Lake of Fire: The Flames of Judgment

A review of J. Webb Mealy's popular-level work developed from his monograph on the biblical themes of Hell and eternal torment.

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...

2020

This paper examines the Christian concept of hell and its development: how it is represented in doctrine and conceived in the imagination. It seeks to explore the development of the concept of hell and how people have arrived at their modern conceptions and misconceptions through the three general lenses of history, modernity, and Scripture. It attempts to investigate what hell is, is it a place? A state of being? A concrete or symbolic reality? And if it is a place where and how might it exist? Who occupies hell and who rules it? The paper also attempts to clarify hell’s relationship to time- when it might exist and for how long. The paper finally dares to clarify which conceptions of hell are likely the most biblical and useful.

This is a paper I found from Jonathan Gibson concerning hell. I post it here because of the recent debate concerning Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins".

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.

The Bible Hell - John Wesley Hanson , 1888

Does the Bible teach the idea commonly held among Christians concerning Hell? Does the Hell of the Bible denote a place of torment, or a condition of suffering without end, to begin at death? What is the Hell of the Bible? Manifestly the only way to arrive at the correct answer is to trace the words translated Hell from the beginning to the end of the Bible, and by their connections ascertain exactly what the divine Word teaches on this important subject. It seems incredible that a wise and benevolent God should have created or permitted any kind of an endless hell in his universe. Has he done so? Do the Scripture teachings concerning Hell stain the character of God and clothe human destiny with an impenetrable pall of darkness, by revealing a state or place of endless torment? Or do they explain its existence, and relieve God's character, and dispel all the darkness of misbelief, by teaching that it exists as a means to a good end? ................................. The brief excursus on the word "Hell" contained in this volume, aims to treat the subject in a popular style, and at the same time to present all the important facts, so fully and comprehensively that any reader can obtain in a few pages a birds-eye-view of "The Bible Hell." The author ventures to hope that any one who will read candidly, not permitting the bias of an erroneous education to warp his judgment, will not fail to agree with the conclusions of this book,----that the doctrine of unending sin and woe finds no support in the Bible teachings concerning Hell.

Unpublished, 2020

This paper seeks to discuss the various terms regarding final judgment in the Tanakh and the New Testament thereby clarifying and correcting common misunderstandings surrounding the duration and nature of judgment of the unrighteous within Scripture.

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."