On a recent Stand to Reason podcast, a caller challenged Greg Koukl as to the nature of hell, arguing that a loving God could not engage in eternal torture. Greg rightly drew the distinction between torture, which implies a certain motive or sick pleasure on the part of the doer, and torment, which does not. Drawing on the symbol of fire, the caller pressed the point, asking how causing someone to burn eternally and to experience the pain and agony of burning could not be characterized as torture.
This is a good question, and a very difficult challenge for the Christian apologist to meet. After all, Jesus used similar imagery, when He compared Hell to the perpetual fires in the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, in the place called Gehenna.
The response to this challenge requires us to tease out the assumption that the question contains. By asserting that God “causes” someone to burn eternally and that God “inflicts agony,” the question compels the answer that yes, this would be torture. The real issue, though, is whether God does those things to the souls in Hell, or whether those lost souls experience an everlasting torment that is a consequence – and not a separate goal - of the fact that they are in Hell.
In the Civil War, doctors treated most bullet wounds to an arm or leg by amputating the limb, no doubt an excruciating experience in the days before anesthetics. But these actions were done not to torture the patient but to accomplish some good purpose – namely, to save him. The patient no doubt felt tormented, but this was a natural consequence of the necessary action that was taken; it would not be fair to say the doctor had engaged in torture. On the other hand, if one side had taken perfectly healthy prisoners of war and amputated a limb to inflict pain, either to coerce cooperation or as a method of terror, this would indeed be torture. Similarly, if a modern surgeon decided to amputate without anesthetics, it would be fair to characterize such actions as torture.
Christians believe that God is all good and that whatever he creates must also be good. Hell is a place of separation He has created for those deserving of such separation. Hell must be good and must serve a good purpose. But if Hell is a place in which God actively inflicts agony simply to terrorize or for some other evil purpose, then Hell cannot be a good place, and God cannot be good. Alternatively, if God could accomplish His legitimate purpose of separating wrongdoers from Him without inflicting the level of torment that exists in Hell, then, once again, it would seem evil to inflict such agony.
How, then, does orthodox Christianity makes sense of this place called Hell?
I submit that the answer lies in understanding that the torment spoken of is the natural consequence of the legitimate end God accomplishes with Hell, and not a separate, sadistic purpose to inflict agony. What is that end? Separation from Him. And what is He? Perfection. Absolute, unlimited, infinite perfection, the kind that we as human beings cannot even begin to fathom. Remember your first love? Or the way you felt when you beheld your first child? Or reuniting with your spouse after a period apart? Conversely, can you recall the first time you were homesick, or the first time you experienced the death of a loved one? Now magnify these feelings – not by a hundred, a thousand, or even a billion, but by infinity, and by eternity. Start to get the picture? If the “goodness” of the people we love can cause us such torment when we are separated from them, and if that goodness is a mere shadow of the infinite perfection of God, then I shudder to imagine what knowing but not be able to experience the infinite beauty and pefection of God would be like.
The Lake of Fire is but a candle to such torment.
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4 comments:
This is a good contrast of torture and torment. I looked up "hell" in several different dictionaries, commentaries, concordances, and Bibles and have yet to find the word "torture" used in the context, yet there are multiple uses of "torment" along with "punishment" and other like words. It is clear that hell, what seems to me to be not only a separation from God but a physical place of eternal, endless, suffering, is neither the desired end of man nor the direct act of God but the consequence, or punishment, for man guilty of rebellion and unwilling to turn to the one offer of forgiveness and redemption. This is God's system of justice, just as all goverments and organizations have their systems of justice. I do not see in the Bible that there is anyone administering this torment, which would seem to be necessary for it to be "torture", rather it is a miserable place (a lake of fire) where one is in continuous, never ending agony, separated from God, with no way to traverse the chasm between there and Him.
I Have a Question About "What Did the Early Christians Believe About Hell?"
I recently read out of Tom Harpur’s book, Life After Death (not a new book, copyright 1991). He discussed the idea of hell. I’m not sure I disagree with his points. They seem solid but I’m no scholar at this point in my life. Can you review the selections below and give me your thoughts on the matter? I will be doing a study of Hell soon for my Systematic Theology class and I feel that your insights will be helpful. Feel free to give me some sources for further reading. Thanks!
Selected quotes from “Life After Death” by Tom Harpur:
…..Christian apocalyptic literature borrowed heavily from Jewish writings and cannot be understood apart from them; Jewish apocalyptic writings, in turn, owed much to Persian sources.
...The idea of a fiery hell of punishment occurs only once in the earliest Gospel, Mark, once in Luke, and not at all in John’s Gospel or the Johannine Epistles.
…It is unfortunate that the translators of the King James Version used the word “hell” here (and even hell-fire) because that is not what the Greek original plainly says. The word actually used, and repeated, by Mark is “Gehenna.”
…Once you realize this, it becomes abundantly clear that Jesus is using contemporary imagery as a striking way of highlighting the fact that important issues are at stake. Sacrifices must be made by those would be disciples, but they are worth it because the alternative is to endure a haunting sense of loss. In trying to avoid the discipline of discipleship one risks desolation, or being cast on the refuse heap. There is absolutelyno warrant here for the later, terrifying doctrines of the Church about hell.
…One thing stands out in our survey of the roots of the doctrine of hell: there is no overall, consistent paradigm or metaphysical system worked out in the Bible. The ancient Hebrew mind was not given to philosophical or metaphysical abstractions; it thought in concrete images.
Summary
…There is no consistent teaching about the fate of the “wicked” or the unrepentant in either the Old or the New Testaments. Nor, considering the figurative language used to describe hell, is there justification for the traditional, popular view of a literal place of eternal, fiery punishment for the “damned.” The Jesus of history never taught such a doctrine, and it desecrates the name of the God he came to reveal to preach and teach that he did. This conclusion will not please those conservative Christians who hate to be disturbed by the facts, but it seems to me inescapable on the basis of evidence.
Knowing with certainty whether Christian apocalyptic literature “borrowed heavily from” earlier sources would require a level of expertise that most people simply don’t have. But I don’t believe this should cause us real concern regarding the nature of hell.
The point of framing an argument the way the writer does, in my view, is to convince the reader that he should simply accept the “expert” view and realize that he was being mislead all these years. The question, of course, assumes that the early writers were manufacturing a faith system, and looking – intentionally or inadvertently – for ideas to help fill it out. But I have little reason to believe this to be true. People invent things for a reason, usually for personal profit, fame or glory, but the early Christians were persecuted and killed for what they taught. Consequently, it is reasonable to conclude that they said the things they said because they believed they were true, that they really did represent Jesus’ teachings.
To help see this point, consider for example an author who writes about the sinking of the Titanic. He might be accused of “borrowing heavily” from previous “tragedy literature” by detailing scenes of the ship’s lighting finally going out, or the band continuing to play on in the night. But why assume that he is borrowing anything, and not instead recounting the events as recalled by the survivors? The more reasonable conclusion - about an actual historic event being written about by a serious writer, as were the early Christain writers - is that they were relating what they knew to be true, or at least what someone reliable had taught them. The writer you quote tries to explain how the early Christian writers fabricated their doctrine, without first providing proof that this occurred.
The next selection you quote has the author saying that the idea of a fiery hell occurs only once in Mark, once in Luke and not in John’s Gospel or letters. My answer would be, so what? How many times must it appear? What contradictory passages about hell surround it? Simply reading the Gospel accounts makes abundantly clear that hell is a place of torment, often referred to as “fiery,” a place where there will be much gnashing of teeth. There is a divide that cannot be bridged, as in the story of Lazarus. The message is consistently foreboding and ominous. For instance, Jesus says it is better to lose and eye or a limb than to be cast whole into hell.
The author goes on to complain about the use of the word “hell.” Translation of concepts like hell – for which humans have no direct experience – is necessarily difficult. The author believes that Gehenna is actually what Jesus referred to. How does this help? Gehenna was the city garbage dump – located outside the city’s walls –in which refuse was perpetually burned. Am I to draw comfort from this imagery? Being cast into a burning garbage dump is supposed to gently remind me of a “haunting sense of loss?” And the idea that “sacrifices must be made by the disciples” – while not inconsistent with Jesus’ message – is certainly not the core of Jesus’ teaching. Instead, he taught that he came to be “the sacrifice” and that through faith and trust in Him, our path to the Father is reopened.
The author says there is “absolutely no warrant here for the later, terrifying doctrines of the Church about hell.” Really? What was Lazarus feeling? What would one feel being tossed into Gehenna? If the author is trying to say that there is no actual “lake of fire,” that may be so. But being separated from the presence of the perfect God would make such a lake seem mild by comparison.
The author goes on to say that there is no overall consistent paradigm or teaching as to the fate of the unrepentant. We must be reading different Bibles. While the imagery is varied, the import is always the same - its a very bad place that we would be wise to avoid.
To sum up, much of what the author is writing may be technically true, but he’s deliberately missing the point. Imagine that you are taking a trip to a remote area and you read a brochure that tells you not to get injured or sick because the medical care is a throwback to the surgeon’s tent on a Civil War field of battle. I could say, parsing words, that the author may have meant that the medical care is good, but the doctors like to wear uniforms reminiscent of the Union Army and work in tents rather than buildings. But this would be missing the obvious point of the writer, and anyone with a basic understanding of English would get that. To insist otherwise would simply reveal one’s bias to refuse to believe what is right before your eyes.
For centuries, serious Christians have debated the nature of hell. Room for disagreement exists. But to suggest that Jesus never taught it to be a horrible place is simply to refuse to see what is plainly written in the texts
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