How can hell exist

Let them listen to them. Reflection Questions :. The God who offers the sinner pardon, does not promise him tomorrow. Consider this In the Christian tradition, there is told the story of an angel, magnificent in a beauty unmatched in all the heavens. For further reflection Consider prayerfully reading the following Scripture passage: There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. The Church teaches that each of us will face judgment at the moment of our death.

The state of our soul will determine whether we go to heaven, purgatory or hell. How does this parable of Jesus support or undermine this teaching? What does this passage suggest about the finality of hell? How might this passage help you discuss the reality of hell with someone who believes everyone will be saved in the end?

Who said the following? Wolfrand B St. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.

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These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. After sorting through the fish, he keeps the good ones and throws the others out. They just die. Or the kingdom is like a person who gathers up the plants that have grown in his field Matthew He keeps the good grain, but tosses the weeds into a fiery furnace.

They are consumed by fire and then are no more. Still other passages may seem to suggest that Jesus believe in hell. Most notably Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment Matthew Some are said to be sheep, and the others goats.

The good sheep are those who have helped those in need — the hungry, the sick, the poor, the foreigner. So the punishment is annihilation. Because the fire never goes out. The flames, not the torments, go on forever. Because it will never end. These people will be annihilated forever. And so, Jesus stood in a very long line of serious thinkers who have refused to believe that a good God would torture his creatures for eternity.

But the torments of hell were not preached by either Jesus or his original Jewish followers; they emerged among later gentile converts who did not hold to the Jewish notion of a future resurrection of the dead.

These later Christians came out of Greek culture and its belief that souls were immortal and would survive death. From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul. Even though the human body dies, the human soul both will not and cannot. Later Christians who came out of gentile circles adopted this view for themselves, and reasoned that if souls are built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well.

It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment. It was a strange hybrid, a view held neither by the original Christians nor by ancient Greek intelligentsia before them.

Socrates himself expressed the idea most memorably when on trial before an Athenian jury on capital charges. Socrates openly declares that he sees no reason to fear the death sentence. On the contrary, he is rather energized by the idea of passing on from this life.

For Socrates, death will be one of two things. On one hand, it may entail the longest, most untroubled, deep sleep that could be imagined. On the other hand, it may involve a conscious existence. That too would be good, even better. It would mean carrying on with life and all its pleasures but none of its pain. And so the afterlife presents no bad choices, only good ones. Death was not a source of terror or even dread.

Twenty-four centuries later, with all our advances in understanding our world and human life within it, surely we can think that that both Jesus and Socrates had a lot of things right.

Jesus taught that in this short life we have, we should devote ourselves to the welfare of others, the poor, the needy, the sick, the oppressed, the outcast, the alien. We should listen to him. But Socrates was almost certainly right as well. None of us, of course, knows what will happen when we pass from this world of transience. But his two options are still the most viable.

Revelation , which implies that the penalty inflicted will be commensurate with the evil done. But, across the centuries, defenders of ECT have emphasized that sin is not something that can be measured by how it affects others. If they do these things against God, do they deserve capital punishment? The Bible's consistent answer is yes. Mark Galli , the editor of Christianity Today , points to Psalm 51 , where David expresses remorse for adultery and his complicity in murder. We realize there's something else we've violated here.

That something else is a moral code that transcends us. And that moral code, of course, is written by God. Preston Sprinkle recalls, with embarrassment, his younger days in seminary, when he first heard that the evangelical leader John Stott was an annihilationist. But, back six years ago, when I truly revisited the question of hell, I was kind of shocked at how little biblical support there was for the traditional view.

Nor do they claim to advocate for a version of hell that represents a soft view on sin or a low view of God. We fight tooth and nail to preserve our lives at all costs.

But traditionalists remain steadfast in their belief that ECT is a pillar of evangelical faith, and some worry that weakening it threatens to bring down the entire edifice. A traditionalist view of hell, however, does not necessarily mean fire and brimstone. But Jesus does talk about it as a reality and he doesn't seem to have any doubts about it. How can you have a place that's bereft of God and yet it exists for eternity?

That's kind of a theological impossibility. So, where do most evangelicals stand on the issue of hell? Sprinkle and Date suggest that it is difficult to know, since people are reluctant to publicly challenge traditional views. Still, the debate over hell shows no sign of dissipating among evangelical scholars. If anything, the scope of the discussion appears to be expanding. Sprinkle, who recently co-edited a book, Four Views on Hell , raised theological eyebrows when he included an essay by theologian Robin Parry defending universalism—the view that all people will eventually be saved.

For his part, Mark Galli believes that many evangelicals will choose to accept that hell is a paradox that can never be fully understood. One can move forward, happily, and live with that mystery.

From ancient Greece to the birth of Christianity, to medieval Europe and modern America, visit real locations believed to be portals to the underworld and witness a hair-raising vision of hell come to life. All rights reserved.