So far, our tour through the Quick Read summaries of the Healing Hereafter books series has led us toward the more hopeful aspects of the biblical afterlife. We’ve seen how God is able to judge every human according to the same fair standard, from the miscarried to the mentally disabled to the missionary-less. We’ve learned how God isn’t absent amidst suffering, but rather (dare I say it) pretty amazing amidst suffering. And we’ve observed how God has innocently and intentionally endured millennia of suffering so that we don’t have to.
But we’ve also seen – again and again – how many still choose to…how many even want the absence of God and his deliverance from suffering (see Booklet 2)! God does not force us to marry ourselves to him and his heavenly perfection. He honors our choice to be ultimately without him…to be in hell.
Most people don’t actually have a problem with this. We all know of really bad folks who we’re convinced belong in such a place, don’t we? The harder part of hell is how the Bible consistently teaches that it’s forever – and Jesus more than anyone. Really? Doesn’t that seem a bit harsh…especially if I only want a little bit of absence from God?
Booklets 6-8 of the Healing Hereafter series thoroughly explore this difficult question, along with a wide variety of pastoral and professorial responses. If we really understand what the purpose of the biblical hell is, and how God’s word literally describes it, his severe language turns out to make a lot more sense. After all, making sense of God’s biblical hereafter is what this free book series is all about!
And don’t worry about going too deep; I’m giving you the lite version! Below is the Quick Read summary of Booklet 6, exploring the words (English, Hebrew, and Greek) that are actually used to describe hell. What can they mean? What do they mean in context? How does that make hell understandable – even unavoidably necessary?
Keep in mind that these “Quick Reads” aren’t meant to extensively prove anything, just intrigue more interest concerning nearly all the questions and conclusions found in Booklet 6. Please explore the Full Version of this booklet (free and two clicks away!) for a more thorough discussion and extensive biblical and scholarly evidence supporting what’s below.
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Booklet 6: Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Words Will Never Hurt Me
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Chapter 1
Our exploration of human suffering transitions us to a focus on Hell, especially on the length of time a human would be there to experience it. We start with a list of the five main arguments used to propose a Hell that is not eternal. First we investigate whether or not everyone goes to Heaven, as that plays a critical role in how long people are in Hell.
By understanding the original audience and literary context of many biblical passages that comment on the inhabitants of Heaven, we find that it is made available to all, but will only be inhabited by some—those who persistently demonstrate a desire for God’s salvation through Jesus of eternal community with him before the day arrives when every human’s eternal fate is realized.
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Chapter 2
The second argument is what the words “eternal” and “forever” literally mean in the New and Old Testaments. Derivatives of the Greek root word aion are the terms primarily translated as the span of time referring to eternity in the New Testament, and we objectively peruse several Greek dictionaries to examine all our options for valid definitions. The discrepancies between these and the definitions offered by people who argue for a temporary Hell are recognized, and we realize how subjectively adding to, changing, or omitting expertly recognized meanings for aion—or any word—is dangerous and doesn’t bestow any practical benefit anyway. From our unaltered dictionary options, we find that it is impossible for aion to be definitively temporary when describing Hell.
To determine whether aion‘s potential transience is plausible in these cases, we learn about another Greek word denoting a span of time that is definitively temporary and is used by Jesus specifically to highlight the difference between its finite nature and aion‘s infinite nature. The biblical adoption of the definitions of aion consistent with endlessness is further confirmed by the intentional use of a uniquely repetitive representation of aion to describe Hell multiple times in the Bible. As this same particular representation of aion is used to describe both Heaven and God—but nothing else—we conclude that when aion is applied to Hell, the intended definition is clearly and consistently forever.
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Chapter 3
This leads us to explore whether that forever involves conscious individuals or people who inevitably cease to exist sometime after arriving there. We survey biblical descriptions of those in Hell and find that many of their situations only apply to those who continue to exist. We question the practicality of an eternal Hell that eventually contains no inhabitants, and then we explore arguments offered in support of the cessation of existence in Hell. The notions that the opposite of eternal life equals annihilation, that the destruction of individuals equals annihilation, and that the biblical phrase “second death” equals annihilation are evaluated.
By assessing the expertly recognized definitions of these terms, exploring the logical consequences of these claims, and putting them within their literary context, we discover that none of these notions remain persuasive, instead opposing several biblical passages definitively stating the contrary. But we also are assured that a conscious, eternal Hell is not the end of God’s commentary on the topic, nor is it the end he desires for any individual.
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Chapter 4
We complete our linguistic study of forever by learning about olam, the primary Hebrew word translated to denote an indefinite span of time in the Old Testament. By reviewing its dictionary definitions we find that it is associated with a sense of uncertainty. This is reflected in the Old Testament’s non-specific description of the afterlife, one we would expect without the historical context of Jesus to make sense of Hell or Heaven. This allows olam to be used to refer to different lengths of time, from only a few days to forever. However, it is never directly applied to the concept of Hell.
Nonetheless, those who argue for a temporary Hell use this Old Testament term to claim that authors of both the Old and New Testaments never intended Hell to be forever. We verify that this is biblically and logically inconsistent, reaffirming olam‘s inapplicability to the longevity of Hell. Alternatively, we discover another Hebrew term translated as forever that always means eternal and has no connotation of uncertainty, and we highlight the places it does refer to Hell in the Old Testament.
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Chapter 5
Then we address the third of the five main arguments for a temporary Hell: that people are only there until they overcome their arrogance or sin and repent, experiencing a conversion similar to what we are familiar with during physical life. We closely inspect the narrative told by Jesus on which this argument is based and unveil that the text has virtually nothing to say about either arrogance or conversion in Hell. In fact, it doesn’t even take place in Hell, although it is a place
adequately comparable to Hell for the purposes of the discussion.
We see how the argument for a temporary Hell in this story relies heavily on assuming several additional qualities about the characters that the text itself speaks against. It also requires omitting the inescapability of Hell clearly taught by the story and the unanimous agreement of the characters on this teaching. We conclude that the words and actions of people experiencing the predicament of those headed for Hell provides a very strong argument against a temporary Hell.
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Chapter 6
The word “Hell” itself is the topic of interest in the fourth of the five arguments for it being temporary. The claim is that those who heard Jesus speak about Hell—or Gehenna as it is called in Greek—would have understood it as a trash heap outside Jerusalem that symbolized an unpleasant transient experience, but not a final place of punishment. Assuming this is what Jesus’ audience did think of Gehenna, the only way people would end up there is in the form of a corpse, which is anything but a transient transition.
More importantly, upon examining the single source of evidence suggesting that Gehenna is a trash heap, we discover that under the most lenient circumstances, we can only conclude it was Jerusalem’s landfill no earlier than 1200AD. And after consulting multiple experts on biblical literature, Jewish literature, Palestinian geography, and archeology, as well as a secular Jewish historian from the first century, we find no evidence that Gehenna was ever a trash heap at all, especially in Jesus’ day.
Instead, we learn that this argument relies on a subjectively inaccurate perception of the Bible’s original audience, as it neither acknowledges nor accounts for 1) Jesus’ repeated warnings that Gehenna is an eternal place or 2) the Old Testament’s continual descriptions of Gehenna as a perpetual punishment of evil, both concepts that were clearly familiar to the ancient Jews. By objectively adopting literary, scientific, historical, and biblical information about Gehenna, we end up with a more responsible and rational understanding of the original biblical audience’s understanding of Hell and therefore of Hell itself.
