Let’s talk about hell. It’s hard to imagine a biblical idea that has been more misinterpreted and a theological doctrine that has been more misapplied than the idea of hell. It would take pages to walk through all of the biblical references that have been translated or interpreted as hell, to show how shaky those interpretive judgments are, so I’m going to walk through just one example. A word that is often translated, or at least heard,as a reference to ‘hell’ in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word, sheol. At the root level, sheol refers to the place of the dead. It is sometimes translated as “grave,” and sometimes as “hell.” Think about the difference between “grave” and “hell,” and you can see the influence that a biblical translator’s theology plays on their translations. In Psalm 16:10 there is a phrase attributed to David that the King James Version (1611) translates, “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” People reading the King James Version come away thinking that back when the psalms were written there was already a fully developed theology of the afterlife that is just like ours. Most other translations do not follow the KJV on this matter. The New Revised Standard Version simply transliterates the word “you did not give me up to Sheol.”
But wait, there’s more! The Apostle Peter quotes Psalm 16:10 in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:22-36). Since the New Testament is written in Greek and not Hebrew, the term sheol has become hades, demonstrating the enormous influence of the Greek Empire by imposing their language and Greek mythology for whom Hades was the god of the underworld. So, when the New Testament refers to an Old Testament text with the Hebrew term sheol, it usually becomes the Greek term hades. That reinforces in some people’s minds that sheol and hades are references to the afterlife. But, if you read wade through Peter’s sermon, he is arguing that hades is simply the place of death, more like we think of the grave than of a netherworld of disembodied souls. Peter’s point is that, since David is in fact dead and buried and his grave is still around, then David was speaking prophetically about his descendant, Jesus, who by virtue of the resurrection is not still in the grave. My point: Peter is clearly using the term hades to refer to a full grave, to contrast it with Jesus’ empty grave. Still, it is translated “hell” in the King James Bible in Acts 2:26. And that unfortunate translation has left a mark on Christian believers.
Death has always been mystifying and, in some ways, terrifying. So, the idea of death has long been at the center of religious and philosophical inquiry: Is death the final word or is there something more in store? Is death just a bodily thing with some other kind of fate for one’s soul? Since vice often goes unpunished and virtue often goes unrewarded, is there an afterlife where a just God makes that happen? I want to say that, throughout the Scriptures, there’s not just one, static, consistent theology of the afterlife. I don’t think there is even a collective understanding that one can name by simply putting all of the references to hell together. Death seems as mystifying to biblical communities as it does to us.
These days, hell is popularly conceived today among Christians as a lake of fire, into which people are eternally consigned who have never adequately professed Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It is a doctrine that produces maniacal rants among preachers and nightmares among listeners. But, can a theology rooted in God’s steadfast love really include something like a place of eternal torment? An eternal punishment would outweigh even a heinous crime so much that we would be sacrificing any notion of God’s justice, much less God’s love, by imagining that God will do that.
So, if you inherited a doctrine of hell that seems to be what the church teaches and seems to be what the Scriptures teach and seems to be what you’re supposed to believe as a good Christian, but which sits uneasily in your spirit as making God’s justice something awful - Then in the name of the living God, creator of life, who sent Jesus Christ as our redeemer, I invite you to let that doctrine go right now. Seriously. I’m convinced that it is more harmful than good, more incorrect biblically than correct, and more anti-Christian than Christian.
If you are concerned that letting go of that understanding of hell is simply a way that people try to water down the Scriptures to make it more accommodating, then I invite you to consider the translation history of Psalm 16:10 to remember that some translations can be misleading and some topics evolve throughout the Scriptures.
And finally, if you need some way of thinking about hell, consider this. What if the doctrine of hell is to establish that, ultimately, sin is destroyed, not people or souls. “Sin” is anything that is destructive of life and community - hatred, evil, violence, hubris, pain. What ‘hell’ represents in a theology built on grace is that, in the end, those things will be destroyed, so that God’s reign of life in all of its fullness can be restored. In the end, even the doctrine of hell is part of God’s salvation story.
That’s me, thinking about things on a Friday morning. Thanks for stopping by.
Mark of St. Mark
