Hell Part 2
We are in part 2 of a two-part series looking at the subject of “hell.” Already we have noted the origins of what people commonly think hell means and involves—“eternal conscious torment,” or ECT for short—and why many Christians (and most non-Christians) find that deeply troubling; wholly inconsistent with a God whom we say is defined by both love and justice. ECT sounds neither loving nor just.
The idea that people who are not Christians (however that is defined—“once saved, always saved” . . . ?) will face physical agony and torment for eternity in the fiery flames of an underworld superintended by a sadistic personification of absolute evil (Satan) who has been given free reign by God to inflict pain and suffering as the agent of his justice, seems, quite frankly, inconceivable. Many Christians wonder how someone with even half an ounce of compassion could ever be happy enjoying eternal bliss in heaven while that is happening to their non-Christian friends and family. Or will God wipe our memories so that we don’t even realise that is what’s going on in “the other place”?
If, in order to be good, Bible-believing evangelicals, we are required to promote ECT as divine truth, we need to be darn sure that it’s right. And if it is, we would surely not be without grounds to question whether we really want to spend eternity in the company of a God whose definition of love and justice looks like that. If Abraham was allowed to question God about the fate of Lot in Sodom (Genesis 18) on the grounds that it would surely be inconsistent with his nature and character, would that not equally be allowed for us?
To discuss a subject such as this requires us firstly to distinguish between beliefs that are truly essential for Christian orthodoxy (known as dogma) and non-essential, peripheral beliefs. Dogma is generally used in a negative sense, of someone being dogmatic, but its technical meaning in this context simply refers to those beliefs that define what it means to be a “proper” Christian—one who “believes the right things.” The extent of those required beliefs is actually remarkably limited. Broadly, it’s the content of the early Creeds: specifically, the Apostles’ Creed (so called not because they drafted it but because it was the early Church’s understandings of what they believed) and the Nicene Creed.
In both Creeds, the dogma are briefly stated and lack detail—which promotes Christian unity, since the more detail is added, and the more subjects are added, the more room there is for counterproductive arguments about secondary matters that will end up distracting from the gospel. The upshot is that on any non-essential matters, outside the Creeds, Christians are at liberty to hold a variety of views. Those are known as adiaphora—matters of opinion (technically, “matters of indifference”).
So, what do the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed have to say on the nature of hell (eternal conscious torment?) and how Jesus saved us (penal substitution?). The short answer is that they say as good as nothing on both subjects. The longer answer is that what they do say references neither eternal conscious torment nor penal substitution.
The Apostles’ Creed says that Jesus was “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; [and] ascended into heaven . . .” In other words, the fact that Jesus saved us through his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension is a required belief. But how that came about (whether it’s through penal substitution or one or more of the other images and metaphors the New Testament offers us) is not a biblically mandated belief—we can explain it through any of those images and metaphors, as we choose. That Jesus saved us is most certainly not a matter of indifference. But exactly how he accomplished that carries no mandated belief. The Nicene Creed says essentially the same, but if anything it hints that the central idea is the incarnation—God becoming man: “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man.”
No word translatable as hell appears in either Creed. In relation to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Apostles’ Creed simply says he “was buried” and “descended to the dead.” It says nothing about Jesus spending time in somewhere called “hell” and even less so anything about what he may or may not have done there. The point the Creed is making is that Jesus went to the place of the dead—he was “properly dead.” The Nicene Creed is similar: “he suffered death and was buried.” Again, nothing whatsoever about a place called hell nor its nature in relation to humanity’s ultimate fate. Rather, the creedal emphasis is on (a) accountability before God for this life, and (b) the eternal benefits of salvation. Both say that Jesus “will come to judge the living and the dead,” but they are silent on the negative consequences that will flow from that judgement. On the positive benefits, the Apostles’ Creed says, “I believe in . . . the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”—with no detail offered on somewhere called “heaven.” Similarly, the Nicene Creed says, “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”
What the early Creeds say shapes what we need to believe (and don’t need to believe) to be “properly Christian” on any subject. With respect to further detail—and with respect to any other subjects—we are at liberty before God (though not necessarily before our evangelical denomination) to hold a range of different opinions deriving from Scripture that are theologically reasonable.
Concerning hell, what might that range of different opinions be? To properly consider them, we will need to be able to set aside any ingrained “must be” and “can’t be” presuppositions about what hell is and what it involves and be willing to objectively consider the scriptural material. The danger lies in finding and then prioritising the verses that appear to “fit” our existing belief framework (this can be true on other subjects, as well). This is known as “confirmation bias.”
Space is limited here, so I will need to be brief. The most important thing to keep in mind is that Scripture is very clear that we will all stand before God to give an account of our lives and that there are potentially negative consequences flowing from that in relation to eternity. However, in both Testaments, it says as good as nothing about the detail of what those negative consequences look like (and still less about their duration). Its focus is on the positives—the availability of eternal life, knowing God, starting in the present (John 17:3) and continuing forever, beyond death.
This is summed up in a classic verse, Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death, but the [free/gracious] gift of God is eternal life in [or, through] Christ Jesus our Lord.” Notice that the contrast is between eternal life and death—not eternal life and eternal torment. That the wages is death does not suggest that anyone “gets away with it” in terms of judgement, just that death is the ultimate outcome. Obviously, the idea that “death means death”—as a plain reading of this and other similar verses would suggest—undermines the neo-Platonic (but non-biblical) assumption that the human soul is inherently eternal.
Romans 6:23 and other similar verses lead us to the first alternative way of understanding things, biblically speaking, which is called “conditional immortality”: namely, the human soul is mortal (ultimately dies), but if the right “conditions” are met, then it can metamorphose into immortality (never dies) in a future that we call “heaven.” What precisely those “conditions” look like is another subject, but simplistically we might say it’s being included in the scope of God’s salvific work through Christ.
Another (albeit minority view) is universal reconciliation (aka, universal restoration). This reflects Scriptures such as Colossians 1:19–20: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” and Romans 11:32: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” Again, universal reconciliation does not suggest that anyone “gets away with it,” but simply that God will ultimately (after the consequences of accountability) draw everyone to him.
Let’s close with a few words on the biblical basis for eternal conscious torment.
The first thing we need to keep in mind is that in the ancient world (through to very recently indeed—just the last couple of hundred years or so in this country, before penal reform) crimes were not punished by custodial sentences. The prison was for those awaiting trial or awaiting their sentencing being carried out. Judicial punishment was by inflicting physical violence and suffering (including execution). Since that was how society understood the judicial consequences of wrongdoing in human law courts, why would that not logically also be the case in the heavenly law court?
The second thing to keep in mind is that there is no biblical word for our word “hell.” The two Greek words that some (not all) Bible versions render “hell” are Hades (the place of the dead—“where people go when they die”) and Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom—a real place between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. To render those words as “hell” (with all of the implications that readers will inevitably draw from that word) is an ideological choice, not a linguistic necessity.
The principal New Testament texts that ECT relies upon are in Luke 16 (the parable of the rich man and Lazarus), where Hades is the setting for a conversation, and Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats, in which the cursed (those who did not look after people in this life) “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous [who did] to eternal life.” In Luke 16, a lot of weight is borne by the assumption that Jesus is validating the surface characteristic of the parable: that Hades = hell, and it involves physical torment. But a close reading makes clear that teaching truths about heaven and hell is not in view here. Jesus is simply borrowing people’s common idea of what Hades is, as the context for teaching the truth that how we live this life has eternal consequences. In Matthew 25, again the focus is on how we have lived this life. And again, a lot of weight is borne by what we think (the Greek words for) “punishment” and “eternal” mean. For example, death self-evidently fulfils the criteria of being both punishment and eternal—death lasts forever—but death is not eternal conscious torment.
In terms of substantiating ECT, biblically, that’s really it. In both cases, we’re talking about a parable, in which the “surface” elements of the story are never the point—they are just scaffolding. The intended meaning (the “teaching”) is always something below the surface.