The evolution of hell

By Babu G. Ranganathan

Although I am a conservative Christian (Reformed Baptist), I no longer believe that the Bible teaches or supports the traditional view of hell with its doctrine of eternal torment or suffering.

The Bible does teach eternal punishment, but that eternal punishment ultimately is not eternal suffering.

God's righteous wrath is not an end in itself but a means to an end - that end being the total and literal destruction of the wicked. Neither will God allow sin to exist for eternity by keeping sinners alive for eternity in hell. Neither is eternal torment necessary for God to satisfy His eternal justice.

But, what about those passages in the Bible which say that the wicked will go into "eternal fire" and that in hell there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth forever and ever," and other similar passages that seem to teach eternal torment? We shall examine, in this article, those and other passages from the Bible in the light of the context of Scripture and by comparing Scripture with Scripture.

Few in society realize just how much ancient Greek philosophy influenced early Christian thought on hell.

The ancient Greeks believed and taught that the human soul is immortal and indestructible. When early Christianity adopted this belief then it became only logical to believe that those who go to hell must suffer eternal torment.

More than anyone else, the early Church bishop Augustine influenced early Christianity's adoption of this ancient Greek belief about the nature of the soul. Augustine was a great admirer and follower of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato even after converting to Christianity. It was Plato who systematically formulated ancient Greek belief and thought concerning the nature of the human soul.

The Bible, however, teaches that man by nature is completely mortal and that immortality is a gift of God to be realized only on Resurrection Day for those who have put their faith and trust in God's Son Jesus Christ for salvation because Christ's death on the Cross fully paid for our sins and His resurrection from the grave is the guarantee of future immortality for all who believe in Him.

Although the wicked in hell, for a period, will suffer consciously for their individual sins, the ultimate penalty for sin itself will be the eternal death of soul and body and the eternal loss to immortality. That is what the Bible means by eternal punishment - the eternal loss to immortality and life. Interestingly, even Adam and Eve were not created as immortal from the beginning. That is why there was placed the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden of Eden.

If pain is necessary for punishment then why do some societies have the death penalty? When a murderer is put to death he no longer feels pain. If he did then he wouldn't be dead. One thing for sure is that a murderer put to death by society no longer feels any pain from society. Does that then mean that society has not punished him since he no longer feels any more pain from society?

In Genesis 2:17 God told Adam not to eat the fruit of a certain tree (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and God also told Adam that if he did eat of it he would die on that very day. Specifically, God said to Adam, "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." But the Biblical record shows that Adam did not physically die on the very day he disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit. Because Adam did not physically die on the very day that he disobeyed God most Christians believe that God was referring to spiritual death and not physical death.

However, in the original Hebrew, in which the Old Testament was written, the grammatical tense of the word "die" in Genesis 2:17 is in the imperfect mood. The imperfect mood denotes a process. Thus, what God was actually saying to Adam is that he would start dying on the day he ate the forbidden fruit. The literal translation from the Hebrew of what God said to Adam is: "Dying you will die." God was not, therefore, referring to spiritual death but to physical death. The fact that God later prevented Adam and Eve from having access to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24) so that they would not live eternally proves that God was referring to physical death and not spiritual death.

There are good Scriptural reasons to believe that the soul also is physical but distinct from the rest of the body, but that is another subject. Whether physical or not physical, man's soul, along with the rest of man, was created completely mortal and that is the primary point being addressed here.

The penalty for sin, then, is the death of both soul and body so that man will not live forever in sin. Not only is God not cruel in His eternal justice, but a holy God will not allow His moral creatures to exist eternally in sin. God will not immortalize sin and evil by making the wicked in hell immortal! All of this contradicts the traditional doctrine and teaching, taught in most churches, about the wicked having an immortal soul and body in hell.

What about "eternal fire", "unquenchable fire", "weeping and gnashing of teeth forever and ever", the account by Jesus about the Rich Man and Lazarus, and other similar passages in the Bible that seem to teach eternal torment? The key, in many cases, is in understanding the context in which these and other similar phrases are used in various parts of Scripture.