255 (pt.2) — About Hell
“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” (Charles Spurgeon)
Any discussion on hell that moves away from the traditional viewpoint brings cries of anguish out of fear that we will lose one of our greatest selling points: “You don’t want to burn forever, do you?” As I wrote recently about the cross and resurrection, I wonder about us when we are so often focused on the gory and dark when the scripture offers us so much light and joy. God calls us into the kingdom. He doesn’t ask us to scare others into it.
One commenter asked me to define what I meant by “traditional view” and that is a very fair question; especially since so many views out there are heralded as orthodox by this or that religious tribe. By “traditional view” I mean that lost souls will live forever and ever, conscious, in horrendous pain, tied up, falling, in the dark, alone. Augustine believed that, saying that “aionois” referred both to life and punishment in Matthew 25:46. Therefore, he stated, both reward and punishment must be of equal duration. That is also the first verse run to by those I’ve tried to talk to over the years. How can we be sure of forever in heaven, they ask, if the word “forever” doesn’t mean “forever” in hell?
While I am not a Greek scholar (Hebrew and I are BFFs but Greek won’t answer my calls), I know a lot about language. I was raised in several countries and have learned a variety of languages. I even got a BA in Linguistics before moving on to gain doctorates in other disciplines. I love language… and my eyes pop when people refer to the adjective form of “aion” as meaning “eternal.” By the way, Young’s Analytical Concordance never translates it that way. No literal translation of which I am aware translates it that way, either. Why? Because “aionois” is an adjective form, it is dependent upon the object it modifies. That is why Jonah was “forever” in the belly of the whale and why it seems it takes the clerk at Wal-Mart “forever” to get a price check on the socks I want to buy. Einstein was right about this: a man speaking with a pretty girl will think an hour goes by like a second. But if he places his hand on a hot stove, he will think that second feels like an hour. Adjectives help us modify nouns. Some examples?
Here is a tall boy, a tall man, and a tall building. The word “tall” has a definite meaning but no objective, measurable reality. What “tall” means when I place it beside “boy” differs when I move it over by “building” or “man.” It becomes even more fuzzy when I use it metaphorically by speaking of a “tall order” or use the old Texas expression, “a tall drink of water.” Still, none of us think “tall” is a confusing word. We know what it means. It means the same in every dictionary we own… but the absolute meaning of the word changes almost every time we use it. Its meaning is dependent upon the word or concept by which we place it.
A stroll through an exhaustive concordance will give you dozens of examples of the word “everlasting” or “eternal” (and their synonyms) being used to modify a large variety of things we know have beginnings and ends. Because of space considerations on a blog, let’s just look at one. Habakkuk 3:6 reads this way: “He stood and shook the earth; he looked and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal.” That’s the NIV. In the KJV, the words are translated “everlasting mountains”, “perpetual hills”, and “his ways are everlasting.” Does anyone think the ways of God have been here only as long as the mountains or that His ways will end when the mountains end? Of course not. The two words used there are widely regarded as synonyms. “‘Ad” was used for the mountains and it means “duration, perpetuity, eternity, everlasting, world without end.” And “olam” is used for the ways of God. It is defined as “eternity, continuous, perpetual, without end.” We get a sense of what Habakkuk meant by looking at the words modified — mountains and God — NOT by going by strict dictionary definition of the modifying words. [a NT example would be Romans 16:25,26]
If we go back to Matthew 25:46 we will also find another gem waiting for us. The word “punishment” here is “kolasis” which is always remedial punishment, not capital punishment. [NOTE: when I say "always used" please understand that I mean "in every reference book I can find." If you have other information, I am always willing to learn] It is used of the pruning of trees, for example. When we take this passage and turn it into something out of a William Blake painting or Dante’s Inferno, I think we err. Hell is horrible — whatever it is — and no one should want to go there. We should fight hard to keep people out. That’s why I opened with the Spurgeon quote. Still, we have to figure out if there is enough information in scripture to know what hell is… and I suggest that the picture we get isn’t the picture I was told about in thunderous sermons by red faced men preached in white board churches when I was a boy. “Kolasis” is for the good of the sufferer. It is not a sadistic, over the top, symphony of brutality. If — as it seems — “kolasis” is never used for the death penalty, then it brings to mind First Corinthians 3:15. I’m not sure what that verse means, but it definitely refers to some men being saved “but only as one escaping through the flames.”
For a thorough study of “kolasis” please get “The Inescapable Love of God” by Thomas Talbott, professor of philosophy at Willamette University in Oregon.
William Barclay, when speaking of the definition we usually give to the word “eternal” and how we have placed that on “aionois” said, “The simplest way to put it is that aionois cannot be used properly of anyone but God. Eternal punishment is then literally that kind of remedial punishment which it befits God to give and which only God can give.” We run off the road and into the weeds when we forget to notice what is “eternal” — the punishment or the punished? The fire can be eternal but that doesn’t mean a person stays in it for eternity. We have to be careful with our words (and, yes, that includes me).
Next time… we look at the words that are translated “hell.”
April 28th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
dr. mead, you get price checks on socks at wal-mart?
i just wanted to thank you for addressing the issue of hell in a series. i’m learning a lot, and am very thankful. looking forward to the next post…
April 28th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Another great post! Still looking for your take on how “eternal” applies to God.
Blessings,
DU
April 28th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
I’m not convinced.
I would still like to see an instance where aionos is used to describe something without end.
If you find a verse, you’ll probably also find it fits the first part of the definition I gave you under your other post that describes something long ago. Otherwise, it means “eternal.”
Also, it appears to me Talbott may have defined kolasis incorrectly.
You said, “The word “punishment” here is ‘kolasis’ which is always remedial punishment, not capital punishment.”
Here is the definition I have (BDAG): 1) infliction of suffering or pain in chastisement, punishment, long-continued torture. 2) Transcended retribution, punishment. As it pertains to Matt. 25:46, “eternal punishment.”
Barclay is notorious for treating biblical words without citing sources. He was a smart guy, but that’s poor scholarship. He alone is not an authoritative resource – the scholarship doesn’t back him up.
I love you, Patrick, and have learned lots from you (and will continue to), but I think you’ve gotten this all wrong.
April 28th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Thanks, Patrick. Keep going. And don’t worry about going too long for a blog. This is a very important conversation.
April 28th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I have not looked at this quite enough, but one question pops to mind. If the descriptions in the gospels and Revelation are not adequate to describe punishment without end, what type of description (in Greek) would? You seem to dismiss the words used as describing what we would consider eternal, so how should that have been described.
Second, hell is a place prepared for Satan and his angels. Just curious, does that also mean the pit was originally designed for the good of Satan? Something seems off about that sort of view.
Third, in order for hell to be anything other than eternal you must assume that the afterlife has a linear time scheme. Anything else would not allow a movement of the soul. The temporal nature of the post-ressurection universe is far from clear.
April 29th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Strangely, I was discussing this very thing with my small group a few weeks ago. We were working through a verse-by-verse of Colossians and had paused to discuss the verse where “everything (EVERYTHING) is reconciled to God,” and someone asked if that meant Hell, as well. I brought up the idea that perhaps this fire is as most fire in the Bible – consuming and purifying. If so, then Hell is a place of temporary purification in order to fulfill this other promise of God, that everything is reconciled to Him.
April 29th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Dear Dr. Mead, thank you for touching intelligently on this important topic; I agree with you that we have too often missed the broader poetic/philosophical understanding of Hell almost as a process rather than a place that Biblical writers really intended to elicit in readers. I appreciate what you say concerning “Kolasis”. For me, the concept brings to mind the instance of the dying Christ with the thief on the cross. Christ did not remove the thief’s instant of suffering, but he did reward the thief’s epiphany that his suffering was intended as a learning experience that literally brought him closer to God and into paradise. Thanks again for these posts, and I look forward to reading the ones to come….
April 29th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Chad, I have not looked too deeply into the subject of Hell either (though there is some interesting stuff in N.T. Wright’s “Surprised by Hope”.
My question for you is this: Why wouldn’t God create Hell in order to bring about Satan’s obedience to him? Sure, they are Cosmic enemies, but I think, only because Satan continues to refuse the sovereignty of God. He is God’s creation, and to my understanding, there is no reason to believe that God does not still love Satan, just as he loves humans who rebel against him. Surely he does not love Satan’s actions or his rebellion, but is it too much of a stretch to say that God loves Satan… not in my mind.
I recently read an interesting thought which pertains to this discussion, I will give the gist below:
We catch a glimpse of Satan’s story in the story of the prodigal son- if the prodigal son had responded to his situation with anger and rage at his father, he would have become a passionate enemy to his father. Much like Satan has responded to God in anger and rage, and thus become an enemy (by his own decision).
I think the idea of prodigal son is an interesting one, and to carry the analogy further: Would the father stop loving the son, even if he truly DID begin to actively undermine and harm him?
April 29th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
I’m reading Gregory Boyd’s Satan and the Problem of Evil, and it is helping me a lot with many of these questions.
April 29th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
You make a number of very good points, especially about the original Greek of the New Testament.
As to Matthew 25:46 and whatever the Greek means, it doesn’t really matter because it’s an interpolation.
There is just no way, after a very long story in which Jesus tried so hard to explain how much he empathizes with human suffering, so much so that he says we ought to think of even the “least” as if s/he were him…that he could turn right around and all in the same breath say, “Oh, but one day I’m going to be the direct cause of the worst suffering ever!”That makes no sense, does it?
Well, the explanation for this contradictory statement is simple–Jesus never said it!!! In all likelihood, this was a comment inserted by a Greek Christian scribe while making a copy of the text, totally distorting the message of the originally inspired autograph!
Sadly, though, because these few verses that place Hell on Jesus’ lips serve the interests of people who feel threatened by the real message of Jesus–that we ought to care for those in need, those suffering, even those who made big mistakes that landed them in jail, even the “least”–they would have us believe that God is ultimately going to give up on most of humanity and let them have it big time! From there, it makes it easy for them to deceive believers into thinking it’s not all that bad to get a head start on hurting people, or at least, not helping the hurting.
I’ve actually written an entire book on this topic–Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There’s No Such Place As Hell, (for anyone interested, you can get a free ecopy of Did Jesus Believe in Hell?, one of the most compelling chapters in my book at http://www.thereisnohell.com), and it in, I explain that Jesus was, indeed, consistent in his message that God cares for all, loves all, wants to heal all, and is never going to give up on anyone until the very last, lost sheep is saved.