"

Ah, but these phrases seem consistent with the Byzantine view of hell; obviously, if the "fire of hell" is nothing more (or less) than the overwhelming (and, to us heathens, unbearable) presence of God, then it would be just as eternal as God himself. This doesn't necessarily pose a problem for the universalist, who can say: the presence of God, and its effects, are eternal. Whether anyone will spend all eternity experiencing this as horrifying, is another question.

"Paul says 'it is appointed once for men to die, and then the judgment'"

Another tough one. We die once; we are then judged as to whether hell is our appropriate domain. Is it a stretch to respond: this does not say anything about the purpose of hell -- it's still possible to maintain that hell is a place of learning or change.

[Josh]

Originally posted 10/05;

No, I don't think it's a stretch...

Oh, and I guess I got it backwards- if you're saying that the torment of hell is in some way being in God's presence (not stemming from His absence).

Interesting, because as I'm reflecting on this, it seems like Lewis went two different ways with this: on the one hand in many places, he says the torment of hell is simply the self-chosen separation from God and humanity. But the position you're describing here fits more closely with the "Dwarves in the Stable" found in the Last Battle of the Chronicles of Narnia- people who are in the very presence of heaven but who see it as dung, darkness, and straw. Does Lewis say more about this in the Great Divorce (I forget, it's been a long time since I read that)?

[hume]

Originally posted 10/05:

Good point about Lewis. It's a reminder of how speculative all this has to be. His picture of separation in the Great Divorce is compelling. The Byzantines were much interested in what they called the Energies of God -- I think it's these Energies which they thought could be experienced as hellish. Lewis writes this into the Great Divorce also; when the protagonist takes the bus out of hell, he discovers to his shock that heaven is an extremely unpleasant place -- even the blades of grass are too solid and sharp for his wispy form.

[hume]

Originally posted 1/29/06:

"Jesus says there are few that will be saved."

Consider this comment on the passage you're referring to:

"This parable does not mean that God calls a lot of people, picks over them, and keeps only a few. If that were true, the middle of the parable would have no meaning. It means that God calls everyone and gives them the power to respond—but to be chosen, we must respond to the call, using the power God gave us for that purpose."

"In this parable, everyone was invited to the wedding, but the invitation went out in two waves. The respectable people were invited first, but they did not heed the invitation or they only pretended to accept. They lied, they pretended, but the result is that they didn’t show up. So the king told his slaves to send out the invitation again to the people who were not originally on the invitation list, and these people actually did show up. One of them was not wearing a wedding garment, so he was thrown out. In those days, the host furnished the wedding garments, so anyone who wasn’t properly dressed was very disrespectful.

In the end, everyone had been invited, but only a few were permitted to stay for the wedding. In other words, everyone is called, but some people refuse the invitation and are not chosen.

Another purpose of this parable is to prepare the disciples for the fact that when they evangelized the Jews, they would meet with disappointment for the most part, and that they should turn to the gentiles, whom they would otherwise consider unworthy. The bit about the man who avoided the distribution of the wedding garments means that the second group cannot presume acceptance, any more than the first group can presume acceptance because they are Abraham’s children. Just being called doesn’t mean you are chosen; you have to respond appropriately in your faith and conduct and then you are chosen ... If the worthy had accepted the invitation, the unworthy would never have been invited; that means if the Jews had accepted the gospel, the gentiles would never have been evangelized. So the Jews’ rejection of the gospel is not Jewish stubbornness, it is divine providence, so that all can be saved."

= from www.kencollins.com/question-44.htm

[Josh]

Originally posted 1/29/06:

Totally agreed on these points. But the verse I was originally referring to was Matthew 7:14, not Matthew 22:14, which underscores how few will find eternal life.

[hume]

Originally posted 1/30/06:

Touche. Other than to moderate it a bit by reminding the reader that Jesus was fond of hyperbole, I don't see any other way to read Matt. 7:14 than as an exclusive statement.

[Josh]

Just found this quote from Pope Gregory the Great (5th Century) that reflects an interesting take on this discussion:

"It is evident that those who are alive know and feel what is done to them, but the dead feel nothing. People would be dead in going down to hell [unable to feel anything, including its torment?] if they did evil out of ignorance; but if they have knowledge of evil and yet commit it, they go down alive-- wretched and conscious-- to the hell of iniquity"

[Josh]

I found the depiction of Jack Sparrow in Davy Jones' locker in the third pirates film to be analagous in some ways to C.S. Lewis' perspective on hell- namely, living with your own ugliness for eternity- the ugliness you have created step by step each moment of your life. Hell is seen as less a punishment from external forces (God, flames, etc..) and more as the natural consequence to a life of selfishness.

This Pirates/ Lewis perspective (and I'm not claiming that they have the definitive description of hell) also accounts for how some people's judgment could be more severe than others (as Jesus seems to indicate). The measure of the torment of hell would be the degree to which you have become corrupted.

Since even the 'best' of us by human standards would groan to spend eternity with ourselves, we can understand the need to be 'born again'-- to become a new creation-- one with which we could spend eternity feeling comfortable as, and in communion with God and others.

[schlaef]

Ok, here's my first foray, so please be gentle. What about the notion of "Hell on earth?" I have been thinking a lot lately about many of the places around the globe where the Christian influence is so remote, or perhaps driven so far underground, that we literally see people suffering in a hellish existence. (Genocide, disease, oppression, etc.) I think of the judgment rendered to the rich man in the story of the beggar Lazarus, and I think perhaps that we have done Hell a disservice by limiting it to an otherworldly (and fairly nebulous ) theoretical existence. When I consider a beggar having his wounds licked by dogs, while a wealthy man walks by him every day, the reversal after death seems like a proper and tonic reckoning. With that in mind, hell becomes in a sense, "just desserts" for those who would make a hell of our current existence. The tough part for people is its eternal component; that is, that the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime. But it seems to me that some karmic/eastern reasoning lies behind this. Namely, that given a second chance at rehabilitation, people would make smarter and wiser decisions. This notion that second chances would cut down on the recidivism rate really doesn't seem to jibe with the reality of our sin nature. Thus, Abraham's answer to the rich man when he asks for the chance to go back to warn his brothers makes the point clearly: Look, your brothers have/will have their chance, but what is left if they do not believe one who has risen from the dead? Who else can be sent? What point is there in pressing the matter any further?

On a side note, since I didn't read all of the above threads, is Christ's teaching about Lazarus and the rich man to be read as a parable, or a historical account? Sorry if this has already been mentioned.

*

[Josh]

Schlaef,

I agree that we must see that the thrust of Christ's argument in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31) as in effect saying that the point of this temporal existence is to solidify our eternal choice-- our eternal bent, if you will. We have all we need now to make our choice-- there is no other information or perspective that will improve our situation. Now, that's hard to believe, but it definitely seems like that's what Jesus is driving at here. And, doesn't that fact actually make this life that much more crucially worth something?

The Christian view places a shocking value on the brief span of a mortal life, weighed against eternity; reincarnation and the like arguably diminish if not almost extinguish the significance of the fleeting moments of our present existence.

I do see this as a parable and also as a nice summary of the state of common Jewish views on the afterlife by the time of the 1st century AD. For most of the OT, the afterlife is shrouded in a mist, reflecting what most of the rest of the world thought about the afterlife (a shadowy, ghostlike existence). The prophets dropped some hints about a brighter hope for God's people beyond the grave, and this came to be expressed in terms of a belief that the true children of Abraham would find themselves in a paradise next to the shadowy existence of the rest of mankind (somewhat similar to the Roman's Illysium).

Of course, for the Jews this abode of the dead was seen only as a resting place before the final bodily resurrection of the dead. And there's good reason to believe that the early Christians believed that Jesus upon either his death or resurrection freed those waiting in this resting place-- ushering them into His presence, where they began to reign with Christ. We could go on about this and venture into interesting speculation, but this probably suffices for now in responding to the second part of your post.

Now, your point about hell on earth... sounds like the seeds of further thought. One thought that jumped into my mind as a corollary was, "maybe some people use up all their heaven here on earth so all that is left is hell". Don't quote me on that, though, just an inkling of a thought.

Welcome aboard, btw. You know I've always enjoyed our conversations. I like this format for this kind of stuff because it helps me write. And it's good to have helpful catalysts. Keep it coming.