Posting 19 RESTORING HELL
Edward William Fudge
[NOTE: I know of no one who has better credentials to write this Posting than Edward Fudge. What he writes deserves our serious attention. Neal Punt]
Jerry Walls of Asbury Seminary put it very well: “We cannot be moral without God, and we cannot have God without hell. Hell needs to make a comeback” (Christianity Today, June 16, 1997, "Can We Be Good Without Hell?"). I say "Bravo!" to Professor Walls for reminding us that we are creatures accountable to our Creator, that earthly actions have consequences beyond this Age of time and space, and that there is a dark side to divine justice as well as eternal reward. The New Testament certainly warns against hell, and Jesus himself says more about it than anyone else. As we restore the doctrine of damnation from widespread disuse, it is important that we faithfully represent what Scripture actually says on this fearful subject. We must observe how Jesus uses this teaching, to whom he addresses it, and what he actually says about it.
Interestingly, the fear of punishment is not the driving force behind most scriptural exhortations to godliness or abstinence from evil. Love for God, and gratitude for what he has accomplished for sinners in Jesus Christ, are far greater incentives to good than fear of hell─although that has its place for those whose spiritual hides are too thick and insensitive to respond to nobler motivations. The Acts of the Apostles reports the gospel as originally preached during the first generation following Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost. And the fact is that, aside from one or two general statements about a coming judgment (Acts 17:30–31; 24:25), this book of apostolic preaching mentions final punishment only once (Acts 3:23). Instead, almost every discourse recorded in Acts focuses on the reality of eternal life in Christ for those who believe in him (too many references to cite).
How Jesus Used Hell
What is the point of hell anyway, if not the “big stick” of evangelism to club sinners to repentance and to motivate them to believe in Jesus? How did Jesus use hell in his own teaching? Whom did he warn about it? What evils elicited his mention of it? Did Jesus, like many preachers and professing Christians today, thunder hell-fire warnings to unchurched sinners: to prostitutes, drunkards and homosexuals? Did he use hell to spur conversions and to bring people to faith? The answers to these questions might surprise us—and teach us something important as well. Jesus specifically mentioned hell (gehenna) just eleven times in the Gospels. You will find his statements at Matt. 5:22; 5:29–30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; and Luke 12:5.
In fact, “hell” (gehenna) is never mentioned by name as the place of final punishment outside the Gospels, by anyone other than Jesus, or in speaking to anyone other than Jerusalemite Jews. When we look closely, we discover that the original gehenna was a literal place—the Valley of Hinnom, the city dump filled with stinking garbage including dead animals, a place of smoldering fire and insatiable maggots representative not of dreadful pain and torture but of utter loss, disgust and, finally, complete and irreversible destruction.
When we read everything in the Gospels that Jesus said about hell, we find him speaking twice to the Pharisees, warning these rigid and self-righteous morality policemen that God is unhappy with what their teaching turns their converts into and with the hypocrisy of their external-only religion (Matt. 23:15, 33). Everything else Jesus says about hell is directed to his own disciples. Twice he is encouraging them not to be afraid of those who might oppose them but to be afraid of God who can destroy the whole person in hell (Matt. 10:28; Luke 12:5). Every other time Jesus mentions hell he is warning his own followers not to mistreat or misuse vulnerable people, whether women (Matt. 5:29–30), "little ones" (Matt. 18:9; Mark 9:43, 45, 47), or anyone with whom one might be angry (Matt. 5:22). What if we used hell the way Jesus did? Would that change the way we use it, whatever we think it will actually be like? Would it change the way we ourselves live and how we treat others?
Why the Silence?
Brother Walls is right. There is a resounding silence about hell in many pulpits. Yet I am convinced that the major cause for silence about final punishment in the churches today is neither loss of gospel conviction nor lack of nerve. It is rather a widespread and uneasy awareness that the traditional doctrine of everlasting conscious torment rests on shaky scriptural interpretation, and that it is patently inconsistent with the character of God revealed in Scripture and especially in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Many conscientious Christians, dedicated to evangelism and deeply committed to the authority of Scripture, simply cannot conceive that the God who loved sinners so much that he gave his Son on the cross for their salvation intends to preserve the lost alive for the sole purpose of torturing them throughout endless ages. These people hesitate to teach on hell—not for lack of biblical boldness, but from a nagging suspicion that the traditional understanding of hell is not biblical.
Does Scripture really teach that God, who "so loved the world" and who does not wish for anyone to perish, will preserve alive forever everyone who fails to trust in Jesus (including those who never heard of him) so that he can torture them in fire throughout eternity without end? Or does the Bible actually teach that those who knowingly and persistently reject God as the only source of life will finally find themselves in hell, where they will disintegrate into nothingness while suffering whatever pain perfect justice requires in each individual case? Is there any basis for thinking that hell will involve a pain that purges, so that all who go there will finally be purified by fire as it were and eventually join God in eternal life and joy?
Eternal Punishment
Jesus warns of everlasting punishment (Matt. 25:46), and Paul tells us exactly what that punishment will be. It will be everlasting destruction (2 Thess. 1:9)—at the hands of God who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell (Matt. 10:28). We cannot possibly say it more plainly than this: "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23).
Against such a backdrop of eternal death, the gospel promise of eternal life shines all the more brightly. Those are our only alternatives, and now is the time to make them plain to a world so desperately in need of life. But what is “eternal punishment” of which Jesus sternly warns? The word "punishment" itself is quite colorless and vague. While it clearly speaks of retribution imposed by a judge (in this case, God himself), the word "punishment" alone does not tell us the nature of that retribution. In our own legal system, for example, "punishment" covers quite a spectrum—from a fine, to probation, to jail or prison (for a short or extended term), to the death penalty—which we regard as the ultimate "punishment."
And how about the word “eternal”? Does the fact that it is joined to the word “punishment” require us to conclude that the lost will endure endless conscious torment? Not at all, if we allow Scripture to define its own terms. "Eternal" fire is fire which belongs to the Age to Come. It is also eternal in the sense that its effects will be everlasting. The ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were "reduced to ashes," illustrate the punishment awaiting evildoers (2 Pet. 2:6; Jude 7). Those cities—which were wiped out thoroughly and forever by fire from heaven (Gen. 19:27–28)—illustrate "the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7). Similarly, God will "destroy both body and soul" in hell (Matt. 10:28). The wicked, once destroyed, will be gone forever.
Normally, when the New Testament uses the adjective "eternal" to describe words involving processes or activities, the result is everlasting, not the process or activity itself. "Eternal salvation" does not suggest an unending process but rather a result that lasts forever (Heb. 5:9). The same is true of "eternal judgment" (Heb. 6:2), "eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12) and "eternal sin" (Mark. 3:29). In the same way, "eternal punishment" is not "eternally punishing," and "eternal destruction" is not "eternally destroying."
Jesus says there will be "punishment" which is "eternal" and Paul amplifies what Jesus left ambiguous. When Christ returns, says the Apostle, he will "punish" the lost with eternal destruction (2 Thess.1:9). This punishment is "eternal" in at least two senses. It is "eternal" in quality because it belongs to the Age to Come. It is also "eternal" in quantity, so to speak, because those who suffer it will remain dead forever. From this death there is no recovery, resurrection, or escape.
The wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life (Rom. 6:23). This life and this death both concern the Age to Come. Each lasts just as long as the other. The saved will be resurrected immortal and deathless to enjoy life with God forever. The lost will be raised for condemnation—but they are not given immortality or deathlessness. Instead they perish in the Second Death, the Lake of Fire, and are gone forever.
IMMORTALLITY: GOD'S GIFT TO THE SAVED
Immortality “means deathlessness and anyone who is "immortal" is incapable of dying. According to the Bible, God "alone possesses immortality" inherently or in his own nature (1 Tim. 6:16). Human beings are not naturally "deathless" or "immortal." We are mortal human creatures who owe our existence every moment to God who made us (Gen. 2:7; Acts 17:25, 28). We cannot survive death by ourselves. Nothing about us is inherently death-proof. Our immortality is conditional on God who gives it.
Despite this grim and humbling reality, humans seemingly have always tried to discover or to obtain immortality apart from God. The Egyptians embalmed their dead and Hindus taught reincarnation. Greek philosophers theorized that every human possesses a mortal body but also an immortal or deathless "soul," which has always existed and will never cease to be. During the second and third centuries after Jesus, certain converted Greek philosophers brought a form of this pagan notion into the church.
Based on this premise that the human "soul" cannot die but will live somewhere forever, these church fathers concluded that the wicked will suffer everlasting conscious torment. This teaching, which makes God the supreme torturer of the universe, overlooks the fact that whenever Scripture ascribes immortality or incorruptibility to humans it always refers:
1. to the saved, never to the lost;
2. to the body, never to a disembodied soul or spirit;
3. to the Resurrection state, never to the present order.
(Rom. 2:7; 1 Cor. 9:25; 15:52, 53, 54; 2 Tim. 1:10; 1 Pet. 1:4).
The traditional doctrine of hell also ignores the regular affirmation of Scripture from first to last that God is his creatures' only source of existence, and that those who finally refuse God's grace and gift of life will "die," "perish," and be "destroyed" (Gen. 3:4; Ezek. 18:4; Mal. 4:1–3; Matt. 10:28; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 21:8).
All that I have said above is really only another way of saying that God is God and we are not; that "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23); and that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
A Study of Hell
There is considerable discussion these days about the nature of hell. Indeed, I have done my share to stir this discussion and also to participate in it. Although I grew up with the traditional majority view of unending conscious torment, a year-long exhaustive study of the whole Bible plus two thousand years of church history forced me to change my mind. I have recorded in detail the biblical and historical evidence that caused my own mind change in The Fire That Consumes (www.BarnesandNoble.com), a five hundred-page book with sixteen hundred footnotes that was a selection of the Evangelical Book Club and that is now popping up in the bibliographies of Bible dictionaries, religious encyclopedias, and theology textbooks around the world. In Two Views of Hell (InterVarsity Press), I summarize the evidence in less detail and respond to arguments of my co-author Robert A. Peterson for the traditional view of unending conscious torment.
Edward Fudge has been honored by the fact that Cambridge Press has asked for and received the rights to publish a completely re-worked edition of his book The Fire That Consumes. It is schedule for release this June (2011).
Edward William Fudge is a preacher, Bible teacher, theologian, author, and a practicing attorney in Houston, Texas. He earned a master’s degree in biblical languages from Abilene Christian University and a doctor of jurisprudence degree from the University of Houston College of Law. His books have been published by Baker and InterVarsity among others and his articles have appeared in Christianity Today. He is a member and former officer of the Evangelical Theological Society. For much more on the subject of final punishment and hundreds of other biblical topics, see his website at www.EdwardFudge.com.
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