The LORD Jesus mentions unquenchable (i.e. it cannot be put out) fire, and in it there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. John Stott, however, turned to a passage that speaks of the "second death" (I forget where that is), an Annihilationist metaphor in his opinion. I believe Eternal Hell exists, out of the Scriptures as taken by the Patristic insistence upon it and the Church's general acceptance. Sometimes I am not sure.
This is a hard topic to talk about and I found immense relief in C S Lewis's book "the problem of pain". I don't have the book on hand but he answers the question that someone may pose to him, isn't the idea of hell intolerable? And he replies along the lines of yes! it is utterly intolerable! but then launches into a defence of this doctrine and the justice of God shown in this. C S Lewis showed me I didn't have to pretend to like it, or find it easy to nevertheless accept hell and the goodness of God in making it. I think also it is difficult for even us Christians to believe that we realllly deserve hell, are we really that bad? And for non Christians it seems downright evil quite often. I think this shows just how deceitful our hearts are that we need to constantly be reminded just how evil we are, how detestable we were in God's sight in all our sin and all that Christ has done for us. A softening of sin and hell is therefore a softening and weakening of the gospel
Hell is eternal, the same way Heaven is eternal. You can't have one without the other. I believe that the idea of annihilationism was formally condemned at least by a synod of the 5th or 6th century.
Nope. Heaven contains perfect happiness, and who could be perfectly happy knowing that such a place existed? I would not. Therefore, my only conclusion is that such language is symbolic.
Doesn't this open up 'Heaven' to being purely symbolic? Regarding the Perfect Happiness contradiction, many have tried to reconcile this with Hell by saying that the perfect happiness of the saints partly consists of knowing that God's Perfect Justice is fulfilled, active, and everlasting - via punishment of unrepentant wicked people.
Here is part of an article I found interesting: "The Patristic Era The early church from the time of the Apostles until the 4th century was primarily a Universalist church. Most of the church fathers during this period believed that all people will be saved. Over time, alternative doctrines about the fate of sinners grew more popular, such as annihilationism and eternal conscious torment. These doctrines were often held by Christians who could not read the New Testament in the original Greek language in which it was written, and who interpreted the Bible through the lens of barbaric forms of paganism. It is noteworthy that Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyons wrote a lengthy book called Against Heresies in the late 2nd century, which never once mentioned universal salvation as a heretical belief. This is because for the first few centuries of Christian history, Universalism prevailed as the mainstream understanding of the Gospel. The greatest theological school of the Patristic era -- which directly descended from the Apostles themselves -- was called the Didascalium and was based in Alexandria, Egypt. It was founded by St. Pantaenus (d. ca. 216) in the year 190 C.E. Pantaenus, described by some of his students as "the Sicilian bee," was a Stoic philosopher who became a Christian missionary and traveled as far as India to spread the Gospel. He sought to reconcile the best of Greek philosophy with the radical new spiritual message of Jesus and the Apostles. He was martyred for his faith in Christ. The Didascalium was the earliest catechetical school, and it played a very influential role in the development of Christian theology prior to the rise of the imperial Roman Church. The city of Alexandria was the center of learning and intellectual culture for the entire ancient world. This cosmopolitan metropolis was the meeting place of philosophers, theologians, writers, teachers and students of various belief systems, and during the first three centuries of Christian history it became the most important city in the Christian world. The Alexandria school of Christianity was thoroughly Universalist in its theology. One wonders how history would have been different had Alexandria remained the center of gravity of Christian thought instead of Rome, which developed a diametrically opposite theological system based on the teaching of eternal damnation."
I hope in the ultimate restoration of all in Christ Jesus and I would never denigrate God's mercy if He chose bring all his children home. But I have said in other places, I cannot say with certainty that all will be saved based on Holy Scripture, although there are definitely hints at it. But if it is true that all will be saved, it will only by grace through faith in Christ. But the question here is whether there is a hell and whether it's eternal. The answer to the first is of course yes. Jesus and the apostles spoke of hell, a place of punishment. There is also an unquenchable fire, but does that mean hell is eternal? Maybe not. Consider Revelation: " And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." According to this, hell is emptied prior to be cast in the lake of fire. Perhaps this means that death and hell are killed and destroyed in the final victory of Christ over Sin and all its effects. Perhaps the death of death itself is the second death.
I am a huge CS Lewis fan. Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters brought about my conversion as an adult and drove me back to the Church. The Problem of Pain was a great book, but much of it imho was recanted in A Grief Observed. One book I thought very telling of his view of Hell was The Great Divorce. People, in this story, were in hell only because and for as long as they want to be. Food for thought.
I would like to a lot more proof-sourcing for these claims. Not only do they go contrary to Christian teaching ("no one who does not go through Me shall be saved"), but to the history of the Patristics era and the missionary zeal of its converts for the souls of pagans. Could somebody explain the significance of this to me? I am obviously not seeing the wide-eyed significance of what was just said. Seems like throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks, i.e. another wildly revisionist article to me.
Indeed!,its an interesting idea. I remember all the furore about Rob Bell's book a while ago. Since I don't believe in free will this is a non issue for me. Because no-one I believe will ever be stuck in hell and wanting to have a relationship with God. They will still be rebellious towards God even in hell, as all human beings naturally are
It is an interesting idea that the has put forward: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened” (The Great Divorce). Those who ultimately choose Hell, when they look back over their existence and see every moment as hell, those that choose heaven will look back of their journey even the parts on earth or in hell as heaven as well. In Problem of Pain, he explains it like this: "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside." But why? Why would anyone willingly choose hell? His explanation is this : " Milton was right,” said my Teacher...The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy – that is, to reality. We see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.” (The Great Divorce) and "Though our Lord often speaks of Hell as a sentence inflicted by a tribunal, He also says elsewhere that the judgment consists in the very fact that men prefer darkness to light, and that not He, but His “word,” judges men. We are therefore at liberty –since the two conceptions, in the long run, mean the same thing – to think of this bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is. The characteristic of lost souls is “their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves." (The Problem of Pain)
It makes me wonder about the story about Abraham and Lazarus, the Rich man who went to hell and wished to just be touched in the tongue by someone in heaven... The gap is huge...
Not at all. Do you feel any sympathy for the lost? Do people seriously expext to "rejoice" that their friends and families will be tortured for all of eternity? That concept is insane.
I have asked God, if it is possible if one day I see my loved ones in Hell (if I can't see hell, then if I do not find them in Heaven) to swap. I can never be happy if someone is in such pain and since I am not happy anyway, I can at least try to make them happy... But then I remember Christ and I think, wow if me sinner and mean think like this, do not want people in eternal damnation... what would Christ think! of course a million time more compassionate than me... So I really do not know how God will make us understand hell and all this...
Isn't it just to punish someone? I don't believe the precise language about everlasting Hell is 'everlasting torture', but rather, 'everlasting punishment'. Torture conjures images of uncommon or egregious punishment, which if that were the case does not apply to Hell. The punishment there is maximal, but not excessive in comparison to the justice involved.