The most recognizable symbol or archetype in our modern world would without doubt be the Cross of Christ, but the ubiquity of the image and its associated ideas of love and forgiveness has tended to desensitize our modern consciousness as to what crucifixion actually was. Crucifixion was a method of punishment, torture, and execution, that was commonly used by ancient Rome, and it was gruesome beyond our imaginings. If you challenged the power of the Roman Empire, and were caught, you could be certain that you would have your life extinguished via one of the cruelest methods of all time. In 70 BC a large slave rebellion that became known as the War of Spartacus was ultimately crushed by the Roman military. 6,000 of the surviving rebels were crucified along 220 kms of the Appian Way that went from Rome to Capua. Nobody who witnessed that extraordinary scene would have had any doubts about who was in control.
There weren’t many rules to crucifixion. What occurred was up to the soldiers performing the task. The victim could be tied up or nailed. It could be to a cross made of wood or a single steak in the ground. You could be suspended upside down or simply left dangling. You would most likely be brutalised and beaten before hand. The process of nailing human bodies to hardwood meant the nails would tear through flesh, blood vessels, bones, muscles and organs. The naked miscreant would then be left in the open usually taking several days to die. Birds would pluck out the eyes. Vermin would crawl up and devour things like fingers and toes. Dehydration, blood loss, organ failure, swarming flies, and exposure would bring about death. The victim’s mental state would often collapse from the agony. Mercifully the intermittent wailing and screaming would end with death and silence would arrive. It was truly the high point of evil in action, and it is very sobering to think that our much loved Jesus had to endure any of the aforementioned cruelties. But then it was a crucifixion by the Roman Empire, and it is very difficult to put a positive take on it.
Jesus’ crucifixion was no exception in the bodily pain it displayed. We know He was beaten repeatedly. We know His clothes were removed. We know the hard nails tore through His flesh and His bones. And we also know that for Him it was much more than just its physical horror. According to Gospels that recount His story, He was more than just a revolutionary leader, or a wise teacher. He was a physical incarnation of the pre-existing, eternal, omnipotent God who had created the entire universe in the first place.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it…. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-5, 14)
He was the source of everything we humans take for granted. He had given us the special gifts of consciousness, free will, moral reasoning, compassion, creativity, and the appreciation of beauty – that is, we were made in His image. He had also given us this planet upon which we now rely on for our existence. Yet on Calvary He was being murdered in the environment He had created by the very beings whom He had made. Somehow in the midst of this He was able to pray, “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) His death has been recognized by some as a type of substitutionary atonement for our persistent failures as humans, or our sin (hamartia, ie missing the target). This appears to be the view stated in Paul’s epistles.
“But God demonstrates His love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from [God’s] wrath through Him.” (Romans 5:8)
….. that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:4)
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace. (Ephesians 1:7)
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. (Ephesians 2:13-14)
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10)
Jesus Himself stated as much in Matthew 26:28 at the last supper, that “...this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
Others with a less legalistic frame of reference have suggested that the cross was the ultimate representation of the highest love one can aspire to. Evil exists and is very real. It inevitably leads to much suffering. The main part of God’s solution is to put Himself the centre of that suffering. God is not a distant, aloof, or unknowable entity like all other mythical deities. He is very much one with us in our many trials.
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:12-13)
No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15)
We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (1st John 3:16)
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
In this reading of the Gospel the cross becomes the ultimate “acte gratuit”. The term “acte gratuit” is French and translated means an act that is independent of motives other than selfless love. It is something like the Greek word “agape” which means a supreme love. It is the origin of the English word gratuitous. Nowadays if someone gives gratuitous advice it is generally regarded negatively, but in its original usage in the late seventeenth century it was associated with the idea of gifts being bestowed on somebody out of spontaneous affection or love, and with no motives other than the goodness of the heart. This is the God that has revealed Himself so unmistakably in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In my experience to understand both of these perspectives has value and the truth is not necessarily an either or; as John so eloquently states below,
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1st John 4:9-11)
Most victims of crucifixion took days to die. Jesus’s death came in a few hours. That happened as a consequence of His total separation from God His Father. During His ordeal He called out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46) Simultaneously there was in God’s mind the imputation on to Him of all the crimes, errors, evil actions and sin in the universe. In the end He cried out in complete despair, “It is Finished.” (John 19:30)
We don’t need to fully understand all this technical and theological discussion to benefit from the Gospel, however. What we need to understand for it to be meaningful is what Paul says in Galatians. In the middle of all his complex explanations of the message he breaks in and says with a childlike innocence, “….I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20) That’s the message of the Cross and the crucifixion of Jesus, and that’s the God of creation who “...gave Himself up for me.”
It is impossible for any of us to fix the world. We can’t even fix ourselves. The clinically efficient mass murder that was perfected in the 20th century shows that we are actually getting more evil, not less. But we don’t have to fix anything because He has done it for us. All the intentional misery and pain we have inflicted on each other over the centuries has been dealt with. All the holocausts, racial genocides, political purges, wars, and nuclear missiles have somehow been washed away and forgotten along with our anger, hatred and cruelty.
God has unambiguously promised that the horror that was the crucifixion of Jesus was the end of the matter. His life, death, resurrection, and then His eventual return with the New Jerusalem, are real actions in space time that will put the whole universe right, eradicate evil, and create a future where the death, pain, and suffering of the past will be no more. This is the blessed hope of the Christian faith. But the cross didn’t happen in a vacuum. Somebody had to pay the price. And it is good for us to be always reminded of that fact.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. (John 3:16-17)
“What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains, and go and search for the one that is lost? And if it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven for one of these little ones to perish.” (Matthew 18:12-14)
Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)
The sufferings of Jesus had a purpose and there’s a promised future that will come about as a consequence. So why then do the vast majority of Christians believe that there still needs to be a permanent place of evil somewhere in this restored universe? Didn’t His horrific death put an end to evil, and didn’t His suffering and blood wash away its power? According to the historical “eternal suffering hell” of church tradition, God intends to imprison all of the unsaved and ensure that there remains an ongoing cruelty that is greater than anything that has ever been. Hell will exist as part of the cosmos like an abyss of evil even though it serves no apparent purpose, no redemptive outcome, has no obvious necessity, and it comes with no possible motivation other than vindictiveness. If the unrepentant choose to reject the free gift of God’s grace, and by doing so experience the death that comes as the inevitable consequence of such a choice, why bring them back to life only to cause them endless pain with no prospect that such an outcome will actually ever produce anything of any benefit to anybody?
The existential terror that was Jesus crucifixion was a unique, universe shattering, reality defining, non-repeatable phenomenon, and it had a focus, a purpose, and a justification. The eternal suffering that is the traditional hell just goes on as an ongoing reality in God’s newly restored universe. Consider the following three uncontroversial propositions,
1) Within the belief systems of Christianity life only exists in the universe because it is a gift from God. That obviously includes humans. God is the reason for everything. There is no other source. We would all agree on that.
2) Death happens because God no longer supplies what in Genesis is called the ‘breath of life’. Any ongoing conscious life after our earthly death is only possible because of the continued gift of life that is from God alone. Life is neither innate nor guaranteed as it is in some eastern religions. We can all agree on that. “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” (John 5:21)
3) Therefore the concept of an eternal suffering hell means that God will intentionally keep on supplying life to everybody who has existed for no reason other than to ensure a large proportion of them suffer torture, separation, despair, pain, and misery for ever.
If according to the Psalms a person is allotted a life span of “Three Score Years and Ten”, (Psalm 90:10) then the punishment for rejecting or disobeying God does seem excessive by comparison, and doesn’t appear to fit the crime; i.e. for 70 years of indolence down here, one will receive pain and conscious misery with no escape. Some have suggested that because God is infinite, to sin against Him is to sin against infinity so the sentence must be infinite. That is, that the level of punishment should not match the seriousness of the crime but rather should be linked to the prestige of the persons or other that has been wronged against. But that is inconsistent with the God that is portrayed in this one of many similar passages from the Psalms -
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.
He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust. (Psalm 103:8-14)
Hell would quite rightly be only a tiniest blip on the smallest radar screen considering the vastness of the new universe, but its impact on its many victims represents something like a malignant tumor festering away in the new pristine cosmos. The idea of it doesn’t sit well with the previously quoted scripture about “wiping away every tear…” does it?
There is no eternal life or eternal soul apart from God to be found in Christian or Jewish belief like those described by Greek philosophy or Eastern religious texts. The concept of a distinct but mortal soul separate to the physical body did infiltrate early Christianity via Neo-Platonism, but a clear description of it is not to be found anywhere in the Scriptures. Some Christians do differentiate between body and soul, and see the soul as a unique thing that separates from the body and goes on with the support of God between death and the resurrection. Other believers see the individual as a unique self created by God, and that total being is who or what gets resurrected in the “Last Days”. But, without hesitation no Christian believes in a soul that exists independently of God. Consciousness for the individual after death is only possible because of God’s willingness to continue to supply the gift of life.
Also for the Bible only believing Christian, our future hope is for “everlasting” life, and not “eternal” life, and this is not just an issue of semantics. God alone is eternal because only God possesses eternal life and only He had no beginning.
….He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses Immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honour and eternal dominion! Amen. (1 Timothy 6:15-16).
Everything else that exists has a beginning therefore can only ever be called everlasting.
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. (1st Thessalonians 4:13-15)
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. (1st Corinthians 15:16-22)
Some individuals find the unresolved debate about our future immediately after death troublesome and uncomfortable, especially at a loved one’s funeral. In this context the question of “where exactly is my mum, or brother etc?” is not an academic one. What does it mean when it describes death as sleep, because belief should bring hope. For these relatives the practical fact is when a believer dies the very next conscious thought that they will experience is hearing their name called by Jesus to join him in the resurrection. The net effect for each of us when we die is exactly the same whatever is the true perspective. We are instantly with Jesus. Praise the Lord! This is what Paul is referring to in Philippians
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labour for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard- pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; (Philippians 1:21-23)
As already stated, traditional Hell is a horror show without a cause. It seems to me to be the ultimate waste of time, resources, energy and creativity, and the pinnacle of mindless cruelty. It is actually an obscenity of such monumental proportions it rightly defies suitable language. Even the Nazi Holocaust had a “purpose” to it, and while that “purpose” was an ugly perversity, and a gigantic lie, at least the Nazis reasoned that if Europe was cleansed of Jews then the future would be better for the Teutonic races. The purges of Stalin and Mao had the assumption that to make a better socialist society it would be more achievable by the removal of all the counter revolutionaries and the entire bourgeois class. Hell doesn’t even possess a despicable justification. It is pure nihilism.
Within Christian thought there exists another system of belief called Calvinism. It is a theological framework that claims that hell is real and there is an ultimately righteous God-ordained purpose for it. For someone who stands outside and views this understanding objectively, it is a very disturbing and cognitively dissonant “purpose” it must be said. It requires hell to exist because there needs to be a final destination for the vast majority of souls who have lived but have unfortunately, irresistibly, and unilaterally been predestined by God to eternal punishment. Their outcome has been foreordained since eternity via the foreknowledge of God. The elect go to heaven to experience eternal bliss, and the rest are requisitioned into misery and suffering. This assertion is apparently made palatable by taking it away from our ordinary moral concerns and putting it in the context of the “Sovereignty” of God.
I can’t see it myself, but I accept with all the graciousness and humility that an egotistical sinner like me can summon, that I could be wrong. On the other hand being wrong would not be a perspective that you would have to allow for if you are convinced that you regard yourself as one of the “elect” of God. If you’re on that good side then what happens to the rest isn’t your problem. If that sounds hard or un-Christian, then answer the question, “what can you do about your loved ones whom God is sending to hell?”
I find the possibility of an eternal future where my children have potentially no other purpose than to make up the numbers and go straight to hell after a brief sojourn on this planet, very – no extremely – troublesome. If this diabolical outcome is true, let it be my eventual fate. As a useless mis-shapen piece of defective Lego in some giant, nihilistic, cosmic game of pawns, I can think no other. God asks of Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding... (Job 38:4). But if I have created other much loved lives, and in the process I have inadvertently facilitated that fate for them, then I feel and am the worst. This is because their eternal destination has nothing to do with their behaviour. It has nothing to do with the quality of their life. It has nothing to do with their apparent acceptance or rejection of Jesus’ many promises. It is solely and capriciously the consequence of some cosmic whim that was determined irrespective of anything achieved or not achieved by any body. I accept my state of mind is extremely flawed and is corrupted by both the environment I inhabit and the sinful heart that beats in me. Maybe the fact that I have the arrogance to pose such questions to the sovereign God of Calvinism is evidence I am indeed on my own road to hell.
Why does the traditional idea of hell and the concept of double predestination of Calvinism cause multiple alarms to go off in my head, and find no respite, when historically many, many much greater minds than mine have been able to rest comfortably with the knowledge? Am I the stupid one here? Am I the odd one out? Am I missing some obvious truth? A Calvinist would agree with Yahweh’s question to Job quoted above, and would then ask me Paul’s question in Romans, “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing moulded will not say to the moulder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? (9:20) In the end according to Calvinism we are all born into “Total Depravity” from which there is no possibility of escape. We have no ability to choose God, nor to even seek for Him. All my life long personal remorse and regret at my persistent failures that have forced me with my sometimes sober conscience to the foot of the Cross, begging for forgiveness, now needs be measured against my inability to bow to the Church’s authority, and much worse to God’s so-called “Sovereignty”.
So what does the Bible say about this belief, and who does Jesus say that His salvation is for, and to whom does He say is it offered?
“Now judgement is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.” (John 12:31- 32)
I have come as Light into the world, so that no one who believes in Me will remain in darkness. If anyone hears My teachings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. (John 12:46- 47)
Jesus spoke these things; and raising His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, so that the Son may glorify You, just as You gave Him authority over all mankind, so that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. (John 17:1-2)
Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One truly is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:41- 42)
“The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John came; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.” (Luke 16:16-17)
What does the Apostle John say?
By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us, because He has given to us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgement; because as He is, we also are in this world. (1 John 4:13-17)
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)
What does the Apostle Paul say?
This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed as a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), as a teacher of he Gentiles in faith and truth. (1 Timothy 2:3-6)
For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience, so that He may show mercy to all. (Romans 11:30-32)
It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labour and strive, because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers. (1 Timothy 4:9-10 )
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:8-11)
...which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will…. (Ephesians 1:8- 11)
For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)
...to whom God willed to make known what the wealth of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles is, the mystery that is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim Him, admonishing every person and teaching every person with all wisdom, so that we may present every person complete in Christ. For this purpose I also labour, striving according to His power which works mightily within me. Colossians (1:27-29)
But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of His suffering death crowned with glory and honour, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9)
The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgement arose from one offence, resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the gracious gift arose from many offences, resulting in justification. For if by the offence of the one, death reigned through the one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then, as through one offence the result was condemnation to all mankind, so also through one act of righteousness the result was justification of life to all mankind. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:16-19)
But the fact is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man death came, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognise no one by the flesh; even though we have known Christ by the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:14-19)
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people….(Titus 2:11)
And what does the Apostle Peter say?
But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly people. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:7-9)
What does “all mankind” really mean? And this is not a call to some form of universalism. There are other prominent words involved like “repentance”, “believe”, “reconcile”, and God’s “power which works mightily within me” that indicate that salvation is for everybody, but it is definitely not passive. We have to make an active decision and say yes to the Holy Spirit.
Having expressed all that alternative minority opinion on what many would regard as a core doctrine one could could well be asked where is the commitment to church unity advocated so often by Paul? In response it should be pointed out that hell is a matter of church tradition and not Biblical study, so where does the disunity originate?
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The Afterlife and its Function
Man has for all our history been acutely aware of the fact that at some point we all will die. It’s fair to say that this unpleasant inevitability doesn’t sit well with our advanced brains and their inbuilt phobias towards this outcome. All animals wish to survive, but the highly complex processes of our mind take this fear to the level of an existential crisis of meaning. What then do our lives signify if they are merely going to be extinguished one day with no residual memory or purpose, and we lapse into an empty void of non-existence.
We have for as long as can be demonstrated told stories about ourselves, our fellow beings, and our relationships in an attempt to come to terms with the monumental absurdity that is the grave. These tales have often contained features that lift them beyond the ordinary interconnections of the natural creation and introduce other-worldly aspects. Dug up grave sites show that burial ceremonies include the deceased being supplied with utensils and items such as food, water, and weapons in obvious attempts to assist their journey even though there was no empirical knowledge anywhere of what that journey was, or that anything actually happens after death.
Man’s imagination about these adventures became more and more sophisticated from the start of the Neolithic when humans left hunter gathering as a mode of living, discovered agriculture, moved into tribes, and grouped together in semi-permanent settings. They quickly learned that they had more than the brutality of nature and the environment to worry about. These developments may have provided greater stability, more reliable sources of food, but life and liberty simultaneously became more perilous. There emerged the new menace of neighbouring tribes and settlements who might become jealous of their successful crops, fattened livestock, or pretty young daughters. Tribal cohesion or social unity was as important to the health of the individual as much as was food, drink and air.
`This is where the concepts of Gods, religion, ritual and the afterlife played a much more important role. Archaeologists have found underground grain storage silos in Great Britain and discovered cow carcasses at the bottom of the grain. They’ve speculated that they were put there as a sacrificial gift to a particular god so he, she or it, would look after the grain for them. The Celts who were responsible for this were just like all the other bronze/iron age European societies. They were polytheistic, and most of their religious activities were about offering sacrifices to appease, to gain the favour, or at least keep these gods onside. An important aspect of the Celt's complicated belief system was that nothing was written down, and that all knowledge, information and details of ritual were held in the memories of their priests the Druids. Now this capacity by the priests to retain and control all the knowledge about these invisible and mysterious deities, how to access them, and how to find out just what they desire, would of course give that same priestly class the most incredible power and prestige. So historically there emerged a new class of tribal sub-leader known as “priests” or “holy men”.
Over time the newly established role of tribal god interpreter grew in importance. These so-called priests were polished in the arts of magic, story telling and showmanship. They were often educated, literate, articulate and charismatic. Therefore we observe the growth and importance of complex and flexible religious myths. Religion it turned out became an important skill in maintaining control and tribal cohesion. For the illiterate and uneducated it was their answers to the big questions. And the biggest of the big questions was always – what happens when you die?
Every society ended up with a religion. Every society had speculations about the after-life even though it was all totally invisible. They invented souls that were immortal, mysterious, and very powerful. When you study the history of human beliefs in the afterlife, and how they have been constructed, you discover the reality is not like the myths. The kind of god you worshipped or believed in evolved as a consequence of what was going on around you in both the physical environment and the social one. And the type of god determined the type of afterlife you invented rather than the other way round.
And of course it was all imagination. Nobody knew what happened after death because nobody had ever come back to describe it. Communication with the afterlife was of course possible for the priests, so they claimed. They could also quantify what a soul was, describe its form, measure it, demonstrate its qualities, and even prove it existed. All they did was speculate because they were never going to be called to account for it. Individuals never came back from the dead to disprove their explanations. So like Andy Warhol’s description of “art” as being “whatever you can get away with”, priestly power and wisdom became built on the same foundation. One wonders at what point along the transfer of myth from the creator to the many peasants and slaves did individuals stop knowing it was all stories and actually thought it was true. Did some of the priests end up actually believing it? Nobody had ever spoken to Zeus, Medusa, Atlas, Sisyphus, Poseidon, Narcissus, Hercules, Prometheus, Venus, Aphrodite, or Dionysus because none of them had ever actually existed. But for the illiterate, superstitious, and uneducated it was the unambiguous truth established by others way smarter than them. The creativity expressed in these complex myths like the Greeks, the Vikings, or the Germanic tribes was enormous. And thanks to the talents of the priestly class, most Greeks firmly believed that the gods were just over there on the top of Mount Olympus. This naive belief is true of every religion and society that have ever existed. That is until the arrival of Christianity.
"God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31)
Oddly enough, in the context of hell, the first person to actually argue for an eternal punishment of the wicked was not in Christianity or Judaism, but in Plato. And it was his authority within Greek philosophy that established the separate soul to the western mind. It was initially proposed in one of his famous dialogues called “Phaedo” or “On The Soul” from around 310 – 325 BCE.
Christianity, for the very first time in history, provided somebody named Jesus who had come back from the dead. Nowadays to make this claim about Jesus is a non-controversial fact. Most serious historians accept the following as indisputable facts. Jesus was real. He was crucified because he had blasphemed by claiming to be God. He was buried in a tomb. Something miraculous happened that Sunday morning. Many, many people, possibly in the hundreds, and maybe even 1,000’s, believe that they met a risen and resuscitated Jesus. Not everybody believes that the miracle of the resurrection really happened in the way the early Christians do, but they are all pretty certain that those who were there “believed” that they met an alive Jesus. His followers believed Him. They reliably recorded the events. They wrote down the important bits of what he said. He said unequivocally that there is an afterlife, and there is an ultimate purpose to this life now. There is also a reason why it currently all goes wrong.
This marks Christianity as much, much more than just one truth among many. It is monumentally unique. It’s not a theory. It’s not a philosophy. It's not a myth. It’s an historical fact about a real human being. And this gives what Jesus said about the afterlife authority, and special prominence. You can choose to ignore it, or dispute some of the details, or say it’s just another myth, but you can’t make it, and what stands for, go away.
Unfortunately for church tradition hell there is no record of Him ever describing an eternal endless suffering. Nor does He ever talk about body soul dualism. He makes a mention of something akin to body and soul in Matthew 10:28 but this verse makes no reference to dualism. Jesus was a Jew and neither of those concepts appear anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.
It would be fair to say that the modern world we live in is a post-Christian world. If you were a pollster walking down the average urban street in the developed world and were to ask people if they were a Bible believing Christian who belonged to a church, about 10% would say yes. This would probably be the lowest level of personal faith in the past 2,000 years. But if you changed the question to ask whether a person had “spiritual” beliefs, or that they “felt” that there was more to life than the modern view of scientific materialism. Maybe there is a God out there and something happens to us via our “soul” after we die? Well the percentage would likely be reversed and about 90% would say yes. This is curious conundrum because for all the modern world’s gains in knowledge what we have actually done here is go back to the superstitious pagan world described earlier, where clever and articulate gurus have bluffed us all with their sophistry about the afterlife. All sorts of stories about spirits, lights, crossing over, and voices calling have implanted themselves in our modern consciousness. But Jesus is still the only individual who has demonstrably come back from the dead and has been able to tell us about what it all means
Hell, in the traditional Christian sense, does not exist in the original languages in which the Bible was written. The words used in the Bible are “Sheol” in the Hebrew, and “Hades” in the Greek translation called the Septuagint. These are concepts that come from Greek Philosophy and refer to a vague idea of an underground nether world, The other place is “Gehenna” which is a Jewish concept, but it refers to an ongoing fire where waste rubbish is discarded and consumed. There is nothing anywhere in the Bible that is like the fires of hell which would later become the shock tactic of choice for the tub-thumping, Bible-bashing preachers of the early modern times. This seems a pity when you contemplate people like Hitler and Stalin, but it’s a fact. Matthew 25:46 does stand as a possible Biblical reference but given it is the only one and taking into account every else that exists in Jewish literature it probably should be interpreted very differently.
Solomon’s wisdom as expressed in the Book of Ecclesiastes, and particularly chapter 9, sums up the mood of the Hebrew scriptures.
For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope; surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. Indeed their love, their hate and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun. (vs 4-6)
The mood expressed in the New Testament is not all that different. There is probably a little more detail provided with its concept of “Gehenna”. As stated earlier Jesus says about death in Matthew 10:28,
“Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (or Gehenna)
In Matthew 7:13 He talks about a narrow gate and the way is that leads to life, but also about the way is broad that leads to destruction, “and there are many who enter through it.”
”Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 7:19)
“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew13:40-42)
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15:5-6)
In John 3:16-17 Jesus offers a choice that individuals can make between believing in Him which leads to life, or rejecting Him which leads to death and destruction. John the baptist makes the same call,
The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:10)
What happens to cut off branches that are thrown onto a fire and consumed? They no longer exist. If you google “annihilationism”, which is the overwhelming mindset in relation to the dead in the entire Bible, there is much content available that examines the main differences in belief on this topic. It is also quite obviously the total opposite of a traditional hell. There are books, articles, you tube presentations, intelligent debates, and lots and lots of Bible references.
Annihilationism has historically been a view of what happens to the unsaved that is held by of a small minority who mostly reside in the metaphorical leper colony outside of established theology. In that minority are often groups regarded by the mainstream church as fringe, or even cult-ish. The traditional belief in eternal hell has for centuries been held by the significant majority. But when Jesus was crucified He was completely alone. There was a time when the future children of Israel were made up of only Abraham and his family. At the time of Pentecost Christianity was made up of a few frightened and confused disciples and their friends. There was a time when Noah and his family, and Lot and his family, were the soul witnesses of God’s righteousness. Martin Luther, on his own, nailed his theses to the church door. Size, or the lack of numbers, is not a determinant of truth.
The following is a brief summary from scripture of the annihilationist argument, and more importantly its historical context. It it generally recognised by most modern scholars of the topic that early Christianity was firmly rooted in the theological mindset that has been called “Second Temple Judaism”. That is, the beliefs of Israel that grew out of the seed bed that was replanted with the restoration of Jerusalem around 500 BC. Much was debated, much was written down, and much became the background of Jesus’ messianic identity. After Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 AD, and over the ensuing early Common Era centuries, the immensely powerful intellectual, philosophical and mythical framework of Greek thinking quietly infiltrated Christian beliefs in much the same way it has done into our modern western thinking. From about the late fourth century, the Hebrew Scriptures, and the evolving collection of writings that became the New Testament, began to be read through Greek eyes by some rather than Jewish ones.
If one reads the Bible with Jewish eyes it is abundantly clear that all language and metaphors used to describe the destruction of the wicked that exist denote annihilation. The unsaved dead are constantly being described as being consumed, destroyed, and consigned to ashes by the divine fire of God. The many references to “unquenchable fire” and an “undying worm”, if read in context, are describing the finality of God’s judgement and not its duration. (See Deuteronomy 29:20-23 Isaiah 1:28-31, 66:24, Jeremiah 4:4, 7:20, 21:12, Ezekial 20:47-48, 2nd Kings 1:31, 22:17, 51:8) This is true of the Old Testament and the Psalms. (See Psalms 1:3-6, 2:9, 9:6, 34:16,21, 37:22, 37:9-10, 37:20, 50:22, 58:7-8, 69:28, 92:7) In the New Testament the pattern is the same. Peter uses the history of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as the pattern of consequences for the unbeliever of God’s final judgement.
….He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter…. (2 Peter 2:6)
Paul, when describing what happens to the saved at Christ’s Second Coming, and the ensuing resurrection, uses carefully chosen expressions.
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
Compare what Paul says and the choice of wording with the following from Jesus’ Olivet discourse.
And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds from one end of the sky to the other. (Matthew 24:30-31)
In the very next statement from that same discourse Jesus describes the fate of the non-believers as being the same as in the days of Noah, as we noted earlier. It requires little examination of the context and contents of these three passages to conclude that none of the people taken by the flood were left suspended in water so that their choking and subsequent drowning would go and on forever. As verses 40 – 41 state unequivocally, “one will be taken”, ie the demise or end of the wicked, and “one will be left”, ie the salvation of the faithful. Like the inhabitants of Sodom they are destroyed, extinguished, or annihilated.
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. (Matthew 24:36-41)
Advocates of the traditional view of hell cite the Parable of the “Rich Man and Lazarus” in Luke 16 as a Biblical proof of its existence. After all they have to because it is the only place in the Bible where anything like the church tradition is described, or even mentioned. But it is a parable, or a metaphorical story, and in practical terms linguistically and logically you don’t derive concrete concepts from abstractions. Language and reason actually works the other way around. Concrete reality informs and expands the meaning of abstract metaphors, not the reverse. But let us put these facts of language and logic on hold and accept for a moment that Jesus is actually describing the real hell where the conscious dead of both persuasions can actually dialogue across a gap of some sort with each other from their extremes of environment. The many critics of Christianity will point out that what is described might be the thing that will stop the residents of Heaven from getting bored in eternity. They can go and watch all their friends and loved ones suffering in the fires of hell for a while, and that should break the monotony of sitting on clouds playing harps all day. The whole scenario is an absurd idea and I really struggle to wonder how so many believers can accept that God would sanction such a grotesque conception. Has no one ever thought any of this through?
One consequence from the Greek infiltration into early Christian thought was the growing belief in a Platonic body soul dualism. In spite of the fact that there are no descriptions of it, it became the official church position, and from about the sixth century CE the Roman Catholic Church was the only game in town. The after death journey of the separate soul, along with the fear of hell became an invisible hand of power and control for the evolving church in much the same way that myths did for the “holy men” of the early neolithic tribes.
This invisible hand became even more persuasive when, via quirk of language and translation, it assumed the strength of a kind of medieval gauntlet. What ended up being known as the New Testament was starting to be fully established around the end of the 4th Century CE. The original texts had been around for several hundred years at this stage and they had gained an authority that separated them from most other contemporary writings. Around this time Pope Damasus the 1st commissioned a current well known expert in languages called Jerome to translate some of them into Latin. Latin was the language of the educated classes at the time. The result was the whole Bible in Latin just a few months later, which was a pretty amazing achievement. It was called the Vulgate and it became the authoritative text of the Roman Church for the next 1,200 years, so it was no insignificant document.
In Matthew 3 John the Baptist is presented as the “voice crying in the wilderness” as he attempted “to make ready the way of the Lord”. And specifically in verse two he is quoted as preaching, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The original word used in the Greek for “Repent” by John the Baptist and recorded by Matthew was “metanoiea” which in English translates as “to change” (meta) “the mind” (noiea, or our modern word “nous”). It means to turn the mind around or just change your thinking. Now for some unknown reason Jerome chose to change its meaning and use the words which in Latin mean to “do penance”. The Latin he used were “poenitentiam agite”. This is a significant alteration in meaning because the Greek equivalent of these Latin words do not appear anywhere in any Christian or Hebrew Scriptures. To repent is a matter of personal volition. It may involve righting wrongs, but essentially it is a case of internal changing of priorities and values, and then behaving differently as a result. Doing penance on the other hand is an action, a deed, a process, a ritual, or a contribution of either money, labour, or produce. For the next 1,200 years the Catholic Church built it massive structure, control and wealth by requiring believers to do, or to pay, penance. It was an elemental aspect of historical Church theology and tradition.
Then the whole false scaffolding got propped up further when it was united with another erroneous, non-Biblical piece of creative thinking, and that was the creation of “Purgatory”. In Purgatory it is said that a penitent soul would suffer something equivalent to the tortures of hell, but only for an allocated time until it was deemed that they had paid for their sins, or had been sufficiently purified. Then they would then be transferred to heaven. Over time doing or paying penance branched off in many different directions. The phenomenon of indulgence selling that eventually came to dominate late 15th and early 16th century Europe grew directly out of requiring penance, and it too became part of the church’s religious framework. Indulgences were built upon the idea that the process cleansing of the penitent sinner for heaven could be sped up by paying money to the earthly Church – surprise, surprise. When it got completely out of hand in the early 16th Century it prompted a German monk named Martin Luther to act. On 31st October 1517 Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-five Theses” or “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” on a Church door in Wittenberg. This action fractured Europe in two and ushered in The Protestant Reformation. It is no exaggeration to say that the world, and the power of the church, was never the same again.
Imagine you’re an illiterate farmer. The plague has recently gone through and killed about a third of the population of your settlement. The wise and persuasive priest has declared from the authority of the pulpit that this recent plague was really a judgement from God. Like everything else that happened in those highly superstitious times it was evidence of God’s disapproval. Once a week you escape from the squalor and filth of your daily grind and attend the magnificent, spotlessly clean, artistically rich, and imposing local cathedral. Your grief for the recent loss of your young daughter in that plague is ramped up to absolutely unbearable levels as the Priest describes how the cruel fires of Purgatory are painfully and slowly purifying her delicate little soul. If you want to speed up the process and shorten the duration of her torture you can make a gift or a donation to the church; or you can buy an indulgence.
The emotional blackmail involved here is so obvious and despicable it beggars description, and the whole shaky structure was based on nothing and was completely made up. Its authority was further enhanced in the early 14th Century when a brilliant Italian poet named Dante wrote the “Divine Comedy”. In this weighty tome he gives a blow by blow description of his guided tour with the ancient Greek poet Virgil through hell, purgatory and heaven. It was a work of fiction, but just like Milton’s “Paradise Lost” the sheer quality of it as a work of genius meant it achieved almost canonical status at the time. And the Church which so profited from its described horror wasn’t going to get in the way. The doctrine of an everlasting hell over time became the most efficient of ideas that the church had in its weapon’s cabinet for exercising control over the masses and that ultimately became its primary purpose. It is the reason for its continued use. It is the reason why it seemed to so easily cross over into the “Sola Scriptura” world of Protestantism. Whether its creation was an intentional exercise, or it was the accidental by-product of some kind of social and theological evolution, would be difficult to prove one way or the other, but its impact has been massive. Once its power to emotionally manipulate the masses became recognised, its destiny was assured.
So why does the belief in hell tower like Babel over Christian doctrine when its very existence is so debatable? There seems to be two possible reasons why it remains so doggedly attached to modern evangelical thinking. The first is the difficulty of admitting the collective church has really been wrong about something so fundamental for around 1500 years. The other is a kind of righteous vindictiveness to all the people out there who have actually enjoyed life, and might still get to heaven. As the anti-religious satirest H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
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