Rob Bell’s Other Problem – Hell

Rob Bell raised another important issue in Love Wins. The idea of eternal conscious torment for people who reject Jesus does not seem consistent with God’s love. I am with him on this one, although for slightly different reasons.

When I became a Christian, I just accepted the usual teaching that Hell was a place of eternal conscious torment. A few years later, when I decided to study the scriptures for myself I was totally surprised by what I found. Thirty years later, I can still remember the shock (and let down) that I felt when I discovered the disconnect between the scriptures and what I had taught about hell.

I discovered four facts that I had not been told:

1. The New Testament has very little teaching about hell. There are almost no references to hell in the epistles. Most are in the gospels.

2. The word Hell is a transliteration of the Greek word Gehenna, which is the name of a valley outside Jerusalem. This word needs careful interpretation to understand its meaning.

3. Most of the descriptions use images like a fire or a furnace. We should be careful about basing a doctrine on an image, because images can take different meaning. Fire can symbolise purification or destruction, which are very different meanings.

4. When I looked at all the actual descriptions of the future of those who reject Jesus, I was surprised to find that the most common word was destruction (Matt 7:13, John 17:12, Gal 6:8, Phil 3:19,2 Pet 3:7, Matt 10:28). The clearest is in the letter to the Thessalonians.

   He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power (2 Thes 1:8-9).

5. Hades is a different place, where people wait for the last judgment.

All this has three important implications.

1. Christians should be careful in what they say about life after death and judgment. We should not go beyond what is clear in the scriptures.

2. We do not need to scare people into faith in Jesus. The Gospel is good news, not escape from bad news. Jesus wants people to follow him because they love him, not because they cannot sleep at night.

3. The scripture are clear that the future for those who reject Jesus is not very nice. That is that we need to know. We do not need to exaggerate to make a point.

My view on the fate of those who reject Jesus is consistent with 2 Thes 1:8-9. Earth is a strange place because God keeps his holiness separate from it in such a way that that people who hate him can continue to live on in safety. When heaven and earth come together after the last judgment, God’s presence will be everywhere. There will be no place for those who have not been born again to hide. They cannot continue to live without God giving them life, yet they will not be able to bear his presence, because his holiness is to awful. They will choose to escape to nothingness to avoid the pain of his presence. For people who know they were created for eternity, this will be a terrible experience.

For more detail see Hell