Different Beliefs About Hell
As described in ‘The Last Word’, there are generally four different streams of Christian thought when it comes to the doctrine of Hell. All of them claim to have Scriptural support. Within these streams are many little branches and differences of opinion, so not everybody believes in exactly the same thing. This came to me as a surprise because I have always thought that the doctrine of Hell was universal in its concept. I had the idea that all Christians agreed on Hell and that it was one of the core doctrines of Christianity. It wasn’t a debatable doctrine like the end times, speaking in tongues and baptism of the Holy Spirit for instance. But here we are.
The first one is the exclusivist view. This is the one most of us Protestants in Malaysia are brought up with. All who repent and accept Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord will escape Hell and end up in Heaven. Those who do not do so will end up in Hell, including those who have never even heard of the gospel. The second one is the inclusivist view. This view allows the possibility that there may be others who may be ‘saved’ as well, even though they may not have literally accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. It is open to the notion that God may allow those who have never heard of the gospel, those who are mentally handicapped or even those who have not had the opportunity to make the choice into Heaven.
The third view is called the Conditionalist perspective. According to this view, only those who will be in Heaven will be raised from the dead and have eternal life. The rest of the people will just cease to exist rather than torment in Hell forever. Finally, there is the Universalist view, in which Hell is only a temporary punishment. All will end up in Heaven eventually. In other words, everyone will be saved in the end.
It’s also interesting to see what other people have to say about Hell. I was amazed when I found this on Wikipedia. I remember Brian McLaren mentioning something like this in ‘A New Kind of Christian’:
For many ancient Christians, Hell was the same "place" as Heaven: living in the presence of God and directly experiencing God's love. Whether this was experienced as pleasure or torment depended on one's disposition towards God. St. Isaac of Syria wrote in Mystic Treatises: "... those who find themselves in Hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in Hell are deprived of the love of God ... But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" This ancient view is still the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
And this:
The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, Hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. ~ Pope John Paul II
Even the Jews do not believe in eternal torment:
In Judaism, Gehenna—while certainly a terribly unpleasant place — is not hell. The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not tortured in hell forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 months. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Gan Eden (Heaven), where all imperfections are purged.
What about the Bible? What did the Old Testament Jews believe? What did Jesus say about Hell? What did the apostles and early Christians believe about Hell? As I mentioned yesterday, the Old Testament Jews did not believe in a life after death. There is a place called Sheol where everyone finally ends up, whether good or bad. Most scholars believe that Sheol means death in metaphorical language. However, there are a few passages in the Old Testament that seem to suggest that a small minority of Jews could possibly have had a hope of having everlasting life. Psalm 23 for example, talks about dwelling ‘in the house of the Lord forever’. Whether the word ‘forever’ here was meant to be literal or used in the manner of ‘I will love you forever’ (as suggested by McLaren) is still debatable.
In one of the chapters of ‘The Last Word’, Reverend Dan Poole makes a list of all the passages in the gospels in which Jesus talks about punishment and Hell. For each passage, he lists down the behavior that Jesus was condemning, the punishment, as well as the point that Jesus was trying to make. While reading through the list, a revelation came to me! Yes, Jesus did talk about Hell a lot, especially in the gospel of Matthew, but the peculiar thing is that never once did He say that those who didn’t believe in Him would end up in Hell! Who did Jesus threaten Hell with? Those who call their brothers a ‘fool’, those who do not bear fruit, the Pharisees, those who do not do God’s will, those who didn’t show mercy and etc. No mention of people who do not know Him. So why do evangelical Christians believe that a person who does not accept Jesus as their personal Savior will end up in Hell?
The more I read, the more I realize that our evangelical beliefs on the doctrine of salvation do not make much sense. If God really desires that all men be saved, why would He have provided such an ineffective method for saving people, where people are only saved by believing the right things? Did He choose to save people in this manner knowing that many people will end up not believing in Jesus, not to mention those who don’t even get the chance to hear about Him? If God really desires all to be saved, why can’t He save everyone? Is He governed by an even greater Law that prevents Him from saving those people? I have a hunch that these Protestant doctrines mainly come from what the apostles said and wrote about. I will have to read more about what St. Paul, St. John and co. have to say about salvation and eternal life first. But as far as Jesus is concerned, there is no mention of salvation by faith alone.
I agree with Brian McLaren that our idea of Hell will change our concept of the ‘good news’ and what ‘salvation’ really means. Or is it vice versa? Maybe our idea of what the ‘good news’ and salvation means will change our concept of Hell. But anyway, these ideas are highly correlated. If we believe that Hell is a place of eternal torment where every man is destined to go unless they repent and believe that Jesus died for their sins, then salvation is about escaping Hell and going to Heaven. The good news is that Jesus died for us as an atoning sacrifice so that if we accept Him as our personal Savior, we are saved. On the other hand, if Hell is a place where people are punished for going against God’s justice, then salvation is God’s justice and God’s kingdom come. The good news is that God’s kingdom is at hand and that Jesus showed us how to live so that the world will become a better place.
I still don’t know.
The first one is the exclusivist view. This is the one most of us Protestants in Malaysia are brought up with. All who repent and accept Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord will escape Hell and end up in Heaven. Those who do not do so will end up in Hell, including those who have never even heard of the gospel. The second one is the inclusivist view. This view allows the possibility that there may be others who may be ‘saved’ as well, even though they may not have literally accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. It is open to the notion that God may allow those who have never heard of the gospel, those who are mentally handicapped or even those who have not had the opportunity to make the choice into Heaven.
The third view is called the Conditionalist perspective. According to this view, only those who will be in Heaven will be raised from the dead and have eternal life. The rest of the people will just cease to exist rather than torment in Hell forever. Finally, there is the Universalist view, in which Hell is only a temporary punishment. All will end up in Heaven eventually. In other words, everyone will be saved in the end.
It’s also interesting to see what other people have to say about Hell. I was amazed when I found this on Wikipedia. I remember Brian McLaren mentioning something like this in ‘A New Kind of Christian’:
For many ancient Christians, Hell was the same "place" as Heaven: living in the presence of God and directly experiencing God's love. Whether this was experienced as pleasure or torment depended on one's disposition towards God. St. Isaac of Syria wrote in Mystic Treatises: "... those who find themselves in Hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in Hell are deprived of the love of God ... But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" This ancient view is still the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
And this:
The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, Hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. ~ Pope John Paul II
Even the Jews do not believe in eternal torment:
In Judaism, Gehenna—while certainly a terribly unpleasant place — is not hell. The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not tortured in hell forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 months. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Gan Eden (Heaven), where all imperfections are purged.
What about the Bible? What did the Old Testament Jews believe? What did Jesus say about Hell? What did the apostles and early Christians believe about Hell? As I mentioned yesterday, the Old Testament Jews did not believe in a life after death. There is a place called Sheol where everyone finally ends up, whether good or bad. Most scholars believe that Sheol means death in metaphorical language. However, there are a few passages in the Old Testament that seem to suggest that a small minority of Jews could possibly have had a hope of having everlasting life. Psalm 23 for example, talks about dwelling ‘in the house of the Lord forever’. Whether the word ‘forever’ here was meant to be literal or used in the manner of ‘I will love you forever’ (as suggested by McLaren) is still debatable.
In one of the chapters of ‘The Last Word’, Reverend Dan Poole makes a list of all the passages in the gospels in which Jesus talks about punishment and Hell. For each passage, he lists down the behavior that Jesus was condemning, the punishment, as well as the point that Jesus was trying to make. While reading through the list, a revelation came to me! Yes, Jesus did talk about Hell a lot, especially in the gospel of Matthew, but the peculiar thing is that never once did He say that those who didn’t believe in Him would end up in Hell! Who did Jesus threaten Hell with? Those who call their brothers a ‘fool’, those who do not bear fruit, the Pharisees, those who do not do God’s will, those who didn’t show mercy and etc. No mention of people who do not know Him. So why do evangelical Christians believe that a person who does not accept Jesus as their personal Savior will end up in Hell?
The more I read, the more I realize that our evangelical beliefs on the doctrine of salvation do not make much sense. If God really desires that all men be saved, why would He have provided such an ineffective method for saving people, where people are only saved by believing the right things? Did He choose to save people in this manner knowing that many people will end up not believing in Jesus, not to mention those who don’t even get the chance to hear about Him? If God really desires all to be saved, why can’t He save everyone? Is He governed by an even greater Law that prevents Him from saving those people? I have a hunch that these Protestant doctrines mainly come from what the apostles said and wrote about. I will have to read more about what St. Paul, St. John and co. have to say about salvation and eternal life first. But as far as Jesus is concerned, there is no mention of salvation by faith alone.
I agree with Brian McLaren that our idea of Hell will change our concept of the ‘good news’ and what ‘salvation’ really means. Or is it vice versa? Maybe our idea of what the ‘good news’ and salvation means will change our concept of Hell. But anyway, these ideas are highly correlated. If we believe that Hell is a place of eternal torment where every man is destined to go unless they repent and believe that Jesus died for their sins, then salvation is about escaping Hell and going to Heaven. The good news is that Jesus died for us as an atoning sacrifice so that if we accept Him as our personal Savior, we are saved. On the other hand, if Hell is a place where people are punished for going against God’s justice, then salvation is God’s justice and God’s kingdom come. The good news is that God’s kingdom is at hand and that Jesus showed us how to live so that the world will become a better place.
I still don’t know.
posted by sojourner @ Thursday, May 12, 2005
2 comments
2 Comments:
now, you are one of the more "serious" Mclaren readers in Malaysia I've "read" so far .. are there more like you? maybe they haven't read Brian's stuff but are asking similar questions?
well, I do have friends who were really upset when close relatives of theirs passed away without 'accepting Jesus as their Saviour'. One of them got so angry with God that she almost gave up on her faith. These are situations where we feel the most helpless because there is nothing we can do to comfort them...
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