Theopedia

Hell

“Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

— Matthew 25:41 (ESV)

Definition

Hell is the place of everlasting punishment to which God, at the last judgment, condemns those who die outside of Christ, for “the eternal damnation of the reprobate, who are wicked and disobedient.”1 Scripture also uses the term more loosely for the temporary abode of the dead awaiting that judgment (sheol, hades), but its sharpest sense is gehenna: the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), into which soul and body are cast together after the resurrection (Matt. 10:28) to be “punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess. 1:9).

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession closes its chapter on the last judgment with the same wording found, in substance, throughout the wider Reformed confessional family:

“The end of God’s appointing this day, is for the manifestation of the glory of his mercy, in the eternal salvation of the elect; and of his justice, in the eternal damnation of the reprobate, who are wicked and disobedient; for then shall the righteous go into everlasting life, and receive that fulness of joy and glory with everlasting rewards, in the presence of the Lord; but the wicked, who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast aside into everlasting torments, and punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”1

The Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration state the identical clause almost word for word, differing only in that Westminster and Savoy speak of the righteous receiving “that fulness of joy and refreshing” rather than “joy and glory.”2 A doctrine three confessional documents state in nearly identical terms is the shared teaching of the Reformed tradition, not a Baptist distinctive.

The confession locates the reason for this “everlasting destruction” in what the last day itself is for: a public “manifestation of the glory” of both God’s mercy toward the elect and his justice toward “the reprobate, who are wicked and disobedient.”1 The wicked are “cast aside,” not annihilated, and the destruction is “everlasting,” not temporary or purifying; the same chapter that names the elect’s blessedness as “everlasting life” names the reprobate’s punishment as “everlasting torments” in the same sentence, with no third or intervening outcome allowed for either.1

Biblical Basis

Jesus names the destination of the wicked most directly at the final judgment: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), a sentence he pairs, in the same breath, with the righteous going “into eternal life,” using the identical word for both destinies (Matt. 25:46). He warns that it is “better for you to enter life crippled” than, “having two hands,” to “go to hell, to the unquenchable fire,” where “their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:43, 48). Paul describes the same fate as those who “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:9). John’s Revelation places the devil, the beast, and the false prophet in “the lake of fire and sulfur,” where “they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10), and describes “the second death, the lake of fire” as the destiny of “anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life” (Rev. 20:14-15).

Jesus also teaches that this punishment admits of degrees. The servant “who knew his master’s will” but disobeyed “will receive a severe beating,” while one who sinned in ignorance “will receive a light beating,” since “everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12:47-48). In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man, “in Hades, being in torment,” seeks water to “cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame” (Luke 16:23-24), a scene Abraham describes as fixed by “a great chasm” that none can cross in either direction (Luke 16:26).

Historical Development

Scripture’s own restraint about the intermediate state carried into the earliest post-apostolic writing: the Apostolic Fathers had no developed doctrine of what lies between death and the resurrection, generally believing that at death the devout immediately entered heaven’s blessedness and the wicked hell’s punishment, with fuller reflection on the interval only developing later, once Christ’s return had not come as soon as many first expected.3

In the third century, in the time of Origen, a group of Arabian heretics called the Thnetopsychites taught that souls remain unconscious between death and the resurrection, a view later revived among some thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologians, condemned by the University of Paris in 1240 and by Pope Benedict XII in 1366, and revived again by some Anabaptists, whom Calvin answered in his treatise Psychopannychia.4 Origen himself went further, teaching the eventual restoration of all rational creatures, including the devil, to blessedness (ἀποκατάστασις, apokatastasis). Bavinck notes that this doctrine “has at all times been taught by only a handful of persons” and is “of pagan—not Christian—origin,” resting on a pantheism in which all things proceed from God and successively return to him.5

At the Reformation, Socinian writers who denied the resurrection of the wicked did so, John Gill observed, without being willing “to speak out their minds fully” on where that denial led.6 The question resurfaced as an open controversy in nineteenth-century England and America, where writers including Henry Constable and C. F. Hudson argued from the Greek vocabulary of “life” and “death” for the conditional immortality of the soul; Charles Hodge answered them at length, arguing that Scripture’s own usage of “life” and “death” for the soul means “not only conscious being, but a normal state of being in the likeness, fellowship, and enjoyment of God,” so that “death,” applied to the soul, means alienation from God rather than the cessation of existence annihilationism requires.7

Opposing Views

Conditional immortality (annihilationism). This view holds that the wicked do not suffer hell’s punishment forever but are, after a period of conscious suffering proportioned to their sin, finally extinguished; immortality itself is treated as a gift given only to those united to Christ, not a property of every human soul. Nineteenth-century proponents including Henry Constable and C. F. Hudson argued that terms Scripture applies to the wicked’s fate, such as “destroy” and “perish,” carry their ordinary Greek sense of ceasing to exist, and that the New Testament’s emphasis on the resurrection of the body implies no separate, disembodied future for the soul.8 Clark Pinnock argued for the same position in the twentieth century; he is a low-trust source on this site, noted here only because he represents this view among evangelicals, not as an authority for it.

Universalism. This view holds that God will, in the end, reconcile every rational creature, including the devil, to himself, so that hell’s punishment, whatever its nature, is not everlasting for anyone who undergoes it. Origen taught an early form of this position, arguing for the eventual restoration of all things to blessedness.5 Modern universalists appeal to texts that speak of God reconciling “all things” to himself (Col. 1:20) or of Christ’s gift abounding “for all men” as Adam’s sin condemned all (Rom. 5:18).

Objections and Responses

Eternal punishment is unjust because it is disproportionate to sins committed in a finite lifetime. Bavinck answers that sin’s gravity is measured not by the duration of the act but by the majesty of the one sinned against: because God is “absolutely and infinitely worthy of our obedience and dedication,” sin against him carries a weight that finite duration does not exhaust, “committed against the Highest Majesty.”5 He adds that the sinner’s own unrepentant will, left to itself, “would not want anything other than to live forever so that he could sin forever.”5

A loving God would not condemn anyone to unending torment. Bavinck answers that the objection secretly sets God’s goodness against his justice, when Scripture allows no such conflict: “if eternal punishment is unjust, then that condemns it, and one need no longer appeal to God’s goodness. If, however, it is consistent with God’s justice, then God’s goodness remains unscathed: if a thing is just, it is also good.”5

Words like “destroy,” “perish,” and “death” show that the wicked cease to exist rather than suffer forever. Hodge answers that these words, applied to the soul throughout Scripture, never mean bare extinction: believers still walking the earth are called “dead” through their trespasses (Eph. 2:1), and the prodigal son, very much alive, is called “dead” and “lost” (Luke 15:24). “Death,” used of the soul, “means alienation or separation from God; and when that separation is final it is eternal death,” not annihilation.7

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 32, “Of the Last Judgment,” para. 2. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 33, “Of the Last Judgment,” para. 2. ↩

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 23, “The Intermediate State.” ↩

  4. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 37, “Death and State of the Soul,” 554-555. ↩

  5. Bavinck, chap. 25, “The Consummation.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VII, chap. 10, “Of the Final State of the Wicked in Hell.” ↩

  7. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 869-870. ↩ ↩2

  8. C. Hodge, 3:868. ↩