Where No Man Has Gone Before (Alternative Views of the Soul’s Destiny)

Should we believe in hell?  That is, an eternal, unending torment for unbelievers?  It certainly doesn’t seem to some like something a loving God would subject nonbelievers to, no matter how evil they were.  In fact, leading evangelicals have come out against the traditional view of eternal hell, some holding to a hell in which residents are rehabilitated and come to faith in Christ, some holding to the complete annihilation of the nonbeliever’s soul at death.  Still others, not evangelicals we should suppose, believe that human souls are constantly reincarnated at death, migrating from body to body until, normally, they are perfected and acquire heaven.

The Traditional View of Hell as Eternal Torment

The word most commonly translated “hell” in the New Testament is geenan for the place-name Gehenna, a ravine or valley named for the son of Hinnom (ge-ben-hinnom, Jeremiah 7:31,32), running east-west to the south of Jerusalem, a place where two wicked kings of Judah burned their children alive as a sacrifice to Molech (2 Chronicles, 28:3; 33:6).  King Josiah desecrated this unholy place (2 Kings 23:10) perhaps by making this place a garbage dump, and it is possible that there was a constant fire burning there with the garbage as fuel.  It thus became a term for hell, the place of torment for the wicked.

Jesus spoke frequently of hell:

Matthew 5:22 – But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:29,30 – If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.   And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Matthew 10:28 – And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 23:15 – Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Matthew 23:33 – You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Jesus uses the concept of the worm not dying and the fire not being quenched (“hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched’” (Mark 9:47,48), picking up the language of Isaiah 66:24.  And this concept of hell seems to indicate that it is a place where the punishment does not end, that hell is an eternal place of punishment.

This eternal nature of hell seems to be confirmed by Jesus’ description of the judgment that occurs when Jesus returns, what we sometimes call the “sheep and goat” judgment, because Jesus describes those who are nonbelievers as goats and the saved as sheep.[1]

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31–46, ESV)

The basis for Christ’s judgment of all the nations, is how they responded to his disciples, which, in essence means, how they responded to the gospel.  So it is an individual judgment, as various individuals within various nations would have responded to Jesus’ disciples in different ways.  But critical to our understanding of what hell means is Jesus’ description of it as “eternal punishment.”  This stands in parallel to “eternal life.”  The word “eternal” (aionios) is used as an adjective for both.  Life for the sheep is just as eternal as is punishment for the goats.  This is the same word used of God (Romans 16:26) and the spirit of Christ (Hebrews 9:14).

2 Thessalonians 1:9 also adds to this picture, where Paul says, “They will suffer justice, eternal destruction, from the face of the Lord and from His glorious might.”  Does eternal destruction mean non-existence forever?  The term translated “destruction” is the Greek olethros, which can mean destruction, ruin, or death, in New Testament era literature.[2]  If the sense of “ruin” is the focus, this could describe continuous ruination, rather than out and out destruction.

This view is consistent with the biblical view of the intermediate state of the nonbeliever.  Jesus pictures the state of the soul between death and the final judgment in his story of Lazarus and the rich man:

“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:19–31, ESV)

Chris Loewen at rethinkinghell.com[3] suggests that Jesus’ story comports with other stories of ancient cultures designed to teach morality by showing the fate of the dead who were unjust.  Context tells us that Jesus’ intent is to convict the Pharisees of their failure to be concerned with the poor but, unlike most morality tales about the fate of the dead, the twist in Jesus’ parable is that no one can go back or should go back and tell people about hell, since they have the Law and Prophets to teach them.  Hence, this parable is not meant, he says, to teach anything about hell itself.

But it is hard to imagine that Jesus’ intent is for his listeners to conclude that how he describes the state of Lazarus and the rich man is not to be taken seriously.  There is no value to the story if there is no validity to the threat of torment and promise of comfort.

And in this state of the soul at death there is torment for the nonbeliever.  The place of torment is Hades, synonymous with sheol in the Old Testament.   At the last judgment, mentioned in Revelation 20, Hades gives up its dead, who have been suffering in torment, and they are judged according to their works and according to the absence of their names in the book of life, and they are then consigned to the Lake of Fire, which is properly called hell.  The nature of the intermediate state is consistent with the nature of the eternal state for the nonbeliever, though the intermediate state has an end.

 

Annihilation of the Soul

Here is the introduction to rethinkinghell.com:

Rethinking Hell represents a global network of Christian scholars, pastors, and laypeople who have been rethinking the idea of Hell as eternal torment, in favor of a biblical alternative known as Conditional Immortality.  We believe that the saved in Christ will receive the reward of immortality, while others will finally be destroyed (sometimes referred to as annihilation).[4]

Annihilationists point to several passages that suggest the penalty for unbelief is complete destruction:

Matthew 10:28 – And do not fear because of those who kill the body but they are not able to kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

John 3:16 – Because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

1 Thessalonians 1:9 – They will suffer justice, eternal destruction, from the face of the Lord and from His glorious might.

They also argue that passages traditionally understood as teaching eternal torment are poorly interpreted.  For example, Revelation 19:20; 20:10-15,

And the beast was captured and the false prophet with him who performed signs before him, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.  These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur….And the Devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet also were, and they were tormented day and night forever and ever.  And I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it, from whose face earth and heaven fled and no place was found for them.  And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne.  And books were opened, and another book was opened, the book of life, and the dead were judged from what was written in the books according to their works.  And the sea gave up the dead who were in it and death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged each according to their works.  And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  This is the second death, the lake of fire.  And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Conditionalists/Annihilationists point out that the beast may not be a literal individual person, and certainly death and Hades are not individuals, and to say that these are thrown into hell and tormented forever does not make sense of impersonal things.  This must signal, they argue, that “eternal torment” must mean something other than conscious, non-ending suffering in hell.  It should be interpreted consistently with the other passages that describe the penalty of the lost as destruction, that is, annihilation.  Revelation 17:11, for example, says that the fate of the beast is that it “goes to destruction.”  They argue that we shouldn’t conform the meaning of “destruction” to “eternal conscious torment” but rather the other way around.

They argue that fire, the common description of God’s judgment, destroys.  Those passages in which Jesus speaks of hell as the place where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48) describe complete destruction, as eventually the worms eat all the body and fire burns the body up.  The “eternal destruction from the face of the Lord” does not mean eternally being destroyed away from God’s presence, but total destruction coming from the face of the Lord.

Some potential weaknesses in the conditionalist case, however, are their dependence on identifying the beast as an entity rather than a person, and viewing death and Hades as entities rather than a metonymy of container for contents (another way of describing the unbelieving dead people).  If all of these represent real individuals, there is no reason to understand “eternal torment” as untenable.  And how are we to think of the beast and the false prophet being destroyed a thousand years before the Devil if they are not personal entities?  They are said to have they been in the lake of fire for a thousand years before the Devil, in that torment where they were thrown “alive”?

The most effective argument for the annihilationist view is that the word aionios, often translated ‘eternal’ in most translations of the New Testament, does not in all instances literally mean ‘eternal’.  And this is unequivocally true.  It is an adjectival form of aion, or ‘age’, and so might be woodenly translated ‘pertaining to the age’.  In Matthew 25:46 we might read, “These will go into pertaining to the age punishment, but the righteous into pertaining to the age life.”  The ‘pertaining to the age punishment’ would not be a time reference as much as an age to come reference, its length of time being a non-factor, but to the punishment appropriate to the age.  The ‘pertaining to the age life’ would be the life of the age to come, the kingdom arrived, the time not being specified, though, as we might suppose, a life non-ending.  It is decidedly harder to use this kind of description than to say “eternal” but “eternal” doesn’t really get at the meaning of the word aionios.

The Greek word aionios is often used to translate the Hebrew word olam in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.  And we see here even more clearly that “eternal” is not the meaning of the word olam nor aionios in several places:

Proverbs 22:28, Don’t remove the ancient landmarks (don’t remove the olam or aionios landmarks, not eternal landmarks at all)

Jeremiah 6:16, Stand in the way and look for the old (olam/aionios) paths (not eternal paths)

Isaiah 58:12, Your ancient (olam/aionios) ruins shall be rebuilt (not Jerusalem’s eternal ruins)

In these instances, the age referred to is a past age, but certainly not an eternal one.

We may conclude, then, that if the punishment for the unbeliever is destruction, in the normal sense of this word, that would not be a continuing, forever torment, but the appropriate punishment for that age, the cessation of the unbeliever’s soul.  There are several church fathers who have held this view, Irenaeus, Arnobius and Athanasius being the most prominent.[5]

But if we accept the view that there is an intermediate state of the soul of the unbeliever in Hades that is then resolved by all Hades giving up the dead for the Great White Throne judgment of Revelation 20, it seems inconsistent to hold the annihilationist view.  Why would the souls of the lost not be annihilated immediately at death?  Why be in a place of torment, as the rich man experienced (Luke 16), for now at least 2,000 years (and many others much longer than that), only to be resurrected at the final judgment and cast into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20)?  Why would annihilation take place then?  It seems more consistent to hold that the experience of the intermediate state would only be continued in the final state.

 

Universal Reconciliation

The Church is being more honest than ever about their desire for Christian Universalism to be true.  While they affirm what they believe Scripture to say about an eternal hell they are not holding back from saying that it troubles them greatly and that they “wish it were not true.” (christianuniversalism.com)[6]

This statement at ChristianUniversalism.com is actually one of their arguments for the view that hell is remedial, curative, restoring, indeed, saving, rather than punitive (eternal punishment) or destructive (annihilation).  The suggestions of this statement are 1) that the church for 2,000 years has not been honest about desiring all people to be saved, an assertion that cannot be certainly defended, and 2) that this desire for eternal hell not to be true is evidence that an eternal hell is not something consistent with who God is.

Because there is no Scripture that specifically states that hell will result in the conversion and redemption of unbelievers put there, the defense of this view is theological.  They ask,

Will it mean that God’s justice requires sin to be punished forever in “eternal conscious torment” or that God’s justice will require that all be made righteous?  Is Biblical justice getting even or is it something being made right?  Does God get His justice or does He do His justice?[7]

And they answer:

…if [it] is true, that justice and righteousness are in fact the same word, then we can be sure that doing justice will not only bring consequences to bear upon the evil doer but will restore a right-useness to both the victim and the perpetrator of injustice! This is the justice that every believer can invest in for there are no dead-ends ultimately.  Everything will be restored.  His word will not have returned void and our work will never ultimately have been in vain.  We can’t be indifferent when we know that God loves His creation, intends to make all things new and has decreed it will be done.  This is motivating and empowering!

If God’s righteousness/justice is restorative and not merely punitive or punishing, then we have justification for thinking of hell as a means of redeeming humans.  Can this view of God’s justice be substantiated?  Can the torment of hell be effective in bringing unbelievers to faith and repentance?

God’s Justice

It might seem that God’s justice as expressed to Israel is restorative.  Isaiah 1:21-26 suggests it:

²¹ See how the faithful city has become a prostitute!  She once was full of justice; righteousness used to lodge in her—but now murderers!  ²² Your silver has become dross, your choice wine is diluted with water.  ²³ Your princes are rebels, partners with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts.  They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them.  ²⁴ Therefore the Lord, the Yahweh Almighty, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: “I will vent my wrath on my foes and avenge myself on my enemies.  ²⁵ I will turn my hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities.  ²⁶ I will restore your judges as at the first, your rulers as at the beginning.  Afterward you will be called the City of Righteousness, the Faithful City.”

But is it justice that is restorative or does restoration come because God has an eternal covenant with Israel?  And to be fair, the justice meted out to Israel was not restorative to those were slain by the invading Babylonians, or those who were carried into exile in Babylon and died before Israel was allowed to return to their land.  It was the succeeding generation of surviving Israelites who repented and came back to the worship of Yahweh who were restored.

We can see the nature of God’s justice more clearly in Jeremiah’s prophecy against the destructive Israelite shepherds or leaders of Israel:

^23:1 “Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. ² Therefore this is what the Yahweh, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend my people: “Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done,” declares the Lord… .¹⁵ Therefore this is what the Yahweh Almighty says concerning the prophets:  “I will make them eat bitter food and drink poisoned water, because from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”…. ²⁰ The anger of the Yahweh will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart.  In days to come you will understand it clearly… .³⁸ Although you claim, ‘This is a message from the Yahweh,’ this is what the Yahweh says: You used the words, ‘This is a message from the Lord,’ even though I told you that you must not claim, ‘This is a message from the Yahweh.’ ³⁹ Therefore, I will surely forget you and cast you out of my presence along with the city I gave to you and your ancestors. ⁴⁰ I will bring on you everlasting disgrace—everlasting shame that will not be forgotten.”

Yahweh’s justice does not restore the wicked shepherds of Israel, but brings on them everlasting disgrace.  God’s justice is fully accomplished by the full measure of Israel’s punishment, not by her restoration.  His choice to restore the nation is not a function of His justice, but of His covenant with Israel.

Ezekiel’s prophecy shares much the same perspective:

 ^22:13 “‘I will surely strike my hands together at the unjust gain you have made and at the blood you have shed in your midst. ¹⁴ Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the day I deal with you? I Yahweh have spoken, and I will do it. ¹⁵ I will disperse you among the nations and scatter you through the countries; and I will put an end to your uncleanness. ¹⁶ When you have been defiled in the eyes of the nations, you will know that I am Yahweh.’”…. ²⁹ The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice.  ³⁰ “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. ³¹ So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their own heads all they have done, declares the Sovereign Yahweh.”

Yahweh’s promise of restoration is not mentioned here but His justice is expressed in the pouring out of His wrath until the offenders in Israel are consumed.

Micah 3:8, “But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Yahweh, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin,” indicates that the end or goal of God’s justice, expressed through the prophet Micah, is not restoration but rather the declaration of Israel’s sin.

Can Hell Redeem Someone?

But let’s suppose that God’s purpose for Hell is to redeem those who, during their lifetime, refused to submit to Him or trust in Him, but instead lived their lives as if they were God.  How does Hell redeem them?  Does the pain motivate them to repent of their rebellion and believe in the Lord?  We may recall that in Jesus’ description of Hades where Lazarus was comforted but the rich man was tormented, the rich man did seem to express some form of repentance:

And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:24-31, ESV)

The rich man’s concern for his brothers is commendable and shows some repentance, but Abraham does not give him hope that he can be redeemed because of this.  In fact, he has just told him that no one can pass from where he is, in torment, to where Lazarus is, being comforted.  “None may cross.”

And are we to suppose that at the Great White Throne judgment in Revelation 20, that when Death and Hades give up the dead to be judged, there are some who were there originally who were moved to repentance and were redeemed and are now in heaven, but the rest have somehow after thousands of years still not repented and been rescued from Hades and are now being put into the Lake of Fire for further punishment until they repent and are rescued?  There is just no indication in Scripture that this is the function of Hell, or God’s plan to redeem all human beings.

 

Reincarnation

Reincarnation is “also known as rebirth or transmigration, the philosophical or religious belief that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death…. In most beliefs involving reincarnation, the soul is seen as immortal and the only thing that becomes perishable is the body. Upon death, the soul becomes transmigrated into a new infant (or animal) to live again. The term transmigration means the passing of a soul from another body to another after-death.”[8]

Though the concept has some variations in different religious and philosophical versions, “The reincarnation concept is considered in Indian religions as a step that starts each ‘cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence,’ but one that is an opportunity to seek spiritual liberation through ethical living and a variety of meditative, yogic (marga), or other spiritual practices. They consider the release from the cycle of reincarnations as the ultimate spiritual goal, and call the liberation achieved by various terms such as moksha, nirvana, mukti and kaivalya.”[9]

Hebrews 9:27 seems to put the kibosh on this view, since “man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”  In addition to this, the Scriptures always depict humans’ souls as either going immediately to heaven or hades/hell.  Scripture also mitigates against this view in its rejection of works as a means of salvation.

Other problems with this view are moral and philosophical:

• A passive fatalism can be generated by this view, since all my life is determined by how I lived in the previous life. Those born into abject poverty, for example, are only living what they deserve, what they earned based on their previous life.
• Suffering is viewed as punishment for past, previous-life failures.
• It blurs the distinction between human and animal souls, since someone may reincarnate as an animal or insect or even a lower life form.
• It greatly complicates the problem of evil. Where did evil come from?  Don’t we need moral failure in order to account for lower life forms, forms that make life for humans possible?  Is it ever then really conceivable that everyone could eventually progress to the highest form and exit the transmigration chain?  Why bother to live if I have already messed up in life (unless suicide is a further sin that will put me even lower on the food chain)?

 

[1] This is not the same as the Revelation 20 “Great White Throne” judgment, which takes place at the end of the millennium.

[2] A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 2^nd edition, Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, 1979

[3] http://rethinkinghell.com/2017/05/16/hypocrisy-not-hell-the-polemic-parable-of-lazarus-and-the-rich-man/

[4] Rethinking Hell | Exploring Evangelical Conditionalism (Annihilationism), http://rethinkinghell.com/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism#:~:text=The%20belief%20in%20Annihilationism %20has%20appeared%20throughout%20Christian,but%20it%20has%20often%20been%20in%20the%20minority. https://www.afterlife.co.nz/articles/history-of-hell/

[6] https://www.christianuniversalism.com/about-us/

[7] https://www.christianuniversalism.com/2012/03/righteousness-justice/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation

[9] ibid

[10] https://www.christianuniversalism.com/about-us/

[11] https://www.christianuniversalism.com/2012/03/righteousness-justice/

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation

[13] ibid