Uncovering Hell

QUAERENS: Journal of Theology and Christianity Studies, 2022

According to the view that is relatively common in the wider Christian culture, heaven and hell basically deserve compensation for the kind of earthly life we lead. Good people go to heaven as a worthy reward for a virtuous life, and bad people go to hell as a just punishment for an immoral life; in that way, the scale of justice is sometimes considered balanced. But almost all Christian theologians regard such a view, however commonly it may be in popular culture, as too simplistic and unsampled; the biblical perspective, as they see it, is much more subtle than that. It is important to acknowledge the polemical and apologetic setting of its development. Judaism underwent modifications to protect the Jewish faith and chastise apostates in the face of invading Hellenism. For the early Christ-movement, continued growth was necessary to defend itself against both internal defection and first-century Judaism and Greco-Roman paganism. The early church fathers believed that using the dre...

2013

The singular construct of afterlife within the Hebrew Bible is Sheol, a desolate place where, to the lament of many, the souls of both the righteous and the wicked reside. Yet there are striking developments within the periods of Second Temple Judaism, the New Testament and the post-apostolic Christian era. Within Second Temple Judaism, Sheol is transformed into a place of differentiation: the souls of the righteous depart to a place of blessing, the wicked to a place of torment. For the New Testament writers, this concept remains, but the soul is now conjoined to the physical body, and in the later post-apostolic period there is accentuated terror for the wicked in vivid descriptions of the eternal ires of hell. The modern understanding of a tortuous afterlife is drawn from the imagery of the church fathers, which was further accentuated within mediaeval Christendom. Yet the polemical and apologetic context of this development needs to be recognized. Within Judaism, changes were ma...

Justice That Transforms: Restorative Justice – "Not Enough!" , 2024

The doctrine of hell necessarily arises in the context of a Christian consideration of violence. For a theological discussion of violence inevitably brings one to the most extreme instance of violence in God, if the traditional, most dominant, Western doctrine of hell is indeed “biblical” — namely, eternal conscious punishment of the unbeliever. This paper, inclusion of which also is in large part is in Volume Three of this series: "WAR AND HELL – and Exception-Clause Footnote Theology."

full-proof.org

Theological debate seldom makes it into the churches. Perhaps practical and ethical issues step into the spotlight, but the finer points of doctrine rarely see the pulpit. However, recently amongst evangelical Christians there has been one topic which has received renewed and vigorous attention -the doctrine of hell. When John Stott 1 (and at other times a small number of other prominent evangelicals 2 ) tentatively suggested that hell may not be everlasting conscious torment, but that those in hell will ultimately be annihilated, many evangelicals were up in arms. Books were written, conferences were held, invitations were withdrawn, and the fire and brimstone sermon returned.

Numen, 2009

A number of currents of thought gradually coalesced into the Judaeo-Christian conception of "hell." Th is article attempts to relate them. Th e earliest traceable ideas involve a disembodied, subterranean existence of the common dead, or in exceptional cases total annihilation. Deceased kings were deifi ed and continued to be involved in the aff airs of the living, as in the Ugaritic funeral and kispum text KTU 1.161. Th is was parodied in Isaiah 14, which also indicates that such a belief was current, if criticised, in Israel-Judah. Th e theme of cosmic rebellion, wrongly traced to text KTU 1.6 i 43-67, actually emerged in such passages as Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 and post-biblical derivative texts. Th e arrogant royal fi gure of such passages merged with the developing fi gure of Satan. Th e tradition of child sacrifi ce in Israel-Judah, performed at the tophet in the Valley of Hinnom, also contributed to the geography of hell in its Greek form Gehenna.

2003

2022

An overview of various interpretations of the Judgment Seat of Christ and Final Judgment

Numen, 2020