4
Views of Hell: A Study Outline (drafted 23/09/05)
This is an outline of a brief presentation on
perspectives on hell I shared at a Teachers’ Christian Fellowship recently. The
structure follows that in 4 Views of Hell
(ed. William Crockett), though I’ve added a bit more material (and links) from
elsewhere.
1. Literal
- Hell is everlasting conscious torment (both
physical and mental)
- Hell fire is literal fire:
- Frequent mention in Scripture e.g.
Matt 5:22, 18:8-9, 25:41; Mark 9:43, 48; Luke 16:24; James 3:6; Rev 21:8,
etc.)
- Parable of Lazarus
and rich man in Luke 16:19-31 has rich man saying, “I am in agony in this
fire”
- Infinite sin against infinite God deserves
infinite punishment of infinite intensity
- Objections against literal fire are derived
from humanist sentiment and based more on philosophy and theology instead
of Scripture
- Utter horror of hell acts as spur to
preaching the gospel, praying for the lost and witnessing for Christ.
- Key problems:
- Doesn’t adequately address symbolic
nature of verses
- Doesn’t adequately address verses
suggesting total destruction (see ‘conditional immortality’ below)
- Everlasting vindictive punishment
of horrendous intensity is inconsistent with notions of love and justice
and raises serious questions about God’s character
2. Conditional / Annihilation
- Unrepentant souls are destroyed by God and
cease to exist
- Biblical
verses suggesting utter destruction (as opposed to everlasting suffering):
- Obad 16,
"...they shall drink and drink and be as if they had never been."
- Dan 2:35,
"Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were
broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing
floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace."
- Nahum 1;10,
"They will be entangled among thorns and drunk from their wine; they
will be consumed like dry stubble."
- Psa 1:4,
"(the wicked) are like chaff that the wind blows away..."
- Psa 37:10, 20, 36,
"A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you
look for them, they will not be found...but the wicked will perish; The
Lord's enemies will be like the beauty of the fields, they will vanish - vanish
like smoke...I have seen a wicked and ruthless man (but) he soon passed
away and was no more..."
- Isa 33:14,
"The sinners in Zion
are terrified...'Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?', 'Who of
us can dwell with everlasting burning?'" (interpretation: people
CANNOT dwell in the burning, they are destroyed!)
- Matt 3:12,
"...He will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the
barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
- Heb 10:27,
"...only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire
that will consume the enemies of God."
- Phil 3:18-19,
"...Their (the enemies of Christ) destiny is destruction." (cf.
1:28, "...they will be destroyed.")
- 1Cor 3:17,
"If anyone destroy God's temple, God will destroy him..."
- Immortality and incorruption are promised
only to the righteous (1Cor 15:42-44); immortality thus may be refused to
the unrepentant, reflecting God’s judgment on them
- Victory of God is truly final and ultimate
i.e. heaven and hell doesn’t have to “eternally co-exist” in eternity (as
in the traditional view)
- Key problems:
- Doesn’t adequately address passages
suggesting conscious punishment in hell
- Difficult to prove that ancient
Jews during Paul’s time held to annihilationism, given their view of the
immortality of the soul
- For more details, see my online write-up (as
yet unfinished, though). See also J.P. Holding’s criticisms of annihilationism.
3. Purgatorial
- Purgatory a kind of ‘outer court’ of heaven
in which people are placed until they are more fully prepared for entrance
into God’s presence
- Most people die as flawed lovers,
still incapable of unconditional heavenly love, not as giants of faith
and thus it seems unlikely that they will immediately share in destiny of
heroic martyrs
- Intermediate purification state
necessary to bring about complete openness to and love of God i.e.
spiritual growth involving cooperation of human freedom and
responsibility continues after death
- Bridges gap between imperfect
sanctification at death and perfect life in heaven; C.S. Lewis, “Don’t
our souls demand purgatory?”
- Our good works on earth and our prayers for
the departed can help in the ‘healing of the dead’:
- Ancient Christians prayed for the
dead
- Human solidarity transcends death
and praying for the dead is a reflection of human relationality beyond
the grave
- Scriptural support:
- Matt 12:31-32, “Anyone who speaks a
word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks
against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Sins can be
forgiven in the next world, a view shared by St. Augustine and Gregory the Great)
- 1Cor 3:11-15, “(Fire) will test the
quality of each man’s work” (Fire spoken of here is purgatorial fire
before the final judgment)
- Apocryphal support: Maccabees 12:41-46,
“Thus Judas made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this
sin.”
- Roman Catholic theology analogously
compares doctrines and Scripture to a
plant and its seed i.e. intrinsic relation exists but an oak tree will
still look different from an acorn
- Key problem is the dubious exegesis of
supporting verses plus the overall lack of Biblical support (this
objection is valid mainly from an evangelical perspective)
4. Metaphorical
- Hell fire is symbolic of severity and finality of God’s judgment upon the
impenitent
- Verses about fire cannot be taken
literally due to Scripture’s conflicting language in describing eternal
punishment e.g. ‘blackest darkness’ versus ‘eternal fire’ (Jude 7 and 13,
Matt 3:10 and 25:41, etc.)
- Heaven is depicted as an ancient
city complete with golden streets, pearled gates, jewelled walls and
sparkling rivers – surely this isn’t literal, likewise with hell’s
depictions
- Ancient Jewish rabbis employed
symbolic hyperbole to emphasize seriousness and urgency of situation,
e.g.: ‘hate’ your father and mother (Luke 14:26), ‘gouge out’ an
offending eye or limb (Matt 5:29), let the dead ‘bury their own dead’
(Luke 9:60), etc.
- Hell is still everlasting and its
inhabitants experience consciously
the effects of separation from God:
- Sorrow (“weeping”)
- Anger (“gnashing of teeth”)
- Sense of emptiness and being lost?
(“darkness’)
- Hell’s punishment is intrinsic to evil acts i.e. an appropriate response to people’s
rejection of God and not primarily vindictive in nature
- Hell is a quarantine, an isolation of the wicked from the righteous and
anything good, true, beautiful or of God
- Hell’s inhabitants continue to sin ‘outside
the city of God’!
(Rev 22:15)
- Physical pain possible due to:
- Physical distress accompanying evil
passions and desires
- Physical violence inflicted among
inhabitants
- Presence of ‘regulated’ literal
fire (in tune with divine justice)
- Key problems:
- Vague about precise nature of hell
(Is metaphorical hellfire as severe and serious as literal hellfire?
Isn’t spiritual torment just as bad as physical torment?) and therefore
may not be a huge improvement on traditional view of hell
- Doesn’t adequately address strong
traditional passages like Rev 20:10 and the ‘burning lake of sulphur’
- Possibly complicates our
understanding of exclusive salvation in Christ, e.g. what about
non-Christians who reject Jesus but embrace and work for love and
relationships on earth? They do not seem ‘deserving’ of a hell understood
as the intrinsic climax of lives filled with evil.
- For probably the best online defence of a
strong relational view of Hell, check out Glenn Miller’s work on the topic.
Alwyn Lau, Oct ‘05
Recommended
Books
1.
4 Views on Hell. John Walvoord, Zachary
Hayes, Clark Pinnock & William Crockett, ed. William Crockett. Zondervan. 1996
2.
Hell: The Logic of
Damnation.
Jerry L. Walls. University
of Notre Dame Press. 1992
(the last two chapters are the most relevant for what ‘goes on’ in hell, the
rest of the book concerns the nature of God i.e. omnipotence, omniscience,
etc.)
3.
Satan & The Problem
of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy. Gregory Boyd. IVP, 2002
(chapters 11 and 12, especially the latter where Boyd draws on Barthian theology in an attempt to harmonize both the
traditionalist and annihilationist views whilst maintaining a strong relational
theme to hell)
4.
The Last Word and the
Word After That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt and a New Kind
of Christianity. Brian
McLaren. Jossey-Bass. 2005.
(offers an Emergent-style twist to the symbolic reading of hell)
5.
The Problem of Pain. C.S. Lewis. (just the
hell chapter, but the whole book’s worth reading)
6.
The Great Divorce. C.S. Lewis. (I haven’t
read this, but the reviews are incredible)
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