A Poster quotes one paragraph out of a dissertation of mine directed to the question of Sin and its consequences. The original document was in response to criticisms from an Islamic friend about the apparent injustices in the Christian concept of God's judgment.
I wrote, in a response to the original posters assertion that Christianity teaches that unbaptized infants and people who have never heard of Christ are automatically consigned to hell;
>Incidentally, hell seems to be a place (or
state) where people suffer
>the consequences of their acts. An infant, presumably, would
have no
>consequences to suffer (That is, if you even take the view
that babies
>go to hell to begin with, which I don't). Furthermore, in the
book of
>Revelations there is described a place called the Lake of
Fire. This
>is treated differently from hell (Gehenna, the Hinom Valley,
is
>actually a waddy ravine wrapping around the West and South
side of Mt.
>Zion in Jerusalem where the inhabitants used to burn their
garbage.
>It's quite lovely today, although from 1948 to 1967 it was
filled with
>barbed wire, land mines, and the bones of a company of
soldiers who
>could not be recovered.)
>The Lake of Fire is treated more as a
spiritual incinerator. A soul
>cast into the Lake of Fire actually ceases to exist. I do not
believe
>in an Eternal conscious hell.
He responds,
>"Where their worm dieth not, and the
fire is not quenched." (Mark > 9:46,48)
> >"He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost
hath never
> forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation."
(Mark 3:29)
> >This is what the Son of God said.
> >Also the apostle Paul writes
> >"..the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven
with his mighty
>angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know
not God,
>and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who
shall be
>punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of
the Lord,
>and from the glory of his power...) (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)
> >Notice - NOT 'be punished with everlasting destruction.'
- period,
> BUT - 'everlasting destruction from the presence of the
> Lord...'
I would like to reply first with a quote,
"Garcin: This bronze. (Strokes it thoughtfully.) Yes, now's the moment; I'm looking at this thing on the mantelpiece, and I understand that I'm in hell. I tell you, everything's been thought out beforehand. They knew I'd stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all those eyes intend on me. Devouring me. (He swings round abruptly.) What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. (Laughs.) So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is-other people!" ("No Exit", Jean-Paul Sartre, New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1955.)
Jean-Paul Sartre, in the quoted passage, envisions a community of suffering, where people build their own hell, not individually, but interactively. The three cell mates in "No Exit", Garcin, Inez, and Estelle, are so matched to each other and to their surroundings as to create a climate of irritation which promises to extend throughout eternity.
It is doubtful whether Sartre was speaking spiritually. More likely his play is a commentary on human interactions and just how much people can egg each other on and get under each other's skin. This is a vision of the community spirit gone sour, yet still contains strong spiritual parallels. The idea is that the damned create their own hell. Suffering is less of the punishment for sin and more of the consequence of sin. In this case, a group consciousness gone awry.
Conversely, C.S. Lewis, in his book, "The Great Divorce", envisions a hell where a sinner's life is drawn out as carded wool on a spinning wheel is drawn into yarn. What was once complex and pregnant with potential as it existed in Time, becomes degenerative and stagnant as it is realized in hell (in the case of the damned), or becomes perfected and God-like as it is realized in heaven (in the case of the redeemed).
Each sinner degrades to the logical conclusion of his own depravity. Hell is viewed as a collapse. A shrivelling. A dulling of the senses and the will as the soul comes fully into synchronization with its state as spiritually dead. The redeemed grow more alive. The damned grow more dead. Lewis's 'Grey City' is frightening precisely because all of the color has been drained from it. What remains is sterile and impotent. A dried out husk grotesquely reminiscent of the original.
Dante, in "The Inferno", graphically depicts this relationship between the punishment for sin as the natural consequence of the crime instead of an arbitrary affliction from the hand of a vindictive God. The sinners in hell are there because they want to be there and for no other reason. The torment they suffer is actually the sins themselves. And whereas Virgil and Dante encounter demon guards periodically which challenge or attempt to trap them, as well as physical barriers (such as the walls of Dis) which block their passage, nonetheless it is ultimately a lack of will which prevents the occupants of hell from escaping their torment. The gates of hell stand wide open.
I believe that hell is best envisioned as the separation from some necessary thing. For example, you could say that Oedipus, as an infant, was in hell when his legs were bound and he was left to die on the hillside. He was in a state of separation from something that he desperately needed; the nurturing of a mother. Oedipus's hell was never fully realized since he was redeemed by the shepherd.
Lewis's Grey City is filled with people who had been separated from God-directed motivations, and had replaced them with their own selfish agendas instead. One of his examples is an artist who originally painted because he could see a glimpse of the Eternal in nature and sought to capture it in canvas and oil. Later, he allowed his first love of 'color for color's sake' to degenerate into the love of artistic trends and schools of thought. Avant garde took the place of the Eye of the Maker. He was in hell, at least the seeds of it, long before he died. Men build their own hell, crawl in, and bolt the door from the inside.
Hell has also been described as a separation from God. St. Augustine first described man as having a 'God shaped' hole within him. Man is not content until that void is filled with the Holy Spirit as administered by the saving grace of Jesus Christ. If it is not filled with God, man will attempt to fill it with something else, such as drugs, alcohol, ambition, sex, pride, selfishness, etc. These things are all sins precisely because they are not the correct approach. They are sins because they are distracting us from the only true healing; the Cross of Jesus Christ and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit under the direction of God the Father.
This is the same as saying that a person with terminal cancer 'sins' by not seeking out therapy. Or a person with high blood pressure 'sins' by not taking his medicine. Sin in this analogy is that which separates us from health. Sin actually is that which keeps us away from God. Sanctification is the process of drawing us closer to God; chemotherapy of the soul, if you will.
Hell, then, would be a condition of permanent separation from God. The condition where that void is never filled. Our whole life, then, is one pilgrimage either toward God or toward hell. It is in this sense that Lewis can say of the damned that there was never a time when they were not in hell and that the pleasures of their lives were actually cheats, void of value. Of the redeemed he says that there was never a time when they were not in heaven and that the trials of their lives were actually purgatory, perfecting their faith.
This concept makes more sense if we abandon the Western view of sin as merely (or solely) infractions of the Law. This may be true on a local level, but globally, sin must be viewed as a shared illness from which the human race suffers. In Adam's sin, all men inherited a disease called 'Sin'. The symptoms of that disease are those things which we call 'sins'. Sins are infractions, but Sin is a condition. The redeeming work of Christ on the Cross is more correctly viewed as God giving His life to us because we had none of our own. Each Eucharist is a spiritual blood transfusion.
Hell, then, is the condition of spiritual death where that person refuses to accept God's life in him. Hell is Life's morgue instead of its recovery room.
So the unredeemed in hell suffers the consequences of his actions, carrying in his soul the realization of his unhealed condition called Sin. But for how long? I have asserted my belief that this suffering is not in an 'Eternal conscious hell'. I suppose I must relent and say that I do believe in an 'Eternal hell' of some sort, since the Bible seems to teach it, as do many traditions (though not all).
However, the word 'Eternal' must be viewed with caution. Augustus Hopkins Strong, in his "Systematic Theology" (Philadelphia: The Judson Press, 12th Edition, 1949) takes great pains to refute what he described as the 'annihilation theory'. The annihilation position, as you might suppose, is the belief that the souls of the unredeemed are dispersed entirely at some point and that the suffering of the damned is not eternal (note the word 'Eternal').
Strong argues that this cannot be, since Scripture clearly teaches a conscious existence after death. Images of hell (fire, worms not dying, being tormented forever, etc.) are metaphors used to relay the fact that there is anguish of sorts. This anguish, as asserted above, is self afflicted and follows causally from the sins committed. However, it is clearly a perpetration beyond death.
This, I think, is unavoidable. Clearly there is some sense in which the unredeemed suffer from their condition of separation from God. Yet I still do not believe that that suffering extends beyond time and into 'Eternity'. Strong takes great pains in discussing the usage of this word, Eternity.
The Greeks had a word for time: KRONOS. They had a different word for something else: AION. AION, from which we derive our word, eon, meaning 'An indefinitely long time: Age' ("The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary"), is sometimes translated in the Bible as 'Eternal' or 'Eternity'.
KRONOS belongs to men, but AION is a timeless expression and belongs exclusively (for now, at least) to God. Strong quotes several passages where the suffering of the damned, as well as the bliss of the redeemed, are referred to as 'Eternal'. (Matt 25:41, Matt 13:39, Mark 3:29, to quote a few.)
AION is sometimes translated as 'Eternal', sometimes as 'For Ever', and sometimes as 'World' (meaning 'Age', also coming closer to our 'Eon'). His argument is that this word, AION, clearly denotes perpetuity and continuance. Or, as he put it, the greatest period of time imaginable.
My belief is that Eternity cannot be translated in any temporal sense at all. God exists outside of Time and Space. He has the ability to view this Time and Space continuum totally, absolutely, and in the third person. All of Time and Space exists as a single glittering jewel in the crown of the Almighty. Eternity does not have to mean everlasting continuation or the perpetual passage of time. Indeed, it cannot.
Eternity can just as easily, and unambiguously, be translated to mean 'permanent' or 'absolute'. Words such as 'final', 'total', 'unchangeable', 'irreversible', and 'incontrovertible' all convey a shadowy image of the meaning of 'Eternity'.
Permanent, actually, is more of a timeless word than everlasting since it denotes a nullifying of change. An absence of time. An impossibility of motion. And this interpretation could just as easily be used to describe the absolute joy of the redeemed as it could the total destruction of the damned.
Our merger with God will be Eternal, ie., permanent, complete, timeless, absolute. The destruction of the Devil and his angels, along with the damned, will be Eternal, ie., permanent, complete, timeless, absolute. It is not necessary to envision a continuation of the passage of time to accept both of these statements. Nor is it necessary to accept conscious existence in both cases. The salvation of the saints will be as complete (Eternal) as the destruction of the damned. I find no contradiction here.
In conclusion, I believe that it is sound intellectually to hold the view that the suffering of the unredeemed does not perpetrate in the same sense as the rapture of the redeemed. That, as the sanctification of the redeemed is to progress through unlimited growth, so also the decay of the damned is to regress through unlimited collapse. At some point, both of these processes extend into the unimaginable domain hinted at by the word, 'Eternal'.
After thought
The first time someone suggested to me that hell was not everlasting, I was personally offended. It was as if I felt somehow cheated by the possibility that the unredeemed of the world might not suffer in a hell of Fire throughout a perpetual existence. The Bible clearly speaks of an eternal damnation, doesn't it? And I have certainly been taught that all my life, haven't I? How could anyone seriously and piously suggest otherwise?
That was my first impression. But it shocked me, somehow. Not the suggestion that hell might not go on for ever, but my own reaction to it. Here I was, a follower of the God of Love, yet, when faced with two possibilities; that some people might suffer for ever, or that their suffering might someday end, and which one am I more comfortable with? Which one did I secretly wish to occur? Which one offended my sense of ghoulish delight? Which one insulted my pride of spiritual elitism more?
The more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt my own motivations. I began to wonder just how cruel was I being? Was I guilty of a 'you'll get yours, some day. Just you wait,' mentality as I smugly contemplated the fate of the damned? Is that why Christ died on the Cross?
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea that the final judgment of Christ and the immersion of the damned into the Lake of Fire represented a final annihilation of the soul. God had created the souls of man Eternal (what ever that means). So why could He not terminate them, as well?
Ultimately, I think the question is undecidable in this world. We will just have to wait until our entrance into Eternity to find out for sure.
The poster also writes,
>How long, do you suppose it takes to
annihilate a soul in the Lake of
>Fire? Instantly? A day? A week? A month? A year? A century? A
>millennium... two millennia, three, four, five...? A
billennium? A
>trillennium?
God knows the answer to that, I do not.
>"And the devil that deceived them was
cast into the lake of fire and
> brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet *ARE*, and
shall
> be tormented day and night *FOR EVER AND EVER*."
(Revelation
> 20:10)
"TOUS AIONAS TON AIONON" Translated 'always' or 'forever'. ("A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament", Barclay M. Newman, Jr., London: United Bible Societies, 1971.)
Alternate translations are, of course, eternally possible.
>Can the everlasting Word of God be plainer than THAT?
To me, at least, the concept of Eternity if far from plain.