Civil Discourse: What Does the Bible Mean By Hell?
Following Nathan Skipper’s three-part discussion of his pastoral interaction with Annihilationists, we brought in a friend of ours — William Kilgore — to talk about some of the arguments he often hears against his own view of Hell. Nathan and I interact with William below.
Evangelicals can be broken down into many categories, although even trying to define what the term Evangelical means will start all kinds of theological debates among those inclined to debate — which seems to be just about every Christian on Facebook, at least among my friends. A few years ago, a big debate raged about determining primary and tertiary issues — I’m still confused about where the ENTIRE secondary category disappeared to in this debate — that made an Evangelical “orthodox” or not (the “not” side of the equation usually sunk quickly into terms such as heterodox or even heretical). A low-hanging fruit in this debate is the issue of what Hell will be like, or even if Hell is real in the traditional understanding.
James: “William, as a self-proclaimed Annihilationist for decades, how would you respond to Nathan’s discussion on Hell the past three weeks?”
William: “It is difficult to respond to these posts, since I’m not a Pinnock fan, and I actually agree with much of Nathan’s posts. Regarding Conditionalism, there are plenty of serious exegetical arguments for our position that are not interacted with. The article just kind of assumes, proclaiming why the false teaching of annihilation is bad without actually demonstrating that it is false. The fact is that there is not a single verse that says that unredeemed human beings will be tormented for eternity. Yet, there are many throughout scripture that specify “destruction” as their end. If we would redefine “destruction” to mean something else, we have a serious problem since scripture uses plenty of potent images and clarifications that are hard to misinterpret: vanishing like smoke, corpses, reduced to ashes, be as though they’d never existed, burned up chaff, ‘extinction,’ melt like a slug, etc., etc.
James: “Seems like you’ve likely engaged with pleasant and unpleasant Evangelicals on this issue. When they find out you don’t hold the traditional, modern view of Hell, what are the arguments you usually hear?”
William: “The traditional view rests on six planks. The first two (‘unquenchable fire’ and ‘worm that does not die’) are OT images that are easily shown *not* to bear the meanings attributed to them by traditionalists. The third, ‘eternal punishment,’ is a grammatical issue regarding how ‘eternal’ is used as a modifier in the NT (there are five other examples), with the noun signifying a completed action. The fourth, ‘eternal fire,’ becomes a problem for traditionalists in its context since it is ‘eternal fire’ that *destroyed* Sodom. The final two proof texts are both in Revelation, a book of apocalyptic symbols with deep OT roots. The first of these uses the eternal memorial of ascending smoke borrowed from the destruction of Sodom, but does not directly apply ‘eternal’ to the torment itself, while the final passage days nothing about human beings being tormented forever (Satan is not human, and ‘the beast’ and the ‘false prophet’ are representatives of ungodly systems). I am not a Conditionalist because of any ideas I may have about how ‘nice’ or ‘mean’ God may or may not be. God is God. I have embraced Conditionalism because I believe it is what scripture teaches. What kind of linguistic voodoo redefines ‘destruction’ and ‘death’ in a multiplicity of scripture passages in order to maintain the precise opposite of what these terms mean? Christ was our substitute: Was He eternally tormented in Hell? Or, did Christ suffer the real wages of sin — i.e., death? You tell me.”
Nathan: “William, I respect your position, and as I said earlier, my issue is with the bunch represented best by Pinnock. My intention was not to take on the textual arguments of Annihilationism or Oblivionism, but the philosophical/theological problems behind their positions. And, despite your well-sourced position, the vast majority of A/O proponents that I’ve debated have always started with the issues of goodness or love.
Having said that, I still think you’re wrong, but I think the debate would probably wander into hermeneutics and context were we to tie up on it.
I believe words are important, and I understand and appreciate what you are doing with the OT texts, but the OT is an incomplete document. While it may inform what we understand about Jesus’ background and meaning, it doesn’t completely form it. You focus heavily on ‘eternal,’ ‘fire,’ and ‘worm,’ but one word that has no equivalent in the OT is ‘Hades,’ at least not in the way Jesus uses it in Luke 16 (with the exception of Peter’s use of the Word in Acts 2 to translate Psalm 16). But, Jesus is engaging the culture of the time, and this is not First-Temple Judaism. It is influenced by that, but it is also influenced by Hellenism and Intertestamental Judaism. So, it is apparent that Jesus means more than what we can glean from the few texts in the OT.
Along those lines, if we say that Jesus could only mean what the OT means by Hell, then we must also say the same thing about Eternal Life/Heaven. The OT has no consistent systematic understanding of these concepts like the NT does.
Next, we need not define what the word ‘worm’ means only by how it is used in the OT, but most importantly, how Jesus uses it. For this, I reiterate the point I made in the article: If Jesus does not use this analogy from Isaiah 66 in Mark 9 as a means of inducing fear at the prospect of failing to repent and turn away from sin, then the text has lost all meaning. If the threat of having my whole body thrown into Hell is only so that my corpse may lie there and be eaten for eternity after I have been spiritually destroyed, then I’m not sure what the threat is.
Also, while you consider much of the NT’s dealings with Hell by covering fire and so on, you miss some very important passages like the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in Matt. 18, in which the unforgiving servant is turned over to the ‘torturers’ until his debt is paid. This is conscious and ongoing torment. Also, Matt. 8:12, where Jesus turns the covenantal community on its head by saying that those who are blood children of Abraham will be cast into a ‘place’ of outer darkness. And in the Parable of the Wedding Feast in Matt. 22, the uninvited guest is thrown into this same place. Finally, in Matt. 25, there is the Parable of the Talents, and we have the same place there. These parables and references of Jesus tell us that Hell is a place of conscious torment into which the reprobate are cast.
Finally, there is a duality to the eternality of both Heaven and Hell which is found in many of these Parables. The judgment of the damned follows the same pattern as that of the saved in most of these parables. Eternal bliss vs. eternal misery. Hope of reward vs. fear of judgment. As with Lazarus and the Rich Man (which I haven’t seen addressed), Hell is a place which the Rich man wishes his friends to avoid. It is a place of which Jesus gives the sober warning, ‘They will not even listen if a man comes back from the dead.’ I am not sure how else we are to read the parables involving Hell other than to read them as a warning of eternal judgment coupled with a promise of eternal reward.
William: “I think you and I have very different views of the unity of scripture and the importance of OT contexts and terms. That aside, I’ll add two brief points in response. First, Luke 16 is irrelevant. I believe it is a parable that has nothing to do with the afterlife. But that doesn’t matter in this discussion. Even if Luke 16 is literal, it speaks to the intermediate state and not to the final end of the wicked. Second, I do not deny torment, only *eternal* torment. Third, the NT speaks clearly of the end of the wicked: ‘extinction’ — just as clearly as the OT. We cannot nullify passages throughout the OT that specify destruction as the final end of the wicked, as if Jesus is contradicting the scriptures. If that is what you believe, we need to be debating that instead of hell.”
Nathan: “No, I am a New Covenantalist. I do believe in a largely contiguous connection between OT and NT. But, the OT is the shadow, and the NT is its true form. I do agree that this is largely the root of the issue between our two views, which is why I said earlier that I think a debate on this would wander into hermeneutics.
Like baptism, church government, resurrection, or even salvation by faith alone, you cannot get to the fullness of the truth about Hell by saying that Jesus and the Apostles only meant what the OT means and only had that vocabulary in mind. There is no language for Christian baptism in the OT. There are types and shadows, but baptism is something beyond that. The OT expresses great hope in the resurrection, but as Martha shows in John 11, the fullness of that is largely concealed in the OT. And on and on… you get the idea.”
William: “I believe in progressive revelation, but that doesn’t change destruction into eternal conscious torment. Much of the NT is an unfolding of the OT, but not one that corrects or replaces inspired concepts. Jesus used the OT precisely because his listeners knew what he meant. When he corrected mistaken notions drawn from it, he was explicit about it.”
While we were unsure to whom to give the final word, we are thankful that William, who most of us here at The Disputed disagree with on the issue of What Will Hell Be Like, is able to base his arguments on Scripture itself without resorting to ad hominem or emotional appeal discussions. May we continue to try to understand the nuances of his position, so we aren’t just beating straw men into the dirt.
