Heaven and Hell

Is Hell Real?

"St. Athanasius in his De Incarnatione, sees sin (and thus hell) as a movement towards 'non-being.' The created universe was made out of nothing – thus as it moves away from God it is moving away from the gift of existence and towards its original state – non-existence. God is good, and does not begrudge existence to anything, thus the most creation can do is move towards non-being.

"[I]n Orthodox spiritual terms I would say that hell is a massive state of delusion, maybe the ultimate state of delusion. It is delusional in the sense that (in Orthodox understanding) the 'fire' of hell is not a material fire, but itself nothing other than the fire of the Living God (Hebrews 12:29). For those who love God, His fire is light and life, purification and all good things. For those who hate God, His fire is torment, though it be love.

"And these are not simply picky issues about the afterlife – they are very germane issues for the present life. Christ Himself gave this 'definition' of hell: 'And this is condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.' (John 3:19).

"It is of critical importance for us to understand that being, reality, life, goodness, beauty, happiness, truth are all synonymous with reality as it is gifted to us by God. Many things that we experience in our currently damaged condition (I speak of our fallen state) which we describe with words such as “being, reality, life, goodness, beauty, happiness, truth, etc., are, in fact, only relatively so and are only so inasmuch as they have a participation or a relationship with the fullness of being, reality, life, etc.

"Tragically in our world, many live in some state of delusion (even most of us live in some state of delusion). Christ said, 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.' We are not pure in heart, and thus we do not see God, nor do we see anything in the fullness of its truth. Our delusion makes many mistakes about reality. The most serious delusion is that described by Christ, when we prefer darkness to light because our deeds are evil.

"I have in my own life known what moments in such darkness are like – and I have seen such darkness in the hearts and lives of others many times. The whole of our ministry and life as Christians is to move from such darkness and into the light of Christ. 'But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship (communion) one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin' (1 John 1:7)

"Is hell real? Only for those who prefer to see the Light of God as darkness.

"Is heaven real? Yes, indeed, and everything else is only real as it relates to that reality. God give us grace to walk in the Light." - Fr. Stephen Freeman, "Is Hell Real?"

Being "Good" Not Enough

"If you recall the parable [of the rich man and Lazarus] the lesson would be that if we are patient and humble and kind and loving, like Lazarus, we will end up in Heaven, in the bosom of Abraham. This signifies that we are in the realm of God; or better, in the presence of God. A presence full of life, full of love, full of joy. But there is, of course, a problem in having that perspective, of doing good things and going up to heaven: namely, that it is excessively individualistic. It presents the believer with the image of, 'it's just you and God'. It can be very selfish. If it's just you and God, then you don't care about others. But above all, it is a serious narrowing of what the Gospel is about. This is not to say that being good is not part of what the Gospel demands -- indeed, in the Bible, the Lord commands, 'Turn from evil and do good'. But the Gospel, in it's essential meaning, and content, has to do with what God has accomplished in the person and ministry of Christ. And what did he accomplish? God, in Christ and the Holy Spirit, unleashed the powers of his kingdom, defeating the forces of evil, and inaugurating a new creation. So God is conducting a rescue operation of humanity. It is not 'my soul' and 'your soul', God is trying to rescue his whole creation from the powers of evil." - Fr. Theodore Steropolous

Location vs Condition

The idea that God is an angry Lord who sends those He condemns to a place called Hell, where they spend eternity being tortured, is an idea which is absent from the Bible. Heaven and Hell are real, but they are not physical places. They are states of being, and both conditions exist in the presence of God.

In Western Christianity, both Roman Catholicism and most of Protestantism, the afterlife is thought of as a location -- either Heaven or Hell. Hell is where God punishes the wicked and where they are cut off from the Kingdom of Heaven. However, this concept of Hell does not occur in the Bible, nor does it exist in the original language of scripture.

Although the scripture describes "gnashing of teeth", that is torment for the wicked (Luke 13:28), it is not a separate destination. Everyone will be in the presence of God in the afterlife, and it is that presence which will bring about either eternal suffering or eternal happiness. -- Wcrowe 2009

Afterlife in the Old Testament

• Sheol

• Translated as "Hell" in many instances. This Hebrew word is a proper noun, and so it should never have been translated, but should have been transliterated as with other names. It's literal meaning is "subterranean retreat". It was not understood as a physical place, but as a spiritual state of being associated with those who have died. According to the ancient Hebrews, Sheol was where everyone went when they died, whether they were righteous or wicked.

• Bible scholars translated Sheol as "Hell" in places where it referred to the wicked, but translated it as "pit" or "grave" when not speaking of the wicked. This confuses anyone who is trying to understand the scripture.

• In historic Jewish understanding the same "place", Sheol, is experienced by the righteous as a paradise (gen eiden), and experienced by the wicked as a punishment ("fires of gehennom"). According to the Jews, the thing that causes each person, whether righteous or wicked, to experience the same place as either paradise or punishment, is the presence of God, because God dwells everywhere and is in all things. There is nowhere apart from God. "The light of the final parousia of the Lord, which is delight to the righteous, is torture to the damned." - Gregory the Theologian

• Consider the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3. Nebuchadnezzar had them thrown into the fiery furnace heated "seven times more". The number seven is symbolic of the "furnace" of heaven, i.e., the dwelling place of God. Shadrach, Mechach and Abednego were unharmed by the fire while one "like the Son of God" was with them. Yet, those same flames of fire killed the king's mightiest soldiers. This is a typology of the afterlife, where the righteous experience God's presence as light and warmth, but the wicked experience it as pain and destruction.

See Also

Eschatology