Unquenchable Fire by Ancient Faith Publishing

UNQUENCHABLE

FIRE

The Traditional Christian Teaching about Hell

lawrence r. farley

ancient faith publishing chesterton, indiana

Unquenchable Fire: The Traditional Christian Teaching about Hell Copyright © 2017 by Lawrence R. Farley All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by: Ancient Faith Publishing A Division of Ancient Faith Ministries P.O. Box 748 Chesterton, IN 46304 ISBN: 978-1-944967-18-5 All Old Testament quotations, unless otherwise identified, are from the Orthodox Study Bible, © 2008 by St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology (published by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee) and are used by permission. New Testament quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible, © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., and are used by permission. Printed in the United States of America

Contents Introduction: An Abiding Temptation

Chapter One: The Teaching of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels 12 Chapter Two: Views of Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

Chapter Three: The Witness of St. John and the Preaching of the Apostles 62 Chapter Four: Divine Judgment in the Epistles and in the Apocalypse of St. John 83 Chapter Five: The Fathers of the Church Chapter Six: Origen and His Legacy

116

164

Chapter Seven: The Traditional Teaching in the Culture of the Church 184 Chapter Eight: The Morality of the Churchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Teaching about Hell 196 Chapter Nine: Conditionalism 217 Conclusion: A New Day and Another Gospel 233

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We are told this is a detestable doctrine—and indeed, I too detest it from the bottom of my heart—and are reminded of the tragedies in human life which have come from believing it. Of the other tragedies which come from not believing it we are told less. —C. S. Lewis Let us struggle with all our powers to gain Paradise. The gate is very narrow, and don’t listen to those who say that everyone will be saved. This is a trap of Satan so that we won’t struggle. —St. Paisios the Athonite, d. 1994

Introduction

An Abiding Temptation

hrist’s teaching about the possibility of being lost, bound hand and foot, and cast forever into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, causes thoughtful souls to tremble, seized with a kind of spiritual vertigo and a desire to back quickly away from the precipice of such a terrible possibility. This is precisely the purpose of such teaching. It is terrifying to reflect that time is so weighted with eternity and that our choices made in this age could possibly produce such great and lasting results in the age to come. Accordingly, some have always retreated inwardly from such a doctrine, feeling the desire to find an exit door to escape from such a universe. C. S. Lewis spoke for the common man struggling with this common temptation when he wrote that he detested the doctrine from the bottom of his heart and found it intolerable (in his The Problem of Pain1). But Lewis was too good a scholar to let his emotions rule his head. “It has,” he also wrote, “the full support of Scripture and specially of Our Lord’s own words; it

1 C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 119–120.

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has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.”2 There was nothing for it: though intolerable to our sensibilities, the doctrine was true, and we must somehow cope with it. Not everyone in history has been prepared to follow Lewis and “Christendom,” and throughout the years a number of people have continued to search for an exit from a universe that holds such a terrifying possibility. Some have conducted this search with immense erudition and scholarship. But it seems to me that the engine driving the search is less a cold and objective search of the Scriptures than a desire to evade the teaching and live in a more comfortable and comforting cosmos. One tries the doorknobs to a number of different doors. One door is labeled, “Universalism: All will certainly be saved and enter immediately into joy after death.” Another is labeled, “Universalism: All will eventually be saved, though some will have to suffer for a long age before finally being restored.” Another is labeled, “Universalism: We don’t know if all will be saved, but we sure hope so, and it certainly looks like it.” Yet another is labeled, “Conditional immortality: Not all will be saved, but the lost will be annihilated and cease to exist, and so none will suffer eternally.”3 What all these doors and options have in common is the revulsion with and rejection of the traditional view that the suffering of the lost will be eternal. Such a view is judged morally 2 3

Ibid, p. 118. This view calls itself “conditionalism” because it asserts that the personal immortality of the soul is conditional and can be lost. It is also known as “annihilationism” because it asserts that the unrighteous will be annihilated at the Last Judgment and so cease to exist.

An Abiding Temptation

repugnant, unworthy of God and man. It is too much to bear; it can’t be true. The temptation to retreat from and reject the Church’s traditional teaching about hell is particularly strong in our current culture, which has demonstrably lost its sense of sin. The ancients all agreed that mankind stood condemned before the divine court of the gods or of God. There was still room for theodicy, of course, but everyone felt he needed saving. As Chesterton once observed (in his Orthodoxy4), whether or not there existed miraculous waters which could wash a man’s soul clean, there was no doubt at any rate that he needed washing, and none of the ancients was prepared to deny the indisputable dirt. When Christ commented almost casually in passing that men were evil (Matt. 7:11), His hearers didn’t bat an eye, for everyone knew it was true. This has all changed, and men no longer regard themselves as worthy of condemnation before the throne of divine justice. We have instead long since pronounced, “I’m okay; you’re okay.” The evil in the world is regarded as irrefutable prima facie evidence that God does not exist, or that if He does exist (in the words of Woody Allen in his film Love and Death), He is something of an underachiever. The sense of sinfulness to which evangelists and theologians of previous generations appealed in order to call sinners to repentance has all but vanished. In this brave new world, the idea of being punished at all for sin cannot but sound surreal. Even those acknowledging that mankind is sinful regard eternal punishment as far too severe a penalty for 4

G. K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy,” in Collected Works, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 217.

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such comparatively light infractions and mistakes. To understand all is to forgive all; so what is God’s problem? Such a culture forms a particularly unfortunate matrix in which to approach the Church’s traditional teaching about hell. Everything within and around us pushes us in the direction of resisting this teaching and drives us forward in our search to find another door to escape a cosmos freighted with such terrifying possibilities. Those who resist the traditional teaching are not too sinful, but too sensitive. Their internal radio dial is tuned to the horrifying suffering of the lost in the next world, and not to their horrifying rebellion in this one. This sensitivity not only drives one to find a theological option other than the traditional one; it also produces a kind of insensitivity to the teaching of the Scriptures and the Church. Texts that are perfectly clear (and perfectly frightening) are judged ambiguous, and other texts, genuinely somewhat more ambiguous, are seized upon as perfectly clear in teaching the desired option. One is driven to speak of “a hermeneutic of Pascha” as a lens that makes the total scriptural view yield the desired result, when a more honest approach would confess that for them the issue is not hermeneutically driven at all, but emotionally driven. Like Lewis, we find the traditional view intolerable, but unlike him, we cast about to find alternatives. This desire to find an alternative to the Church’s traditional doctrine concerning hell has grown exponentially in our day, both in its conditionalist form (which seems to be the favored choice among British evangelicals) and in its universalist form (the preferred option among Eastern Orthodox). If each generation and epoch has its own particular errors and heresies,

An Abiding Temptation

it appears that this one is ours. The opponents of the Church’s Tradition bring up to the front line of this debate every argument they can lay their hands on—philosophical sophistry, lexical hairsplitting, emotional rhetoric—even sometimes to the point of maligning those who retain the Tradition as somehow lacking in compassion for the lost. One senses a kind of emotional desperation in the number of straws that are grasped for. It becomes imperative, therefore, to examine what the teaching of the Scriptures and of the interpreting Church actually says. For the matter is not simply one of academic interest. We don’t live solely in ivory towers, but on the field of spiritual battle. The denial of the Church’s traditional teaching has the potential to impede us in our struggle for salvation, as St. Paisios the Athonite observed. In this age we need all the help we can get; we cannot afford the luxury of false teaching. We must of course also try to understand how the traditional teaching of the Church about hell can withstand accusations of being morally repugnant, and so give an answer for the hope that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15). But first we must ascertain what exactly that teaching is. And once we have discovered it, we must cling to it steadfastly and stubbornly, regardless of how successfully we can defend its morality. For our beliefs do not depend upon the results of our own little philosophizing and store of accumulated wisdom, but on the words of Christ and His saints. Moral arguments about the supposed immorality of the doctrine must not be allowed to trump or overturn the teaching of Scripture. If Scripture does teach the eternity of hell, Orthodox Christians must give it their assent. To do

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otherwise is to set up our own limited understanding as the ultimate authority, which is the sin of pride. This present volume attempts to survey the basis of the Church’s traditional teaching about hell. It makes no claims to originality but only to fidelity. We will examine in turn the words of Christ about eternal judgment, and then turn to some views on the subject common in His day that formed the lens through which Christ’s teaching was received by His original audience. Then we will survey the rest of the New Testament, focusing briefly on the parts of it in which the apostolic authors mention eternal judgment, in order to try to grasp its consistent message. The survey must of necessity be cursory, for we are not offering in-depth exegesis but simply running a spotlight over certain texts to highlight the New Testament’s consistent message. We will then turn to the Fathers, bringing them forth each in turn in brief citations, like a procession of witnesses into a courtroom, asking for their testimony about the eternity of divine punishment upon the unrighteous and whether or not their words offer the hope that there will be a final restoration of the lost at the end of time. We then turn to a brief history of Origen and the controversy over apokatastasis that exploded after him in his name. After that, we will try to ascertain the Church’s abiding mind on the topic as expressed in her culture of hymns and icons. We conclude by turning from historical survey to personal reflection, suggesting how the Church’s traditional teaching on hell can be squared with a view that says God loves humankind. And before offering a final word, we will briefly examine the

An Abiding Temptation

conditionalist view, as expressed by its irenic but determined advocate Edward William Fudge. This view represents something of a minority report, but it has enjoyed a not inconsiderable history of its own and should be examined to see if it accords with Christâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teaching and that of many of the Fathers, as it claims to do. We turn first to the words of Christ.

[Chapter One was omitted from this sample page document.]

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Chapter Two

Views of Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

ur Lord was, of course, a supremely competent communicator, and it is unthinkable that He would have spoken in such a way as to be largely misunderstood. Rejected, yes; misunderstood, no. Many of His hearers, for example, rejected His claim to be Messiah and to be divine. But they did not misunderstand Him. The problem lay in the imperfection of their hearts, not in any imperfection of our Lord’s communication. We must therefore ask the question, “How would Christ have been understood when He spoke those words about Gehenna, the undying worm, and unquenchable fire?” We therefore turn to other voices in His cultural times—not because they necessarily possessed tremendous wisdom or prophetic inspiration, but because they formed for His first target audience the lens through which His teaching was viewed and understood. Varied views about divine judgment existed in the years immediately preceding the time of Christ. This is to be expected, since Israel had no central authority that pronounced

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

on what was or was not acceptable and true in Judaism. Indeed, it is better to speak of several “Judaisms” than of a single one. The various schools of thought included those represented by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, and even within these movements one could expect diversity of opinion. Apocalyptic writers and other authors had their views as well. One should beware, therefore, of talking about the Jewish opinion in the time of Christ as if there were a single one. Rather, we must listen to the various voices heard at that time and strive to see how Christ’s words would have been understood. A starting place is the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Old Testament

The Hebrew Old Testament does not dwell much on the fate of men after this life. As we have seen, it was assumed that after death everyone went to Sheol—the underworld, the land of shades. God manifested His power by keeping people alive and well and out of Sheol, thriving in His blessing in the land of the living, offering joyful sacrifice (Ps. 26/27:13; 114/116:9).24 The dead were cut off from His hand, separated from His care (Ps. 87:6/88:5). In the earliest layer of Old Testament reflection, the wicked were punished by being taken away from life early; men of bloodshed and treachery would not live out half their days (Ps. 54:24/55:23). God made them fall to ruin, destroyed 24 In this Israel differed from the Egyptians, who thought much about the underworld and preparing for it. It seems providential that God shielded His people from concerns: first they had to value Him for Himself, and not simply as an instrument of life beyond the grave. I suspect that the slow growth of understanding through the Old Testament centuries was a pedagogical mercy.

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in a moment, swept away by terrors (Ps. 72/73:18–19). Soon enough, however, the question inevitably arose, “Is death therefore stronger than Yahweh? Does His power not extend to Sheol?” Of course the answer was a resounding affirmation of Yahweh’s power: “If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there!” (Ps. 138/139:8). Indeed, even Sheol was naked before God, subject to His sovereignty (Job 26:6). But these confident assertions represented an advance on the earlier understanding. Israel was anchored in this present age, since salvation would at length consist of a work accomplished by Christ “in the midst of the earth” (Ps. 73/74:12).25 Accordingly, the Hebrew word olam (often translated “forever”) is also anchored in this age. It can mean “forever” in the sense of “eternity.” Thus the psalmist says, “From everlasting to everlasting [Heb. meolam ad olam], You are God” (Ps. 89/90:2). But other uses of the term mean something more like “permanently, perpetually”—that is, as permanent as anything ever is in this age. Thus the statute in Exodus 12:1–20 regarding keeping the Passover meal was a statute “throughout your generations [Heb. olam]” (v. 17). This rootedness in the present age meant that most of the Hebrew Old Testament had little or nothing to say about the question of eternal punishment, since the concept of just retributory punishment of an individual beyond this life did not then exist. Wicked individuals were punished by being killed, and once they reached Sheol, the land of the dead, they ended as shades and phantoms, just like everyone else in Sheol.26 25 This verse is used in the Orthodox liturgical tradition for the Feast of the Elevation to describe Christ’s work on the Cross. 26 Thus the Babylonian tyrant descending to Sheol in Is. 14:9f does not

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

The first advance and development of thought regarding the future reward or punishment after death came with Daniel 12:2. The Book of Daniel (however one dates it) deals at length with Israel’s suffering, especially at the hands of the tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes (referred to in the visions as the “little horn”; compare Dan. 8:9–14). The martyrdoms he caused in Israel were something new: men had been slain in battle before, dying for resisting foreign powers, but this was the first time men had died solely for their faith. It provoked tremendous national trauma and was responsible for the writing of four separate books, known now as First through Fourth Maccabees.27 These events also provoked a theological crisis: good men had died for their God, cut down in their youth, while wicked men lived out their lives. Where was God’s justice in all this? The answer was sought in the age to come. At the end, “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting [Heb. olam] life, and some to disgrace and everlasting [Heb. olam] shame” (Dan. 12:2). Given that both the life and disgrace/shame take place after the resurrection of those who slept in the dust of the earth, it seems clear that here olam should indeed be translated “everlasting.” This verse, in fact, formed the original gateway to a broad field of speculation, writing, and reflection regarding the fate of the righteous and the unrighteous in the age to come. We look undergo any particular torment or punishment there for his sins; his punishment consisted of his death and of his corpse being left unburied (vv. 19–20). 27 3 Maccabees, though not detailing the struggles in Palestine under the Syrian Antiochus directly, still drew its inspiration from those difficult days.

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first at the books of the Anaginoskomena (also called the “deuterocanonical books” and the “apocrypha”). These books vary in their treatments of the fate of the soul after death, as is only to be expected.

The Later Books of Wisdom of Sirach, Tobit, and the Wisdom of Solomon

With these later books, we see a development of reflection regarding the fate of the soul after death, though of course the development is not consistent or chronological. The Wisdom of Sirach (technically, “The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach”) represents the distilled and collected wisdom of Joshua ben Sira, who was probably a scribe teaching in Jerusalem about 180 BC. His work, written in Hebrew, was translated into Greek by his grandson shortly after 132 BC. The viewpoint found there is the old traditional one, which seems to view death as the final end, when the departed rested in Sheol. Thus the fate of the impious is described as “decay and worms” (19:3), with no thought of additional punishment. The assembly of the wicked will be consumed by God just as tow is consumed by fire; the way of sinners may be smooth and easy, “but at its end is the pit of Hades” (21:9–10). Death is pronounced a better fate than a miserable and unhappy life of chronic sickness, for death constitutes “eternal rest” (30:17). The author counsels moderation in mourning for the dead, saying, “When the dead man is at rest, let his remembrance cease, / And be comforted for him in the exodus of his spirit” (38:23). In this work we can find no evidence of concern for one’s future

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

fate in the age to come. It does not represent much development over the classical period of the Old Testament. The Book of Tobit, written about the same time during the second century BC, represents a similar view of the fate of the departed. Its concerns center entirely upon matters of this life. When the author suffers grief and prays to God, he says, “Command that my spirit be taken up, so I may be released and become soil, since it is better for me to die than to live. . . . Command that I be freed from distress to now enter into the eternal place” (Tob. 3:6). We find here no thought of either consolation or punishment in the future life. The Wisdom of Solomon may have been written in the first century BC. Its probable author was a Hellenistic Jew, possibly writing from Alexandria. Here we see some advance, for the righteous experience God’s blessing after death: But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, And no torture will ever touch them. . . . For though in man’s view they were punished, Their hope is full of immortality. . . . In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, And they will run about like sparks through straw. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, And the Lord shall reign over them unto the ages. (W.Sol. 3:1, 4, 7–8)

Thus the author anticipates the final triumph of the righteous, but provides few or no details about the final fate of the wicked. All that is said of the ungodly is that their hope “Is like dust carried by the wind / And like a light frost driven away by a

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storm, / It is dispersed like smoke before the wind, / And it passes like the remembrance of a guest / Who stays only one day” (W.Sol. 5:14). The “righteous,” however, “live forever, / And their reward is with the Lord; / And their care is by the Most High. / Therefore they shall receive a kingly dwelling of dignity / And a crown of beauty from the hand of the Lord ” (W.Sol. 5:15–16). This reversal takes place on the day when the Lord “as His full armor / And will turn His creation into weapons against His enemies . . . . And creation will fight with Him against the senseless” (W.Sol. 5:17, 20). It seems, therefore, given the context of a final battle in this world, that the reward of the righteous takes place on this earth and not in the life to come. Mention of immortality (3:4) and reference to ruling over nations (3:8) suggests a resurrection for the righteous, though it is not explicitly affirmed. Regardless of the precise details, the book does represent a development, since the fate of the righteous after death was a matter of great concern to the author.

The Books of 2 Maccabees, Judith, 4 Maccabees

With the Book of 2 Maccabees we see a further advance and a development of interest in the fate of those in the age to come. This work, like 1 Maccabees, recounts the struggles of the Maccabees against the Syrian tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes. It was probably written about the first century BC. It is somewhat less rigorously historical in orientation than 1 Maccabees and more open to colorful legend and the supernatural. In the central portion of the book, we find an account of the martyrdom of seven brothers and their mother. Each of the

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

brothers in turn is given the opportunity to renounce his Jewish faith and embrace a more Hellenistic (and pagan) lifestyle. Each in turn refuses, makes a speech of sorts, and is martyred. These speeches reveal the view of the author and represent at least one view current in the first century. The second brother, for example, rather than eat unclean food, accepts torture and dies, saying, “You accursed wretch! You set us free from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us to an everlasting renewal of life, because we die for His laws” (2 Macc. 7:9). The fourth brother makes a similarly defiant speech: “One may be chosen to die at the hands of men and to look for the hope that God gives of being raised again by Him. But for you there shall be no resurrection to life” (v. 14). The fate of doom for the tyrant seems confined to this world—one brother declares that the tyrant will “behold how [God’s] mighty power will torture you and your seed,” presumably in this life (v. 17), and another brother declares to the tyrant “But do not think that you shall be innocent for trying to fight against God!” (v. 19). Compared with the clear assertions of resurrection for the righteous, it appears the author held the view that only the godly would be raised to life.28 But given that the resurrection of the righteous is consistently stressed in the stories and presented as a commonplace hope, this book represents a greater advance over the classic Old Testament understanding. 28 It is possible to read the assertion of v. 14 that for the tyrant “there will be no resurrection to life” as allowing that there will be instead a resurrection to judgment, but given their attitude of hostile defiance to the tyrant, it seems odd that they would have missed the opportunity to say that this would be his fate if they believed it.

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The Book of Judith represents an even further advance over the older, less apocalyptic approach. It was written around the second century BC and is an historical romance, purporting to tell the heroic story of Judith as she resists the pagan invaders. The song of thanksgiving placed in her mouth at the conclusion of the book climaxes with an imprecation on all the nations who would dare to oppress God’s people: “Woe to the nations that rise up against My people; / The Lord Almighty will punish them on the day of judgment; / He will give them over to fire and worms in their flesh; / In pain they shall weep forever” (Jdt. 16:17). The reference to fire and worms, of course, was inspired by Isaiah 66:24, but the divine vengeance is firmly planted in the age to come, after “the day of judgment.” Unlike Isaiah 66:24, which concerns the corpses of the slain, here the author envisions judgment on the souls of the ungodly, saying “in pain they shall weep forever.” We discern here the beginning of a specific trajectory, affirming the acute consciousness of both the righteous and the unrighteous after death. This view of the consciously felt eternal punishment of the wicked is also emphasized in the Book of 4 Maccabees, written in the first century AD,29 making it almost exactly contemporaneous with Christ. In recounting the martyrdom of the seven brothers, the author narrates the defiant speech of the elder brother: “Tyrant, put us to the test . . . for we, through this severe suffering and endurance, shall have the prize of virtue and shall be with God for whom we suffer; but you, because of 29 4 Maccabees 4:2 mentions how Apollonius was governor of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia, and Cilicia was not added to the others as one province until AD 20–54, so the text must date from that time.

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

your bloodthirstiness toward us, will deservedly undergo from the divine justice eternal torment by fire” (4 Macc. 9:7–9). This emphatic assertion of eternal suffering for the ungodly persecutor comes in a speech given by the youngest brother: “Justice has laid up for you [O king] intense and eternal fire and tortures and these throughout all time will never let you go” (4 Macc. 12:12). This fate is referred to in 10:15 as “eternal destruction” [Gr. olethron aionion]. We also read of the speeches the brothers make encouraging each other, saying, “Let us not fear him who thinks he is killing us, for great is the struggle of the soul and the danger of eternal torment lying before those who transgress the commandment of God” (4 Macc. 13:14–15). Taking these passages together, the view contained in this book constitutes a vigorous assertion that the ungodly such as Antiochus Epiphanes will be punished by suffering torture forever in the fire.

The Book of 2 Esdras

Finally, we look at the apocalyptic book of 2 Esdras, often included in the Orthodox canon of the Old Testament.30 (It is sometimes referred to as 3 Ezra or 4 Ezra.) This is a complex and composite book, with later chapters added to both the beginning and the end of the original core of chapters 3–14. This original Jewish core probably dates from the first century A.D. It consists of a set of apocalyptic visions containing the perplexed questions of “Salathiel [i.e. Shealtiel] who am also called Ezra” (3:1), which are answered by visions from the angels. In these visions we learn the fate of the wicked. We shall 30 Kallistos Ware, in his classic The Orthodox Church, in a note on the Orthodox acceptance of the “apocrypha” as Scripture, includes it under the title “3 Esdras.”

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quote it at length, for it represents the fullest example of eschatological thought at the time of Christ. In 2 Esdras 7:32f we find a long revelation about the age to come. At the beginning of the age to come, The earth shall give up those who are asleep in it, and the dust those who dwell silently in it, and the chambers [of Hades] shall give up the souls which have been committed to them. And the Most High shall be revealed upon the seat of judgment and compassion shall pass away and patience shall be withdrawn. . . . And recompense shall follow and the reward shall be manifested; . . . Then the pit of torment shall appear and opposite it shall be the place of rest, and the furnace of Gehenna shall be disclosed and opposite it the paradise of delight. Then the Most High will say to the nations that have been raised from the dead, “Look now and understand whom you have denied. . . . Look on this side and on that: here are delight and rest and there are fire and torments!’”

The author believes that more will be lost than saved in the age to come, but one should not grieve, for God declares, I will rejoice over the few who shall be saved, because it is they who have made My glory to prevail now, and through them My name has now been honored. And I will not grieve over the multitude of those who perish, for it is they who are now like a mist, and are similar to a flame and smoke—they are set on fire and burn hotly and are extinguished. (2 Esdras 7:60–61)

The ungodly then are doomed to vanish from the earth, even as mist is dispersed by wind and as flame and smoke are quickly

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

extinguished.31 Their lot is eternal suffering, as described in verses 78f: Now concerning death, the teaching is: When the decisive decree has gone forth from the Most High that a man shall die, as the spirit leaves the body to return again to Him who gave it, first of all it adores the glory of the Most High. And if it is one of those who have shown scorn and have not kept the way of the Most High . . . such spirits shall not enter into habitations, but shall immediately wander about in torments, ever grieving and sad in seven ways. The first way, because they have scorned the Law of the Most High. The second way, because they cannot now make a good repentance that they may live. . . . The seventh way . . . because they shall utterly waste away in confusion and be consumed with shame and shall wither with fear at seeing the glory of the Most High.

The final result is that “no one will then be able to have mercy on him who has been condemned in the judgment or to harm him who is victorious” (v. 115). The vision presented by this apocalyptic work is one of glory for the godly and shame and suffering for the ungodly. The “pit of torment,” the “furnace of Gehenna” stands opposite the “place of rest,” the “paradise of delight” (7:36) as the only two fates awaiting mankind. The author of 2 Esdras is emphatic about God’s justice in the age to come, and not surprisingly, since his basic concern was the apparent absence of His justice in the present age. He 31 Note this verse does not say that the wicked are extinguished or cease to exist, but rather compares their absence from the new earth to the extinguishing of flame and smoke. From the other verses it is clear that the lot of the wicked will be torment, not annihilation.

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presents the divine response to Ezra as declaring, Indeed I will not concern Myself about the fashioning of those who have sinned or about their death, their judgment, or their destruction, but I will rejoice over the creation of the righteous . . . and their salvation. . . . Do not ask any more questions about the multitude of those who perish. For they also received freedom, but they despised the Most High and were contemptuous of His Law and forsook His ways. . . . For the Most High did not intend that men should be destroyed, but they themselves who were created have defiled the name of Him who made them. . . . Therefore My judgment is now drawing near. (8:38–39, 55–61)

The vision of the last judgment offered in 2 Esdras is very similar to the one found in Christ’s teaching. Both affirm that after the resurrection of all the dead, the just will be rewarded with paradise while the unjust suffer eternal fiery torment.

The Pseudepigrapha

We now turn to other works dating from the same era, called by some the pseudepigrapha, or works written under a false name. The convention of writing under the name of an historical character was not intended to be fraudulent but a way of securing a hearing for one’s narrative and of honoring those to whom the work was ascribed. We look first at the Sibylline Oracles, a collection of material very hard to accurately date. The Jewish core perhaps dates from the second century BC (there were some later Christian interpolations). This material purports to be the work of the

Divine Judgment in the Time of Christ

Sibyl, a famous Greek prophetess who would give counsel in the form of prophecies. A Jewish writer took over the form and composed his own oracles, which were ascribed to the famous Sibyl to give them added stature and to stir up apocalyptic enthusiasm. In Book 4, we find the following account of the end of the world and the final judgment: O ill-starred mortals . . . if with evil mind you obey me not, but delighting in ungodliness you receive all these words with ill-affected ears, then fire shall come upon the whole world, and a mighty sign with a sword and trumpet at the rising of the sun. . . . And He shall burn the whole earth, and consume the whole race of men, and all the cities and rivers and the sea. He shall burn everything out and there shall be sooty dust. But when at last everything shall have been reduced to dust and ashes, and God shall quench the giant fire even as He kindled it, then God Himself shall fashion again the bones and ashes of men, and shall raise up mortals once more as they were before. And then the judgment shall come wherein God Himself shall give sentence, judging the world again. And all who have sinned with deeds of impiety a heap of earth shall cover again and murky Tartarus and the black recesses of hell. But all who are godly shall live again on earth when God gives breath and life and grace to them.32

We note certain features in this lengthy passage (dated by R. H. Charles to a time just after AD 76 and written probably by a Jewish author). God will burn the whole earth to ashes so 32 The Sibylline Books, Book 4, lines 162, 171–190; cited in R. H. Charles’ The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), p. 396.

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that all will be reduced to sooty dust, and then He will quench the fire. He will then raise up mortals in a general resurrection, restoring them to life again. Then comes the judgment: sinners will be consigned to the subterranean depths of murky Tartarus and the black recesses of hell. Tartarus in pagan Greek thought was the place far beneath the earth where the wicked were tormented as divine punishment. In 2 Peter 2:4, a verb form of the noun is used with the meaning “to cast into Tartarus” [Gr. tartaroo]. This Sibylline text refers to Gehenna as Tartarus, predicting the future torments of the wicked after the end of the world and the final resurrection. Given that Tartarus was famously a place of torment for the ungodly, the use of the term here reveals that Gehenna was regarded as a place of torment also. The book called The Assumption of Moses has been dated to before AD 70 and identified as the work of a Pharisee. The work known now by this name contains an apocalyptic survey of Israel’s history from Moses’ time to the time when the book was written (i.e. the first century). Regarding the end of the world and the final judgment, we read: Then [God’s] kingdom shall appear throughout all His creation, and then Satan shall be no more, and sorrow shall depart with him. . . . For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne and He will go forth . . . and the earth will tremble . . . and the high mountains shall be made low and the hills will be shaken and fall. And the horns of the sun shall be broken and he shall be turned into darkness, and the moon will not give her light and be turned wholly into blood, and the circle of the stars shall be disturbed and the sea shall retire into the abyss.

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. . . For the Most High will arise and will appear to punish the Gentiles. Then you, O Israel, will be happy and God will exalt you and cause you to approach to the heaven of the stars . . . and you shall look from on high and shall see your enemies in Ge[henna]33 and you will recognize them and rejoice.34

The material here bears striking resemblance to the teaching of Christ, including the reference to the sun being darkened, the moon turned to blood, and the stars falling from the sky (Matt. 24:29). Israel is here exalted to heaven, from where they look down to see their enemies in Gehenna. It is clear that these enemies suffer there and are not simply annihilated, for Israel is able to recognize them and rejoice. The passage is intensely nationalistic, with God’s enemies being simply “the Gentiles.” That Gehenna is a place of suffering for God’s enemies seems taken for granted. In the Book of Jubilees we find the same approach. This work was written in the second century BC and purports to be a history of Israel from the creation of the world to the time of the Exodus, given by an angel to Moses on Mount Sinai. Much of the threatened wrath against sinners is expressed in the older form, wiping them out from the earth at the time of God’s intervention and the bringing in of the final kingdom. But in one place we find the following passage. In it, Isaac exhorts his sons, Jacob and Esau, to love each other and requires them to 33 The Greek text here reads simply ge, probably short for Gehenna. It could conceivably mean “earth” (Gr. ge), but this would yield little sense. Charles reads the text as “Ge(henna).” 34 The Assumption of Moses 10:1–10, cited in Charles, op. cit., pp. 421–422.

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take an oath that they will do so. And he adds: If either of you devises evil against his brother, know that from henceforth everyone that devises evil against his brother shall fall into his hand and shall be rooted out of the land of the living and his seed shall be destroyed from under heaven. But on the day of turbulence and execration and indignation and anger, with flaming devouring fire as He burnt Sodom, so likewise will He burn his land and his city and all that is his, and he shall be blotted out of the book of the discipline of the children of men and not be recorded in the book of life, but in that which is appointed to destruction, and he shall depart into eternal execration, so that their condemnation may be always renewed in hate and in execration and in wrath and in torment and in indignation and in plagues and in disease forever.35

Here we find a view that divine punishment pursues the sinner even beyond this life and into the next. In this life, God punishes the sinner by having his enemy exact vengeance on him (“his brother shall fall into his hand”) and causing him and his children to die (he “shall be rooted out of the land of the living and his seed shall be destroyed”). But then the text goes on to speak of punishment in the age to come, after the day of judgment (here styled “the day of turbulence and execration and indignation and anger”). On that day God will send fire from heaven to burn all the sinner has. And the sinner himself will not be recorded in the book of life so as to receive life in the age to come, but will be recorded in the book of those “appointed to destruction.” The sentence will be carried out: the sinners 35 The Book of Jubilees 36:9–11, cited in Charles, op. cit., p. 67.

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“shall depart into eternal execration so that their condemnation may always be renewed.” This clearly speaks of continual and ever-renewed suffering, described at great length as “hate, execration, wrath, torment, indignation, plagues and disease.” That is, every manner of suffering is renewed so that the sinner suffers forever. Though the word “Gehenna” is not used, the concept is the same. The suffering is final, with no future reprieve in sight, either through restoration to life or through annihilation. In the work known as 2 Baruch (or the Apocalypse of Baruch), the judgment against sinners is also mentioned repeatedly. The book was written in the second half of the first century AD by Jewish hands, making it contemporaneous with the first Christian writings. The torment awaiting sinners is clear and emphatic throughout the text. Thus we read, “The souls of the wicked, when they behold all these things [i.e. the resurrection of all] shall then waste away the more. For they shall know that their torment has come and their perdition has arrived.”36 On that day “the new world . . . has no mercy on those who depart to torment” (44:12); the wicked shall waste away on the day of judgment, “for they shall first behold and afterward depart to be tormented” (51:6); for those who deny God, “the torment of fire is reserved for them” (59:2); readers are exhorted to “prepare your hearts for that which you believed before lest you come to be in bondage in both worlds, so that you be led away captive here and be tormented there” (83:8). The references to torment for the wicked in the age to come are mentioned almost in passing, as a well-known feature of the received eschatology. 36 2 Baruch 30:4–5, cited in Charles, op. cit., p. 498.

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Finally we examine the Book of Enoch, which dates from the second and first centuries BC. It is a very important text and sufficiently well known in the first century that the author of the Epistle of Jude cites a verse of it (Jude 14–15, quoting Enoch 1:7). We shall examine several passages that speak of Gehenna. I looked and turned to another part of the earth and saw there a deep valley with burning fire. And they brought the kings and the mighty and began to cast them into this deep valley. And there my eyes saw how they made these their instruments, iron chains of immeasurable weight. And I asked the angel of peace who went with me, saying, “For whom are these chains being prepared?” And he said to me, “These are being prepared for the hosts of Azazel, so that they may take them and cast them into the abyss of complete condemnation. . . . And Michael and Gabriel and Raphael and Phanuel shall take hold of them on that great day and cast them into the burning furnace, that the Lord of Spirits may take vengeance on them for their unrighteousness.”37

Or another citation, again describing the final judgment upon the false shepherds and the apostates led astray by them: I looked until a throne was erected in the pleasant land and the Lord of the sheep sat himself on it and the other took the sealed books and opened those books before the Lord of the sheep. . . . And those seventy shepherds were judged and found guilty and they were cast into that fiery abyss.38 37 Book of Enoch 54:1–6, cited in Book of Enoch, op. cit., pp. 71–72. 38 Book of Enoch 90:20, 25, ibid, pp. 126–127.

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And again, from the appendix to the Book of Enoch: You who have done good shall wait until an end is made of those who work evil . . . and wait indeed until sin has passed away . . . and their spirits shall be slain and they shall cry and make lamentation in a place that is a chaotic wilderness and in the fire they shall burn, for there is no earth there. And I saw there something like an invisible cloud . . . and I saw a flame of fire blazing brightly. . . . And I asked one of the holy angels who was with me and said to him, “What is this shining thing?— for it is not a heaven, but only the flame of a blazing fire, and the voice of weeping and crying and lamentation and strong pain.” And he said to me, “This place which you see, here are cast the spirits of sinners and blasphemers and those who work wickedness.”39

In all these citations from the Book of Enoch, we find a consistent picture of the wickedness punished by endless fiery torment.

Summing Up the Background Material: An Eschatological Trajectory

As we survey all the material from the Old Testament, apocrypha, and the pseudepigraphal materials, a clear pattern emerges. We see first the original classic view of Sheol as the place where all the dead rest in a shadowy, half-conscious state. This view slowly gives place to a more developed and detailed view of the afterlife. The development and trajectory is not consistent or chronological, nor could we expect that it would 39 Book of Enoch 108:2–6, ibid, p. 153.

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be. But the general trend is unmistakable, and it is increasingly toward an eschatological view that sees all the departed as fully conscious in the afterlife and as subject to divine reward or punishment. By the time of Christ, the view articulated in the pseudepigraphal material about sinners being cast into a place of fire and torment had become commonplace, as our examination of some of these texts has shown.40 The authors of these texts no longer had to argue their views of eternal punishment as something new. Rather they could presuppose the acceptance of these views as something that was rapidly becoming traditional. There were other views, of course, regarding the final judgment. The Sadduceesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; insistence that there would be no resurrection of the dead (Matt. 22:23; Acts 23:8) is proof that some diversity of views existed in the time of Christ. And we have no way of knowing how influential the views found throughout the pseudepigrapha were in the everyday thought of the common man. The Pharisees believed in fiery punishment for the unrighteous after death, as did those identified with the Qumran community. But did most everyone else? There is no way to poll the dead and ascertain what their views were, but fortunately this knowledge is unnecessary. Our point here is not that everyone believed in the eternity of a fiery punishment for the unrighteous, but rather that if they heard of a fiery punishment for the unrighteous, they would have assumed that this punishment was eternal. If someone spoke as Christ did of there being a Gehenna of fire and an 40 This view excludes both universalism, which asserts that all will eventually be saved, and conditionalism, which asserts that the wicked will be annihilated and so cease to exist.

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outer darkness where sinners will weep and gnash their teeth, everyone listening to this would have interpreted these words in the same way as they did similar words in the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. These texts had become the cultural filter through which Christâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teaching was received. Christ, of course, taught many other things besides a doctrine of eternal punishment for the wicked. He came to save the world and offer eternal joy to any who would receive His word. We may ask, therefore, how this teaching about hell formed part of the total message of Christ and His apostles.

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