On Hell
I've been thinking about Christian hell a great deal recently, and it doesn't sit right with me. Don't get me wrong – I don't begrudge God's desire to punish evil, but the way Christians have presented it to me is almost cartoonish. "God's plan is to vindicate the righteous and condemn evil," they say. But, of course, there are no righteous: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," says Paul. But there's good news, of course: "in him we might become the righteousness of God." So the heaven/hell divide really has nothing to do with good and evil; everyone is evil, after all, so heaven is simply filled by those who have properly believed in Jesus and repented.
Lots of problems, though: What about those who died as little kids? Or as teenagers, for that matter, before they'd had a chance to learn about Jesus and consider questions of Faith deeply? Or were illiterate, or very dumb, or lived on a desert island and were never preached to? Or lived a proper Christian life, but were never baptized as Mark 16 requires? Maybe the answer is that God is the perfect judge and will make proper adjustments for unusual situations.
C.S. Lewis probably would have agreed with that last statement. His novel The Great Divorce dealt a great deal with hell, and he portrayed it as a place that people damn themselves to – usually because they can't bear to let go of whatever horrible weight they've been carrying and start a new relationship with God. God continues to appeal to them from time to time, and will probably do so as long as there's anything left of them, but it's hopeless more often than not. I like this vision on a moral level, but it's not the one I've had preached to me by Christians.
"God can damn whoever he wants," I've been told. "If he chooses to damn young children because they died without being saved and baptized first, that's his business. Your business is to get on board with his plan and praise him regardless, unless you want to join that kid where he's going." A Bible study group leader I once had didn't quite phrase it like that, but that was the thrust of his argument.
After hearing this kind of thing enough times, I decided that it's time to find out for myself.
In The Beginning...
One striking thing about Biblical hell is how late it shows up. When God enters into a covenant with Abraham, he frames it as a worldly matter. God would give to Abraham and his descendants "the whole land of Canaan," make them a "great nation," and enter into an "everlasting covenant" with them. Abraham himself would be made "the father of many nations." Kings would come from him, and God would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him.
These are all physical blessings that were going to happen to living people in this physical world. God's judgement is also portrayed as a purely physical affair. When the Israelites made their golden calf, their punishment was that the Levites slaughtered about 3,000 of them. God sent a plague, too, for good measure. When they again turned to idol worship (a favorite pastime of theirs), God gave them over to slaughter by the neighboring tribes. In other cases, he sent famines, plagues, and droughts.
It's not just Israel who got this treatment, either. When other nations in the land of Canaan gave themselves over to evil, God said to Abraham that “in the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” In other words, after their second chances run out, I'll hand them over to you to destroy by the sword.
And when Sodom and Gomorrah's sins grew to be too much:
The Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah... he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land ... Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place ... and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. (Genesis 19)
In other words, their punishment was destruction by fire. By now, you should be seeing a pattern: obedience leads to physical prosperity, and evil leads to physical punishment. There's no hell, no heaven, no life-after-death, no resurrection, it's not even hinted at in this stage of their development.
The First Hints
Isaiah 26 is a song about a day in the future when God finally intervenes to impose his justice on the world. It's filled with hope about everything being set right someday, and it culminates with this:
But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise—
let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy.
It's just a hint, a notion of resurrection. It's the first one ever (as far as I can tell), and it comes from Isaiah probably 600 years after the Covenant began (maybe longer). To get something more substantial, we have to wait another 500 years. Here's the Prophet Daniel, writing around the Maccabean crisis in 165 BC:
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12)
This is the first notion we have that some people will be resurrected into punishment. It's still a relatively mild punishment – no torture, just shame and contempt. We're now over 1,000 years into the Covenant relationship between God and Israel.
Just imagine the implications here if hell (as we understand it today) is real. God makes his covenant with Abraham, gives the Law to Moses, and Judea/Israel is established. He teaches His people that the rewards for righteousness, justice, and obedience are entirely physical, as are the punishments for disobedience – but secretly, he's been shoveling the plurality of them into everlasting torture after their deaths without so much as a warning. He then keeps doing this for over 1,000 years, and no prophet, not even Isaiah, gets so much as a hint of it.
And when the hints do start trickling out, they're pretty mild. Mostly a line or two in a poem. Maybe the righteous alone will resurrect, so they can dance with joy. Or maybe the evil ones will resurrect also, so they can weep with shame. Nothing more.
A New Worldview
Judea's perspectives start to change after Greek thought begins to dominate in the region. Though the idea of conscious torment after death (whether temporary or eternal) never makes it into the Old Testament, we start to see it in important Jewish writings outside of scripture. For example, here is 1 Enoch 22 (written maybe 200BC, shortened by me):
Then Raphael, one of the holy angels, said unto me: 'These hollow places have been created that the spirits of the dead should assemble therein ... till the day of their judgement.' Then I asked regarding all the hollow places: 'Why is one separated from the other?' And he answered: 'These have been made that the spirits of the dead might be separated. And such a division has been make (for) the spirits of the righteous, in which there is the bright spring of water. And such has been made for sinners. Here their spirits shall be set apart in this great pain till the great day of judgement and punishment and torment of those who curse for ever and retribution for their spirits.
There are other texts that show up around this time period, all pointing to the same thing – look up 4 Ezra 7 and 2 Baruch if you're curious – but they all have certain qualities in common: the immediate afterlife is portrayed like the life of a prisoner who couldn't make bail. He sits in jail awaiting trial, being tormented all the while. In all of the texts, the "day of judgement" will end their immediate suffering, but the judgement itself could involve still more suffering, or it could involve destruction.
Note that this framework is totally different from the visions the Prophets saw. The Prophets' visions had no conception of a spirit separate from the body, and they assumed that a resurrection had to happen before the dead could either dance or weep. These new Jewish writers have invented the idea of a holding cell where the dead await final judgement, but the torture has already begun before the verdict is even rendered.
If you're wondering whether it's a coincidence that this idea happened to enter Jewish thought at about the same time that the dominant social and political power in the region began exporting it, then all I can say is that it occurred to me, too.
What About Jesus?
Jesus comes onto the scene at a time when his audience is already familiar with these ideas through their day-to-day life. Greek ideas about disembodied conscious torment had permeated Jewish society, and Jewish versions of these concepts had sprouted up, as I cited above. Some of them argued that the torment was temporary (until final judgement), others suggested that it was permanent in some cases. When Jesus started teaching on the subject, he was not telling his audience anything they hadn't heard before, though he was mediating between competing visions and picking a winner.
In the remainder of this essay, I hope to persuade you that Jesus's view was this: After death, the righteous will be at peace, and the wicked might experience torment (though I doubt it). Then final judgement will come, and everyone will be raised and judged. Those that he chooses will enter His Kingdom, and the rest will be destroyed forever.
Unquenchable Fire
Before we can get there, though, we need to understand something about the language Jesus was using. His audience's worldview was, by this point, a mixture of Jewish scriptures and Greek and Roman philosophy, and he alluded to concepts from both.
The "unquenchable fire" (and its cousin, the "eternal fire") were Old Testament concepts that would have been familiar to his audience, but can easily confuse a modern reader. About 1600 years of Church history have caused us to associate eternal, unquenchable fire with torment in hell, but for someone raised on Torah, it would have been synonymous with God's judgement and the destruction of evil.
Unfortunately, words and phrases can drift like that – consider that "martyr" initially meant "witness" but became so associated with dying for one's faith that it now means exclusively that and gets read that way into every text where it appears, whether the author intended it or not.
Now with that in mind, let's consider what "unquenchable fire" meant to an Old Testament audience. Recall that Sodom and Gomorrah were hit with a rain of burning sulfur, which "destroyed all those living in the cities."
The Old Testament is actually replete with fire imagery, all of it pointing to destruction of the living rather than torment of the dead. Here is Jeremiah 17, for example:
This is what the Lord says: Be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. ... but if you do not obey me to keep the Sabbath day holy, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses.
The people ignored God's warning, and the Babylonians delivered the punishment as promised:
He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. (2 Kings 25)
An unquenchable fire is not one that never goes out, as we can see – rather, it's a fire that that brings the finality of God's judgement, and will not be put out before it has consumed its target.
Here's another example in which God takes revenge on Edom, a historical enemy:
Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning sulfur; her land will become blazing pitch! It will not be quenched night or day; its smoke will rise forever. (Isaiah 34)
This is another unquenchable fire, and we can see that these terms are hyperbole meant to signify the finality of God's judgement. Obviously, the fires in that region are not literally burning to this day.
One last example, where God destroys his enemies:
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. (Isaiah 66)
This kind of language was fresh in the memories of 1st century Jews. Here's Matthew 3, talking about a similar kind of unquenchable fire:
I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire... he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
There are more examples of this kind of rhetorical device (e.g. Malachi 4, Ezekiel 20), but hopefully you've noticed the pattern: language like "fire that will not be quenched" and "smoke that will rise forever" and "worms that will not die" is hyperbole meant to emphasize the totality and finality of God's destruction of his chosen target, not that the fire is still burning today.
Also, these are all physical fires that destroy physical buildings and people.
Jesus' 3-Step Program
Once more, Jesus' plan for the end times involves 3 steps that everyone will go through (not counting those who are alive to see His return): death; resurrection; and judgement leading to either salvation through His Kingdom or final destruction.
Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. (John 5)
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (Luke 14)
And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. (John 6)
So first he will raise them up, and then he will judge everyone and give them either eternal life or destruction:
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Cor 5)
There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. (John 12)
The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13)
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' " (Matthew 25)
Fear him who can destroy both soul and body... (Matthew 10)
Remember what fire (including eternal fire) does in the Old Testament: it destroys. That's what will happen to the weeds in Matthew 13. No doubt the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" is that of people who have had their sentence read to them, but the judgement was not yet carried out.
And, of course, the most famous Bible verse of all confirms this, implying that those who don't receive eternal life will perish:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3)
Does Paul Agree?
Paul repeatedly makes it clear that those who don't enter the Kingdom are slated for death and destruction:
For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. (Phil 3)
He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction... (2 Thess 1)
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6)
Do The Other Epistles Agree?
Many are focused on other things, so we don't know what they would say on this issue, but there is this:
...if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly ... if this is so, then the Lord knows how to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. (2 Peter 2)
So again, the "punishment" involves destruction by "burning them to ashes."
Do Early Church Fathers Agree?
Most early Church fathers did agree that destruction awaits those who are not saved – the belief in eternal torment did not become popular until 200AD or so. For example, Irenaeus in "Against Heresies" argues that eternal life is reserved only for the saved and will be withheld from everyone else, causing them to cease to exist:
Life does not arise from us, nor from our own nature; but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. And therefore he who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days for ever and ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker ... deprives himself of [the privilege of] continuance for ever and ever ... those who, in this brief temporal life, have shown themselves ungrateful to him who bestowed it, shall justly not receive from him length of days for ever and ever. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.34.3)
Tertullian (around 200AD) was actually the first major Church father to switch sides and argue that eternal torment is real. His writing was instrumental in redefining the idea of "eternal fire" away from its Jewish roots of destruction, and towards the way the Church now sees it.
the profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner shall be consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire – it does not consume what it scorches, but while it burns it repairs ... a person is kept safe from any destroying flame. (Tertullian, Apology, Ch 48)
He actually goes on to argue that it will be a common pastime in heaven to go and watch the torture take place, and the he will personally take great delight in it:
Which rouses me to exultation? ... as I see so many illustrious monarchs groaning now in the lowest darkness, and those, too, who bore witness of their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity ... in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire. What priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favour of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Whatever they are, they are nobler, I believe, than circus, and both theatres, and every race-course. (Tertullian, De Spectaculis, Ch 30)
Very Christian, indeed.
But What About The Rich Man and Lazarus?
This is where it gets tricky, and it's easy for the modern reader to misunderstand. The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus occurs once in the gospels – Luke 16 – and tells of a rich man who ignores the beggar camped outside his gate. The beggar dreams of the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, but gets nothing.
The rich man dies and enters Hades, the realm of the dead from Greek mythology (Hades was where everyone went when they died, it wasn't typically a place of punishment). He is tormented by fire, and like the beggar who was deprived in life, he now gets no water to soothe him and is left with no choice but to endure what comes. "I am in agony in this fire," he says, causing many Christians to think that this is what hell is like.
But remember Jesus's 3 step plan: What's coming next for the rich man is resurrection and judgement. Assuming he does not properly repent – or that it's too late – he will be slated for "everlasting destruction," as both Paul and Jesus said.
But Aren't There Some Bible Verses That Make It Sound Like Eternal Torture is Coming?
Let's go through them.
Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1)
In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)
Remember what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah: they were slated for destruction using God's preferred weapon in the Old Testament: eternal fire. And remember what 2 Peter 2 said: Sodom and Gomorrah's punishment was to burn them to ashes, which is what the eternal fire did (right before it went out).
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25)
Like the Rich Man and Lazarus, this one tricks a lot of people. But remember how 2 Thess 1 said that "they will be punished with everlasting destruction?" That's the same thing Jesus is getting at here, and it's consistent with the rest of his message. The punishment is still destruction, and that destruction is "everlasting" or "eternal", meaning that it's final, irreversible and will not be stopped.
But Didn't Jesus Specifically Mention "hell"?
First century Jews didn't have a concept of "hell" like ours. This is where the Bible's translators did the modern reader a disservice, because any conceptions of hell that are popular in the reader's time and place get read back into the text.
The word that most commonly gets translated as "hell" is gehenna. Gehenna was actually a physical location just outside Jerusalem where Jews used to offer child sacrifices to the "gods" of Judea's neighbor countries – essentially, a place of evil, corruption, and decay. By the 1st century, though, it was synonymous with God's judgement.
Jesus always used it in that way, referring to the coming destruction. For example:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in gehenna [hell]. (Matthew 10)
You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to gehenna [hell]? (Matthew 23)
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 gehenna [hell], where the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9)
Again, recall that the "unquenchable fire" and "worms that do not die" are familiar Old Testament imagery for total physical destruction.
But Wasn't "Sheol" the Old Testament Afterlife?
"Sheol" is a common word for death (or "the grave") in the Old Testament, but it is not an afterlife and it is definitely not heaven or hell. Consider these verses, which are the few times we get a useful description of Sheol:
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. (Ecc 9)
For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise? (Psalm 6)
Sheol is definitely not hell because there are no references to suffering happening there. It is definitely not heaven because, as we see above, no one will either praise God or have wisdom there. And it's definitely not a unified afterlife (where everyone goes) because then, at least some residents would be receiving wisdom and praising God.
The Ecclesiastes 9 verse above is part of a larger passage that can be summarized like this: Whatever work you are called to, do it now. Whatever joys your heart yearns for, take them now. Whatever way you want to praise God, do it now. For in Sheol, you will have none of these things. You will know nothing; do nothing; even the praise of God will be silent because there will be nothing left of you but dust.
Sheol is not an afterlife– it is merely "the grave."
But What About The Book of Revelation?
First, a little bit of background: by around the 3rd century BC, Greek culture was absolutely dominant in the region surrounding Judea/Israel. That the Septuagint (Greek Torah) was the most important version of Torah by this point should tell you something – the Jews were primarily reading their own holy scriptures in Greek! No doubt many of them were studying Homer and Plato, too.
Hades was the realm of the dead in Greek mythology. It was primarily a place of quiet (but conscious) rest, but it had special walled-off sections. Tartarus is one of them: it's a special place of torment within Hades, initially used by Zeus to hold the defeated Titans when the Gods of Olympus overthrew them. Just to be clear, this wasn't about justice; it was merely the winners of a war imprisoning the losers.
Zeus later expanded the scope of Tartarus, and threatened to put there any Gods who disobeyed him. Here is Homer's Illiad:
“Hearken unto me, all ye gods and goddesses... Let not any god ... thwart my word, but do ye all alike assent thereto, that with all speed I may bring these deeds to pass. Whomsoever I shall mark minded apart from the gods ... I shall take and hurl him into murky Tartarus... (Illiad, Book 8 - 750 BC)
And now here's 2 Peter 2:
God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to Tartarus, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment...
...ok, this is pretty blatant plagiarism. If you look this up in your own Bible, it'll probably say God sent those angels to "hell", but the original really does say Tartarus. Even the chains are standard Greek imagery.
The Greek idea of Tartarus later gets expanded again, this time to hold the sinful.
There are also incurable sinners, who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious crimes; these suffer everlastingly. (Plato, Gorgias - 380 BC)
It even has a river of fire:
“Just in front the gaping jaws of Tartarus open, a sheer cliff overhung by black rock, where a river, Phlegethon, of fire, rolls along with echoing boulders, whirling flames with it. Here is heard the crash of groaning iron, and the dragging of chains.” (Virgil, Aeneid - 25BC)
Compare to the Book of Revelation:
“If anyone worships the beast ... receives its mark... they will be tormented with burning sulfur." (Rev 14)
And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Rev 20)
As it should be clear by now, the Book of Revelation does contain imagery of eternal torment – it's the only book in the Bible that does (The Rich Man and Lazarus describes temporary torment before judgement). But as it should also be clear, the Book of Revelation borrowed heavily from Greek Tartarus imagery that would have been familiar to its readers.
Since I don't think they were trying to tell us that Tartarus is real, my suspicion is this: The Book of Revelation is primarily a cry to God, begging him to deal with Rome – people wanted to see God's justice done, the virtuous exalted and the evildoers laid low. They hated the evil and corruption that spewed forth from Rome, and were wondering how much longer they'd have to wait before it was destroyed. The Book of Revelation focuses on precisely this, and it leans heavily on Greek afterlife imagery (which would be familiar to its readers) to do it. It's probably meant to emphasize the fact that God will deal with the just and the unjust, not the specific nature of the afterlife.
Conclusion
The Old Testament has absolutely no afterlife imagery – the Prophets would no doubt have agreed that God dispenses justice and mercy here on Earth, to the living, and by-and-large lets the dead rest in peace. However, there are also a few Prophetic hints suggesting that people would be resurrected in the future.
Jesus, Paul, and Peter all repeatedly reaffirm those Old Testament ideas, but focus on that resurrection that had been hinted at by the Prophets Isaiah and Daniel. They explain that God will raise all of the dead, judge them, and either bless them with eternal life in the Kingdom or sentence them to final destruction. They frequently use Old Testament "eternal fire" imagery that would have been synonymous with destruction to their audiences – and just in case it was unclear, they also frequently just use the word "destruction" to describe the fate of the condemned.
There are just two odd exceptions, and they both lean heavily into Greek mythology. Jesus's parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is the first. It appears just once in the Bible – Luke 16 – and its theology is a remarkable departure from what both Jesus and Paul repeatedly attest to everywhere else. No longer are the dead "asleep" as Jesus and Paul have so often said (John 11, 1 Cor 11, 1 Cor 15, 1 Thess 4, Acts 7, 2 Peter 3, etc), they are now very much awake in "Hades" (the Greek afterlife), where the righteous are gathered to the "bosom of Abraham" and the unrighteous endure temporary torment before final judgement. None of these ideas appear anywhere else in the Bible.
The Book of Revelation has its own unique theology, totally different from that preached by Jesus and Paul. Or rather, it has two theologies and can't make up its mind. In one, all of the dead are resurrected and judged (Rev 20), and anyone whose name is not in the Book of Life will be thrown into the "lake of fire", which is the "second death" (suggesting the Jewish idea of destruction). On the other hand, in Rev 14, those who worshipped the beast would be "tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever" (suggesting the Greek idea of eternal torment). Again, none of this is mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.
As I see it, Luke 16's Rich Man and Lazarus and the Book of Revelation are trying to communicate their own ideas about good and evil, not making factual claims about the afterlife. When Jesus told the Rich Man parable, he was probably using familiar "Greek afterlife" imagery to emphasize how ignoring the poor can lead to a sudden reversal of fortune, not attesting to the existence of Greek Tartarus or the conscious suffering associated with it. Similarly, the Book of Revelation was probably about the yearning for justice against Roman corruption and evil, and the author used Roman afterlife imagery as an ironic ending place for Rome's own corrupt leaders.
To claim otherwise raises more problems than it solves. If the Rich Man parable was being literal about the afterlife, it would mean that temporary torment (while awaiting judgement) is real, and that the sequence of events is death, then punishment, then judgement – even though the judgement is now pointless since the harshest sentence has already been carried out, and the destruction to follow (which was supposed to be the primary punishment) is a mercy at that point.
If the Book of Revelation was literally (and correctly) describing the nature of the afterlife, then the problems are even worse. It suggests that Jesus personally sentences many to eternal torture, and then stands there and watches the torture get carried out (Rev 14:10); and that God actively hid this fact from Moses and the prophets for over 1,000 years and then revealed it to Greek philosophers hundreds of years before the Jews heard about it.
No – the best explanation is this:
- The Prophets were right that God primarily deals with the living, not the dead, but that future resurrection is a possibility.
- Jesus, Peter, and Paul were right that global resurrection is coming, and everyone will receive either salvation or destruction.
- The Parable of the Rich Man was primarily about helping the poor, and about sudden reversal of fortune when God gets involved. Jesus used Greek afterlife imagery that would have been familiar to his audience, but he did not intend to suggest that the Realm of Hades is real, nor that torture sometimes happens in it.
- The Book of Revelation was primarily about the future destruction of the Roman Beast (frequently referred to as "Babylon," lest anyone accuse the author of inciting rebellion) – it was not attesting to the reality of Tartarus.
God's eternal punishment of choice is destruction, not torture.