What the Hell?

 Hell has been a topic of much discussion online this past week, and not due to any speculation that the polar vortex that meteorologists are predicting will soon plunge us into some nasty temperatures, is about to arrive there and cause everything everyone has ever said would never happen to happen.  The impetus for the discussion, as far as I can tell, was the actor Kirk Cameron.  You might remember him from such TV shows as Growing Pains or from the films based on Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series.  Apparently, on his podcast on 3 December, he explained why he has shifted from a belief in “eternal conscious torment” to a belief in “conditional immortality” or as it is more commonly called “annihilationism.”

 

I had initially intended to ignore this because I have been working on something else from which I did not want to divert my time and attention.  I had, however, answered a question on a somewhat related topic in the comments to my essay “The Tenth Article – Baptism and Forgiveness”, and so I had already been thinking about the general subject.  This, and the way in which the matter was being framed by many on my side, prompted me to change my mind.   I will try to keep this short.

 

I have seen many who hold to “eternal conscious torment”, which shall be designated ECT for the remainder of this essay, accuse Cameron and those with similar views of “denying hell.”  I have also seen several references to the “heresy of annihilationism.” (1)  The first of these is clearly an inaccuracy due to lazy thinking.  The difference between ECT and annihilationism is not about the existence of hell but its nature.  Annihilationism claims that it consumes those consigned to it so that they eventually cease to exist.  ECT claims that those consigned to it suffer forever without ever ceasing to exist.

 

Those who speak of “the heresy of annihilationism” either use “heresy” interchangeably with “error” or distinguish heresy from error in general on grounds other than those generally accepted in orthodox Christianity.  There is not really much that can be said those to whom heresy and error are interchangeable synonyms.  Those who recognize the distinction, however, presumably also recognize that heresy is a more serious type of error than error in general.  To these, I would point out the ways in which heresy has traditionally been demarcated.

 

Such ancient heresies as Arianism (denial of the eternity and full deity of the Son of God) and Apollinarianism (denial of the full humanity of the Incarnate Son) were formally condemned as such by the Church in ecumenical council.   Moreover, they involve a denial, in full or in part, of a doctrine that is de fide, that is to say, of the very essence of the Christian faith, and as such is confessed in the Apostles’ and Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creeds.  The only place in either of these Creeds where the word hell appears is in the words “He descended into hell” in the Apostles’ Creed.  Both Creeds assert that Jesus will come back “to judge the quick and the dead” but nothing specific is said about the nature of the punishment that the wicked face as the outcome of this judgement.  The Athanasian Symbol does expand on the judgement by saying “And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire”, but this wording does not exclude an annihilationist interpretation.   Nor was annihilationism ever formally condemned by the Church in ecumenical council.  Some Protestant confessions such as the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (Presbyterian) exclude and condemn it, but these confessions are far too extensive and precise for everything confessed in them to be regarded as de fide.   On the very eve of the Reformation, the Church of Rome asserted the unconditional immortality of the soul in the Fifth Lateran Council but this council is hardly a true ecumenical council being recognized only by Rome. The closest thing to an ecumenical condemnation of annihilationism is an anathema attached to the records of the fifth ecumenical council (the Second Council of Constantinople, 553 AD) but when it condemns the idea that the punishment of the demons and the impious is temporary it is clearly the idea that this punishment will end with the restoration of the demons and the impious (universalism) that is in view and not the idea that it will end with their extinction.  

 

For these reasons we should be more cautious about applying the word “heresy” to conditional immortality or annihilationism.  If, however, it is not a heinous twisting of doctrine in which a de fide truth is denied to the peril of the soul, this does not mean that it is true doctrine.  These can hardly be the only two options, otherwise we would have to say that salvation is by dotting every i and crossing every t correctly in every doctrine, major or minor, which is a far cry from salvation by grace.

 

When it comes to ECT/conditional immorality there are both hermeneutical (Scriptural interpretation) and theological/philosophical factors to be considered.  

 

With regards to the hermeneutical, the first thing that needs to be noted is that there are two hells in the Bible.   Since there is also more than one heaven (2 Cor. 12:2) this should hardly be shocking.  The first is the place called Sheol in the Old Testament and Hades in the New Testament.  The second is the place that Jesus calls Gehenna and which is referred to as the Lake of Fire in the book of Revelation.  In Rev. 20:14, the first hell is cast into the second hell.  The idea of Sheol/Hades is of an underworld.  It corresponds to the concept expressed by “the grave” in the Bible.  When someone dies, his body goes to “the grave” and his spirit or soul goes to Sheol/Hades.  With regards to the English word “hell”, this is the idea that it originally conveyed.  We borrowed the English word from Norse/Scandanavian/German mythology in the same way the writers of the New Testament borrowed Hades from Greek mythology. Hel was the goddess who ruled the underworld in Norse mythology, the daughter of Loki, just as Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, was the god who ruled the underworld in Greek mythology.   Today, the English word more commonly suggests the idea of the second hell, Gehenna, the Lake of Fire, the place to which the lost are consigned at the Last Judgement.

 

From this we can establish that the matter of the ECT and annihilationist interpretations cannot be decided by the question of literalism.  The word Gehenna, taken in its most literal sense, is a place on this earth.  It is the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, located on the boundary of Judah (Jud. 15:8), which became a site of child sacrifice (2 Chron. 28:3, 33:6), which under the name Tophet was cursed by the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 19), which in a later period was used by Jerusalem as the place to throw their garbage and the bodies of executed criminals and accordingly fires were kept perpetually burning there.  Everybody, I think, would regard it as excessive literalism, to interpret Jesus’ eschatological references to Gehenna as meaning that after the Final Judgement the earthly Gehenna that anyone can visit today will be the actual location of the punishment of the damned.

 

Short of that, it is arguable that the annihilationist is the more literal of the two interpretations.  In the ECT interpretation, the fire of Gehenna depicts the conscious suffering of the lost in hell and Jesus’ repeated description of the fire as “everlasting” means that the punishment is to consciously suffer forever.  That Jesus took the name of Jerusalem’s garbage dump, where the purpose of the perpetual fire was to burn up the corpses of the condemned and other rubbish, however, suggests that the annihilationist is the more obvious interpretation of this imagery.  It is also clearly what the fire of judgement suggests in the parables of the wheat and tares and of the net in Matthew 13. 

 

Indeed, within the Gospels, the passage involving fire which most suggests the ECT understanding of it is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.  In this, the rich man is consciously suffering in flame.  There are two problems, however, with using this passage to support the ECT interpretation.  The first is that the hell in the passage is Hades not Gehenna.  The second is that the entire passage is intentionally counter-factual.  Some object to it being called a parable on the grounds that an actual name is used, and they are correct, but not in the way they think.  It would more properly be called the Parody of the Rich Man and Lazarus.  Lazarus, in the story, is a fictional counterpart to the Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead in John 11.  The rich man in the story, is a caricature of Caiaphas, the high priest who presided at the trial that unjustly condemned Jesus.   The whole point of the parody is found in Abraham’s refusal of the rich man’s request that Lazarus be raised from the dead and sent to his five brothers (Annas, Caipahas’ father-in-law, had five sons, all of whom served as high priests like their father and brother-in-law).   They won’t believe, Abraham told the rich man, even though one rose from the dead.  This points to what happened in real life – Lazarus WAS raised from the dead, and in response Caiaphas initiated the conspiracy to put Jesus to death (Jn. 11:46-53). 

No, the strongest support for ECT in Jesus’ own words does not come from the passages in which He uses the imagery of Gehenna and fire, but the passages in which He speaks of the punishment of the lost as so terrible that it were better that one not have been born at all (in the case of Judas) or as so bad that it were better that one cut off a limb or pluck out an eye.   This language is difficult to reconcile with any interpretation other than ECT as is the whole idea of a Final Resurrection of the lost.  The Final Resurrection of the lost, however, is clearly taught in both Testaments.  “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Dan. 12:3)

 

When we look at the rest of the Scriptures, Rev. 14:11 provides the most support for the ECT interpretation.  “And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”  Unlike the same book’s depiction of the Final Judgement six chapters later, in which the devil, the lost, and ultimately death and hell, are all cast into the Lake of Fire which is described as a Second Death, all of which can easily be understood in an annihilationist manner, it is very difficult if not outright impossible to read Rev. 14:11 without ECT.

 

If we take St. Paul’s epistles and Jesus’ teachings together, the strongest image associated with damnation is that of loss rather than inflicted pain.  “Depart from me”, Jesus says in Matt. 7:23, to those who He had just said would not “enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  This is what the goats are told in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matt. 25, although everlasting fire prepared for the devil is also mentioned.  Earlier in that chapter the foolish virgins are denied entry by the bridegroom.  This is overwhelmingly the way St. Paul speaks of the fate of those who are ultimately lost – they will not inherit the kingdom of God.  This, of course, would be true regardless of whether ECT or annihilationism is correct.  What these words do seem to exclude is the universalist interpretation, especially the dogmatic absolute kind currently taught by David Bentley Hart.  Since the Beatific Vision – the sight of God face to face - is the good for which man, both the race and each person individually, was created, the failure to attain that end is the worst possible thing that could happen to a person.  This is true, regardless of whether the person is placed in a prison where he is kept consciously existing forever suffering inflicted physical pain, whether he is ultimately extinguished, or even whether he is place in an environment that is otherwise pleasant but where he is knowingly kept from the Beatific Vision forever.  St. John Chrysostom knew what he was talking about when he said “The pains of hell are not the greatest part of hell; the loss of heaven is the weightiest woe of hell.”  The theologians who speculated about a limbus infantium, to which the souls of unbaptized infants would be consigned where they would not endure the pains of hell but would be deprived of the Beatific Vision, did not.

 

The state of the question, after considering the Scriptural evidence, is such that it is most unwise to be so dogmatic in favour of either ECT or annihilationism as to pronounce the other to be heresy.  As for the theological/philosophical considerations, I will be much briefer in my treatment of them.  There seems to be a presumption in annihilationism that the extinction of the conscious existence of the damned is more merciful than allowing them to suffer torment eternally.  Is this true or is this based on presuppositions that we assume because they are common to the day in which we live without taking into consideration the corruption and degradation of that day?   Could an argument not be made, that those who are ultimately lost in hell are those who have rendered themselves so incapable of God’s blessing by refusing the proffered grace of God that in the end they are kept in existence eternally because their existence is the only good they are capable of receiving from God and He in His love and mercy is unwilling to deprive them of that?  Existence is always a good, after all.  The idea that in the hell of ECT, the lost suffer the loss of all good, is error, and perhaps an error more worthy of being considered “heresy” than annihilationism, because it contradicts what orthodox Christianity has always taught about the good and evil. (2) If the punishment of the damned truly were the loss of all good, this would mean the extinction of their existence, and so would be an argument for annihilationism.

 

Ultimately, the fact that ECT is by far the prevalent view of orthodox Christians in all places and times since the founding of the Church is what tips the balance of the hermeneutical and theological/philosophical considerations in favour of the ECT view for me.  Annihilationism has had its otherwise orthodox proponents, such as the late John R. W. Stott, but has mostly been the view of heretical sects like the neo-Arian Jehovah’s Witnesses.  This is a factor that carries no weight whatsoever for those who are now treating old Mike Seaver like he has apostasized from the faith once delivered unto the saints.  These, however, tend to be Calvinists of the strict TULIP type, the type who behave towards other Christians much like the five year old who guys around telling other kids that his dad can beat up their dad(s). 

 

For anyone looking for a more substantial treatment of this issue, Edward Fudge’s The Fire That Consumes is the best articulation of the conditional immortality viewpoint of which I am aware.  It is an extensive, scholarly treatment.  Fudge was a minister of the Churches of Christ and the first edition of his book was published in 1982.  In 1992, Dr. Larry E. Dixon, who was Professor of Theology at Providence College in Otterburne when I began my studies there in 1994 and who was my faculty advisor, published a defence of ECT entitled The Other Side of the Good News.  Anglican lay theologian Michael J. McClymond’s two-volume The Devil’s Redemption (2018) is a more recent and more extensive defence of ECT, but it is tailored towards addressing universalism (the subtitle is A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism) whereas Dixon’s book was more directed towards annihilationism.

 

 (1)   For some reason my spellchecker recognizes the word “annihilationist” but not “annihilationism”.  

(2) Evil has no existence of its own.  God, Who exists in Himself eternally, is entirely Good.  Everything He created is good.  Evil, unlike all created things, has neither form nor matter.  It is present only in a parasitic sense in created things that are otherwise good, in way exactly analogous to a hole in a wall.  The hole is there, it should not be there, but it is not there as a thing in the same way the wall itself is.  This is the orthodox Christian view of good and evil.  The Hollywood notion that evil exists in itself as a force almost equal to good, is the heresy of Mani.