The following article was written in response to Lesley Eve's piece on Hell published in the Maiden Newton Parish magazine.

Good News Bad News

I felt that Lesley Eve’s chirpy piece on everlasting torment last month deserved a reply. In fact I have Good News for Lesley and anyone else worried about eternal damnation.

First, for those of you who think of themselves as leading a reasonably blameless life undeserving of eternal punishment, I must point at that in Christian doctrine you are saved from hell only through faith in Jesus Christ any amount of virtue on its own is not enough.

Now if hell exists and there is a fair risk that many people will end up there (“broad is the road”) one might reasonably expect that the Bible would be entirely clear about the matter. But what does the Bible actually say?

The Old Testament, not known for its reticence or squeamishness, does not mention the subject. The Hebrew word unhappily translated as “hell” is “sheol”. Sheol is the common grave of mankind; as the Psalms say "His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish." The much put upon Job actually asked God to send him to sheol for a bit of peace and quiet. Eventually the notion that a part of sheol was reserved for punishment was borrowed from pagan sources and incorporated into some Judaisms, but one must look to works such as the extra-canonical Book of Enoch and the writings of Josephus for an expression of these ideas and not to Holy Scripture.

The New Testament provides a much better prima facie case for hell, chiefly in the first three Gospels. John’s Gospel shows no interest in hell and neither does our earliest Christian writer St Paul who yet again proves more illuminating in his silences than his utterances; his view was “The wages of sin are death”. I will put Revelation to one side (it is the only thing you can do with it).

Two words are rendered “hell” in the NT – “hades”, which means the same as “sheol”, and “Gehenna” which was a smouldering rubbish dump with a chequered history south of Jerusalem. “Gehenna” is used to represent permanent destruction. On no occasion save one do either of these words suggest post mortem suffering. The odd occasion is the story, singly attested in Luke, of Lazarus and the Rich Man. The Rich Man is said to be in torment in Hades. The story is a parable, not reportage and it uses colourful ideas familiar to the listeners, the Pharisees, in order to make a point. In fact it is difficult to see what the rich man’s terrible sin had been and the parable appears to take up the familiar NT theme of the Gentiles displacing the Jews as God’s favourites.

The ever popular “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched…” is a quote from Isaiah which refers to the fates of the dead carcasses of men who had transgressed and there is no reason to believe that the various “weeping and gnashing of teeth” passages refer to anything other than ante mortem suffering.

Not that the NT is lacking in dire warnings but these are dire warnings of annihilation. What is completely absent is any explicit statement as to the existence and nature of hell.

I hope this has gone some way towards quieting the fears of anyone unhappy with this unfortunate doctrine. And to those who display what I consider to be an unhealthy enthusiasm for it I say this – leave received ideas behind and read your Bible with a fresh mind.