Originally posted on 1 June 2008 and updated on 18 March 2010 and 11 March 2021
One of the growing dividing lines between “emerging church” and “traditional” evangelicals is their views on hell, eternal life/damnation and the doctrines that link to this (including original sin, God’s hatred of sinful humanity, what Christ’s death accomplished, atonement and so on). In other words, this is core doctrine stuff and worthy of full consideration.
Yet, most people’s vision of hell has more to do with Dante than the Bible. They take little account of the many different Biblical words that are all translated “hell” in our English Bibles. They take little account of the historical and cultural backdrop to the Biblical references. But, probably most significantly, they just don’t take account of the Bible itself.
I am certainly not going to attempt to deconstruct or construct a theology of hell here. Maybe some time in the future. You can certainly do some reading yourself (see some of the comments below), and especially the Wikipedia entry and http://www.tentmaker.org/
What I would like to do is just list some verses that raise some very real questions for me. Ever since my first formal studies of Biblical intepretation, the dangers of proof texting have been drummed into me. The danger is that you take a single verse (often, a single phrase from a single verse) without looking at the context. And then you make it say whatever you want it to say.