What is your picture of hell? On an album in the 1970s, Alice Cooper pictured it as a never-ending disco. For me, it would be a never-ending telemarketing job.
It is chronological bigotry to insist that hell cannot exist because we are too enlightened to accept so primitive or horrid a belief. Neither time nor polling data can change the truth of whether such a destination for souls exists or not. While I respect and otherwise agree with much of the fine work of physicist and theologian Sir John Polkinghorne, I must reluctantly disagree with him on this question.
The Church rightly refused to go down this road back in the second century, when Marcion introduced his god of sweetness and light to replace the vengeful, evil Creator of the material world. As Tertullian derisively describes Marcion’s claim, a “better god has been discovered, one who is neither offended nor angry nor inflicts punishment, who has no fire warming up in hell, and no outer darkness wherein there is shuddering and gnashing of teeth: he is merely kind. Of course he forbids you to sin – but only in writing…Fool: you call him lord, but deny he is to be feared.” (Against Marcion 1.27)
(True, Tertullian broke with Rome and followed the Montanists, but the rest of the church sided with Tertullian against Marcion on this issue. And in defense of Tertullian, I’ll take Montanus and his groupies over Bishop Spong and John Dominic Crossan any day.)
In a day when nothing in the Bible supposedly counts unless it’s in red print (i.e., spoken by Jesus), how can we throw out hell, when Jesus preaches it more than all other voices in Scripture combined? Jesus uses the term Gehenna (the image of the 24/7 pile of burning garbage outside Jerusalem) eleven out of the twelve times it is used in the New Testament (the twelfth time is by his brother James). In addition, Jesus refers to the place where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” seven times (no one else does), and refers to “Hades” three times as the opposite of heaven (in Luke 16, he is referring to a place of overheated torment). Aside from Jesus, the New Testament has four mentions of the lake of fire, and one reference to “Tartaros” (2 Pet 2:4).
The only way to dismiss Jesus’ proclamation about hell is to claim that he was just being rhetorical. An honest exegetical (rather than eisogetical) reading of Jesus does not permit this option. He is either using scare tactics (which we would consider to be unethical), or he is preaching what he considers to be an urgent, truthful warning to us all.
Those who believe Islam to be as American as apple pie and as Christian as Jesus, should take note that the Quran speaks of hell over 200 times by my personal count, usually borrowing the Jewish term “Gehenna” into Arabic. This does not count the Quran’s references to the Hour of Doom. What the Quran says about hell makes the 26 references in the New Testament look mild by comparison. Hell is the place where people drink “scalding water, festering blood, and other putrid things” (Sura 38:55). “On that day you shall see the guilty bound with chains, their garments blackened with pitch, and their heads covered with flames.” (Sura 14:49) “Hell shall be their couch, and sheets of fire shall cover them.” (Sura 7:41) Here is one issue on which I actually agree with the Quran, although I find its description to be unnecessarily vivid.
The flames of hell do not have to be literal to be real, particularly because when we speak of a world other than our own, we are often forced to use analogical language. Yes, the flames do seem to conflict with the darkness. But when the Bible uses symbols like this, the reality could be more painful than the symbol.
I find it hard to escape the conclusion that hell is a real destination for souls that we should seek to avoid at all costs. To conclude less, fails to do justice to the teaching of Jesus. And if one wishes to play the game of attributing this teaching to the early church rather than Jesus, then one must throw out the parables of the Sheep and the Goats, and the Rich Man and Lazarus, both of which are intimately bound together with this teaching.
C. S. Lewis has a compelling picture of hell in his book The Great Divorce. Lewis pictures hell as a dreary place where people keep moving farther and farther away from each other. And when residents of hell get the chance to take a bus tour of heaven, only one person decides to stay, reminding one of the scene in Revelation 9 where God pours down plagues on unbelievers trying to get them to cry “Uncle!”, yet after all that effort to compel a change of heart in them, we read that they “did not repent” (Rev 9:20-21).
If it were not for our understanding that hell is to be cut off from the Author of life and love, I could almost picture heaven and hell as being the same place. To be in the presence of God would be heaven for some, and hell for others. Imagine: to spend forever with Someone you can’t stand! That would truly be hell.
The Good News about hell is that God has gone there in our place, to endure an eternity of hell for every one of us, so that no one would have to go there. Hell is a place we send ourselves, by rejecting the greatest gift of grace ever given. We will save the issue of universalism for another time.
TOM HOBSON of Belleville, Ill., a PC(USA) pastor for 27 years, is currently serving at First Church in Herrin, Ill, and as adjunct professor, Morthland College, West Frankfort, Ill.
