Chapter 5 – Everlasting Prison: Luke and Mark

I recently revised my book on hell and I’ve decided to post the updated chapters on this site. This is much more than a tour through the underworld. The Christian doctrine of hell drives us to take a closer look at Scripture, church history, and the character of God.

If you downloaded a previous Kindle version, you can get the updated version by following these steps.

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I remember hearing how an elementary teacher scared one of her students into saying the Sinner’s Prayer. (The Sinner’s Prayer is an informal prayer used to help people accept Christ into their lives.) “You don’t want to go to hell, do you? It will be hot and painful and you won’t be able to get out.” Unsurprisingly, the student repeated the prayer with her.

That story upset me. It was pure manipulation and it was wrong for an adult to do that to a child. I can’t imagine Jesus talking to a kid that way.

But in the teacher’s defense, if hell is an everlasting prison cell, shouldn’t we warn people about it? They really won’t ever be able to escape.

In the previous reflection, I presented a positive case for annihilationism. But what about the many Scriptures used to support eternal conscious torment (ECT) or infernalism? Let’s take a closer look at a few of these passages.

Lazarus and the Rich Man

In Luke 16 Jesus tells a story that has been frequently used to reinforce the traditional idea of hell. In the story a beggar named Lazarus used to sit a rich man’s gate “longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table” (v. 21). When Lazarus died, he was taken to Abraham’s side where he dwelled in comfort. But when the rich man died, he found himself in torment in a place called Hades (v. 23). So he calls to Abraham, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire” (v. 24). But Abraham replies that there is a great chasm between them so no one can traverse between the two places.

The description of Hades sounds like eternal conscious torment, but does it contain all of the necessary elements? Is an­y­thing missing?

Since the man who died says, “I am in agony in this fire” (v. 24) and calls his dwelling, “this place of torment” (v. 28), the story checks a few boxes. This is an afterlife scene with a deceased human who is conscious and suffering. But something is missing. How long will his experience of torment continue? It doesn’t say.

Moreover, the rich man is in Hades. Hades refers to the grave, the realm of the dead, or the underworld. Calling it “the underworld” doesn’t mean that it is literally underground. It means that it is “a spiritual reality, not mappable on geographic or cosmographic terms.”[i] Hades is the Greek counterpart to the Hebrew Sheol. What is Sheol?

Here are a few examples of how Sheol is used in the Hebrew Bible. Thinking his son Joseph died, Jacob laments, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (Gen 37:35 NRSV). The Psalmist writes, “my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol” (Ps 88:3 NRSV) and “Who can live and never see death? Who can escape the power of Sheol?” (89:48 NRSV). It’s difficult to determine if Sheol merely means death or a shadowy world where the dead exist. As a result, English translations use a variety of terms, such as “the realm of the dead,” “the grave,” or simply “Sheol.”

Some verses make it clear that Hades was used as the equivalent for Sheol. For instance, “you do not give me up to Sheol” (Ps 16:10) enters the Greek New Testament as “you will not abandon my soul to Hades” (Acts 2:27 NRSV).

So what is Hades? Luke 16 paints it in dark and fiery colors. But the book of Revelation adds: “death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death” (Rev 20:14). Hades, then, is not eternal. It will be destroyed.

Moreover, in Revelation 1 Christ says, “I hold the keys of death and Hades” (v. 18). So Christ can open the doors of the underworld and many early church leaders believed he did just that as we will see in chapter 12.

In addition, we must consider the genre of the story. Is it a historical narrative or a parable? Many scholars argue that this story is a myth or parable for the following reasons. First, it is preceded by several parables in Luke 15 and 16. In fact, Luke 16 even begins with another parable that opens with the same words, “There was a rich man” (v. 1). Second, the story contains unusual features, such as the rich man communicating with Abraham in a different realm. Will people in heaven really be able to talk to people in Hades or is that not the point of the story? And third, scholars have noted similarities between this story and Jewish myths and Egyptian folk tales.[ii] The British Evangelical Alliance report on hell, which supports the traditional view along with conditionalism, says:

From a literary critical perspective, most now recognize that it is based on a well-established Near Eastern folk tale, of which several versions had been produced in Jewish literature at the time, and in which the central concerns were avarice, stewardship and pride rather than the mechanics of heaven and hell.[iii]

In light of these reasons, viewing this unearthly story as a parable or something like a parable makes the most sense.

Why does the genre matter? Because Jesus told a lot of parables and we don’t argue about other parable details as if they conveyed historical facts. Parables contain elements that exist to fill out the story, like the background of a painting. The point, however, is found in the foreground. What’s the point of this story? God’s judgment is not the same as ours. Although the rich man looked blessed in this world, the poor beggar was the one who received God’s ultimate blessing.

So why has this story been used to support the traditional view of hell? Probably because the King James Bible of 1611 renders hades as hell: “And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom” (v. 23). But many scholars today are convinced that hell is a poor translation of the Greek word hades. Hence several modern Bible versions leave hades as “Hades” (ESV, HCSB, NASB, NET, NIV, NRSV), including the New King James Version: “And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom” (v. 23). Other versions use “the place of the dead” (CEB, NCV, NLT, VOICE), and still others retain the word “hell” with a footnote explaining that it’s the Greek word for Hades (CEV, TLB).

Worms and Unquenchable Fire

Hell is frequently associated with fire and many have used Jesus’ words in Mark 9, and its parallel statements in Matthew, as support for that imagery. Mark writes,

And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where

  “the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.”

Everyone will be salted with fire. (vv. 47–49)

Did Jesus just say that the wicked will suffer in everlasting fire and be eaten by eternal worms? What kind of prison cell is this? Some link the apocryphal book Judith, written about a century before Christ, to this concept. After Israel defeated the Assyrian army, Judith sings:

Woe to the nations that rise up against my kindred! the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh; and they shall feel them, and weep for ever. (16:17 KJV)

While many believe Jesus is referring to an eternal torture chamber, his statement in verse 48 is a direct quote from the end of Isaiah:

And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind. (66:24)

Isaiah is referring to literal “dead bodies” that will be eaten by worms and burned. Why do we think Jesus is teaching about something else? Because he uses the word hell, right? We will analyze Jesus’ statements later, but for now, it’s important to note that the Greek word translated as hell is Gehenna. And Gehenna was an actual valley outside the walls of Jerusalem where Roman soldiers threw dead bodies when they conquered the city in AD 70.

But what about a place where “the fire is not quenched” in verse 48? Doesn’t that mean the fire will burn forever so that whatever goes into the fire burns forever? No, it says “the fire is not quenched,” it doesn’t say that what goes into the fire burns forever. John Stott writes, “The fire itself is termed ‘eternal’ and ‘unquenchable,’ but it would be very odd if what is thrown into it proves indestructible.”[iv] An unquenchable fire burns until everything is destroyed. In fact, John the Baptist makes this connection explicit in his message to the Pharisees and Sadducees: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt 3:12).

John the Baptist’s reference to unquenchable fire was not unique. The prophets before him gave a similar warning:

• The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire. (Is 1:31)
• Say to the southern forest: “Hear the word of the This is what the sovereign Lord says: I am about to set fire to you, and it will consume all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched, and every face from south to north will be scorched by it.” (Ezek 20:47)
• Seek the Lord and live, or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire; it will devour them, and Bethel will have no one to quench it. (Amos 5:6)
• Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place—on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the crops of your land—and it will burn and not be quenched. (Jer 7:20)

Rather than referring to eternal flames in the world to come, Israel’s prophets were warning of physical destruction in this world: “it will consume all your trees” . . . “on man and beast, on the trees of the field and on the crops of your land.”

Summary

The story in Luke 16 is often used to support the traditional view of hell, but it doesn’t mention the duration of the rich man’s suffering, it refers to Hades, and it appears to be a parable. Likewise, Jesus’ statement in Mark 9:47–49 doesn’t describe eternal conscious torment because it doesn’t say that what goes into the fire burns forever. Moreover, recognizing Jesus’ words as a quote from Isaiah encourages readers to connect it with physical devastation. The idea that people will burn forever, then, is an assumption that has been added to the text.

But there must be more passages that support eternal conscious torment, right? Let’s turn our attention now to the big three.

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[i] Emerson, 132.

[ii] Steve Gregg, All You Want To Know About Hell: Three Christian Views of God’s Final Solution to the Problem of Sin (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013), 77–79.

[iii] Cited in Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), chap. 6.

[iv] Stott, 316.