Since the eighteenth century, a Cold War has been smouldering within Christianity. This war is not, as might be expected, between Catholicism and Protestantism; nor is it between traditional little-old-churches-next-door and modern ‘megachurch’ behemoths. Rather, this spat is contested by what might be termed ‘fundamentalist’, ‘evangelical’, or ‘Awakened’ Christians, on the one hand, and ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’, or ‘Enlightenment-style’ Christians, on the other. At the centre of this battlefield is the issue that made Baruch Spinoza one of Europe’s most hated men: What is the Christian Bible, and how should it be used and understood?
The chosen implements of this war are not bombs and bullets; instead, territory is claimed and defended by way of preaching, book releases, international statements and conferences, as well as modern innovations like websites and podcasts. Perhaps the most recent and newsworthy of these ‘statements’ was 2017’s LGBT-denying Nashville Statement, created by the Orwellian-sounding ‘Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’. (As an aside, the CBMW were also associated with the 1988 Danvers Statement, which excluded women from certain church leadership roles and endorsed female submission within marriage). More relevant for the purposes of today’s discussion is the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (followed by additional statements in 1982 and 1986).
The Chicago Statement claimed, among other things, that the Bible (that is , the Protestant Christian Bible) is a single, united document, internally consistent and free from any and all “alleged errors and discrepancies”; that the Bible is correct and infallible “in all matters upon which it touches”; that the various authors of the Bible were somehow ‘mysteriously inspired’ by God, and that their writings are therefore “true and trustworthy”; and that the ‘Holy Spirit’ reveals ‘true understandings’ of the Bible to the minds of ‘true Christians’. More commonly (because ‘inerrant’, as a word, is a touch too complicated and old-fashioned), this viewpoint is referred to as the ‘literal’ interpretation of the Bible.
With that being said, one might expect Christians across the ‘evangelical’ or ‘fundamentalist’ spectrum to be in agreement regarding questions of hell and the afterlife. After all, if the Bible is so ‘literal’ and straightforward, it would surely leave little room for misunderstandings, right?
Alas, in reality, this is not the case. Some ‘literalists’ believe in a hell of never-ending physical torments; others support a hell of never-ending ‘separation from God’ (minus all of that unpleasant fire), while emphasising its self-chosen nature. A vocal minority endorse the theory of predestination (the idea that God exclusively and irresistibly chooses who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell). Proponents of these opinions — despite the “discrepancies” between them — would all heartily identify with the ‘Chicago Statement’.
An Insistence on Foreverness
What these views do have in common, of course, is the concept of forever-punishment. This is in contrast to some of Protestantism’s most celebrated passages (such as John 3:16 and Romans 6:23); repeated references to concepts like ‘death’, ‘destruction’, and ‘perishing’ are, apparently, somehow not to be taken ‘literally’. Instead, in support of a forever-hell, Bible ‘literalists’ appeal to a number of apocalyptic passages, namely:
Daniel 12:1-3: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”
Matthew 25:31-46: “‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
2 Thessalonians 1:5-12: “For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you… These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord…”
Jude 1:7: “Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities… serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”
Revelation 14:9-12: “They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”
Revelation 19:3: “Once more they said, ‘Hallelujah! The smoke goes up from her [Rome] forever and ever.’”
Revelation 20:10: “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Now, on the surface, this collection does seem to paint a convincing picture. However, the Bible does not always play nice when it comes to modern Western expectations of literature, and this is especially true within the genre of apocalypse.
Foreverness in the Apocalyptic Genre
Conveniently enough, it’s actually quite easy to test what ‘foreverness’ meant within the genre of Jewish apocalypse. For starters, we can turn to Jude 1:7 (already quoted above) and its reference to the infamous twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Way back in Genesis 19, of course, is the classic story of Yahweh wiping out Sodom and Gomorrah with a colossal fireball from heaven. Now, I highly doubt that anyone could point to a map of the Middle East and identify a currently-burning ‘eternal’ blaze where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood. Likewise, Rome’s destruction — predicted in Revelation 19:3 — would obviously not be marked by a never-ending column of smoke.
In Matthew, meanwhile, Jesus associates “eternal fire” with “the Gehenna of fire”. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus remarks that God is capable of “[destroying] both soul and body in Gehenna”. Gehenna, as has been discussed in a previous post, inherently implies death. The “eternal punishment” and “eternal fire” of Matthew 25 is therefore an image of destruction, not a depiction of never-ending existence in hell.
Revelation 14:9-12 copies the image of destruction from Isaiah 34:9-10, re-using images like “burning sulfur”, smoke going up forever, and the phrase “night and day”. In Isaiah, these over-the-top images were used to prophecy disaster against Edom. Edom, of course, did not literally become a never-ending, burning, smoking hellscape. Isaiah’s use of language predicted a disaster that would happen once, and end with Edom being destroyed. Revelation 14 should be taken in much the same way.
Finally, Revelation 20 depicts a terrifying “lake of fire and sulfur”, where Satan is apparently tormented “day and night forever and ever”. Later in the same chapter, however, Death and Hades are also “thrown into the lake of fire”. Revelation personifies Death and Hades, depicting them as a couple of sombre-looking gentlemen who ride around on a pale horse and unleash war, famine, and pestilence on humanity. This is, once again, highly figurative language. The author of Revelation did not think that Death and Hades were actual equestrians, any more than he thought that Rome was actually a giant woman riding a seven-headed beast. It is silly, then, to imagine the concepts of Death and Hades being tormented “forever and ever”. How can a concept be tormented? It is much more logical to view this “lake of fire and sulfur” as a metaphor for destruction, in which God ends the existence of entities like Satan as well as concepts like Death and Hades.
The Impossibility of Biblical Literalism
Upon closer analysis, it is evident that apocalyptic usage of words like ‘eternal’ and ‘forever’ is not ‘literal’ or straightforward at all. Within the Jewish apocalyptic genre (as with the genre of Jewish prophecy — a discussion for another day), these words were used as over-the-top, hyperbolic figures of speech, deliberately utilised in order to add emphasis to curses. In and of themselves, they don’t really mean anything, any more than an exclamation mark or an underlined, size-100 font means anything. Unfortunately, this understanding has been largely lost on modern Western readers.
At the end of the day, the problem with ‘biblical literalism’ and the Christian afterlife — apart from an unshakeable insistence in a ‘literal’ forever-hell — is its sheer commitment to non-literalism. Hellfire (Luke 16:19-31) and predestination (Romans 8:29-30) are either ‘literal’ or ‘non-literal’, depending on who you’re talking to; the many references to death, destruction, perishing, and so on are resoundingly interpreted as ‘non-literal’; passages which might imply universal salvation (Philippians 2:10-11) or ‘second chances’ after death are likewise explained away. Each of these could be reasonably argued to be a ‘literal’ position based on biblical texts. Identifying the single, unifying, ‘literal’ view of the Bible, however, is an exercise in impossibilities.
This is a modified excerpt from my as-yet-unreleased book, Decoding Gehenna: Hell and the Afterlife in the West. Subscribe or Follow Me for updates and more sneak-peek excerpts!
Bonus Update: I’m currently knuckling down with the final draft and fact-checking of Decoding Gehenna (wish me luck!). This means that posts will be a little more irregular than usual — don’t worry, I’m still grinding away behind the scenes 🙂
