This book, part of the Counterpoints Series, examines the four major approaches to hell found within Christendom: the literal view, the metaphorical view, the purgatorial view, and the view of conditional immortality. The Literal View interprets the variety of texts on hell in the New Testament as being literal, in that hell is characterized by literal fire that does not quench, worms that will not die, and weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Metaphorical View sees the texts on hell not as literal descriptions of hell but symbolic signposts to what hell is like in its essence; using stock Jewish imagery and ideas, the New Testament provides symbolic metaphors that depict hell as a place of profound misery and banishment from the presence of God. The Purgatorial View is the classic Roman Catholic approach to hell; according to this view, even Christians saved by grace will experience a short time in the fires of hell being purged of their sinfulness so that they will be enabled to survive and thrive in heaven. The Annihilationist view (commonly called "conditional immortality") is the view that those who don't belong to God don't suffer eternally but are eternally destroyed (or annihilated) by God. By calling it "conditional immortality," its adherents soften the blow, so-to-speak, pointing out that the concept of an immortal soul is a Greek idea that has no basis in the Hebrew worldview; this is why Paul can say that Christians have been given the gift of immortality. Immortality is not something every person innately possesses; to say that God annihilates them makes it look like God is actively destroying their immortality. It may very well be that the essence of hell is God not granting the wicked what He grants the faithful (i.e., immortality).
I personally fall somewhere between the Metaphorical View on hell and the Annihilationist view on hell. Here are a few take-away points I've scribbled down as I've read this book:
THE USE OF METAPHOR. In an ironic twist, the criticism leveled against those who take the “hell texts” literally is that they don’t take them literally enough. This is what I mean: to take a text literally, you should read the text as it literally intended to be read. This means we must give ample room to the different genres which we find in the New Testament instead of fitting the scriptures into our culture’s prefabricated molds. The mold of literalism is an odd breed: though dependent upon the Enlightenment, it rose as a reaction against the Enlightenment. Fundamentalism is a reaction to the cultural and secular climate of the 19th century, and fundamentalists are those most keen on interpreting the hell texts literally, so that hell is characterized by literal fire, literal worms that do not die, and literal weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, if the texts demanded to be read in that way, then we would do well to read them as such; but as much scholarship over the last several decades has shown, the type of language Jesus uses in these texts is metaphorical. Jesus, in the same vein as his Jewish contemporaries, has no problem using metaphor to describe the essence of something without giving its intrinsic details. Our Enlightenment-based thinking and reading chafes against metaphor as if it were sub-par to a literal reading of things, but that doesn’t change the fact that the scriptures use metaphor and we must acknowledge those metaphors. This may be uncomfortable, especially for fundamentalists, but it’s necessary when it comes to reading and understanding God’s Word.
JEWISH CONCEPTIONS OF HELL. What sorts of thoughts did the Jews of Jesus’ day have regarding hell? This is important, because when looking at Jesus’ words on hell, we ought to be conscious of both continuity and discontinuity with his contemporaries. Where does Jesus agree with them? Where does he diverge from them? This question is important, but an answer is by no means easy: the unsettling truth is that the Jewish teachers of Jesus’ day were as varied in their conceptions of hell as modern Christians are. The liberal Pharisees advocated eternal conscious punishment; the more conservative Sadducees denied heaven or hell. The School of Hillel, a more open-minded school of Pharisaism, took a line similar to those who believe in conditional immortality: the wicked will suffer, but eventually they will be extinguished. Thus a wide variety of views in Jesus’ day is matched by a wide variety of views in our day.
THE NATURE OF ETERNITY. A second factor of consideration in any discussion of hell is the nature of eternity. The New Testament is explicit: hell lasts forever. In Matthew 25.46, Jesus says, Then they will go away to ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, but the righteous to ETERNAL LIFE. Punishment is eternal, and thus most argue that it is eternal conscious punishment; in other words, it is an unending, conscious punishing. This makes sense with the inherent contrast with eternal life, which no one would argue to be an unconscious life. At the same time, the text can also be read to say that the punishment (rather than the punishing) is eternal; there’s no escape from the punishment. In the same way that an inmate on Death Row faces an eternal punishment—there’s no escape once the poison is plunged into the bloodstream!—so, too, those who are stubborn in their refusal to love God will face a similar punishment, an extinction from which there is no escape. The text in question (along with others in the New Testament) don’t demand to be read as literal, conscious torment. One could argue (and many do) that eternal punishment must be understood within the wider context of scripture on the subject, and the wider attestation is that hell is characterized by destruction rather than torment.
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