Here's a quote that pretty much is my view. I know there are other views but I cannot get past a loving God eternally "torturing" creatures he created in His image. I've long ago rejected this idea of God. His love is perfect and this sort of thing is not perfect love by any stretch.
Papa Zoom,
The late Clark Pinnock's views on hell have come under intense criticism from some scholars in the evangelical community. See:
Clark Pinnock on Eternal Torment & Millard Erickson on Clark Pinnock by Peter Lumpkins. Of Pinnock's view, Erickson stated:
“It is one thing to speak emphatically about one’s sense of injustice and moral outrage over the idea of God’s condemning persons to hell. If, however, one is going to describe sending persons to endless punishment as ‘cruelty and vindictiveness,’ and a God who would do so as ‘more nearly like Satan than God,’ and ‘a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz,’ he had better be very certain he is correct. For if he is wrong, he is guilty of blasphemy. A wiser course of action would be restraint in one’s statements, just in case he might be wrong” [both Pinnock and Erickson's quotes are taken from " A Traditionalist Response To John Stott’s Arguments For Annihilationism", Robert A. Peterson, JETS 37:4 (Dec 1994].
I consider that hell/Hades/Gehenna are real and this will be a conscious, frightful place. But
I can't conclude about its exact nature for these reasons:
I accept that the biblical writers used metaphorical and not literal language. My main reasons for such a view are:
- Hell/Hades could not be represented as literal fire because it is also described as a place of darkness (see Matt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30; 2 Peter 2:17; Jude 1:13). Fire and darkness are mutually exclusive terms so hell's description cannot be literal.
- Let's use Jude as an example. He described the after-life as 'eternal fire' (Jude 1:7) but that is contrasted with 'utter darkness' (Jude 1:13). For the angels, Jude writes of 'gloomy darkness' (Jude 1:6). Again, literal fire and literal darkness would be contradictory - from my human perspective.
- This issue is made knotty by the language of the 'lake of fire' (Rev 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8. This hardly conforms with the 'blackest darkness'.
- John the Baptist and Jesus also describe hell as 'fire' (Matt 3:10; 25:41) but also as 'darkness' (Matt 8:12; 22:13; 25:
- Also Matt 25:41 describes hell as a place for the devil and his angels. They are spirit beings. How is it possible for fire to work on non-physical beings?
Therefore, I accept a metaphorical understanding of hell/Hades/Gehenna. It does involve conscious suffering/torment (cf
Luke 16:23-24) , but
its nature is unknown to me because of the language used. Evidence from outside the NT also supports this perspective.
See fire and darkness appearing together in Jewish writings such as Qumran (1QS 2:8; 4:13),
1 Enoch 103:7;
2 Enoch 10:2-3; Jerusalem Talmud, Shekalim 6:1, 49d. These writings also speak of the bodies of the wicked that are rotting with worms and maggots (
Judith 16:17;
Sirach (Ben Sira) 7:17, cf
Isa 66:24). It was ‘hot as fire and cold as ice’ replacing eternal torment in
2 Enoch 14:20(12) [from my article,
Is there literal fire in hell?]
Oz
