Thoughts On Hell I
I grew up on Hell. The preachers of my youth weren’t afraid to broach the subject. They preached sin black, Hell hot, and Heaven…well, if it wasn’t a sure destination, it was at least there and something to shoot for. A favorite passage was Matthew 25:41: “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Although they mentioned the fact that the eternal fire wasn’t made for man, nevertheless, if men didn’t repent, they would surely go there–and suffer forever. Although I don’t remember specific descriptions of the tortures of Hell, early on I got the idea that Hell was awful, painful, and, above all, endless.
One of the things that always bothered me about that understanding of Hell was the gap between our belief in it and our efforts to warn sinners of it. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that if what those old preachers said Hell was–awful, painful, endless–was true, then we all ought to be out busting our humps telling people about it. If Hell really is that bad, then it’s something to lie awake nights over, isn’t it? It’s a belief that should either make you go crazy or turn you into a tireless evangelist. Yet I, who held that belief, wasn’t either one.
I suppose it was this cognitive dissonance, the irony of believing one thing and doing (or not doing) another, that got me to studying the matter. I read a couple books on the subject, which I recommend to you: Four Views on Hell (Zondervan) and The Fire that Consumes (Verdict Publications). The first presents four understandings of the doctrine of final punishment: Literal, Metaphorical, Purgatorial, and Conditional. The latter view refers to “conditional immortality,” i.e., that human beings don’t possess an immortal soul and will not then suffer endlessly beyond the grave. It is this view to which Edward Fudge, who wrote the second book, conforms. Fudge is no mean scholar who’s done his homework on the subject. Among his conclusions is one most pertinent to the verse I quoted above, Matthew 25:41, specifically, to the word “eternal.” After exhaustive scriptural study, Fudge concludes that it doesn’t always mean “of endless duration.”
I’m not going to recount what Fudge wrote here. You can find the book and read it yourself. What I want to say here is that his thinking on the subject helped me with something I’d been puzzling over for a long time, to wit, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It seems to me that, if something’s vitally important then it’s that important all the time, not just now and again. If a human being’s choice is Endless Bliss or Endless Torment, then surely the Author of Salvation would’ve wanted it stated clearly throughout His word. Here, however, in what’s arguably the most famous capsule of the Gospel, the choice isn’t stated in such terms. The choice is either eternal life or…perishing. Same goes for what Paul wrote in another verse always on the lips of an evangelist, Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life…” If Hell is endless torment, endless burning, or, to soften the blow, just endless regret; if it’s endless something, why, oh, why didn’t John or Paul say so? They say the choice is between life and death. Life and death, not life and living death or life and endless punishment or life and burning hell. Life and death!
You’ve made an excellent point to show that there can be no Hell, not in the sense of people being consciously tortured.
I’ve actually written an entire book on this topic–Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There’s No Such Place As Hell, (for anyone interested, you can get a free ecopy of Did Jesus Believe in Hell?, one of the most compelling chapters in my book at http://www.thereisnohell.com), but if I may, I’d like to add one more point to yours–that there’s substantial evidence contained in the gospels to show that Jesus himself opposed the idea of Hell.
For example, in Luke 9:51-56, is a story about his great disappointment with his disciples when they actually suggested imploring God to rain FIRE on a village just because they had rejected him. His response: “You don’t know what spirit is inspiring this kind of talk!” Presumably, it was NOT the Holy Spirit. He went on, trying to explain how he had come to save, heal and relieve suffering, not be the CAUSE of it.
So it only stands to reason that this same Jesus, who was appalled at the very idea of burning a few people, for a few horrific minutes until they were dead, could never, ever burn BILLIONS of people for an ETERNITY!
True, there are a few statements that made their way into the copies of copies of copies of the gospel texts which place “Hell” on Jesus’ lips, but these adulterations came along many decades after his death, most likely due to the Church filling up with Greeks who imported their belief in Hades with them when they converted.
Bear in mind that the historical Protestant doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures applies only to the original autographs, not the copies. But sadly, the interpolations that made their way into those copies have provided a convenient excuse for a lot of people to get around following Jesus’ real message.