The Suffering of God

Putting Out the Fires of Hell

And Lighting Them Again

The doctrine of hell is the most repugnant of all Christian doctrines.

C.S. Lewis said, “There is no doctrine I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power,” and I would guess that there has never been a Christian who disagreed. In fact, God himself does not desire hell for humanity, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9 ESV)

Does it “lie in our power” to remove the doctrine of hell? In our time, many have tried to remove it, in many ways. This article is about such attempts.

What is hell?

Every attempt to remove the doctrine of hell from Christianity involves a redefinition of the term. For that reason, we must be clear on what the Scriptures mean by it. Since a definition is not the focus of this article, here are the basics:

As you can see from the column on the left, there are three words that have been translated as hell in our English Bibles: Hades, Gehenna and Tartaroo.

» Hades is the underworld of Greek mythology and in the New Testament is in some sense the “place” where the dead “go”, though it is not their final state. In Revelation 20, the dead are let out of Hades to be judged and Hades itself is destroyed in the lake of fire.

» Tartaros is another word from Greek mythology. From what I've gathered, it has been used in mythology as a synonym for Hades, as the name of a place below Hades (and therefore more terrible), and as the name of the place of eternal punishment. It is only used once in the Bible: in 2 Peter, God is said to have sent the fallen angels there.

» Gehenna is the word Jesus uses to describe the place of eternal punishment for the wicked, and this is what is normally meant by the word “hell”. The word “Gehenna” is derived from the name of a valley which was used for child sacrifices near Jerusalem, the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom (now a garden). In Jeremiah 7 God declares that he will punish his people there because of the detestable things that they did there.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis succinctly ties together Jesus' teachings about hell:

Our Lord speaks of Hell under three symbols: first, that of punishment (“everlasting punishment”, Matthew 25:46); second, that of destruction (“fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Hell”, Matthew 10:28); and thirdly, that of privation, exclusion, or banishment into “the darkness outside”, as in the parables of the man without a wedding garment or of the wise and foolish virgins. The prevalent image of fire is significant because it combines the ideas of torment and destruction.

[C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p.99]

In the rest of this article, the word “hell” will refer to the place or state that is represented by these three symbols. We will now look at the attempts to remove the doctrine of hell.

Attempt #1: The “God is Nice” Theory

Because hell is such a repugnant idea, there will always be people who will think they are defending God by arguing that there is no such place. A classic example can be found in the writings of Gary Amirault on what-the-hell-is-hell.com. The basic argument on this site is that God is nice and would never send humans, his beloved creation, to be tortured forever. Gary writes that “Christians find themselves short of good reasonable answers to questions like these: ‘If my daughter is in Hell because she did not get “born again” then I'd rather go to Hell and be with her than to be with your God because there would be more love in Hell than near your vindictive God.’”

I have no doubt that he is sincere and thinks that he is doing God a favour by removing the doctrine of hell but sadly, he is sincerely wrong. Like many others, Gary is unwilling to believe that God is deeply angry about sin and that He is the judge of the world.

Geoffrey Bingham has noted that our unwillingness to believe that God is angry about sin stems from our association of God's anger with human anger. We see the irrational, power-asserting anger of people around us—perhaps the anger of a close relative—and cannot believe that God could be anything like that. And the truth is that he is not like that. God's anger is not a sudden, violent response to a threat but is rather His reasonable response to humans worshipping created things and refusing to acknowledge Him as God. Bingham also notes that we cannot see sin as it truly is because we are on the “inside”; we evaluate our corruption with mental and moral faculties that are corrupt and our perception of our state is warped and confused.

It is imperative then, that we believe the Scriptures. Without them we would never suspect that we are so far from being truly human. When God tells us that he is the judge and we are guilty we must listen as created beings.

But why is hell eternal? It is doubtful that we could ever answer this question to our satisfaction but there are two things to keep in mind:

1. In the book of Revelation we see that the people who come under God's judgment never repent, but continue to shake their fist at God. (Rev 9:20; 16:9; 16:11)
2. In the words of the Evangelical Bible Dictionary, the kind of question raised by Gary Amirault “assumes that the creature is the highest intrinsic good, even for God. But the highest good for the God of Scripture is not humanity. Humanity was created for God, and cannot be defined in terms of itself; we exist to glorify God”

Attempt #2: The “Separation from God” Theory

The horror of hell compels us to look for ways to soften the blow. One such softening that has become popular is to define hell as separation from God. “Hell,” we are told, “is merely the absence of God, and because God is absent, all that is good is also gone.” It would be somewhat comforting if it were true. But no one who has read Revelation 14 could believe it:

Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse's bridle, for 1,600 stadia.

[Rev. 14:17-20 (ESV)]

In fact, it is clear throughout the Revelation that God is personally angry with the people who refuse to repent of their godless behaviour and that he sovereignly orchestrates their punishment and destruction. He does not merely leave them alone as though their punishment was simply to be apart from him, he unleashes his anger on them. The “great winepress of the wrath of God” is just one symbol but the message cannot be mistaken: God is destroying human life.

This is not to say that separation from God is not part of the picture. We have already seen from C.S. Lewis' summary that banishment is one symbol used to describe hell. In 1 Thessalonians 1 we are told that “they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”. But hell cannot be defined as separation from God. It is only part of the way that God's wrath is carried out.

Attempt #3: The “They'll Never Listen” Theory

The most significant attack on hell comes from secular culture. Firstly, anyone who believes that there might possibly be a God regards him as either a remote force or at least someone who is nice all the time. He couldn't possibly be angry with me because I'm not that bad, and how dare he make anyone suffer, anyway? Following this attempt to deal with guilt, the idea of hell, along with the idea of the devil, has become such a joke that there is no better way to ridicule Christianity than to mention “fire and brimstone”.

Naturally then, when it comes to explaining the gospel to our culture we wish to avoid talk of hell. Not only will they think that we're trying to scare them into a decision, but we don't want to associate ourselves with “all that fiery judgment nonsense”. We believe that because they think hell to be a stupid idea, they will reject us and the gospel if we mention it.

The problem here is significant. Without hell, the invitation to believe in Jesus Christ is like an invitation to eat gelato—it sounds nice enough, but if I don't accept it's no big deal. Without the warning of hell, the gospel is one option among many, and probably not the most attractive one. If we leave out the fact that God is angry and will punish sinners, we have completely misunderstood the command of the gospel: Repent and trust in Jesus to be saved from the coming wrath of God.

Talking about Hell

While these attempts to remove the doctrine of hell may come with good intentions, it is likely that they betray an unwillingness to believe what the Scriptures tell us about human guilt. If we believe the Scriptures and accept, with tears, that there will be some human lives that end in destructive torment, how are we to talk about it? There is only room here for a few pieces of advice:

Our talk of hell should be marked by sincere concern and godly sorrow. In Romans 9 Paul says that he has “great sorrow and unceasing grief in [his] heart” because his fellow Jews have rejected Christ. It may seem to be the antithesis of Attempt #3 above, but if we don't mention it our friends and family may (rightly?) assume that we don't care.

Contrary to what our culture would like to believe, hell is not a fairy story that was made up to keep people in church. We should never use it to scare people into Christianity. People will repent when they realise that though they deserved judgment, God loved them, and dealt with the problem of sin himself. So don't push people into a relationship with God that is characterised by loveless fear. Rather, persuade them of the magnitude of their guilt, the reality of God's anger, the overwhelming truth of his love for them and his desire that they do not perish.

It will always be difficult to even mention hell when our culture thinks it so ridiculous, but for that very reason we must. The gospel is a warning and a promise; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will set people free.

Ben is the co-editor, co-founder and co-publisher of Hippocampus Extensions. He may be scared of talking about hell but he's certainly not un-co. (Sorry, needed some light relief after this piece.)

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