The Academics Collection #1

Heaven, Hell, and the Human Soul

Questions Concerning the Nature of Eternal Things

ABSTRACT: For as long as anyone can remember, the promise of an eternal Heaven, the threat of an eternal Hell, and the doctrine of the eternal human soul have been heralded from virtually every sacred space. To believe otherwise is not only unthinkable but heretical as well, if one claims to believe The Bible. Oddly enough, though, when one simply takes the time to fully examine the Scriptures, one is irrevocably thunderstruck by the inconsistency of believing in said eternal nature of Heaven, Hell, and the human soul. But mind you, I’m not suggesting here that the Godhead itself isn’t eternal in every sense of what that word implies. Instead, what I will be questioning is whether Heaven, Hell, and the human soul bear any intrinsic resemblance to the Godhead Who created them…

AS SOMEONE WHO CONSIDERS himself firmly committed to the message of The Bible, I’ve been just as firmly committed to what I would call a common-sense approach to truth in general. As a result, my take on biblical exegesis has been a constant source of consternation and puzzlement to anyone I interact with regarding the message and meaning of Scripture. What’s more, this self-avowed, common-sense approach to The Bible has not only affected my views about its message and meaning, but it’s also sensitized me to the way others perceive that message and meaning.

Case in point is how certain individuals have no problem with the high moral standard contained in The Bible yet still can’t get past the way that God Himself seems to contradict His own standard of morality. In this case, I’m referring to what I believe is the greatest inconsistency in the scriptural record, which is to say, the doctrine of an eternal Hell. To this day, regardless of my faith in many of the most traditional views of The Bible, I’ve always been baffled and disturbed by this obvious inconsistency. Admittedly, though, this inconsistency was not something that occurred to me on my own. One of America’s greatest satirical minds first brought it to my attention. His name was George Carlin, and his words continue to reverberate in my mind to this day:

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time… But He loves you… George Carlin

A stinging indictment, no doubt, and just as doubtlessly one that many Christians might insist is invalid because George Carlin is certainly no theologian. But I’d quickly add that even Jesus set a precedent for such a criticism, when in the gospel record He commended the unjust steward, “because the children of this world are in many ways wiser than the children of light.” (Luke 16:8)

Now, just to set the record straight right from the start, I’d also add that I have no problem with the idea of a heavenly Father Who watches our every move, and Who’s given us His Ten Commandments. However, as a lifelong Paulinist, I’m not the least bit concerned that God will send anyone to Hell for failing to live up to His standard as set forth on those two tablets of stone. What I am concerned about is the insistence by so many well-intentioned Christian voices that it’s The Bible that demands there’s a “special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time.”

But really, who could blame anyone for thinking otherwise, considering the heated debate down through the ages about what The Bible supposedly says about the “eternal” nature of Hell. In all honesty, it’s enough to make one’s head spin. Now certainly, we, as Christians, do affirm that God’s ways are not man’s ways, and yes, that means that, just as certainly, many of the great mysteries of God are difficult to fathom at first glance. Still this doesn’t mean that, as we learn more about an aspect of God’s ways, we can’t expect to find His ways are consistent with the total character of God as revealed in The Bible, especially in regard to His judgments in Christ. That’s why we must never fear challenging a traditional interpretation of Scripture when the acceptance of that interpretation can only be accomplished through an act of self-lobotomy, where we short-circuit our own God-given common sense.

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That said, consider the following pronouncements, which were all espoused by some of the so-called greatest minds of Christendom; but consider them all with one simple proviso. Consider them in light of both your own common sense and your understanding of the total character of God.

I tell you the groans of the damned in Hell are the deep bass of the universal anthem of praise that shall ascend to the throne of my God forever and ever… Charles Spurgeon

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in Hell… Thomas Aquinas

He fashioned Hell for the inquisitive… Saint Augustine

To the unbelieving and despisers, who do not obey the truth but are obedient to unrighteousness … there shall be anger and wrath, tribulation and anguish, and at the last, everlasting fire shall possess such men… Theophilus

He shall come from Heaven with glory, accompanied by His angelic host, and He shall raise the bodies of all men who have lived … and shall send those of the wicked, endued with eternal sensibility, into everlasting fire with the wicked devils… Justin Martyr

Of course, the tragic irony of such bold declarations is that they’re all made on behalf of a God Who they claim loved the world so much that He sacrificed His only Son for the sins responsible for condemning sinners to eternal damnation.

So, I ask you, all those who claim to believe in a loving, merciful God: Does the idea of an eternal Hell, brimming with unspeakable agony and horror forever and ever, jibe with the over-all biblical view of that loving, merciful God? What does your common sense tell you? What does your understanding of the total character of God tell you?

Now, in challenging the traditional view in this way, I want next to address the most obvious objection to this challenge, again, in the name of common sense and in light of the total character of God. That objection comes in the form of the following question: In objecting to the “eternal” nature of Hell, am I denying the doctrine of Hell altogether, as it appears in The Bible? After all, that is the typical response when anyone questions the validity of the biblical record, is it not? As though anyone who dares question a time-honored biblical doctrine must be some sort of weak-kneed liberal, a backslidden agnostic, or worse still, a downright atheist. But let me assure you, this certainly is not the case.

I believe there’s a Hell, just as wholeheartedly as I believe there’s a Heaven, and I do so because, as I’ve already stated, I’m so firmly committed to the message contained in The Bible. In no way, shape, or form, then, is the following treatise an attempt to dismiss or undermine the existence of Hell as a place reserved for the judgment of the wicked. Clearly, anyone who looks to God as a source of justice in a Universe overrun on every side by evil forces cannot help but concede the need for such a place. What I am challenging, though, is whether the Scriptures are the genuine source for a view of the kind of Hell with which we’re presently confronted. In short, what I’m specifically challenging is the so-called “eternal” nature of this place that The Bible calls Hell, or, as it appears in the Greek language, Hades. And in doing so, I assure you that I will in no way diminish the integrity of God’s righteousness in the slightest. To the contrary, it is the very righteousness of God that I believe is being undermined, when narrow-minded critics of Scripture run roughshod over the biblical record, and all thanks to those individuals who claim to cherish The Bible but in fact are mindlessly cherishing ideas that never originated in Scripture in the first place.

So, to anyone who has ever scratched their head and wondered how the same loving, merciful God characterized in Scripture can be the same God Who is said to be the author of the eternal torment and suffering endured in Hell, I offer the following alternative. But, mind you, this alternative will not—I repeat, not—consist of a rejection of Holy Scripture but, rather, will be one that unabashedly digs into the biblical record to restore what has, in fact, always been there all along, hidden in plain sight.

ALONG WITH THE ETERNAL NATURE of the Godhead itself there stands the eternal nature of Heaven, Hell, and the human soul, which together represent the four great pillars upon which the whole edifice of Christian theology rests. For as long as anyone can remember, the promise of an eternal Heaven, the threat of an eternal Hell, and the doctrine of the eternal human soul have been heralded from virtually every sacred space. To believe otherwise is not only unthinkable but heretical as well, if one claims to believe The Bible.

Oddly enough, though, when one simply takes the time to examine the Scriptures, one is irrevocably thunderstruck by the inconsistency of believing in said eternal nature of Heaven, Hell, and the human soul. After all, if Christian theology is supposed to be based on the written record of The Bible, shouldn’t all so-called “Christian thinking” flow from the written record that describes these pillars of the faith? One would certainly hope so. Yet despite such an obvious assumption, centuries of church tradition have effectively thwarted all attempts at such a critical examination of Scripture. That’s because, if there’s one thing that human beings hold in common, it’s our ability to see and hear anything that contradicts our worldview and then turn it into exactly what we want to see and hear, regardless of the mounting weight of evidence that contradicts it. Let me demonstrate what I mean by that.

Just ask a hundred Bible-believing Christians: Is Heaven eternal? And ninety-nine of them will almost certainly tell you the same thing. Of course Heaven is eternal; what a perfectly silly question to ask. If you believe The Bible, how can you not believe in the eternal nature of Heaven? To which I would then have to ask them about certain inconsistencies that have bothered me ever since I first started to take note of them.

But, mind you, when I introduce the following inconsistencies, I’m not at all suggesting that the Godhead itself is to be lumped into this investigation of the “eternal” nature of such things. That’s because I’m entirely convinced, based on the testimony of both Scripture and Nature, that God is eternal in every sense of what that word implies. What I will be questioning, however, is whether any of those other so-called “pillars” of the faith, namely, Heaven, Hell, and the human soul, bear any intrinsic resemblance to the Godhead Who created them.

Now, returning to our question concerning the eternal nature of Heaven: Of course, ninety-nine out of a hundred Christians will almost certainly insist that Heaven is eternal, and just as certainly they will all insist that it is The Bible itself that supplies us with the answer to this all-important question. But here’s the peculiar problem with such thinking. I could just as easily ask those same ninety-nine Bible-believing Christians if they believe everything that the Scriptures have to say, and when they claim they do, just imagine the look on their stunned faces when I ask them: But didn’t Jesus Himself say:

Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away… Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31

I mean, something that’s eternal can’t pass away, can it? Something that’s eternal goes on and on and on; worlds without end, right?

Of course, those defenders of the faith might then point to the various biblical commentators throughout history who have all handled this passage with kid gloves, and who all saw this verse strictly in terms of the stark contrast between the eternal permanence of the words of Jesus and the earthly nature of the physical universe created by those words. Undaunted, however, I then politely remind them that this isn’t the only place in The Bible where it speaks of Heaven in terms of its “non-eternal” quality. Both Isaiah in The Old Testament, and Peter and John in The New Testament speak of Heaven as being a place of finite duration. First, Isaiah has God saying:

Lift your eyes to the Heavens, and look at the Earth below, because the Heavens will vanish like smoke, the Earth will wear out like a garment, and its people will perish like gnats. But My salvation will last forever, and My righteousness will never fail… Isaiah 51:6

Then, several chapters later, Isaiah has God saying:

Look and see, for I’ll create a new Heaven and a new Earth. And the things that were before will no longer be remembered… Isaiah 65:17

And finally, one chapter later, Isaiah continued:

“For just as the new Heavens and the new Earth that I’ll make will endure,” declares the Lord, “so your children and your name will endure…” Isaiah 66:22

Add to that what Peter and John said. Peter, who undoubtedly recalled the words of Isaiah, declared:

The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the Heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the Earth and its works will be burned up… But we, according to God’s promise, are looking forward to new Heavens and a new Earth, in which righteousness prevails… Second Peter 10:13

And finally, like great bookends of prophetic time, John the Revelator saw the fulfillment of what both Isaiah and Peter spoke of:

Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, because the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no more sea… Revelation 21:1

Based on so many scriptural references, then, clearly, only the most narrow-minded Christian thinkers would ever cling to the assumption that The Bible is the source for our belief that Heaven is eternal by nature.

So if The Bible isn’t the source for such a belief, then why has the so-called “eternal” nature of Heaven become such a hallowed institution of thought in the first place? And more importantly, what’s so wrong with believing that Heaven is eternal?

Am I trying to say there’s no basis for the biblical concept of an afterlife?

To which I’d first reply to the third question: Absolutely not. Of course I believe in an afterlife. I could hardly call myself a Christian if I didn’t. But I do so in strict accordance to how I believe Scripture portrays that afterlife. I believe in the promise of Jesus as conveyed in The New Testament:

And Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though they die…” John 11:25

Elsewhere, John had Jesus say:

Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This bread came down from Heaven, but unlike your forefathers, who ate the manna and died, whoever eats this bread will live forever… John 6:58

So, having made clear that I do believe in the eternal nature of God and Jesus and the afterlife that can be attained in a mystical kinship with Them, facilitated by the Holy Spirit, again I ask: Why do most Christians assume Heaven itself is eternal, and more importantly, what’s so wrong with believing it’s eternal?

En route to explaining the origins of such a belief, I’ll first tell you that, as I see it, the most troublesome thing about believing Heaven is eternal by nature is that it lends itself so readily to believing that both Hell and the human soul are just as eternal as Heaven.

To which you’d probably reply, “Whoa, whoa, son; now you’re really meddling with sacred territory. Bad enough you undermine our supposed biblical foundation for the eternal nature of Heaven and Hell. What are you saying now?

You mean to tell us you don’t believe the Scriptures teach that humans possess an immortal soul, either? But didn’t you just point out that The Bible states that anyone who places their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will receive eternal life as a result?”

To which I’d reply, without reservation: “That’s exactly what Scripture teaches, and because that’s what it teaches, then I have no doubt it’s true.”

Said Jesus:

For God so loved the world that whoever believes in Me won’t perish but will have eternal life… John 3:16

Whoever hears My word and believes Him Who sent Me has eternal life. He doesn’t come into judgment but has passed from death to life… John 5:24

For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I’ll raise them up on the last day… John 6:40

So, as you can imagine, I’m not arguing that those who place their faith in Jesus Christ don’t receive eternal life, as God has clearly promised this to be so. What I’m arguing with is whether human beings, in and of themselves, possess an immortal soul simply by virtue of being born. What I’m arguing with is the typical assumption that all humans, godly or ungodly, believers or unbelievers, sinners or saints, possess immortal souls as a matter of course. This doesn’t mean I’m questioning the existence of the human soul. I’m just saying: If you think The Bible is the source for equating the human soul with that of an immortal soul, you’re going to have a very difficult time proving it.

What The Bible is the source of, certainly, is the idea that God did create Adam and Eve with immortal souls, the original nature of which they forfeited when they disobeyed God’s order to avoid eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

This doesn’t mean that God removed the soulful quality of life from them because they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. It just means that the day they ate, the immortal nature of their souls became qualitatively different. No longer immortal, they became mortal. No longer possessing immortal souls, they possessed mortal souls.

Consequently, the descendants of Adam and Eve have never possessed immortal souls as so many have assumed simply because The Bible speaks of eternal life. The idea that humans possess immortal souls just because the Scriptures teach that believers in Christ have eternal life simply doesn’t compute. It’s rhetorical nonsense.

And just as nonsensical as is the notion of the immortality of the human soul, subsequent to the Fall of Adam, is the notion of the immortality of anything other than the Godhead, which quite naturally includes … you guessed it … Heaven.

Again, before you write me off as a heretic and an unbeliever, remember: The Bible speaks of more than one Heaven. It’s said that Paul was caught up to the Third Heaven, (Second Corinthians 12:2) whereas in The Secrets of Enoch, also known as The Second Book of Enoch, it’s said that Enoch traveled upward until he reached the Tenth Heaven, where he encountered the Face of God. (The Secrets of Enoch 22:1-3) According to Enoch, the same individual whom Jude described in his New Testament letter, the Eternal God resides in this highest level of Heaven. (Jude 1:14)

The reason all this is important is because just as there’s so much confusion regarding the biblical doctrine of the nature of the human soul, there’s similar confusion regarding the nature of Heaven, or more specifically, in light of the preceding, Heavens, as in, plural. So, just as The Bible isn’t diminished because it can be shown that it doesn’t teach the immortal nature of the soul apart from the life-restoring act of God in Christ, the same can be said regarding the Heavens above, which are no less in need of the restorative power that only comes from the direct presence of God.

According to this view, then, the Heavens—a realm of existence originally synonymous with the God Who created it—is in fact no more divine than is the human soul subsequent to the Fall of Adam.

That said, the time has finally come that these great pillars of Christendom should no longer be seen as being pillars themselves, apart from the indwelling presence of God that sustains them. And thus, it should no longer come as any surprise that Heaven, just like Earth, can pass away and be replaced by a new Heaven.

In this way, what becomes apparent is, the Heavens themselves bear more than a little resemblance to that of the humans who are destined, by the grace of God, to inhabit it, as is revealed in the words of Jesus, Who said:

I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in them, it is they who bear much fruit, because apart from Me you can do nothing… John 15:5

Seen in this context, the notion of the so-called “immortal” soul of human beings, apart from the abiding presence of God, is reduced to the sham that it is, and so, too, the assumed “eternal” nature of Heaven. Then, we’re finally able to see that what constitutes the reality of our deepest hopes and dreams isn’t a place of eternity where we all yearn to go someday; it’s the very heart of the Eternal God. Then and only then, there and only there, will we really know what it means to be … in Heaven.

STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM to those who cherish The Bible, the concept of Hell, as we’ve come to envision it today, doesn’t appear once in The Old Testament.

Far from describing the afterlife as a land of glistening pitchforks and fiery torture, The Old Testament envisioned it as a colorless place of darkness, gloom, and silence. This, in the Hebrew language, was Sheol—the land where the souls of both the righteous and the unrighteous resided. And although the two groups were said to be separated by a vast gulf, both endured a similar existence cut off from the direct presence of God.

As such, Sheol was seen more as an equivalent to the grave than a place of retribution. According to the writer of The Book of Ecclesiastes, Sheol was the ultimate end of all God’s creatures, stripped entirely of moral implications:

For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of the beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other. Indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place; all came from the dust, and all return to the dust… Ecclesiastes 3:19-20

Based on passages like this, a truly Bible-inspired doctrine of Hell can scarcely be seen strictly in terms of divine retribution, let alone that of eternal retribution.

Of course, in pointing out the previous verse, I do insist I’m not trying to undermine the idea that the afterlife, according to the vast majority of scriptural evidence, is a state of existence where God, as the Ultimate Judge, will winnow out the good and bad among the souls of all humans. I introduce it here simply to demonstrate that The Bible, as usual, has much more to say on this subject than tradition has thus far handed down to us.

So, if the scriptural record leading up to The New Testament era never espoused a picture of Hell as we know it today, what could possibly account for such a huge shift in biblical theology?

Actually, the seeds of this shift were sown as a result of several distinct ingredients, each of which exerted immeasurable influence upon the concept of Hell that Christianity ultimately embraced. For the seedbed into which these seeds were sown, we look to a time around two and a half centuries before the Birth of Christ, when The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into the language that then dominated the ancient world: Greek. Theologians call this text The Septuagint Bible.

Now, this doesn’t mean the text itself was the source for this shift in theology—far from it, in fact. The source is the association between the language of the Greeks and the Grecian culture from which it sprang, which was well known to contain certain concepts foreign to Scripture.

But before this association with the Grecian culture was to sow its seeds of confusion, its language was to play a critical role in the development of The Bible as we know it today. Accordingly, many theologians believe that part of the meaning of the scripture that states, “In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son,” (Galatians 4:4) was the fact that it occurred at a moment in history when the prevailing language frame was Greek.

As it turns out, the Grecian language is so specific that it far exceeds the communicative ability of Hebrew, with its lack of vowels and scarcity of word meanings. In other words, compared to the ambiguity of Hebrew, Greek is a language of precision.

The Greeks don’t just have a word to describe a “roof” that’s stationary; they also have a word for a “roof” that’s falling. Thus, a degree of textual ambiguity is avoided, which even English contains, because as you know our word for “roof” doesn’t change when the actions involving it change. Only the verbs we use in relation to the word “roof” change. But not so in the Greek. And to that degree, it’s common knowledge that translating The Old Testament into the Greek language was clearly a boon to mankind.

Even more fortuitous, when The New Testament was written, it was written in Koiné Greek, which is to say, the vernacular of that language, which, unlike the scholarly tone of The Septuagint, provided an even greater accessibility to the text. However, as important as this was in refining the language of The Bible itself, the unexpected downside was the way in which the early Church Fathers equated the importance of the language of the Greeks with their philosophical notions, particularly as they pertained to their view of the afterlife.

All this, then, provided the fertile seedbed into which the seeds were sown that eventually blossomed into the theological shift we’re investigating.

As we’ve already seen, in The Hebrew Bible, the word used for the underworld is Sheol, but in The Septuagint, this word Sheol was translated as Hades. It was this choice in translation that provided the transition point we’re looking for, because already in the Grecian culture, this word Hades had a long and storied tradition. This must have loomed large in the minds of the translators who were undoubtedly seeking a common ground of understanding in choosing the word Hades, as there were certain similarities in the worldviews of both Greeks and Jews.

According to Greek mythology, Hades was also the abode of the dead. However, there was one important distinction between the two views. Whereas Hades designated the whole of the underworld, the deepest level of Hades contained a horrific zone known as Tartarus, the lowest of the low, reserved as a dungeon of torment and suffering, particularly for those superhuman beings the Greeks called the Titans. It just so happens that these Titans bore an uncanny similarity to the giants, or Nephilim, that The Book of Genesis says wreaked such havoc on the antediluvian world that God had to destroy them with the Great Flood. (Genesis 6:4-7)

In Greek mythology, the Titans were born of Uranus, the God of Heaven, and Gaea, the Goddess of the Earth. What better way to describe the origin of the giants of Genesis 6, which declares they were born of the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men?

It’s also interesting that the Apostle Peter referred to these angels—these sons of God—and their gigantic offspring, in speaking of the angels who’d sinned and were cast into Hell. How do we know Peter was referring to those angels who sired the giants of Genesis 6? It becomes apparent when we take the time to notice that Peter said the hellish place of their divine retribution was—in the Greek—Tartarus. (Second Peter 2:4)

Then, add to our soil the next seed: It just so happens that well known to the second-century Church Fathers was an influential text that spoke of the special judgment reserved for these angels who’d sired the Nephilim. It’s called The First Book of Enoch; and in it is a detailed account of God’s judgment of these angels whom Enoch called the Watchers. Apparently, because of the uniquely heinous nature of their crime against humanity, God deigned to imprison them in the lowest depths of Hades, the very place that in the Grecian mind was synonymous with Tartarus. (The First Book of Enoch 10:15-17) No doubt as a result of reading this popular book, which only fell out over favor some four centuries later, that Church Fathers like Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria began to see Tartarus—this special place of judgment reserved for the Watchers—as being synonymous with what Scripture described as Hades.

Within just two hundred years after the Birth of Christ, then, the concept of Hades as simply the abode of the dead was already being seen as a place of eternal torment, eternal suffering, and eternal pain.

Eternal fire is prepared for sinners. The Lord has plainly declared this and the rest of the Scriptures demonstrate it… Irenaeus

We believe that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merits of his deeds. Sensation remains to all who have ever lived, and eternal punishment is laid up… Justin Martyr

All souls are immortal, even those of the wicked. Yet, it would be better for them if they were not deathless. For they are punished with the endless vengeance of quenchless fire. Since they don’t die, it’s impossible for them to have an end put to their misery… Clement

So, along with the Grecian language, which helped to disseminate the message of The Old and New Testament, came the unexpected consequence of mixing truths that actually had their origin in Grecian culture, and not The Bible.

Of course, this didn’t always have a negative effect. More often than not, the philosophy of the Greeks was quite compatible with the wisdom of The Bible.

Philosophy has been given to the Greeks as their own kind of covenant, their foundation for the philosophy of Christ. This philosophy of the Greeks contains the basic elements of that genuine and perfect knowledge which is higher than human … even upon those spiritual objects… Clement

Of course, Grecian philosophy isn’t compatible in every way, which could be said about any worldview not inspired by The Bible. My intention, though, isn’t to pass judgment concerning the inadequacies of Grecian thought. What I’m trying to do is figure out: How did Hades, as it was originally described in Scripture, come to be associated with all that the word Hell now brings to mind?

To determine that, we’ll need to examine one last seed of thought that seems to have, more than any other, “tipped the scales,” as it were; and that seed is the perceived notion of the immortality of the human soul.

AS WE SAW EARLIER, the assumption that Heaven is an eternal place could never flourish as it has without being supported by the notion that the human soul is immortal. In the same way, then, we must understand how this belief in the immortality of the soul, which has its roots in Grecian philosophy, plays an essential part in our belief that Hell is also an eternal place.

Accordingly, Hell isn’t a place that presupposes eternity, in and of itself. It’s eternal, say those who maintain this view, because the human souls that reside there are eternal and, therefore, must endure the conditions of Hell for all eternity. How else might we go about explaining how such a place could be eternal in nature, if not by way of convoluted logic like this?

“But wait just a darn minute,” you might say. “All this is perfectly fine, based on looking at Scripture in light of Grecian philosophy. But you still haven’t mentioned the most important factor in the theology of Hell. What about the words of Jesus Christ Himself? Jesus spoke repeatedly of Hell as being a place of eternal punishment and torment. What about the weeping and gnashing of teeth? What about the tares and the goats? What about them being tossed into the eternal fires of Hell?”

Well, the first thing I’d say is: “How, exactly, are we to interpret this word ‘eternal’ in relation to this place Jesus calls Hell?”

As we’ve just pointed out, our preconceived notion of Heaven as being an eternal place was completely undermined when we took the time to see how this word “eternal” was understood, or, to be more precise, misunderstood. When we did that, our conclusion brought about a radically new view of the matter, based on the premise that neither Heaven nor human souls are “eternal” apart from the direct presence of God Who alone is eternal.

So, if you’re willing to appreciate that fact, then, by all means, let’s take some time to see how the words of Jesus Himself confirm or deny the so-called “eternal” nature of Hell.

Although it’s well known that in The New Testament the word used to describe the afterlife is “eternal,” not so well known is how much disagreement there is over the true meaning of this word as it’s derived from the original languages in which it was written. But in light of our new understanding of Heaven and the human soul, we should be that much closer to freeing ourselves from the traditions that have shanghaied this word and erroneously applied it to that last bastion of puritanical Christianity—the eternal Hell of men like Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century Congregational minister of New England.

With that in mind, let’s examine the words in the original languages and see where that leads us.

In The Old Testament, we find that the Hebrew word olem is used to describe such conditions as “eternal” or “everlasting” before The Septuagint Bible began to employ the Greek word aionios. From there, The New Testament incorporated this word aionios to express the ideas of both “eternal” life and “eternal” punishment. Said Jesus:

Then these will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life… Matthew 25:46

Oddly enough, though, when we look for a definitive answer as to the specific meaning of this word aionios, we’re presented with a conflict of meanings.

First, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, aionios is said to be derived from the Greek root word aion, from which we get our English word “eon,” meaning an “age” or, more specifically, a “cycle of time,” especially of the present age, as contrasted with the future age. As such, says Strong’s, because aionios is an adjective that modifies whatever it’s associated with, it’s said that “it doesn’t focus on the future per se but, rather, on the quality of the age to which it relates.” Then, according to Strong’s, aionios is also said to describe a period which is simultaneously “outside” of time, “inside” of time, and “beyond” time. It’s in this latter sense that aionios is said to mean “eternal,” in that “this is what gives time its everlasting meaning for the believer through faith, yet is also time-dependent.”

It’s this difference in potential meaning, then, that lies at the heart of our present misconception. It’s here that we’re faced with a linguistic fork in the road that leads to two separate points of view. But, as always, when faced with an apparent contradiction in Scripture, I don’t see a contradiction; I see a paradox.

According to this view, it seems likely that God intended that this word “eternity” act as a kind of cosmic Rorschach test, where the “eye of the beholder,” as it were, is the determining factor. If this possibility holds any truth, then a brand-new way to ferret out the meaning of texts like this becomes available to us. And if so, then quite possibly we no longer need concern ourselves with those who insist on seeing the glass as half empty.

Of course, this isn’t the first time a “dilemma of choice” like this has faced the student of Scripture. The same thing happens when reading the peculiar story of Jephthah and his daughter.

According to The Book of Judges, Jephthah vowed to God that if He helped him win a victory over his enemies, he’d sacrifice as a burnt offering the first thing that walked out his front door upon returning home after the battle. After a tremendous victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah triumphantly returned home to have his only daughter come running out to greet him.

Devastated, Jephthah and his daughter were said to acknowledge the binding nature of his vow to God, and although she was as heartbroken as her father, Jephthah’s daughter consented to go along with him, saying:

My father, you’ve given your word to the Lord, so do with me as you’ve promised… Judges 11:30-36

The reason I bring this up is because The Bible never actually states that Jephthah offered his daughter as a burnt offering. It only implies that he did. Yet centuries of debate still rage over whether he actually killed her in the way that Israelite law stipulates concerning the burnt offering.

Just think: God could’ve revealed the end of the story, but He didn’t. Why?

Because by leaving the story open-ended like this, we’re forced to interpret these seemingly impenetrable mysteries in a way that actually says a great deal to both God and the world at large.

Are you the kind of person who sees God as loving and merciful? If so, then you’d probably see nothing wrong with God allowing Jephthah to follow through with his vow so that she could devote herself to a religious life in service to God alone.

Or, are you the kind of person who sees God as angry and vengeful? If so, then you’d probably insist that God could never be satisfied apart from the death of this devoted daughter in her being sacrificed as a burnt offering in the strictest sense of Jephthah’s vow.

Based on the foregoing, then, one way of looking at what’s taking place in the translation of aionios is to think of it in the following terms. The key to interpreting this word is remembering that aionios is an adjective, which means, “it modifies whatever it’s associated with”—in this instance, either life or punishment.

So on one hand, when aionios is used in conjunction with the word “life,” as in, life eternal, it’s being correctly translated. How do we know this? We know because we’re speaking of life in the context of the Eternal God Who bestows this life.

On the other hand, when aionios is used in conjunction with the word “punishment,” as in, Hell eternal, then it’s being incorrectly translated. Again, how do we know this? We know because now we’re speaking of something that exists apart from the sustaining force that only God is capable of bestowing. So, instead of speaking of “eternal” punishment, this passage should read “time-dependent” punishment.

What’s more, the idea that God’s punishments are always time-dependent is nothing new to the student of Scripture. Throughout the history of God’s dealings with humanity, the Lord of Hosts has revealed Himself as a God of Set Times. Whereas God’s blessings are said to be boundless, His punishments are of limited duration.

Wrote the psalmist:

For His anger lasts for just a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning… Psalm 30:5

When God spoke of blessing Abraham, He said:

Lift up now your eyes and look at the land that you see, because I’ll give it to you and your descendants forever… Genesis 13:14-15

And speaking of God’s punishment, the psalmist wrote:

My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But You, Lord, sit enthroned forever. Your renown endures through all generations. You’ll arise and have compassion on Zion, because it’s time to show her favor; the appointed time has come… Psalm 102:11-13

So, having been reminded of the preceding tendencies of God, just imagine how different our present-day theology of Hell would be if only those biblical translators had allowed the context of The Bible as a whole to provide them with the meaning of such passages. Imagine if only they saw the consistency of God’s ways, which clearly depict His blessings as enduring forever but His punishments as lasting for but a determined set time. And imagine, if they’d stopped to consider the implications of John the Revelator, when he described, in vision, of that future day when:

The sea gave up its dead; and death and Hell gave up their dead, and each of them was judged according to their deeds. Then death and Hell were thrown into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death… Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, because the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no more sea… Revelation 20:13-14; 21:1

Imagine, too, our view of such things had we taken the time to nurture three final seeds of thought—but this time, not seeds that sow disinformation but those that grow into the kind of truth that restores our view of what The Bible has always been telling us about our God-ordained Universe.

The first is that, in contrast to the otherworldly nature of Heaven, Hell is said to be a terrestrial place, located underground, either under the Earth itself, or at the bottom of the ocean. An idea handed down in the writings of Enoch, long before the Greeks ever contemplated such things, this earthbound Hell was called the Abyss, otherwise known as the Bottomless Pit. (The Secrets of Enoch 28:2; Luke 8:31; Revelation 9:1-2, 11; 17:8; 20:1, 3)

Second, it’s said the primordial ocean was still so pure that a person could see into the very depths of the Earth, and if anyone washed in it, they became as clean as it was. (The First Book of Adam and Eve 1:2) According to this way of thinking, the ocean isn’t just a body of water but is a kind of repository for the sins of humanity.

And third, not only does Hebraic tradition see the oceans as a repository of human sin, the ancient Greeks held this same view. In this, we detect another way that the Greek and Hebrew cultures run in parallel, theologically speaking. In Homer’s Iliad, it tells the story of how men made themselves ceremonially pure by casting their defilement into the sea, thereby ridding themselves of their guilt and being made right again. (The Iliad 1:312-317).

Who is a God like You, Who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He doesn’t remain angry forever, because He delights in unchanging love. He’ll have compassion on us; He’ll tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, He’ll cast all our sins into the depths of the sea… Micah 7:18-19

How marvelous is the poetry of God’s word—poetry that isn’t just poetry, but poetry laden with truth. In this case, what do we see in the mirror of truth, however darkly?

What we see is that God intends to judge the dead according to their deeds—no more and no less—which shows that His mercies are everlasting and His judgments are time-specific.

We see that humans aren’t immortal by nature, so that anyone separated from the divine presence in the coming judgment will inevitably fade like twilight shadows, like seedlings without sunlight, like flames without oxygen. We see that both death and Hell are destined to one day come to a glorious end by being thrown into the Lake of Fire, thereby nullifying the possibility of eternal retribution.

And we see that once the new Earth comes into being, it’ll have no more need for an ocean, because finally:

There’ll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, because the former things will have passed away, and God will have made all things new… Revelation 21:4-5

So ends this Essay of THE ACADEMICS COLLECTION. To read more, please click on one of the following links:

Read the Next Essay to learn that, from its first descriptions in Genesis, the Spirit of God has been equated with the feminine aspect of the Godhead.

Read the First Essay of The Academics Collection, to see that, The Bible isn’t diminished just because it doesn’t teach that Heaven, Hell, or the human soul are eternal apart from God.