This is a VERY crazy and stupid question but… does Hell exist yet?
Revelation 20:14-15
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Does Hell not exist until the end of the world? These verses seem to imply that people do not go to Hell until the time in Revelation.
Even CRAZIER question:
Could ghosts be damned souls that will one day go to Hell?
This is a difficult question to answer because when the Bible talks about the fate of the wicked it uses different terms, language, and metaphors.
So, here in the Revelation St. John writes down his vision of a lake of fire, which is also called "the second death". The thing is, it even says "Death and Hades" were cast in too.
We shouldn't be thinking that there is literally some lake somewhere that is literally fire and sulfur, and that Death and Hades are literal persons of some description that will also be in there. Rather, the language is symbolic (as is most everything else written in the Revelation). And because of that there have been many, many different writers and commentators over the centuries who have provided their thoughts, and there are lots of discussions to be had--but no real hard answers.
There's also the problem with the word "hell" itself. In the original languages of the Bible there are a number of words that all get translated as "hell" in older English Bibles. So, for example, when Jesus speaks of Hades, this is sometimes called "Hell"; and by the same token when Jesus speaks of Gehenna, this is also sometimes called "Hell".
But Hades and Gehenna aren't the same thing. Hades is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word She'ol, the word used in the Old Testament to describe the common place of the dead. The word she'ol literally translates to "grave" or "pit".
In the 2nd Temple period of Judaism (the time between the rebuilding of the Temple after the Babylonian Exile all the way to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD) we see a large amount of Jewish writings. Highly diverse writings with lots of ideas. A lot of which helps provide some helpful context for some of the things the New Testament says.
So, for example, while the Old Testament doesn't really make a distinction between a place for the righteous dead and a place for the wicked dead (a "heaven and hell" so to speak), the idea of radically distinct experiences for the righteous dead and the wicked dead does show up in 2nd Temple Jewish literature. And so we get the language of a place for the righteous dead called Gan-Eden ("the Garden of Eden") which is translated into Greek as
paradeisos, ("paradise", the Greek word is actually a borrowing from a much older Persian word that referred to an enclosed garden); and the place of the wicked dead called Ge-Hinnom (Greek: Gehenna, literally "Valley of Hinnom").
So with this in mind, Jesus tells us a parable of the rich and poor man, they both die. The poor man dies and is in "Abraham's Bosom", the place of the righteous dead; while the rich man is in Gehenna, in agony.
What all this means is that frequently, at least as English-speakers (I can't speak for others), we use the term "hell" to refer to:
1) Hades
2) Gehenna
3) the lake of fire
Is Gehenna and the lake of fire the same thing? Arguments could be made either way. Though I'd tentatively argue no, they aren't.
And then the most difficult question: Does "hell" exist at all? And by that, I don't mean that there is no "hell" for the wicked, or that there is no such thing as hell. Rather, does hell exist as a descrete created thing somewhere in the grand whole of creation--a place, a literal pit of literal fire? Well, the most common Christian answer is that no, "hell" is not a literal place with literal fire. But is far more complicated and more sobering than that.
Hell is a reality that describes the deepest estrangement of man from God. I think (but could be mistaken) that it was St. Augustine who said something to the effect that even as man without the soul is a dead corpse, the soul without God is likewise dead. We are human beings created in the divine image and likeness, created to reflect God's love and goodness--that's what it means to be human. To simply be human, to simply love and live and be human as God made us (which has been broken because of sin, and now there is death and misery and all those things which are wrong and unjust in the world).
When we sin we deny the Divine image and likeness. Because when we sin, we cause injury to our neighbor, we hurt one another. We deny the humanity of our neighbor, and we deny our own humanity. And so through sin we collude with death and our own, what theologian N.T. Wright describes as "progressive dehumanization".
In the end, there isn't much of us that is human left, I like how C.S. Lewis puts it when he says something to the effect of (I could find the direct quote if anyone prefers that): Right now when we find ourselves grumbling, we can recognize the grumble and put a stop to it. But if the grumble keeps on grumbling, and we submit to it time and again, we may find that there comes a day when there is no "us" left to criticize the grumble, because all that is left
is the grumble--like a humming machine going on endlessly.
The language of "the grumble" reminds me a lot of what Jesus says, when He speaks of those in Gehenna where there is "gnashing of teeth". "Gnashing of teeth" is a description of anger and rage, of bitterness, and of regret.
So to the question "Does hell exist?" I would answer yes, but with a large asterisk and a very long footnote. Hell exists as a reality that is very serious and needs to be taken seriously. But we shouldn't think of Hell as a giant burning pit of fire somewhere, either right now, or in the future. The reality of hell is far more sobering, sad, and tragic than that. Because in the end, in a sense, the thing that makes hell
hell, isn't "hell" itself,
it's us.
-CryptoLutheran
