Does the New Testament teach a doctrine of Hell?

 

INTRODUCTION

     Until more recent times, it had long been a commonplace in Christian thought that the New Testament teaches unequivocally that there exists a place of eternal, conscious bodily/spiritual torment where the lost will spend eternity, a.k.a. Hell.[1]  However, there are many scholars who, albeit out of no desire to belittle the testimony of Scripture, now question whether the New Testament actually does affirm this traditional view of Hell.  In this brief paper, I will examine two NT expressions – “the Gehenna of fire” found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and “the lake of fire” of the book of Revelation – with the goal of determining whether they do indeed teach what they have traditionally been understood to teach, or whether a close examination of their language in its canonical, historical and cultural context might reveal a different referent for their “fiery imagery”.

MATTHEW & MARK: “THE GEHENNA OF FIRE”

     “Gehenna”, traditionally rendered “Hell” (cf. Mt. 5.22, 29-30) actually did not originally denote a “bad place” the far side of death.  At the most basic level, this Greek word is simply a translation of the Hebrew “Hinnom”, a valley situated to the south of Jerusalem (cf. Joshua 15.8).  The threats of judgment uttered over this sinister valley (cf. Jer. 7.30-33), a place of child sacrifice in pre-exilic times, are the reason why the Valley of Hinnom came to be equated with the “hell” of the last judgment in Jewish apocalyptic literature from the 2^nd century B.C.[2]  After Josiah defiled the valley to make it unacceptable as a holy site (2 Kings 23.10), it was used as a garbage dump by the inhabitants of Jerusalem.  As a result, the valley became known in Jewish tradition as the place of destruction by fire.

     The word Gehenna, in the opinion of many scholars, is commonly used in the NT for the place of final punishment.  This valley was regarded as an appropriate image of “hell” due to its association with the place to deposit the bodies of those slain in battle by God’s judgment (cf. Jer. 7.30ff).  Besides Gehenna, another biblical aspect of “hell” is that of fire and burning.  Throughout the Scriptures the execution of judgment is frequently portrayed with images of burning.  Cp. the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gn. 19) and that of Jericho (Joshua 6).  The point of burning seems to be that it destroys something offensive to God’s holiness and that the smoke acts as a sign that the offensive thing is in fact being destroyed.[3]  Fiery images are used in the Gospels with reference to divine judgment in the afterlife – according to J.B. Green – including “fire” (Mt. 3.10; 7.12, etc.), “‘hell’ (Gehenna) of fire” (Mt. 5.22; 18.9), “unquenchable fire” (Mt. 3.12; Mk. 9.43, 48), “eternal fire” (Mt. 18.8; 25.41), and “eternal punishment” (Mt. 25.46).[4]

     Burning is not only an image of the satisfaction of God’s holiness, but also of the suffering of those undergoing judgment.  Revelation 14.10 warns that worshippers of the “beast” will be “tormented with burning sulfur”.  Here we have the image of bodies capable of feeling pain being subjected to the agony of being burned.  This is in keeping with the traditional view that the NT teaches that “hell” is punishment experienced as suffering in body and soul (Mt. 10.28; Jude 7).  The impression the relevant texts (Lk. 16. 23-25; Mt. 13.42, 50; 22.13) give of unbearable heat, the noxious odor of burning and the sound of weeping has inspired many a harrowing sermon and such awful scenes in literature as the desert of burning sand and fiery rain in Canto 14 of Dante’s Inferno.  In the NT the torment is described as continuous and eternal[5] (Mt. 3.12; 25.41, etc.).

     “Hell” is also described with the image of darkness (Mt. 8.12).  This image appears to indicate consignment to chaos, being shut out of God’s favorable presence and his good creation, since creation began with God calling light out of darkness (Gn. 1.1-3).  Instead of getting hung up on the contradictory imagery (fire and darkness), we must remember that biblical images of “hell” leave many details to the imagination, perhaps because no picture is capable of doing justice to the reality.  As many have pointed out, Jesus speaks more of “hell” than any other biblical figure, and proffers strident warnings to avoid it (Mk. 9.42-48).[6]

     However, this raises an important question.  When Jesus uses the term “Gehenna”, is he referring to the post-mortem destiny of individuals or is he making reference to a future historical judgment – or perhaps both?  More than the other evangelists, Matthew is concerned about the final judgment.  Matthew uses the term “Gehenna” seven times, once with reference to people whose lives are inspired by “hell” (Mt. 23.15), but otherwise – so says Joel B. Green – with reference to the “hell” of eschatological condemnation (Mt. 5.22, 29-30; 10.28; 18.9; 23.33).  Mark, for his part, devotes little attention to these matters.  References to “hell” are concentrated at the end of Mark 9, where Jesus warns his followers to set aside whatever might cause one to stumble in one’s faith (9.43-48).  Mark associates those who stumble with God’s enemies (cf. Is. 66.24), and paints “hell” with images of deplorable death and decomposition, images used to motivate unreserved allegiance to God.[7]

     Against the common view that “Jesus has more to say about Hell than any other individual in the Bible”,[8] N.T. Wright advances the argument that when Jesus warns his contemporaries of Gehenna, he is not speaking of a post-mortem, individualistic, eternal destination; rather, Jesus was warning the people of God of the this-worldly consequences of refusing his call to walk in the way of peace and enemy-love.  Wright interprets Jesus’ “Gehenna warnings” in light of his predictions of Jerusalem’s destruction (cf. Mk. 13, par.).  On Wright’s reading, Jesus was warning his nation that if they did not “repent” of their being “hell-bent” on violent revolution against Rome, Zion in its entirety would become an extension of Gehenna, i.e. the garbage-dump in the Valley of Hinnom.[9]  In the fourth Gospel, Jesus refers to both the resurrection of life and the resurrection of condemnation (Jn. 5.29); this was a belief that he shared with the Pharisees (cf. Ac. 23.6-8; 24.15).  The Age to Come would be inaugurated by a resurrection of all the dead (which assumes a new creation for these resurrected folk to inhabit; cf. Rev. 21—22), followed by the final judgment (cf. Rev. 20).  So, Jesus did believe in two possible “eternal” destinies; however, his “eschatology” differed greatly from the popular, modern idea that eternity consists of disembodied souls inhabiting either “Heaven” or “Hell”, without any regard for a rebirth of the created cosmos (cf. Rom. 8.18-25).

REVELATION: “THE LAKE OF FIRE”

     Revelation raises many disquieting questions.  What is a good God to do?  Can God judge the world without morally compromising himself?  Does it make moral sense for the Creator to “destroy those who destroy the earth” (cf. Rev. 11.18)?  Surely, destruction in and of itself is morally wrong, no?  Isn’t God “love” (cf. 1 Jn. 4.16-18)?  Doesn’t God always forgive wrongdoing?  Indeed, it often seems that in today’s Global North, (the Christian) God has become quite sentimental…^[10]  Positive thinking – including a “positive” image of God – will always be welcome to anxious/affluent moderns, but the question remains – what can this “good God” do about evil?  This is the question to which the book of Revelation offers itself as an answer.

     God created a “good” cosmos; indeed, the Creator declared his work to be “very good” (Gn. 1.31; cf. 1.4, 10, 12, etc.).  And yet, there was a snake in the garden… (cf. Gn. 3.1ff).  Evil – whose origins are never fully explained in the Bible^[11] – infiltrated God’s good world and corrupted it, along with the wills of God’s human creatures (cf. Gn. 3.1-7).  The rest is (quite literally) history…

     The Bible is the long, tortuous story of the Creator’s struggle to rescue his world from the evil that defaces and seeks to destroy it.  Evil is a slippery foe.  As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918—2008) said, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.  No one is untainted by evil; traditionally, this reality – of which everyone is intuitively aware – has been referred to as “original sin”.^[12]  No one occupies the proverbial moral high ground; therefore, each person who would seek to fight evil will not only do so imperfectly, but will also be painfully aware of the inherent hypocrisy in even their best-intentioned actions.  Indeed, this would be an apt summary of the history of ancient Israel as told in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Israel, called to be the Creator’s agent of salvation and rescue among the nations of the world, turns out to be just as tainted by evil as the heathen nations for whom she was supposed to be the light.^[13]

     But what of God himself?  Can God (violently) judge the world without ceasing to be “good”?  According to the Bible, the Creator rarely acts without partnering with human beings – and therefore always runs the risk of being associated with the moral ambiguity of human nature.  Be that as it may, there are times when God acts unilaterally; for example, the great Flood described in Genesis chapters 6—9.  Indeed, the story of Noah’s Flood is in many ways the “prequel” to the book of Revelation – in both instances, the Creator performs a cataclysmic judgment of the world in order to make a new beginning (cp. Gn. 1.26-31 with Gn. 9.1-7; cf. Rev. 21.1-5).^[14]  Paradoxically, God tells Noah that the reason he is about to destroy the earth is because of humankind’s rampant violence (Gn. 6.11-13; cf. Rev. 11.18)!^[15]  This apparent paradox is somewhat mitigated when we consider that the Flood represents the tragic climax of violence that ultimately ruined creation.  The Flood was both the end and natural result of violence and God’s way of mediating the consequences of sin that were already present in the pre-Flood situation.^[16]  Through the Flood, the Creator brought the world back to its pre-creation state (cf. Gn. 1.1-2), with the goal of re-creating it.  Following the Flood, God promised never to un-make his creation again (Gn. 9.8-17).  In Revelation, God re-makes his ultimate version of his creation (Rev. 21.1ff).  It remains that before new creation can become a reality, all anti-creation forces must be destroyed…^[17]

     The “lake of fire” is the equivalent, in apocalyptic literature, to Gehenna in the Gospels.[18]  The narrative of Revelation is hard to reconcile with the traditional picture of a final judgment which results in the saved ascending to Heaven and the damned descending into Hell (cf. the altar wall of the Sistine chapel).  Rather, Revelation offers a tantalizing vision of a new creation, “new heavens and a new earth” (21.1).  The New Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth, with the appearance of a bride on her wedding day (21.2).  The vision of the new creation presumes the resurrection of the dead (cf. 20.12; Ac. 24.15).  The “lake of fire” (20.15) served to destroy (?) everything/everyone who posed a threat to the shalom of the new world where there is no more crying, pain, suffering, evil or death (21.2-5).  And yet, even after the great white throne judgment scene (20.11-15), there remain nations in need of healing (22.2) who make pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem and bring their glory into it (21.22-26).

     This “ambiguous” final scene which contains “nations” outside the heavenly city (now on earth) who are yet welcome to visit the New Jerusalem as well as the list of those who are (eternally?) refused access (21.27; 22.14-15) rejects the overly simplistic scenario which has long prevailed in the Christian imagination – that of all humans ending up in one of two eschatological destinations: either “the good place” or “the bad place”.  Whatever the “lake of fire” is, it seems that it must not be taken to mean the “final resting place” of those who, by all appearances, do not yet belong to Christ at the time of his coming to judge the living and the dead.

CONCLUSION

     There seems to be no way of doubting that the New Testament clearly teaches the reality of a final judgment.  However, when one begins to examine the imagery provided for the consequences of a negative outcome at this judgment, things become less straightforward.  Fire is often used in the Scriptures to connote destruction, but it is also often used to connote purification (e.g. 1 Cor. 3.10-15).  In his sermon “The Weight of Glory”, C.S. Lewis spoke of two possible eschatological outcomes – that each and every person was in the process of becoming either “a creature which, if we saw it now, we would be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as we now meet only in a nightmare”.[19]  Is death the “unveiling” of which outcome is to be ultimately and definitely ours?  Or is there yet hope beyond the grave to continue journeying towards one’s “final destination”?  Alas, the New Testament doesn’t appear to have clear and fast answers…besides that of Rom. 8.38ff.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

     Green, Joel B., “Heaven and Hell” in Green, Joel B., gen. ed. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (second edition), Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013, pp. 370—76.

     Hoekema, Anthony A. The Bible and the Future, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.

     Kittel, Gerhard, ed. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. I, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964.

     Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory and other Addresses, New York: HarperOne, 2001 [1949, 1976, 1980].

     Lynch, Matthew J. Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

     Ryken, Leland et al., gen. Eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

     Shogren, G.S. “Hell, Abyss, Eternal Punishment” in Martin, Ralph P. & Peter H. Davids, eds. Dictionary of the Later New Testament & its Developments, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997, pp. 459-62.

     Vanhoozer, Kevin J., gen. ed. Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.

     Wright, N.T. Evil and the Justice of God, Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006.

     __________. Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995 [1994].

     __________. Jesus and the Victory of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

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[1] Cf. Hoekema, Anthony A. The Bible and the Future, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979, p. 273.

[2] Kittel, Gerhard, ed. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. I, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964, p. 657.

[3] Ryken, Leland et al., gen. Eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998, pp. 376-77.

[4] Green, Joel B., “Heaven and Hell” in Green, Joel B., gen. ed. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (second edition), Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013, p. 371.

[5] I.e. a characteristic of the Age to Come; cf. Shogren, G.S. “Hell, Abyss, Eternal Punishment” in Martin, Ralph P. & Peter H. Davids, eds. Dictionary of the Later New Testament & its Developments, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997, p, 461.

[6] Ryken, Leland et al., gen. Eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998, pp. 377.

[7] Green, Joel B., “Heaven and Hell” in Green, Joel B., gen. ed. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (second edition), Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013, pp. 373-74.

[8] Cf. Hoekema, Anthony A. The Bible and the Future, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979, pp. 266-68.  A few days ago, I heard a street preacher say this.

[9] Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996, pp. 329-32; 454-55; cf. idem. Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995 [1994], pp. 91-98.

[10] This phenomenon has resulted in the proliferation of what some call “therapeutic spirituality”.

[11] Cf. N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006, pp. 13-42.

[12] The classic exposition of this doctrine was made by St. Augustine in the 5^th century AD.  Since the advent of modernity, this doctrine has become controversial, but the events of the 20^th century served to remind the West that there may still be something to it (to put it mildly…).  Different attitudes towards evil emerged in the modern era.  Liberal theology has tended to assume that human nature is basically good; for his part, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) waxed eloquent about the “problem of morality” and taught that we must go “beyond good and evil” in order to arrive at a true account of human nature.  Nietzsche believed that the “good” consisted in exerting one’s “will to power”, to constantly surpass both oneself and society’s conventions.  On his account, the fundamental mistake was to appease weakness, the error exhibited in the “morality of resentment” which, for him, was the hallmark of Christianity.

[13] Cf. chapters 9—11 of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

[14] Interestingly, in Rev. 21.1, “there is no more sea” (cf. Gn. 9.8-17).

[15] Cf. Matthew J. Lynch, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God, Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023, pp. 64-73.

[16] Cf. Ibid, pp. 84-85.

[17] Cf. chapters 6-20 of Revelation.

[18] Shogren, G.S. “Hell, Abyss, Eternal Punishment” in Martin, Ralph P. & Peter H. Davids, eds. Dictionary of the Later New Testament & its Developments, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997, p. 460.

[19] Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory and other Addresses, New York: HarperOne, 2001 [1949, 1976, 1980], p. 45.