Oh Hell…or Hades…or Gehenna…or Sheol! Will there be an Eternal Crispy Burning Sensation there? (Part 1)

Recently, someone I know posted a question on his Facebook page about Hell. He said he didn’t see anywhere in the Bible where it said that a person was cast into Hell for an eternity of suffering. “From what it looks like, once a person is thrown into Hell, he is dead, with no eternal suffering or anything.” His responses from other people included references to Mark 9 (“where the worm doesn’t die and the fire isn’t quenched”), Luke 16 (the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus), the rationale of using the “you’ll burn in Hell for eternity” scare tactic to win people to Christ, and questions of how one defines “death” and “Hell.”

I think my friend has a good reason to ask this question, for too many Christians have a caricatured idea of “Hell” that is more a product of questionable medieval theology and Dante-esque imagination than of actual biblical Christianity. The topic of Hell is complicated simply because when a Christian uses it, he doesn’t realize he is glossing over a wide range of languages and meanings. The most important thing to do is to first make sure one clearly sees all the relevant pieces to the puzzle. Here are those first three pieces. Tomorrow we will deal with two more:

1. The Greek concept of Hades: it is the place of the dead, where one is now just a flighty shadow, lacking reputation, sense, and vigor. One has been forgotten in the land of the living and is now just wandering about in sadness and darkness. It is not necessarily a place of “punishment.” It is simply the unavoidable end for all people.

2. The Ancient Near Eastern/Old Testament concept of Sheol: simply put, it is the grave. In the ANE Sheol was associated in some way with the primordial sea of chaos. Therefore, for example, when Jonah is thrown into the sea, he says both “I’m going down to Sheol,” and “I’m going down to the abyss.” At the same time, though, Sheol is very similar to Hades, in that it is seen as the place of the dead. Like with Hades, Sheol was not a place of punishment—both the righteous and unrighteous went there at death. The despair of Sheol is not because of divine punishment, but rather because one was no longer fully human—one was a shade, a disembodied shadow, forgotten and cut off from the land of the living.

Therefore, it should be agreed on that it is biblical to say that when one dies, one goes to Hades, or Sheol, or the grave—i.e. the place of the dead. This place is not a place of punishment. If anything, the idea of disembodied shadows wandering about in darkness and senselessness might well be considered to be a colorful/metaphorical way of simply saying, “You’re dead…you do not have a place among the living.” Another way death is described by both Jesus and the early believers is “having fallen asleep”—John 11:11-12; I Thessalonians 4:13. To be “dead” is simply to be “asleep”—because Christians believe that when Christ returns, those asleep (i.e. dead in Christ) will wake up, resurrect, and live again.

3. The New Testament term Gehenna: even though this word is often translated as “hell,” such a translation is really misleading. Gehenna is just another word denoting the Valley of Hinnom, which is one of the valleys surrounding the old city of Jerusalem. This valley has quite a history to it. It was not only the site where the ancient worshippers of Baal-Molech sacrificed their children by fire, but by the time of Jesus it was essentially the city garbage dump where people threw their garbage, dead animals, etc., which would then be burned and consumed by fire. Furthermore, in Jewish folklore, in Gehenna there was a gate that led down to a molten lake of fire.

When Jesus uses the term Gehenna in the New Testament, he uses it in the following ways:

• Matthew 5: 29-30; 18:9; Mark 9:43, 45, 47—better to cut off a body part than to go to Gehenna, the unquenchable fire.
• Matthew 5:22—the one who says “you fool” will be liable to Gehenna of fire.
• Matthew 10:28—fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.
• Matthew 23:15, 33—the Pharisees make a convert twice as much a child of Gehenna than themselves; the Pharisees won’t escape being sentences to Gehenna.
• Luke 12:5—fear the one who, once he has killed you, has the authority to cast you into Gehenna.

So what can we take from this? First, the actual valley of Hinnom clearly can be seen as a metaphor for a place where the “garbage” of sin, pride, and hypocrisy are burned. Second, it is a metaphor for destruction by fire. And finally, although it is clearly a punishment for the sinful and prideful, nowhere do these verses suggest that the one thrown into Gehenna is tortured forever. If anything, it seems to suggest total annihilation, not eternal torture and punishment. Furthermore, let’s think about it, how could a disembodied soul be eternally burned by fire? Isn’t fire a physical thing that burns other physical things? How can fire burn a disembodied shade? The imagery of Gehenna, it seems to me, suggests the idea that garbage must be burned and done away with, not eternally tortured for being garbage.