So in the bible does it mention eternal suffering? Will people who go to hell be burned alive for eternity?
Will there be eternal pain and suffering? Or do you cease to exist?
The idea that hell is a literal place of fiery torture is certainly one interpretation some Christians have had at different times.
But it's never been
the view, or even
the primary view.
Here's what the 7th century theologian St. Isaac bishop of Nineveh writes, and it is more reflective of the ancient Christian understanding (and is still the way most Eastern Christians still talk about hell today),
“
As for me I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful.
That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse. But love inebriates the souls of the sons and daughters of heaven by its delectability.”
Early Christians looked at the biblical language, how the Scriptures speak of fire in different ways. For example, throughout the Bible we see the language of God as a refiner who purifies through fire, like taking gold and heating it with flame, to burn away the impurities. The refiner's fire. Fire is also used to destroy, so we read in St. Peter's first epistle that the present and sinful age will be consumed by fire, and St. John in the Revelation speaks of a lake burning with fire and sulfur. Note, however, that in the ancient world sulfur was a purifying agent, sulfur was used as an incense viewed as being able to purify and cleanse, in fact the Greek word translated as sulfur/brimstone is θεῖον (theion), "divinity" or "divine substance", called such because of association of sulfur with purification in religious contexts. Further, the author of Hebrews says "our God is a consuming fire".
So here many Christians saw all of this language of fire and identified it with God, the God of judgment is the God of mercy; thus hell is not a deprivation of God's loving presence, it
is God's loving presence. In the same way heaven is also God's loving presence. The difference between heaven and hell isn't about "where" one is, and it isn't about God's disposition toward us. The difference between heaven and hell is about our disposition toward God.
Thus for the redeemed God's love is a fire that warms and kindles us, as boundless joy. But the same love, the same fire, is a torment for those who dwell in the remorse. The anguish, the pain, isn't from God, but is from within ourselves.
The 20th century prolific Christian writer and thinker C.S. Lewis also provides us with some excellent commentary and thought provoking ideas in his work The Great Divorce (which I cannot recommend highly enough),
"
The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences...it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."
It's not about God "sending us to hell", so much as our actively wanting and choosing hell. Or even, as Lewis puts it elsewhere, that there is something in each of us that will become hell unless it is nipped in the bud. Hell is not something God sends anyone to, nor a choice God makes for anyone--indeed, we see in the Scriptures where God declares, "Do I delight in the death of the wicked? ... do I not rather that he turn from his ways and live?"
If one looks down through the centuries, the fact of the matter is that there have been a lot of different ways Christians have read the various passages of Scripture on the topic of the fate of the wicked. And there's never been anything resembling a universal consensus. What is hell? Is hell forever? These are questions that have been answered differently, and there is no standard, universal, or definitive orthodox position to such questions. Because, frankly, the Bible itself actually has remarkably very little to say about hell--Jesus speaks about Gehenna a few times, the New Testament broadly speaks of judgment and destruction of this age, and that we are perishing without new life from Christ, and then we have the very colorful language of St. John in the Revelation. But there isn't a clear through-line that gives us a unambiguous picture of these things.
Which really just means that if anyone claims they have THE answer to the question, they don't. They just have a very strong opinion.
I've provided you here with some views from two very well respected historic Christian thinkers, but speaking personally while these do tend to reflect my own ways of thinking on the subject, I am rather intentionally agnostic on the subject of hell. I don't have a dogmatic position, because I don't think a dogmatic position is really possible.
So what does that mean? Well, for me, it means that I put my hope in Jesus Christ. Not just for myself, but for everyone. I have trust in God's justice and mercy, I have trust that whatever happens, the One who does know is good, loving, kind, and just. In essence, I don't believe anyone will be "in hell" except those who
want to be "there". And, I pray, that the number of people that ultimately want to be there is as close to zero as can be.
It's not something that keeps me up at night, because I trust that the God who meets us in Christ--who suffered, bled, and died for us sinners--is who He says He is. He is a just and gracious God.
-CryptoLutheran
