This is the seventh in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

Also speaking of a consuming fire on Edom, Isaiah says:

The streams of Edom will come filled with burning pitch, and the ground will be covered with fire. This judgement on Edom will never end; the smoke of its burning will rise forever. The land will lie deserted from generation to generation. No one will live there any more. (Is 34.9-10)

These verses use language similar to what we are used to thinking about hell and present the image of eternal fire. Yet the Edomites will not burn forever and forever. The Edomites will not live in eternal torment—they have all been destroyed (no one lives there any more). God says:

My sword… will fall on Edom, the nation I have completely destroyed… He will make a mighty slaughter in Edom. The strongest will die—veterans and young men, too. (Isaiah 34.4, 6-7)

Malachi 4.1 also uses the image of the fire of God’s judgement:

“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evil-doer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left.”

Once again, the point is not that the evil-doers are tortured or afflicted by fire, but that they are consumed by fire. That which is thrown into this fire is burned up so that “not a root or a branch” is left. Similarly, hell may be an eternal fire, but it is a consuming fire. Those thrown into it will be “completely destroyed,” they will all “perish,” “not a root or a branch will be left,” they will “disappear from history as though they had never existed,” “there will be no survivors” and “no one will live there any more.”

Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities annihilated by God with “fire and brimstone” (Gen 19.24). According to Jude those who were destroyed “serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). Yet the inhabitants of the cities were not eternally tormented, and the fire is not still burning. Rather they were overthrown in a moment (Lam 4.6) and turned to ashes (2 Pet 2.6). The picture of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of lifeless waste: “nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing in it” (Dt 29.23). Again, the point is that God annihilates the wicked.

Revelation uses similar imagery to describe the destruction of “Babylon”:

“The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.” (Rev 19.3)

However we understand this “Babylon,” as a literal city (Rome) or a symbolic image of false religion, the image of this eternal fire is one of complete destruction.

This tells us how God deals with evil and injustice: it is to completely destroy it. God destroyed the Edomites because they were guilty of social injustice, and wiped them out as a nation, until not a single person survived. As a way of describing that judgement, God speaks of “burning pitch” and “ground covered with fire” and says that His judgement “will never end” and that “the smoke of its burning will rise forever.” This means that the judgement is final and that the extinction of the Edomites is eternal.

If we compare this to descriptions of hell, we may suggest not that souls will live in eternal torment, but that the wicked will be extinguished, and that this punishment—the punishment of extinction—will be eternal.

The Psalmist says that the wicked will be destroyed:

The wicked will perish…
they will vanish—vanish like smoke! (Ps 37.20)

God “destroys the wicked” (Ps 9.5), “all evildoers… will be forever destroyed” (Ps 92.7). However “forever destroyed” is something different from “forever punished.” The Bible declares that the wicked will be destroyed and that this will be an enduring and eternal fate. Paul says that the wicked “will be punished with everlasting destruction (2 Thess 1.9). This does not mean that they will endure everlasting torment—but rather that they will be destroyed and that they will be eternally non-existent. To return to the prophecy against Edom, this “judgement on Edom will never end; the smoke of its burning will rise forever,” yet the point is that the Edomites will be eternally non-existent: “No one will live there any more.”

I find it difficult to believe that the Edomites destroyed over two thousand years ago are still being punished in hell. They received their punishment—they were destroyed—and, having been destroyed, no longer exist.

This is the sixth in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

If one looks at the Scriptures, it is apparent that God’s response to evil is annihilation. That is, because God is holy and cannot co-exist with evil, He always moves to destroy it. While it may seem offensive to us, the stories in Joshua about the children of Israel exterminating whole cities and societies are about annihilation. God did not ask the Israelites to torture the Canaanites, or to keep them alive endlessly pouring burning coals on them. Rather, these peoples given over to evil (such as the practice of child sacrifice) were to be destroyed—annihilated.

Similarly, in the Old Testament Law God commanded that certain people—such as adulterers—were to be put to death. This is because God’s response to evil is to destroy it; the adulterer and the idolater were to be annihilated.

Throughout the Old Testament we read of similar responses to evil. The northern kingdom of Israel was also annihilated. Those who went after the Baals were not tortured by God—they were simply destroyed.

This is the model for how God deals with evil. In the afterlife God will not torture the wicked—He will punish them by destroying them. This is because God cannot co-exist with evil, and to keep wickedness alive in some corner of the Universe in order to punish it would be opposed to the character of God. Remember that God is present everywhere and the idea that hell is a place where God is absent is contrary to the teachings of the Bible.

God, in the end, will have a “clean universe”—a universe without evil. God will not keep the wicked eternally alive—cursing God and blashpheming His Name as they are tortured in fire—since sin and evil would be perpetuated. If this were true God would be segregating evil, and not destroying it.

However, Scripture consistently indicates that the wicked will be destroyed. Jesus also spoke of the wicked “perishing” or being destroyed. When told about some Galileans who had been killed by Pilate, he said:

“I tell you… unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Lk 13.3)

Consistently, the language used throughout the Bible to describe the fate of the wicked is imagery of destruction, not of enduring torment. Interestingly, sometimes the Biblical authors speak of fire as the agent of God’s judgement, but this image is always one of destruction—fire consumes and destroys—not as an image of torture.

In Obadiah’s prophecy, judgement on Edom was extinction:

“The house of Jacob will be a fire
and the house of Joseph a flame;
the house of Esau [Edom] will be stubble,
and they will set it on fire and consume it.
There will be no survivors
from the house of Esau.” (Ob 18)

God’s judgement, it seems, is one of annihilation. The fire of God’s judgement, like the fire of hell, is a consuming fire. Those upon whom it falls will “disappear from history, as though [they] had never existed.”

This is the fifth in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

The early Christian writers, who were influenced by a Greek doctrine of the immortal soul, also adapted another element into their theology: that of a place of eternal torment. Their reading of the Bible and its reference to hell was influenced by their understanding of Greek philosophy and mythology.

The notion of an eternal hell was a logical result of the immortality of the soul—God, or the gods, had to “put” the evil souls somewhere, since they will eternally continue to be. The theory of a place for these souls, in which they will be tortured for their sin, is a Greek idea. For example, Plato wrote:

Wild men of fiery aspect… seized and dragged off several of them… they bound head and foot and hand, and threw them down and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them along the roads at the side, carding them on thorns like wool, and declaring to the passers-by what were their crimes, and that they were being taken to be cast into hell. (Plato, Republic 10)

Here, and elsewhere, we find a pagan notion of eternal suffering. Some early Christians were influenced by this mythology, and created a barbaric and horrific theology of eternal torment. An early Christian writing from the early second century describes some of the miseries of hell:

There were certain there hanging by the tongue: and these were the blasphemers of the way of righteousness; and under them lay fire, burning and punishing them. And there was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men that perverted righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them…
And near those were again women and men gnawing their lips, and being punished and receiving a red-hot iron in their eyes, and these were they who blasphemed and slandered the way of righteousness…
And other men and women were being hurled down from a great cliff, and reached the bottom, and again were driven by those who were set over them to climb up upon the cliff, and thence were hurled down again, and had no rest from this punishment, and these were they who defiled their bodies acting as women, and the women who were with them were those who lay with one another as a man with a woman. (Apocalypse of Peter).

This vision of terrible torment was created by Christians reading the Bible with a pre-understanding of hell derived from Greek mythology. We, too, inherit the theology and presuppositions which have been handed down throughout Church history, and come to the Biblical text with a pre-understanding of what we are reading, which is sometimes quite wrong. When we read of everlasting fire and eternal damnation we think of the kinds of torment outlined in that 2nd century writing. But this is derived more from Plato and pagan mythology than from the Bible. The idea of hell which we inherit is only partly Biblical, and is partly mythological. (The English word “hell” is derived from an ancient Norse myth in which the underworld is ruled by a goddess named “Hel”.)

The first century Jewish people who heard Jesus and who read Paul and John also had a pre-understanding of what “hell” was. They had images in their mind—but they were not the images of Greek philosophers. Jesus’ audience would have recognised the Old Testament references and allusions, and their world-view would have included Hades—a shadowy underworld of the dead—and Gehenna—the city dump of Jerusalem. While the Greek idea of eternal punishment was of eternal torment (and it is this idea we inherit in our Christianity), the Jewish idea is of ultimate destruction and annihilation. It is this idea which the New Testament writers, and Jesus Himself, was speaking about, though we often miss the point because our pre-understanding is so different.

This is the fourth in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

The resurrection of Jesus is central to the Gospel because it demonstrates that Christ conquered death (1 Cor 15.54-55). God became human in the Person of Christ, suffered death and was buried. But Jesus came through the other side of death, demonstrating that its power had been defeated: “The last enemy to be destroyed was death” (1 Cor 15.26). While ordinary humans might die and become extinct—Jesus, being God, was immortal and eternal. As such Jesus continued beyond the grave.

Jesus is called the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor 15.20) because what is true of Jesus is also true for those who follow Him. Just as Jesus was raised to life, so too those who are saved will be raised to life and receive the gift of immortality which is bestowed by God:

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Cor 15.21-22)

Paul says:

…this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. (1 Corinthians 15.54)

There are a number of Old Testament texts which indicate that the dead do not continue to have conscious existence:

Humans’ fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them all… All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over the animal… All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. (Eccl 3.19-20)
When their breath departs, they return to the ground, and on that very day their thoughts come to nothing. (Psalm 146.4)
The dead know nothing. (Eccl 9.5)
They are now dead, they live no more; those departed spirits do not rise. You punished them and brought them to ruin; You wiped out all memory of them. (Is 26.14)

We are used to hearing the words “eternal life” and understanding them to mean “salvation—an eternity in heaven” and contrasting them with “damnation—an eternity in hell.” But eternal life in the Scriptures is contrasted with death, not an eternity of suffering. We almost need to use new words to translate these terms so that their original meaning is presented. I would suggest that we could substitute “immortality” for “eternal life” and “extinction” for “death.”

For example, we would then read:

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has immortality and will not be condemned. He or she has crossed over from extinction to life.” (John 5.24-25)

The most famous of Bible texts is John 2.16:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only son so that whoever believes in Him would not be extinguished, but may have immortality

Romans 6.23 would read:

The wages of sin is extinction, but the gift of God is immortality.

1 John 5.11-12 would say:

God has given us immortality, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; but he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The result of this is that those who are not saved are not eternally tortured in hell, but are extinguished. This teaching is called conditional immortality—it means that only those who are saved receive immortality or eternal life, while the unsaved remain mortal and do not continue on eternally.

If it were true that even the unsaved will live forever, Jesus did not come to bring eternal life, since even those in hell will live eternally.

This is the third in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

The 2nd and 3rd century Christians attempted to defend their faith to Greeks by presenting the Gospel in Greek ways of thinking. They sought to demonstrate that the Gospel was rational by showing that it was compatible with Greek philosophy. In doing so they created a synthesis of Biblical truth and Greek philosophy. There were a number of ideas of Greek philosophy and pagan thought which crept into Christian theology. One of those ideas was the view that the body was bad, and was a prison of the soul, which was good. Salvation, for Greeks, was the release of this immortal soul from the mortal, sinful body. This was a Greek, not a Hebrew (or Biblical) idea.

Jostein Gaarder, in his novel on the history of philosophy, Sophie’s World (Phoenix House, 1995), writes:

Remember that from the Jewish point of view there was no question of the “immortality of the soul” … that was a Greek … thought. According to Christianity there is nothing in man—no “soul”, for example—that is in itself immortal. Although the Christian Church believes in the “resurrection of the body and eternal life”, it is by God’s miracle that we are saved from death and “damnation”. It is neither through our own merit nor through any natural—or innate—ability. (134)

The idea that the soul is immortal—and even that we have a soul at all—was derived from Plato and other Greek philosophers, though second century Christians adopted this teaching into their own writings. While this idea was incorporated into Christian theology quite early on, it is not a Biblical idea. The Bible never speaks of an “immortal soul.” The Bible certainly does affirm that there is life after death, but this is on the basis of the resurrection of the dead. This is something which God decrees—if He did not raise the dead then the “souls” of the departed would be forever dead.

The Bible declares that “God alone is immortal” (1 Tim 6.16). God alone possesses immortality by nature. Humans are by nature mortal. The book of Job asks: “shall mortal man be more just than God?” (Job 4.17).

After the Fall of Adam and Eve the humans are removed from the Garden so that they will not become (or remain) immortal:

The Lord God said: “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” (Genesis 3.22)

Death was part of the curse of the Fall—as a result of their actions, Adam and Eve were deprived of immortality. Romans 6.23 says that “the wages of sin is death”—and we should probably think of this not simply as physical death—but as extinction.

Paul says that the ultimate fate of the unredeemed is “death” (Rom 6.21, 23), or “destruction” (2 Thess 1.9; Phil 3.19). Ezekiel says that “the soul that sins will die” (Ezk 18.4).

However, the Good News of the Gospel is that God has offered eternal life—immortality—as a free gift through His Son. Romans 6.23 goes on to say that “the gift of God is eternal life.” We should clarify this by saying that those who do not receive this gift of God do not have eternal life—they have only death. It is not that all people are eternal—and that some have an eternity of bliss while others have an eternity of suffering and torment. Rather, some have eternal life, or immortality, while others do not have eternal life at all.

Because humans are mortal, their natural end is death—there is nothing beyond the grave. However, God has offered a gift of eternity, so that those who believe may continue on beyond the grave in His Presence.

This is the second in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

I was visiting a local Pentecostal church, and an elder was preaching. The subject was hell.

“I was talking to my next door neighbour over the fence,” he said. “His father had recently died after a long battle with cancer. ‘At least he’s at peace,’ the neighbour said. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘If he didn’t have Jesus as his personal Lord and Saviour he’s in hell, and the pain he suffered here is nothing compared to what he’s going through now.'”

This guy had never read How to Win Friends and Influence People!

Many Christians feel uncomfortable about the idea of hell, and wonder how this eternity of punishment can be reconciled with the belief that God is a God of love. Perhaps most Christians avoid thinking and talking about hell, because it does not sit well with us. We prefer to talk about the more marketable aspects of our faith: love, grace and salvation.

The traditional view of hell seems, to many modern Christians, a little barbaric. Those who do not want to portray God as quite so vindictive often eliminate the idea of active punishment inflicted by God through fire and retain only the idea of exclusion from God’s presence. This makes the punishment of hell something which God is not actively involved in.

Therefore a popular Christian idea these days is that “hell” is simply the absence of God. Thus hell is not a place where God actively inflicts punishment on people, but rather a place where “God is not”. Those who do not choose to follow God will find themselves in a place of eternal separation from Him. This will be a place of torment only in the sense that people will be forever afflicted by the knowledge of what they have missed out on.

While this idea is appealing, it is not really a Biblical idea. God is omnipresent (present everywhere). There is no corner of the Universe where God is not. That means that He is present in hell also.

David says:

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
  Where can I flee from Your Presence?
If I go up to the heavens, You are there;
  if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.
  (Psalm 139.7-8)

If God is present in Sheol, then hell cannot be absence from God or eternal separation from Him.

Another common response to the problem of hell is simply to ignore it, in the hope that it will go away. While preaching “hell-fire and brimstone” used to be popular, most preachers avoid the subject. There is a recognition that the age old doctrine of hell is problematic—it is difficult to reconcile our belief in a loving God with that of a place of eternal torture.

Still another solution to this problem has been to reject the idea of hell altogether. Numerous heretical Christian groups and sects have rejected the orthodox view of hell. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Herbert W. Armstrong’s World Wide Church of God (which recently returned to Christian orthodoxy) reject the doctrine of hell.

But the Bible does affirm that God will punish the wicked in the afterlife—a simple rejection of hell is not satisfactory. Some Christians have responded to this problem of hell by rejecting the traditional understanding of what hell is, and propose alternative interpretations—especially the idea of annihilationism.

There is a growing trend among Evangelicals to turn away from the traditional view of hell as an eternal torment. A number of Evangelical writers have advocated annihilationism—Clark Pinnock, John Wenham, Philip Hughes, Stephen Travis and others (see the bibliography at the end of this little booklet). Most significantly, Anglican John RW Stott, from All Soul’s Church London and a leading Evangelical, has declared himself to be an annihilationist in his book Evangelical Essentials : A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue.

A recent Commission of the Church of England has suggested that “it might be better to think of hell as a state of annihilation,” and that the traditional view of hell as eternal torment has “portrayed God wrongly in a sadistic manner” (quoted in Burge 29).

Clark Pinnock notes that the annihilationist position “does seem to be gaining ground among Evangelicals. The fact that no less of a person than J. R. W. Stott has endorsed it now will certainly encourage this trend to continue” (Pinnock [1990] 249).

Stott says:

I find the concept [of everlasting torment in hell] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterising their feelings or cracking under the strain. (Stott, 314-15)

However, unlike liberals, who deny the doctrine of hell (along with miracles, the deity of Christ, the resurrection and many other key doctrines) because it seems incomprehensible to them, evangelical annihilationists believe that their position is faithful to the teachings of Scripture. The question is not whether we like the doctrine of eternal torment, but whether this is what the Bible actually teaches. Evangelical annihilationists would say that it is not. Stott says the question is “not what does my heart tell me, but what does God’s word say?” (Stott, 314-315).

There is no doubt that belief in the eternal torment of the wicked has been taught by the Church throughout its history. At the same time, our allegiance is not to the traditions of the Church, but to the teachings of the Bible. The fact, then, that Christians for nearly two thousand years have believed in the eternal torment of the unsaved is of no consequence—it is only the teachings of God’s Word which carries any weight in terms of what we should or should not believe.

If, as Evangelical Annihilationists believe, the traditional view of hell is not Biblical, where did this doctrine come from?

This is the first in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.

There are some things which Christians believe which are (or should be) non-negotiable. These are the great doctrines of the Church expressed in the creeds: the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection. One can hardly remain a Christian and deny these truths. At the other end of the spectrum are issues on which the Scriptures are silent. It is left for us to work out a Christian position on the various issues and situations which are not specifically addressed by the Bible, and we must admit a degree of flexibility in accommodating or tolerating interpretations and views different from our own. One of the important principles established by the Church since the Reformation is that no Christian should be compelled to believe any teaching which cannot be proved from Scripture. One of the 39 Articles (the official statement of belief of the Anglican Church) says:

Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation, so that whatever is not found there, or which cannot be proved from it, is not to be required of any person… or thought to be essential for salvation. (Article 6, paraphrased)

It is important, then, to recognise that while there are some “absolutes” in Christian belief and practice, there are many areas on which Scripture is silent, and such things cannot be regarded as essential for salvation. For example, the Bible says quite clearly that Jesus is the Son of God, and every Christian is bound to believe it. On the other hand, the Bible does not tell us what He did for all eternity before the creation of the universe, and any teaching on the subject must be regarded as conjecture. However, Christians have tended to create and defend dogma which has dubious Biblical authority.

In between these two extremes—things which are unambiguous in Scripture and things which are not mentioned at all—are a great many things on which the Bible says something which is open to interpretation. For example, the Bible tells us that Jesus will return, but the timing and exact nature of His coming is unclear. There are therefore a number of theories about the End Times, and Christians are free to choose the view which seems to them to be the best explanation of the teachings of the Bible. However, since there is a range of possible views and interpretations, we should not be dogmatic, and must hold to our own views lightly.

Hell is one of those subjects on which there are some different possible explanations of the Biblical evidence. Scripture affirms that there is a hell—a punishment for the wicked in the afterlife—and so we may not simply dismiss this as a myth. However, Scripture is not entirely clear as to where hell is or what it is—or even if it is a “place” at all. There are a range of possible interpretations of the Biblical evidence, the most common of which is the traditional view of hell as a place of fire and eternal torment.

It should be acknowledged that the traditional view of hell is able to be argued and defended from Scripture. However there is an alternative view—called annihilationism or conditional immortality—which is also arguable. Since the Bible is ambiguous, we cannot argue dogmatically either way—either by saying that hell is certainly a literal place of eternal torment in the middle of the earth, or that hell is certainly a state of non-existence. We may however carefully consider the options and the alternative points of view. In this little booklet I want to present a case for annihilation, but do so with the realisation that many readers—perhaps most—will be unconvinced. But as with theories about the Second Coming, when we talk about the nature of hell we are in the realm of speculation. No one really knows, this side of eternity, what heaven and hell will be like. We can, and should, discuss and debate what Scripture says, and consider the various options and interpretations. What is the right interpretation will be a matter of conjecture until we, like the good thief, cross over to be with Jesus in Paradise.