Objection:
The Bible repeatedly speaks of hell and hellfire and of the wicked going down into hell when they die. That proves the conscious state of the dead.
Answer:
The best way to address this objection is to look at how the word “hell” is used in the Bible. In the Old Testament, “hell” is always translated from the Hebrew word sheol, which means “the unseen state” (See Young’s Analytical Concordance). The idea of fire or punishment is not present in the word. For example, Jonah 2:1, 2 says, “Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly… out of the belly of hell [sheol] cried I.” It would be hard to imagine anything like fire in connection with a cold sea monster. The marginal reading of this text gives “the grave” as the translation of hell, or sheol.
Sheol is often translated as “grave.” Both good and bad people go there. “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave [sheol]? Selah.” (Psalms 89:48). The godly man Job said, “If I wait, the grave [sheol] is mine house.” (Job 17:13). “The psalmist wrote, “The wicked shall be turned into hell [sheol], and all the nations that forget God.” (Psalms 9:17).
In the New Testament, the word “hell” is translated from the three following Greek words:
- Tartaros, 2 Peter 2:4.
- Hades, Matt. 11:23; 16:18; Luke 10:15; 16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; Rev. 1:18; 6:13; 20:13, 14.
- Gehenna, Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6.
1) Once from the root tartaros, which means “a dark abyss.” (See Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon.) This word is used in connection with the casting out of the evil angels from heaven down into “darkness.” There is no idea of fire or torment in the word. The passage declares explicitly that these angels are “reserved unto judgment.” It is a future event. (See 2 Peter 2:4; Rev. 12:7-10).
2) Ten times from hades, which means “the nether world, the grave, death.” (See Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon.) Hades describes the same place as sheol. That is evident from these two facts:
a) The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, almost without exception, uses hades as the translation of sheol.
b) In quoting the Old Testament prophecy regarding Christ: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [sheol],” the New Testament writer gives, “hell [hades].” (See Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:27.)
When the word “hell,” translated from hades, appears in the New Testament, the reader should not understand it to mean the exclusive abode of the wicked or a place of fire and brimstone because:
a) As already noted, the primary definition of hades does not demand such an understanding of the word.
b) We have shown that the Old Testament speaks of the righteous and the wicked going down to sheol. We have also demonstrated that hades describes the same place or state. Did the ancient patriarchs go down into a place of flames?
c) The New Testament speaks of Christ’s being in hades. (See Acts 2:27). To be consistent, most of those who believe in the doctrine of disembodied souls and present-burning hellfire feel forced to interpret this text in Acts to mean that Christ’s disembodied soul went down into hellfire when He died on the cross, though at other times they endeavor to prove from Luke 23:43, 46 that Christ went up to God when He died. Both positions certainly cannot be right. The fact is that neither is correct.
Under the objection titled CHRIST’S PROMISE TO THE THIEF SHOOTS HOLES IN YOUR VIEW, we showed that Luke 23:43 is wrongly interpreted. The interpretation of Acts 2:27 is equally false. As Christ died, He cried out, “It is finished.” His dying completed His suffering to save humanity. The erroneous ideas held by most theologians as to hell and hades have caused them their perplexity when reading this text in Acts. They cannot understand why Christ should descend into hellfire.
Though a believer in soul immortality, Albert Barnes, the eminent Presbyterian commentator, boldly disposes of the difficulty by discarding the lurid value that theology has given to the word hades in this text. He remarks: “The Greek word “Hades” means literally “a place devoid of light; a dark, obscure abode.” Given this, he explains Acts 2:27 thus: “The meaning is simply, thou wilt not leave me among the dead.” Incidentally, he reminds his readers that the original word for soul may be understood to mean “the individual himself.” That is why Barnes renders “My soul” by “Me.”
Thus, we may view Acts 2:27 as proving that hades means the abode of the dead, even though righteous, and thus in no way connected with fire or torment.
We conclude thus also from 1 Corinthians 15:55, where the word “grave” is a translation of hades and describes that over which the righteous are finally victorious at the resurrection. Incidentally, 1 Corinthians 15:55 is a quotation from the Old Testament (Hosea 13:14), where we find the equivalent word sheol employed.
In one other text, the translators of the King James Version indicated that “hell” may correctly be translated by “grave.” In Revelation 20:13, where “hell” is given in the text, the marginal reading is “the grave.”
d) The Greek scholars who made the American Revised Version, sensing doubtless that our word “hell” has come to mean a place of fire and torment, did not use it to translate the Greek term hades. Instead, they transferred the Greek word hades right into English. They use “hell” to translate a different Greek word, which we will examine briefly.
e) Moulton and Milligan, eminent Greek scholars, give this bit of information: “The word [hades] is common on tombstones in Asia Minor.”–The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, under “Hades.”
We need hardly remark that the bereaved in Greek-speaking Asia Minor would surely not use the word hades on tombstones if it meant what English-speaking people mean by the word “hell.”
[Note: The only place in the Bible where fire or torment is coupled with hades is in Luke 16:23. This is in the parable of THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS, which we have already examined. It is an accepted rule in theology that doctrines should not be based on parables. It is even more questionable to attempt to discover the real meaning of a word by the setting in which it is placed in a parable or allegory.]
3) Twelve times from Gehenna (or, as it is sometimes transliterated, Geenna). That is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Hinnom, the name of a valley near Jerusalem “used as a place to cast carcasses of animals and malefactors, which were consumed by fire constantly kept up.” (See Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon.) Thus, Gehenna is the only one of those words translated as “hell” in the Bible that has any idea of fire or torment resident in it.
Now, in connection with the twelve times Gehenna is used, two facts stand out:
- The “body,” as well as the soul, is said to be “cast into hell.” Twice is the phrase used, “the whole body.” (See Matt. 5:29, 30; 10:28.)
- In not one of the twelve instances does the text tell when the wicked will be “cast into hell.” The fiery judgment is described as a future event. That takes the whole point out of the objection before us.
However, these two facts contain evidence that this future event does not follow immediately after death. The “whole body” is not cast into the flames at death, and there is no suggestion in the texts that the “soul” is cast in at one time and the “body” at another. The immortal soul doctrine, by defining “soul” as the real man and the body as but a fleshly prison house, really asks us to believe that the real man goes immediately at death to hellfire. Then, at some distant future date, God raises the body, which has turned to dust, and consigns it to the fires. We avoid such an irrational and unscriptural conclusion by understanding the phrase “soul and body” to mean the whole person, viewed physically and mentally in his entirety, “the whole body.” But when are persons cast bodily into the judgment fires? At the last great judgment day, when the wicked dead who have been raised and who have been judged guilty are “cast into the lake of fire.” (See Rev. 20:11-15).
Note that the wicked are said to be “cast into” the fire, as though to describe hurling an object into the flames. Further, the interesting fact, which is undoubtedly more than a mere coincidence in words, is that the same word “cast” (even in the original Greek) is repeatedly used in the various Gehenna texts. We read no less than six of these texts, “Cast into hell [Gehenna].” (See also Matt. 25:31, 41, as to the time when the wicked are consigned to the judgment flames).
From all the preceding, we reach the conclusion that the Bible does not support the idea that the wicked go at death into the flames of hell, but that the day when the impenitent objects of God’s wrath are “cast into Gehenna” is still in the future.
