Hell
HELL
The Hebrews SHEOL, and the Greek HADES, usually translated hell, often signify the place of departed spirits, Psa 16:10 Isa 14:9 Eze 31:16 . Here was the rich man, after being buried, Luk 16:23 . The above and many other passages in the Old Testament show the futility of that opinion which attributes to the Hebrews an ignorance of a future state.The term hell is most commonly applied to the place of punishment in the unseen world, and is usually represented in the Greek New Testament by the word Gehenna, valley of Hinnom. See HINNOM. In 2Pe 2:4, the rebellious angels are said, in the original Greek, to have been cast down into “Tartarus,” this being the Grecian name of the lowest abyss of Hades. Other expressions are also used, indicating the dreadfulness of the anguish there to be endured. It is called “outer darkness,” “flame,” “furnace of fire,” “unquenchable fire,” “fire and brimstone,” etc., Mat 8:12 13:42 22:13 25:20,41 Mar 9:43-48 Jdg 1:13 Jer 20:14 . The misery of hell will consist in the privation of the vision and love of God, exclusion from every source of happiness, perpetual sin, remorse of conscience in view of the past, malevolent passions, the sense of the just anger of God, and all other sufferings of body and soul which in the nature of things are the natural results of sin, or which the law of God requires as penal inflictions. The degrees of anguish will be proportioned to the degrees of guilt, Mat 10:15 23:14 Luk 12:47,48 . And these punishments will be eternal, like the happiness of heaven. The wrath of God will never cease to abide upon the lost soul, and it will always be “the wrath to come.”
Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
Hell
1. Context.-The word most frequently so rendered in the English Version is the Gr. (see Hades). In the NT, outside the Gospels, hell is also used in translating the two Gr. words (Gehenna) and the very rare verbal form (send into Tartarus).
The former occurs only once, viz. in Jam 3:6, where it is obviously used metaphorically for the evil power which is revealed in all forms of unlicensed, careless, and corrupt speech. In the figurative phrase set on fire of Gehenna, the author of the Epistle has clearly in mind the original idea of that name in the associations of the Valley of Hinnom, with its quenchless fire and its undying worm (2Ch 28:3; 2Ch 33:6, Jer 7:31).
The name Tartarus (2Pe 2:4) carries us out of the association of Hebrew into the realm of Greek thought. It is the appellation given by Homer (Il. viii. 13) to that region of dire punishment allotted to the elder gods, whose sway Zeus had usurped.
I will take and cast him into misty Tartarus, says Zeus, right far away, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth; there are the gate of iron and threshold of bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth.
The Greek word passed into Hebrew literature, and is found in En. xx. 2, where Uriel is said to have sway over the world and over Tartarus (cf. Philo, de Exsecr. 6). The passage in 2 Peter shows evident traces of the effect upon it of the Book of Enoch, so it is not necessary to go further a field in order to discover the source of the word. In the Christian sections of the Sib. Or. the word is of frequent occurrence, and appears sometimes to be used as equivalent to Gehenna and at other times as the name for a special section of that region. Cf. i. 126-129:
Down they went
In to Tartarean chamber terrible,
Kept in firm chains to pay full penalty
In Gehenna of strong, furious, quenchless fire.
With this passage should be carefully compared En. cviii. 3-6, where some exceptional features occur in the description of hell. The passage is in a fragment of the earlier Book of Noah, now incorporated in the larger work.
Their names, says the seer, shall be blotted out of the book of life, and out of the holy books, and their seed shall be destroyed for ever, 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 shall they burn; for there is no earth there. And I saw there something like an invisible cloud; for by reason of its depth I could not look over, and I saw a flame of fire blazing brightly, and things like shining mountains circling and sweeping to and fro. And I asked one of the holy angels who was with me, and said unto 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 unto me: This place which thou seest-here are cast the spirits of sinners and blasphemers, and of those who work wickedness, and of those who pervert everything that the Lord hath spoken through the mouth of the prophets.
As Charles points out in his notes on this passage, the writer has confused here Gehenna and the hell of the disobedient stars, conceptions which are kept quite distinct in the earlier sections of the book (cf. chs. xxi. and xxii.).
2. The idea in apostolic and sub-apostolic literature.-We have to pass beyond the strict use of the word hell to discover the wider range of the conception in the literature of the NT that comes within the scope of our examination. There are two or three terms found in the Apocalypse, to which we must now turn.
(a) The Apocalypse of John.-(1) In Rev 9:1 the pit of the abyss (see Abyss) is regarded as the special prison-house of the devil and his attendant evil spirits. This conception is probably derivable from similar sources to those from which Tartarus comes, though there are peculiar and interesting features about it, details of which will be found in the special article devoted to its explanation. Closely connected with the idea of the abyss is its demonic ruler Abaddon (Rev 9:11, see Abaddon), whose name figures frequently in the Wisdom-literature, and is generally translated in the Septuagint by = destruction. According to one Hebrew authority, Abaddon is itself a place-name, and designates the lowest deep of Gehenna, from which no soul can ever escape (see H. B. Swete, The Apocalypse of St. John, in loco). In the Asc. Is. iv. 14 is a somewhat similar passage: The Lord will come with His angels and with the armies of the holy ones from the seventh heaven and He will drag Beliar into Gehenna and also his armies.
(2) The lake of fire is an expression found several times in Rev. (cf. Rev 19:20, etc.). It is described as the appointed place of punishment for the Beast and the False Prophet, for Death and Hades themselves, for all not enrolled in the Book of Life, and finally for those guilty of the dark list of sins given in Rev 21:8. It is questionable whether the original imagery underlying the expression is derived from the story of the Cities of the Plain, or the Pyriphlegethon-the fiery-flamed river-one of the tributaries of the Acheron in the Homeric vision of the under world (cf. Od. x. 513). Probably elements from both enter into it. A passage in the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, x. 1-6-remarkable for the fact that hell is here set in the third heaven (see W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, Berlin, 1903, p. 273 n. [Note: . note.] )-has close parallels with the passage in Rev 21:8. The following extracts will show how close and suggestive the imagery is-and as it probably dates before a.d. 70, the actual connexion is not improbable.
They showed me there a very terrible place and all manner of tortures in that place and there is no light there, but murky fire constantly flameth aloft, and there is a fiery river coming forth, and that whole place is everywhere fire and those men said to me: This place is prepared for those who dishonour God, who on earth practise magic-making, enchantments, and devilish witchcrafts, and who boast of their wicked deeds, stealing, lies, calumnies, envy, rancour, fornication, murder for all these is prepared this place amongst these, for eternal inheritance (cf. also Asc. Is. iv. 15).
In the Sib. Or. we have similar language, e.g. ii. 313:
And then shall all pass through the burning stream
Of flame unquenchable.
Again, in ii. 353ff. we have:
And deathless angels of the immortal God,
Who ever is, shall bind with lasting bonds
In chains of flaming fire, and from above
Punish them all by scourge most terribly;
And in Gehenna, in the gloom of night,
Shall they be cast neath many horrid beasts
Of Tartarus, where darkness is immense.* [Note: These translations are taken from the English version by M. S. Terry, New York, 1899.]
(3) In Rev 20:14 the lake of fire is further defined as the second death-a phrase which recurs in other passages of the book (e.g. 2:11), The phrase seems traceable to Jewish sources, for it occurs frequently in the Targums (cf. Wetstein on Rev 2:11). It seems likely that the Jews, in turn, derived it from the ideas of Egyptian religion, since we find Ani, seated on his judgment throne, saying, I am crowned king of the gods, I shall not die a second time in the underworld (The Book of the Dead, ed. E. A. Wallis Budge, London, 1901, ch. xliv.; cf. Moffatt in Expositors Greek Testament , 1910, on Rev 2:11).
(b) St. Paul.-This idea of the second death leads naturally to St. Pauls use of death in such passages as Rom 6:21. When the Apostle uses the word, he evidently intends by it something far deeper than the natural close of life. For him death is one indivisible experience. It is the correlative of sin. Death is regarded as separation from God. So death, conceived as the final word on human destiny, becomes the synonym for hopeless doom (Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, 1904, pp. 113-117).
(c) Other NT books.-This idea is also strongly and strikingly put in Jam 1:15 : Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death (cf. 2Ti 1:10, Heb 2:14). In Jud 1:6; Jud 1:13 and 2Pe 2:17 we have the expressions darkness and the blackness of darkness used as descriptive epithets of the place of punishment. Once more we are face to face with the peculiar imagery of apocalyptic, and we recall how the word is employed in the Gospels, especially in the phrase the outer darkness (cf. Mat 8:12). In En. x. 4 we read, Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness, and throughout that book the imagery frequently recurs. The figure is a natural one, and needs no elaboration to make its force felt.
(d) Apostolic Fathers.-In turning to the Christian literature of the 1st cent. that lies outside the NT, we do not find any very striking additions to the ideas contained in the pages of the canonical books. In Did. 16 we read, All created mankind shall come to the fire of testing, and many shall be offended and perish, which is only a faint reflexion of the Synoptic statements. In the Epistle of Barnabas, xx., the way of sin is described as a way of eternal death with punishment, and then follows a list of sins reminiscent of Rev 21:8. In the 8th Similitude of the Shepherd of Hermas-that of the tower-builders-there are many references to judgment, but they are couched in such general terms as shall lose his life, these lost their life finally, or these perished altogether unto God. In Sim. ix. xviii. 2 there is a striking passage differentiating between the punishment of the ignorant and those who sin knowingly: They that have not known God, and commit wickedness, are condemned to death; but they that have known God and seen His mighty works, and yet commit wickedness, shall receive a double punishment, and shall die eternally. In ix. xxviii. 7 it is said: Confess that ye have the Lord, lest denying Him ye be delivered into prison ( ). There can be no doubt here that prison is meant to signify the place of punishment beyond death. The imagery may be derived from the saying in Mat 5:25-26, but we must remember that bonds and imprisonment were frequently the terms in which the apocalyptic literature figured future punishment.
(e) First-century apocalypses.-The conception that meets us in the Parable of Dives and Lazarus, viz. that the places of bliss and torment are visible the one from the other, meets us in two or three apocalypses of the 1st century. In the section of 2 Esdras discovered in 1875, we have one of these passages (7:36-38):
And the pit (Lat. place) of torment shall appear, and over against it shall be the place of rest: and the furnace of hell (Lat. Gehenna) shall be shewed, and over against it the paradise of delight. And there shall the Most High say to the nations that are raised from the dead, See ye and understand whom ye have denied, or whom ye have not served, or whose commandments ye have despised. Look on this side and on that: here is delight and rest, and there fire and torments.
In Ass. Mos. x. 10 occurs the passage:
And thou wilt look from on high and see thine enemies in Gehenna, and thou wilt recognize them and rejoice, and thou wilt give thanks and confess thy Creator.
Very similar passages are found in the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, chs. x., xl., and xli.
This idea is even more clearly set forth in the Apocalypse of Peter, and forms the beginning of the famous passage in which is set forth the punishment of sinners, in the manner that to later ages is most familiar in the pages of Dante, where the forms of torment bear an appropriate relation to the sins committed. The passage begins at 20, and follows immediately on the description of Heaven, with these words:
And I saw another place over against that, very dark: and it was the place of punishment: and those who were punished there and the punishing angels had a dark raiment like the air of the place. And some were there hanging by the tongue: these were those who blasphemed the way of righteousness, and under them was fire burning and punching them. And there was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men who had perverted righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them.
In these verses we trace the similarity to ideas and figures we have already discovered in the Apoc. of John and elsewhere, but the further descriptions of this Inferno borrow elements from Greek and other sources, and are considerably more extravagant than anything within the limits of the 1st century. It may, however, be only a development of the conceptions found in such 2nd cent. documents as Jude and 2 Peter.
(f) Josephus.-An interesting witness to contemporary Jewish thought in the 1st cent. is Josephus, who has two references to the belief of the Pharisees in the matter of future punishment. In Ant. xviii. i. 3 we read:
They also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again. Again in Bellum Judaicum (Josephus) ii. viii. 14, quoting the doctrine of the Pharisees, he claims their view to be that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.
(g) Testament of Abraham and Pistis Sophia.-Before our survey of the literature closes, note must be taken of two striking and somewhat fantastic conceptions contained in two works, which probably set forth, among their obviously later material, elements of an earlier tradition. The first is found in the Testament of Abraham, which may date in its origin from the 2nd cent. of our era, and doubtless some of its contents are from a much earlier period. In its present form it appears to issue from a Jewish-Christian source, and its place of origin seems to be Egypt. Elements of Egyptian thought enter into its literary form, among the most striking of which is the idea of the weighing of souls-a scene that often occurs on the Egyptian pagan monuments. The trial of souls is threefold-once before Abel, at a later time by the twelve tribes of Israel, and finally by the Lord Himself. Abraham is permitted to witness the procedure of judgment, and he finds two angels seated at a table. The one on the right hand records the good deeds, and the one on the left the evil deeds of the soul to be tested. In front of the table stands an angel with a balance on which the souls are weighed, while another has a trumpet having within it all-consuming fire whereby the souls are tried. These more elaborate and somewhat mechanical methods form a link with the imagery of mediaevalism, but also prove the manner in which Christianity was proceeding along eclectic lines, and taking to itself ideas and figures from other religions.
In the curious work known as the Pistis Sophia, probably of Valentinian, and certainly of Gnostic origin, we have a bizarre conception of the place of punishment-described as the outer darkness. It is presented in the form of a huge dragon with its tail in its mouth, the circle thus formed engirdling the whole earth. Within the monster are the regions of punishment-for there are in it twelve dungeons of horrible torment. Each dungeon is governed by a monster-like ruler, and in these are punished the worst of sinners, e.g. sorcerers, blasphemers, murderers, the unclean, and those who remain in the doctrines of error. To express the awfulness of the torture, it is said that the fire of the under world is nine times hotter than that of earthly furnaces; the fire of the great chaos nine times hotter than that of the under world; the fire of the rulers nine times hotter than that of the great chaos; but the fire of the dragon is seventy times more intense in its heat than that of the rulers! In 3 Baruch, iv. and v. there is the mention of a dragon in close connexion with Hades, and in the latter chapter Hades is said to be his belly (cf. Hughes notes on the passage in Charles Apoc. and Pseudepig.). We are at least reminded by such passages of the Jonah legend, and it may well be that behind all three is a common origin. The dragon is obviously an old Semitic myth, and this particular form of it probably gives fresh significance to the words in Rev 20:2 : the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan.
3. General considerations.-Several points of importance emerge from our study of these references in the literature of the 1st century.
(1) The surprisingly few passages in the NT in which the word hell (or even the idea it conveys) occurs.-Outside the Gospels and the Apocalypse, there are practically no occasions on which we find it employed. Its absence from the writings of St. Paul, Hebrews, and the Epistles of John is most noteworthy. Our surprise is not lessened by the recollection of the fact that, according to the Rabbis, seven things were created before the world-Torah, Gehenna, the Garden of Eden, the Throne of Glory, the Sanctuary, Repentance, and the Name of Messiah. In St. Paul at least, six of these are frequently in evidence, and this gives more significance to his silence about the seventh.
(2) The restrained sanity of the references that do occur.-When we compare even the lurid images of the Apocalypse with those we have cited (and even more with those that may be found elsewhere in the same books) from contemporary works of a similar character, we cannot but be impressed with the soberness of the language. There is nothing of the morbid curiosity and unpleasant lingering on horrors, to say nothing of the sense of gloating over vengeance and cruelty, that we find in so many kindred passages. Terrible imagery is sometimes employed, but it is clearly imbued with a high moral aim, and designed to convey a clearly spiritual purpose. The absence of such allegorizing methods as those of Philo is also noteworthy. Imagery is the method in which the truths are here conveyed, not allegory.
(3) The obvious dependence on the teaching of the Gospels for all that is said about hell.-It would be hard to point to any passage in the NT that conveyed any fresh or fuller ideas about the place of punishment, its nature and purpose, than are to be found in words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. This is certainly noteworthy and significant, even if the Gospel teaching on Gehenna is an echo of current ideas. In form it probably is, but in ethical content it surely goes deeper, and we are made to feel that in the conception of the speaker this place also is founded by the Eternal Love-it too is part of the Fathers Universe. Dante, the greatest apocalyptist of subsequent ages, had caught the true evangelical spirit of this most awful doctrine when he wrote:
Justice incited my sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love
(Inferno, iii. 4).
(4) The permanent spiritual lessons to be derived from the descriptions of future punishment.-(a) All evil powers-death, sin, and their forces-are to be finally destroyed in the fires of Divine judgment (Rev 20:10; Rev 20:13-15, 2Pe 2:4, Jud 1:13). According to St. Paul, all powers that make against Christ and His Kingdom are to come to final ruin (cf. 2Th 2:8-10, 1Co 15:24-26).
(b) Evil in the heart of men must entail punishment and, if persisted in, eternal loss and shame, and a death that is more than death (Rom 6:20-23, Rev 21:8). The terrible nature of moral evil, and of the hearts persistent rebellion against God, is the appalling reality that renders these pictures of judgment truly significant, and redeems them from being the mere pageantry of a heated imagination. Whatever we may say of their outward form, there is an inexpressible grandeur behind them that rests in a true conception and representation of the Divine Holiness. The fear of hell in these pages is much more than the hangmans whip; it is the cry of the soul in the presence of Him who is revealed as of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, but who is, nevertheless, the Redeemer of His Universe.
Literature.-See articles Hades, Abyss, Life and Death, etc., in this Dictionary, and also in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) , Dict. of Christ and the Gospels , Encyclopaedia Britannica , and Encyclopaedia Biblica . In addition to the works referred to in the body of the article, the following should be consulted: R. H. Charless separate editions of the various apocalypses, the great work edited by him, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the OT, Oxford, 1913, and Between the Old and New Testaments, London, 1914; E. Hennecke, Neutest. Apokryphen and Handbuch zu den neutest. Apokryphen, Tbingen, 1904; J. A. Robinson and M. R. James, The Gospel acc. to Peter and the Revelation of Peter, London, 1892; A. Harnack, ber das gnost. Buch Pistis-Sophia (= Texte and Untersuchungen vii. 2), Leipzig, 1891; R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life2, London, 1913; S. D. F. Salmond, The Christian Doctrine of Immortality4, Edinburgh, 1901; E. C. Dewick, Primitive Christian Eschatology, Cambridge, 1912; W. O. E. Oesterley, The Doctrine of the Last Things, London, 1908; A. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Eng. translation , do. 1910; G. Dalman, The Words of Jesus, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1902; P. Volz, Jdische Eschatologie, Tbingen, 1903.
G. Currie Martin.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
HELL
The place of divine punishment after death. As all religions have supposed a future state of existence after this life, so all have their hell, or place or torment, in which the wicked are to be punished. Even the heathens had their tartara; and the Mahometans, we find, believe the eternity of rewards and punishments; it is not, therefore, a sentiment peculiar to Christianity. There have been many curious and useless conjectures respecting the place of the damned: the ancients generally supposed it was a region of fire near the centre of the earth. Mr. Swinden endeavoured to prove that it is seated in the sun. Mr. Whiston advanced a new and strange hypothesis; according to him, the comets are so many hells, appointed in their orbits alternately to carry the damned to the confines of the sun, there to be scorched by its violent heat; and then to return with them beyond the orb of Saturn, there to starve them in those cold and dismal regions. But, as Dr. Doddridge observes, we must here confess our ignorance; and shall be much better employed in studying how we may avoid this place of horror, than in labouring to discover where it is.
Of the nature of this punishment we may form some idea from the expressions made use of in Scripture. It is called a place of torment, Luk 16:21. the bottomless pit, Rev 20:3-6. a prison, 1Pe 3:19. darkness, Mat 8:12. Jud 1:13. fire, Mat 13:42; Mat 13:50. a worm that never dies, Mar 9:44; Mar 9:48, the second death, Rev 21:8. the wrath of God, Rom 2:5. It has been debated whether there will be a material fire in hell. On the affirmative side it is observed, that fire and brimstone are represented as the ingredients of the torment of the wicked, Rev 14:10-11. Rev 20:10. That as the body is to be raised, and the whole man to be condemned, it is reasonable to believe there will be some corporeal punishment provided, and therefore probably material fire. On the negative side it is alleged, that the terms above- mentioned are metaphorical, and signify no more than raging desire or acute pain; and that the Divine Being can sufficiently punish the wicked, by immediately acting on their minds, or rather leaving them to the guilt and stings of their own conscience.
According to several passages, it seems there will be different degrees of punishment in hell, Luk 12:47. Rom 2:12. Mat 10:20-21. Mat 12:25; Mat 12:32. Heb 10:28-29. As to its duration, it has been observed that it cannot be eternal, because there is no proportion between temporary crimes and eternal punishments; that the word everlasting is not to be taken in its utmost extent; and that it signifies no more than a long time, or a time whose precise boundary is unknown. But in answer to this it is alleged, that the same word is used, and that sometimes in the very same place, to express the eternity of the happiness of the righteous, and the eternity of the misery of the wicked; and that there is no reason to believe that the words express two such different idea, as standing in the same connection. Besides, it is not true, it is observed, that temporary crimes do not deserve eternal punishments, because the infinite majesty of an offended God adds a kind of infinite evil to sin, and therefore exposes the sinner to infinite punishment; and that hereby God vindicates his injured majesty, and glorifies his justice.
See articles DESTRUCTIONISTS and UNIVERSALISTS. Berry St. Lect. vol. 2: p. 559, 562; Dawes on Hell, ser. 10:; Whiston on ditto; Swinden, Drexelius, and Edwards on ditto. A late popular writer has observed, that in the 35th sermon of Tillotson, every thing is said upon the eternity of hell torments that can be known with any certainty.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
HELL
Christ’s descent into. That Christ locally descended into hell, is a doctrine believed not only by the papists, but by many among the reformed.
1. the text chiefly brought forward in support of this doctrine is the 1Pe 3:19. “By which he went and preached to the spirits in prison;” but it evidently appears that the “spirit” there mentioned was not Christ’s human soul, but a divine nature, or rather the Holy Spirit (by which he was quickened, and raised from the dead;) and by the inspiration of which, granted to Noah, he preached to those notorious sinners who are now in the prison of hell for their disobedience.
2. Christ, when on the cross, promised the penitent thief his presence that day in paradise; and accordingly, when he died, he committed his soul into his heavenly Father’s hand: in heaven therefore, and not in hell, we are to seek the separate spirit of our Redeemer in this period, Luk 23:43; Luk 23:46
3. Had our Lord descended to preach to the damned, there is no supposable reason why the unbelievers in Noah’s time only should be mentioned rather than those of Sodom, and the unhappy multitudes that died in sin. But it may be said, do not both the Old and New Testaments intimate this? Psa 16:10. Act 2:34. But it may be answered, that the words, “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, ” may be explained (as is the manner of the Hebrew poets) in the following words: “Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption.” So the same words are used, Psa 89:48.
“What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?” In the Hebrew the word commonly rendered hell properly signifies ” the invisible state, ” as our word hell originally did; and the other word signifies not always the immortal soul, but the animal frame in general, either living or dead. Bishop Pearson and Dr. Barrow on the Creed; Edwards’s Hist. of Redemption, notes, p. 351, 377; Ridgley’s Body of Div. p. 308, 3d edit. Doddridge and Guise on 1Pe 3:19.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
hell
(probably from Anglo-Saxon: helan, conceal)
Theologically, a place of privation and punishment after death. In the strict sense of the term, hell (infernus) is the place of eternal punishment for the damned, whether demons or men. In a broad sense it may mean:
the limbo of infants (limbus parvulorum), where those who die in original sin, but without personal mortal sin, are deprived of the happiness which would come to them in the supernatural order, but not of happiness in the natural order;
the limbo of the Fathers (limbus patrum) where the souls of the just who died before Christ awaited their admission to heaven, which had been closed against them in punishment for the sin of Adam;
purgatory, where the just who die in venial sin or who still owe a debt of temporal punishment for sin are cleansed by suffering before their admission to heaven.
Under this heading only the strict sense of the word will be treated. The existence of hell is shown from innumerable passages of Holy Scripture where it is referred to, not only as a place of punishment, but as a place of eternal punishment of fire for those who die in the state of mortal sin. The chief punishment is of course loss of God. The location of hell has never been revealed and is a matter on which the opinions of theologians differ. That there should exist a place of punishment as well as a place of reward for men after death is readily admitted by all who believe in the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul. Human reason, however, unaided by revelation, could not know with certainty all that is actually known of hell. Although this is the case, there is no contradiction between faith and reason. One of the most common objections offered to belief in the eternity of hell is that it is repugnant to Divine goodness. This objection is often due to the fact that men fail to remember that God is infinitely just and holy as well as infinitely good; no man will be damned who does not deserve it; God is infinitely wise, and it would be repugnant to this infinite attribute for Him to establish laws which man can violate with impunity in this life without endangering his eternal happiness; the damned persevere forever in their evil dispositions and impenitence.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Hell
This subject is treated under eight headings: (I) Name and Place of Hell; (II) Existence of Hell; (III) Eternity of Hell; (IV) Impenitence of the Damned; (V) Poena Damni; (VI) Poena Sensus; (VII) Accidental Pains of the Damned; (VIII) Characteristics of the Pains of Hell.
I. NAME AND PLACE OF HELL
The term hell is cognate to “hole” (cavern) and “hollow”. It is a substantive formed from the Anglo-Saxon helan or behelian, “to hide”. This verb has the same primitive as the Latin occulere and celare and the Greek kalyptein. Thus by derivation hell denotes a dark and hidden place. In ancient Norse mythology Hel is the ill-favoured goddess of the underworld. Only those who fall in battle can enter Valhalla; the rest go down to Hel in the underworld, not all, however, to the place of punishment of criminals.
Hell (infernus) in theological usage is a place of punishment after death. Theologians distinguish four meanings of the term hell:
hell in the strict sense, or the place of punishment for the damned, be they demons or men; the limbo of infants (limbus parvulorum), where those who die in original sin alone, and without personal mortal sin, are confined and undergo some kind of punishment; the limbo of the Fathers (limbus patrum), in which the souls of the just who died before Christ awaited their admission to heaven; for in the meantime heaven was closed against them in punishment for the sin of Adam; purgatory, where the just, who die in venial sin or who still owe a debt of temporal punishment for sin, are cleansed by suffering before their admission to heaven.
The present article treats only of hell in the strict sense of the term.
The Latin infernus (inferum, inferi), the Greek Hades, and the Hebrew sheol correspond to the word hell. Infernus is derived from the root in; hence it designates hell as a place within and below the earth. Haides, formed from the root fid, to see, and a privative, denotes an invisible, hidden, and dark place; thus it is similar to the term hell. The derivation of sheol is doubtful. It is generally supposed to come from the Hebrew root meaning, “to be sunk in, to be hollow”; accordingly it denotes a cave or a place under the earth. In the Old Testament (Sept. hades; Vulg. infernus) sheol is used quite in general to designate the kingdom of the dead, of the good (Genesis 37:35) as well as of the bad (Numbers 16:30); it means hell in the strict sense of the term, as well as the limbo of the Fathers. But, as the limbo of the Fathers ended at the time of Christ’s Ascension, hades (Vulg. infernus) in the New Testament always designates the hell of the damned. Since Christ’s Ascension the just no longer go down to the lower world, but they dwell in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:1). However, in the New Testament the term Gehenna is used more frequently in preference to hades, as a name for the place of punishment of the damned. Gehenna is the Hebrew gê-hinnom (Nehemiah 11:30), or the longer form gê-ben-hinnom (Joshua 15:8), and gê-benê-hinnom (2 Kings 23:10) “valley of the sons of Hinnom”. Hinnom seems to be the name of a person not otherwise known. The Valley of Hinnom is south of Jerusalem and is now called Wadi er-rababi. It was notorious as the scene, in earlier days, of the horrible worship of Moloch. For this reason it was defiled by Josias (2 Kings 23:10), cursed by Jeremias (Jeremiah 7:31-33), and held in abomination by the Jews, who, accordingly, used the name of this valley to designate the abode of the damned (Targ. Jon., Gen., iii, 24; Henoch, c. xxvi). And Christ adopted this usage of the term. Besides Hades and Gehenna, we find in the New Testament many other names for the abode of the damned. It is called “lower hell” (Vulg. tartarus) (2 Peter 2:4), “abyss” (Luke 8:31 and elsewhere), “place of torments” (Luke 16:28), “pool of fire” (Revelation 19:20 and elsewhere), “furnace of fire” (Matthew 13:42, 50), “unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12, and elsewhere), “everlasting fire” (Matthew 18:8; 25:41; Jude 7), “exterior darkness” (Matthew 7:12; 22:13; 25:30), “mist” or “storm of darkness” (2 Peter 2:17; Jude 13). The state of the damned is called “destruction” (apoleia, Phil., iii, 19, and elsewhere), “perdition” (olethros, 1 Timothy 6:9), “eternal destruction” (olethros aionios, 2 Thessalonians 1:9), “corruption” (phthora, Galatians 6:8), “death” (Romans 6:21), “second death” (Revelation 2:11 and elsewhere).
Where is hell? Some were of opinion that hell is everywhere, that the damned are at liberty to roam about in the entire universe, but that they carry their punishment with them. The adherents of this doctrine were called Ubiquists, or Ubiquitarians; among them were, e.g., Johann Brenz, a Swabian, a Protestant theologian of the sixteenth century. However, that opinion is universally and deservedly rejected; for it is more in keeping with their state of punishment that the damned be limited in their movements and confined to a definite place. Moreover, if hell is a real fire, it cannot be everywhere, especially after the consummation of the world, when heaven and earth shall have been made anew. As to its locality all kinds of conjectures have been made; it has been suggested that hell is situated on some far island of the sea, or at the two poles of the earth; Swinden, an Englishman of the eighteenth century, fancied it was in the sun; some assigned it to the moon, others to Mars; others placed it beyond the confines of the universe [Wiest, “Instit. theol.”, VI (1789), 869]. The Bible seems to indicate that hell is within the earth, for it describes hell as an abyss to which the wicked descend. We even read of the earth opening and of the wicked sinking down into hell (Numbers 16:31 sqq.; Psalm 54:16; Isaiah 5:14; Ezekiel 26:20; Philippians 2:10, etc.). Is this merely a metaphor to illustrate the state of separation from God? Although God is omnipresent, He is said to dwell in heaven, because the light and grandeur of the stars and the firmament are the brightest manifestations of His infinite splendour. But the damned are utterly estranged from God; hence their abode is said to be as remote as possible from his dwelling, far from heaven above and its light, and consequently hidden away in the dark abysses of the earth. However, no cogent reason has been advanced for accepting a metaphorical interpretation in preference to the most natural meaning of the words of Scripture. Hence theologians generally accept the opinion that hell is really within the earth. The Church has decided nothing on this subject; hence we may say hell is a definite place; but where it is, we do not know. St. Chrysostom reminds us: “We must not ask where hell is, but how we are to escape it” (In Rom., hom. xxxi, n. 5, in P.G., LX, 674). St. Augustine says: “It is my opinion that the nature of hell-fire and the location of hell are known to no man unless the Holy Ghost made it known to him by a special revelation”, (De Civ. Dei, XX, xvi, in P.L., XLI, 682). Elsewhere he expresses the opinion that hell is under the earth (Retract., II, xxiv, n. 2 in P.L., XXXII, 640). St. Gregory the Great wrote: “I do not dare to decide this question. Some thought hell is somewhere on earth; others believe it is under the earth” (Dial., IV, xlii, in P.L., LXXVII, 400; cf. Patuzzi, “De sede inferni”, 1763; Gretser, “De subterraneis animarum receptaculis”, 1595).
II. EXISTENCE OF HELL
There is a hell, i.e. all those who die in personal mortal sin, as enemies of God, and unworthy of eternal life, will be severely punished by God after death. On the nature of mortal sin, see SIN; on the immediate beginning of punishment after death, see PARTICULAR JUDGMENT. As to the fate of those who die free from personal mortal sin, but in original sin, see LIMBO (limbus parvulorum).
The existence of hell is, of course, denied by all those who deny the existence of God or the immortality of the soul. Thus among the Jew the Sadducees, among the Gnostics, the Seleucians, and in our own time Materialists, Pantheists, etc., deny the existence of hell. But apart from these, if we abstract from the eternity of the pains of hell, the doctrine has never met any opposition worthy of mention.
The existence of hell is proved first of all from the Bible. Wherever Christ and the Apostles speak of hell they presuppose the knowledge of its existence (Matthew 5:29; 8:12; 10:28; 13:42; 25:41, 46; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; Revelation 21:8, etc.). A very complete development of the Scriptural argument, especially in regard to the Old Testament, may be found in Atzberger’s “Die christliche Eschatologie in den Stadien ihrer Offenbarung im Alten und Neuen Testament”, Freiburg, 1890. Also the Fathers, from the very earliest times, are unanimous in teaching that the wicked will be punished after death. And in proof of their doctrine they appeal both to Scripture and to reason (cf. Ignatius, “Ad Eph.”, v, 16; “Martyrium s. Polycarpi”, ii, n, 3; xi, n.2; Justin, “Apol.”, II, n. 8 in P.G., VI, 458; Athenagoras, “De resurr. mort.”, c. xix, in P.G., VI, 1011; Irenaeus, “Adv. haer.”, V, xxvii, n. 2 in P.G. VII, 1196; Tertullian, “Adv. Marc.”, I, c. xxvi, in P.L., IV, 277). For citations from this patristic teaching see Atzberger, “Gesh. der christl. Eschatologie innerhalb der vornicanischen Zeit” (Freiburg, 1896); Petavius, “De Angelis”, III, iv sqq.
The Church professes her faith in the Athanasian Creed: “They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire” (Denzinger, “Enchiridion”, 10th ed., 1908, n.40). The Church has repeatedly defined this truth, e.g. in the profession of faith made in the Second Council of Lyons (Denx., n. 464) and in the Decree of Union in the Council of Florence (Denz., N. 693): “the souls of those who depart in mortal sin, or only in original sin, go down immediately into hell, to be visited, however, with unequal punishments” (poenis disparibus).
If we abstract from the eternity of its punishment, the existence of hell can be demonstrated even by the light of mere reason. In His sanctity and justice as well as in His wisdom, God must avenge the violation of the moral order in such wise as to preserve, at least in general, some proportion between the gravity of sin and the severity of punishment. But it is evident from experience that God does not always do this on earth; therefore He will inflict punishment after death. Moreover, if all men were fully convinced that the sinner need fear no kind of punishment after death, moral and social order would be seriously menaced. This, however, Divine wisdom cannot permit. Again, if there were no retribution beyond that which takes place before our eyes here on earth, we should have to consider God extremely indifferent to good and evil, and we could in no way account for His justice and holiness. Nor can it be said: the wicked will be punished, but not by any positive infliction: for either death will be the end of their existence, or, forfeiting the rich reward of the good, they will enjoy some lesser degree of happiness. These are arbitrary and vain subterfuges, unsupported by any sound reason; positive punishment is the natural recompense of evil. Besides, due proportion between demerit and punishment would be rendered impossible by an indiscriminate annihilation of all the wicked. And finally, if men knew that their sins would not be followed by sufferings, the mere threat of annihilation at the moment of death, and still less the prospect of a somewhat lower degree of beatitude, would not suffice to deter them from sin.
Furthermore, reason easily understands that in the next life the just will be made happy as a reward of their virtue (see HEAVEN). But the punishment of evil is the natural counterpart of the reward of virtue. Hence, there will also be punishment for sin in the next life. Accordingly, we find among all nations the belief that evil-doers will be punished after death. This universal conviction of mankind is an additional proof for the existence of hell. For it is impossible that, in regard to the fundamental questions of their being and their destiny, all men should fall into the same error; else the power of human reason would be essentially deficient, and the order of this world would be unduly wrapt in mystery; this however, is repugnant both to nature and to the wisdom of the Creator. On the belief of all nations in the existence of hell cf. Lüken, “Die Traditionen des Menschengeschlechts” (2nd ed., Münster, 1869); Knabenbauer, “Das Zeugnis des Menschengeschlechts fur die Unsterblichkeit der Seele” (1878). The few men who, despite the morally universal conviction of the human race, deny the existence of hell, are mostly atheists and Epicureans. But if the view of such men in the fundamental question of our being could be the true one, apostasy would be the way to light, truth, and wisdom.
III. ETERNITY OF HELL
Many admit the existence of hell, but deny the eternity of its punishment. Conditionalists hold only a hypothetical immortality of the soul, and assert that after undergoing a certain amount of punishment, the souls of the wicked will be annihilated. Among the Gnostics the Valentinians held this doctrine, and later on also Arnobius, the Socinians, many Protestants both in the past and in our own times, especially of late (Edw. White, “Life in Christ”, New York, 1877). The Universalists teach that in the end all the damned, at least all human souls, will attain beatitude (apokatastasis ton panton, restitutio omnium, according to Origen). This was a tenet of the Origenists and the Misericordes of whom St. Augustine speaks (De Civ. Dei, XXI, xviii, n. 1, in P.L., XLI, 732). There were individual adherents of this opinion in every century, e.g. Scotus Eriugena; in particular, many rationalistic Protestants of the last centuries defended this belief, e.g. in England, Farrar, “Eternal Hope” (five sermons preached in Westminster Abbey, London and New York, 1878). Among Catholics, Hirscher and Schell have recently expressed the opinion that those who do not die in the state of grace can still be converted after death if they are not too wicked and impenitent.
The Holy Bible is quite explicit in teaching the eternity of the pains of hell. The torments of the damned shall last forever and ever (Revelation 14:11; 19:3; 20:10). They are everlasting just as are the joys of heaven (Matthew 25:46). Of Judas Christ says: “it were better for him, if that man had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). But this would not have been true if Judas was ever to be released from hell and admitted to eternal happiness. Again, God says of the damned: “Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched” (Isaiah 66:24; Mark 9:43, 45, 47). The fire of hell is repeatedly called eternal and unquenchable. The wrath of God abideth on the damned (John 3:36); they are vessels of Divine wrath (Romans 9:22); they shall not possess the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10; Galatians 5:21), etc. The objections adduced from Scripture against this doctrine are so meaningless that they are not worth while discussing in detail. The teaching of the fathers is not less clear and decisive (cf. Patavius, “De Angelis”, III, viii). We merely call to mind the testimony of the martyrs who often declared that they were glad to suffer pain of brief duration in order to escape eternal torments; e.g. “Martyrium Polycarpi”, c. ii (cf. Atzberger, “Geschichte”, II, 612 sqq.). It is true that Origen fell into error on this point; but precisely for this error he was condemned by the Church (Canones adv. Origenem ex Justiniani libro adv. Origen., can. ix; Hardouin, III, 279 E; Denz., n. 211). In vain attempts were made to undermine the authority of these canons (cf. Dickamp, “Die origenistischen Streitigkeiten”, Münster, 1899, 137). Besides even in Origen we find the orthodox teaching on the eternity of the pains of hell; for in his words the faithful Christian was again and again victorious over the doubting philosopher. Gregory of Nyssa seems to have favoured the errors of Origen; many, however, believe that his statements can be shown to be in harmony with Catholic doctrine. But the suspicions that have been cast on some passages of Gregory of Nazianzus and Jerome are decidedly without justification (cf. Pesch, “Theologische Zeitfragen”, 2nd series, 190 sqq.). The Church professes her faith in the eternity of the pains of hell in clear terms in the Athanasian Creed (Denz., nn. 40), in authentic doctrinal decisions (Denz, nn. 211, 410, 429, 807, 835, 915), and in countless passages of her liturgy; she never prays for the damned. Hence, beyond the possibility of doubt, the Church expressly teaches the eternity of the pains of hell as a truth of faith which no one can deny or call in question without manifest heresy.
But what is the attitude of mere reason towards this doctrine? Just as God must appoint some fixed term for the time of trial, after which the just will enter into the secure possession of a happiness that can never again be lost in all eternity, so it is likewise appropriate that after the expiration of that term the wicked will be cut off from all hope of conversion and happiness. For the malice of men cannot compel God to prolong the appointed time of probation and to grant them again and again, without end, the power of deciding their lot for eternity. Any obligation to act in this manner would be unworthy of God, because it would make Him dependent on the caprice of human malice, would rob His threats in great part of their efficacy, and would offer the amplest scope and the strongest incentive to human presumption. God has actually appointed the end of this present life, or the moment of death, as the term of man’s probation. For in that moment there takes place in our life an essential and momentous change; from the state of union with the body the soul passes into a life apart. No other sharply defined instant of our life is of like importance. Hence we must conclude that death is the end of our probation; for it is meet that our trial should terminate at a moment of our existence so prominent and significant as to be easily perceived by every man. Accordingly, it is the belief of all people that eternal retribution is dealt out immediately after death. This conviction of mankind is an additional proof of our thesis.
Finally, the preservation of moral and social order would not be sufficiently provided for, if men knew that the time of trial were to be continued after death.
Many believe that reason cannot give any conclusive proof for the eternity of the pains of hell, but that it can merely show that this doctrine does not involve any contradiction. Since the Church has made no decision on this point, each one is entirely free to embrace this opinion. As is apparent, the author of this article does not hold it. We admit that God might have extended the time of trial beyond death; however, had He done so, He would have permitted man to know about it, and would have made corresponding provision for the maintenance of moral order in this life. We may further admit that it is not intrinsically impossible for God to annihilate the sinner after some definite amount of punishment; but this would be less in conformity with the nature of man’s immortal soul; and, secondly, we know of no fact that might give us any right to suppose God will act in such a manner.
The objection is made that there is no proportion between the brief moment of sin and an eternal punishment. But why not? We certainly admit a proportion between a momentary good deed and its eternal reward, not, it is true, a proportion of duration, but a proportion between the law and its appropriate sanction. Again, sin is an offence against the infinite authority of God, and the sinner is in some way aware of this, though but imperfectly. Accordingly there is in sin an approximation to infinite malice which deserves an eternal punishment. Finally, it must be remembered that, although the act of sinning is brief, the guilt of sin remains forever; for in the next life the sinner never turns away from his sin by a sincere conversion. It is further objected that the sole object of punishment must be to reform the evil-doer. This is not true. Besides punishments inflicted for correction, there are also punishments for the satisfaction of justice. But justice demands that whoever departs from the right way in his search for happiness shall not find his happiness, but lose it. The eternity of the pains of hell responds to this demand for justice. And, besides, the fear of hell does really deter many from sin; and thus, in as far as it is threatened by God, eternal punishment also serves for the reform of morals. But if God threatens man with the pains of hell, He must also carry out His threat if man does not heed it by avoiding sin.
For solving other objections it should be noted: God is not only infinitely good, He is infinitely wise, just, and holy. No one is cast into hell unless he has fully and entirely deserved it. The sinner perseveres forever in his evil disposition. We must not consider the eternal punishment of hell as a series of separate of distinct terms of punishment, as if God were forever again and again pronouncing a new sentence and inflicting new penalties, and as if He could never satisfy His desire of vengeance. Hell is, especially in the eyes of God, one and indivisible in its entirety; it is but one sentence and one penalty. We may represent to ourselves a punishment of indescribable intensity as in a certain sense the equivalent of an eternal punishment; this may help us to see better how God permits the sinner to fall into hell — how a man who sets at naught all Divine warnings, who fails to profit by all the patient forbearance God has shown him, and who in wanton disobedience is absolutely bent on rushing into eternal punishment, can be finally permitted by God’s just indignation to fall into hell. In itself, it is no rejection of Catholic dogma to suppose that God might at times, by way of exception, liberate a soul from hell. Thus some argued from a false interpretation of I Peter 3:19 sq., that Christ freed several damned souls on the occasion of His descent into hell. Others were misled by untrustworthy stories into the belief that the prayers of Gregory the Great rescued the Emperor Trajan from hell. But now theologians are unanimous in teaching that such exceptions never take place and never have taken place, a teaching which should be accepted. If this be true, how can the Church pray in the Offertory of the Mass for the dead: “Libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de poenis inferni et de profundo lacu” etc.? Many think the Church uses these words to designate purgatory. They can be explained more readily, however, if we take into consideration the peculiar spirit of the Church’s liturgy; sometimes she refers her prayers not to the time at which they are said, but to the time for which they are said. Thus the offertory in question is referred to the moment when the soul is about to leave the body, although it is actually said some time after that moment; and as if he were actually at the death-beds of the faithful, the priest implores God to preserve their souls from hell. But whichever explanation be preferred, this much remains certain, that in saying that offertory the Church intends to implore only those graces which the soul is still capable of receiving, namely, the grace of a happy death or the release from purgatory.
IV. IMPENITENCE OF THE DAMNED
The damned are confirmed in evil; every act of their will is evil and inspired by hatred of God. This is the common teaching of theology; St. Thomas sets it forth in many passages. Nevertheless, some have held the opinion that, although the damned cannot perform any supernatural action, they are still able to perform, now and then, some naturally good deed; thus far the Church has not condemned this opinion. The author of this article maintains that the common teaching is the true one; for in hell the separation from the sanctifying power of Divine love is complete. Many assert that this inability to do good works is physical, and assign the withholding of all grace as its proximate cause; in doing so, they take the term grace in its widest meaning, i.e. every Divine co-operation both in natural and in supernatural good actions. The damned, then, can never choose between acting out of love of God and virtue, and acting out of hatred of God. Hatred is the only motive in their power; and they have no other choice than that of showing their hatred of God by one evil action in preference to another. The last and the real cause of their impenitence is the state of sin which they freely chose as their portion on earth and in which they passed, unconverted, into the next life and into that state of permanence (status termini) by nature due to rational creatures, and to an unchangeable attitude of mind. Quite in consonance with their final state, God grants them only such cooperation as corresponds to the attitude which they freely chose as their own in this life. Hence the damned can but hate God and work evil, whilst the just in heaven or in purgatory, being inspired solely by love of God, can but do good. Therefore, too, the works of the reprobate, in as far as they are inspired by hatred of God, are not formal, but only material sins, because they are performed without the liberty requisite for moral imputability. Formal sin the reprobate commits then only, when, from among several actions in his power, he deliberately chooses that which contains the greater malice. By such formal sins the damned do not incur any essential increase of punishment, because in that final state the very possibility and Divine permission of sin are in themselves a punishment; and, moreover, a sanction of the moral law would be quite meaningless.
From what has been said it follows that the hatred which the lost soul bears to God is voluntary in its cause only; and the cause is the deliberate sin which it committed on earth and by which it merited reprobation. It is also obvious that God is not responsible for the reprobate’s material sins of hate, because by granting His co-operation in their sinful acts as well as by refusing them every incitement to good, He acts quite in accordance with the nature of their state. Therefore their sins are no more imputable to God than are the blasphemies of a man in the state of total intoxication, although they are not uttered without Divine assistance. The reprobate carries in himself the primary cause of impenitence; it is the guilt of sin which he committed on earth and with which he passed into eternity. The proximate cause of impenitence in hell is God’s refusal of every grace and every impulse for good. It would not be intrinsically impossible for God to move the damned to repentance; yet such a course would be out of keeping with the state of final reprobation. The opinion that the Divine refusal of all grace and of every incitement to good is the proximate cause of impenitence, is upheld by many theologians, and in particular by Molina. Suarez considers it probable. Scotus and Vasquez hold similar views. Even the Fathers and St. Thomas may be understood in this sense. Thus St. Thomas teaches (De verit., Q. xxiv, a.10) that the chief cause of impenitence is Divine justice which refuses the damned every grace. Nevertheless many theologians, e.g. Suarez, defend the opinion that the damned are only morally incapable of good; they have the physical power, but the difficulties in their way are so great that they can never be surmounted. The damned can never divert their attention from their frightful torments, and at the same time they know that all hope is lost to them. Hence despair and hatred of God, their just Judge, is almost inevitable, and even the slightest good impulse becomes morally impossible. The Church has not decided this question. The present author prefers Molina’s opinion.
But if the damned are impenitent, how can Scripture (Wisdom 5) say they repent of their sin? They deplore with the utmost intensity the punishment, but not the malice of sin; to this they cling more tenaciously than ever. Had they an opportunity, they would commit the sin again, not indeed for the sake of its gratification, which they found illusive, but out of sheer hatred of God. They are ashamed of their folly which led them to seek happiness in sin, but not of the malice of sin itself (St. Thomas, Theol. comp., c. cxxv).
V. POENA DAMNI
The poena damni, or pain of loss, consists in the loss of the beatific vision and in so complete a separation of all the powers of the soul from God that it cannot find in Him even the least peace and rest. It is accompanied by the loss of all supernatural gifts, e.g. the loss of faith. The characters impressed by the sacraments alone remain to the greater confusion of the bearer. The pain of loss is not the mere absence of superior bliss, but it is also a most intense positive pain. The utter void of the soul made for the enjoyment of infinite truth and infinite goodness causes the reprobate immeasurable anguish. Their consciousness that God, on Whom they entirely depend, is their enemy forever is overwhelming. Their consciousness of having by their own deliberate folly forfeited the highest blessings for transitory and delusive pleasures humiliates and depresses them beyond measure. The desire for happiness inherent in their very nature, wholly unsatisfied and no longer able to find any compensation for the loss of God in delusive pleasure, renders them utterly miserable. Moreover, they are well aware that God is infinitely happy, and hence their hatred and their impotent desire to injure Him fills them with extreme bitterness. And the same is true with regard to their hatred of all the friends of God who enjoy the bliss of heaven. The pain of loss is the very core of eternal punishment. If the damned beheld God face to face, hell itself, notwithstanding its fire, would be a kind of heaven. Had they but some union with God even if not precisely the union of the beatific vision, hell would no longer be hell, but a kind of purgatory. And yet the pain of loss is but the natural consequence of that aversion from God which lies in the nature of every mortal sin.
VI. POENA SENSUS
The poena sensus, or pain of sense, consists in the torment of fire so frequently mentioned in the Holy Bible. According to the greater number of theologians the term fire denotes a material fire, and so a real fire. We hold to this teaching as absolutely true and correct. However, we must not forget two things: from Catharinus (d. 1553) to our times there have never been wanting theologians who interpret the Scriptural term fire metaphorically, as denoting an incorporeal fire; and secondly, thus far the Church has not censured their opinion. Some few of the Fathers also thought of a metaphorical explanation. Nevertheless, Scripture and tradition speak again and again of the fire of hell, and there is no sufficient reason for taking the term as a mere metaphor. It is urged: How can a material fire torment demons, or human souls before the resurrection of the body? But, if our soul is so joined to the body as to be keenly sensitive to the pain of fire, why should the omnipotent God be unable to bind even pure spirits to some material substance in such a manner that they suffer a torment more or less similar to the pain of fire which the soul can feel on earth? The reply indicates, as far as possible, how we may form an idea of the pain of fire which the demons suffer. Theologians have elaborated various theories on this subject, which, however, we do not wish to detail here (cf. the very minute study by Franz Schmid, “Quaestiones selectae ex theol. dogm.”, Paderborn, 1891, q. iii; also Guthberlet, “Die poena sensus” in “Katholik”, II, 1901, 305 sqq., 385 sqq.).
It is quite superfluous to add that the nature of hell-fire is different from that of our ordinary fire; for instance, it continues to burn without the need of a continually renewed supply of fuel. How are we to form a conception of that fire in detail remains quite undetermined; we merely know that it is corporeal. The demons suffer the torment of fire, even when, by Divine permission, they leave the confines of hell and roam about on earth. In what manner this happens is uncertain. We may assume that they remain fettered inseparably to a portion of that fire.
The pain of sense is the natural consequence of that inordinate turning to creatures which is involved in every mortal sin. It is meet that whoever seeks forbidden pleasure should find pain in return. (Cf. Heuse, “Das Feuer der Hölle” in “Katholik”, II, 1878, 225 sqq., 337 sqq., 486 sqq., 581 sqq.; “Etudes religieuses”, L, 1890, II, 309, report of an answer of the Poenitentiaria, 30 April, 1890; Knabenbauer, “In Matth., xxv, 41”.)
VII. ACCIDENTAL PAINS OF THE DAMNED
According to theologians the pain of loss and the pain of sense constitute the very essence of hell, the former being by far the most dreadful part of eternal punishment. But the damned also suffer various “accidental” punishments.
Just as the blessed in heaven are free from all pain, so, on the other hand, the damned never experience even the least real pleasure. In hell separation from the blissful influence of Divine love has reached its consummation. The reprobate must live in the midst of the damned; and their outbursts of hatred or of reproach as they gloat over his sufferings, and their hideous presence, are an ever fresh source of torment. The reunion of soul and body after the Resurrection will be a special punishment for the reprobate, although there will be no essential change in the pain of sense which they are already suffering.
As to the punishments visited upon the damned for their venial sins, cf. Suarez, “De peccatis”, disp. vii, s. 4.
VIII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PAINS OF HELL
(1) The pains of hell differ in degree according to demerit. This holds true not only of the pain of sense, but also of the pain of loss. A more intense hatred of God, a more vivid consciousness of utter abandonment by Divine goodness, a more restless craving to satisfy the natural desire for beatitude with things external to God, a more acute sense of shame and confusion at the folly of having sought happiness in earthly enjoyment — all this implies as its correlation a more complete and more painful separation from God.
(2) The pains of hell are essentially immutable; there are no temporary intermissions or passing alleviations. A few Fathers and theologians, in particular the poet Prudentius, expressed the opinion that on stated days God grants the damned a certain respite, and that besides this the prayers of the faithful obtain for them other occasional intervals of rest. The Church has never condemned this opinion in express terms. But now theologians are justly unanimous in rejecting it. St. Thomas condemns it severely (In IV Sent., dist. xlv, Q. xxix, cl.1). [Cf. Merkle, “Die Sabbatruhe in der Hölle” in “Romische Quartalschrift” (1895), 489 sqq.; see also Prudentius.]
However, accidental changes in the pains of hell are not excluded. Thus it may be that the reprobate is sometimes more and sometimes less tormented by his surroundings. Especially after the last judgment there will be an accidental increase in punishment; for then the demons will never again be permitted to leave the confines of hell, but will be finally imprisoned for all eternity; and the reprobate souls of men will be tormented by union with their hideous bodies.
(3) Hell is a state of the greatest and most complete misfortune, as is evident from all that has been said. The damned have no joy whatever, and it were better for them if they had not been born (Matthew 26:24). Not long ago Mivart (The Nineteenth Century, Dec., 1892, Febr. and Apr., 1893) advocated the opinion that the pains of the damned would decrease with time and that in the end their lot would not be so extremely sad; that they would finally reach a certain kind of happiness and would prefer existence to annihilation; and although they would still continue to suffer a punishment symbolically described as a fire by the Bible, yet they would hate God no longer, and the most unfortunate among them be happier than many a pauper in this life. It is quite obvious that all this is opposed to Scripture and the teaching of the Church. The articles cited were condemned by the Congregation of the Index and the Holy Office on 14 and 19 July, 1893 (cf. “Civiltà Cattolia”, I, 1893, 672).
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PETER LOMBARD, IV sent., dist. xliv, xlvi, and his commentators; ST. THOMAS, I:64 and Supplement 9:97, and his commentators; SUAREZ, De Angelis, VIII; PATUZZI, De futuro impiorum statu (Verona, 1748-49; Venice, 1764); PASSAGLIA, De aeternitate poenarum deque igne inferno (Rome, 1854); CLARKE, Eternal Punishment and Infinite Love in The Month, XLIV (1882), 1 sqq., 195 sqq., 305 sqq.; RIETH, Der moderne Unglaube und die ewigen Strafen in Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, XXXI (1886), 25 sqq., 136 sqq.; SCHEEBEN-KÜPPER, Die Mysterien des Christenthums (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1898), sect. 97; TOURNEBIZE, Opinions du jour sur les peines d’Outre-tombe (Paris, 1899); JOS. SACHS, Die ewige Dauer der Höllenstrafen (Paderborn, 1900); BILLOT, De novissimis (Rome, 1902); PESCH, Praelect. dogm., IX (2nd. ed., Freiburg, 1902), 303 sqq.; HURTER, Compendium theol. dogm., III (11th ed., Innsbruck, 1903), 603 sqq.; STUFLER, Die Heiligkeit Gottes und der ewige Tod (Innsbruck, 1903); SCHEEBEN-ATZBERGER, Handbuch der kath. Dogmatik, IV (Freiburg, 1903), sect. 409 sqq.; HEINRICH-GUTBERLET, Dogmatische Theologie, X (Münster, 1904), sect. 613 sqq.; BAUTZ, Die Hölle (2nd. ed., Mainz, 1905); STUFLER, Die Theorie der freiwilligen Verstocktheit und ihr Verhältnis zur Lehre des hl. Thomas von Aquin (Innsbruck, 1905); various recent manuals of dogmatic theology (POHLE, SPECHT, etc.); HEWIT, Ignis Æternus in The Cath. World, LXVII (1893), 1426; BRIDGETT in Dub. Review, CXX (1897), 56-69; PORTER, Eternal Punishment in The Month, July, 1878, p. 338.
JOSEPH HONTHEIM Transcribed by Michael T. Barrett Dedicated to the Poor Souls in Purgatory
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Hell
a term which originally corresponded more exactly to HADES, being derived from the Saxon helan, to cover, and signifying merely the covered, or invisible place-the habitation of those who have gone from this visible terrestrial region to the world of spirits. But it has been so long appropriated in common usage to the place of future punishment for the wicked, that its earlier meaning has been lost sight of. In the English Bible it is used in the wider sense.
I. Hebrew and Greek Terms. The three words, which all but monopolize the subject, are , Sheol’, in the O.T.; and , Hades, and , Gehenna, in the N.T. occurs 65 times; in 61 of these it is rendered in the Sept. By ; twice by (2Sa 22:6, and Pro 23:14); and twice omitted in the common text (Job 24:19; Eze 32:21). In the Vulg. is translated 48 times by Infernus, and 17 times by Inferus [mostly Inferi (plur.)]. In our A.V. it is represented 31 times by Grave, 31 times by Hell, and 3 times by Pit. In the N. Test. our word Hell occurs 23 times; 12 times it stands for , and 11 times [perhaps the twelfth should be added, see Tischendorf and Bruder (Concord.) on Rev 3:7] for . The Vulg. closely follows the original in its N.T. renderings; in all the twelve passages is simply copied into Ge’henna, while Infernus stands for every occurrence of , except once (Mat 16:18), where the phrase (gates of hell) becomes portae inferi. Since, therefore, , , and , are employed in the sacred original to designate the mysteries of HELL, we proceed to give first their probable derivation, and then their meaning, so far as Holy Scripture assists in its discovery.
(I.) Their Derivation.
1. (or, as it is occasionally written, ), is by most of the old writers (see Cocceius, Lex. p. 840,841; Schindler, Lex. Pent. 1782; Robinson, Key to Hebrew Bible, 2, 217; and Leigh, Crit. Sacra, 1, 238; 2, 6) referred for its origin to , to demand, seek, or ask. They are not agreed as to the mode of connecting the derivative with this root; Cocceius suggests an absurd reason, notateum locum in quo quiest in quaestione est (!) A more respectable solution is suggested by those who see in the insatiableness of (Pro 30:15-16) a good ground for connecting it with the root in question. Thus Fagius on Gin. 37; Buxtorf, Lexicon, s.v. referring to Isa 5:14; Hab 2:5; Pro 27:20. (Ernst Meier, Hebr. W-w-b, p. 187, also adopts this root, but he is far-fetched and obscure in his view of its relation to the derived word). (A good defense [by a modern scholar] of this derivation of Sheol from the verb is given by Giider, Lehre.v. d. Erschein. Jesu Christi unter den Todten [Berne, 1853], and more briefly in his art. Hades [Herzog, 5, 441, Clark’s trans. 2, 468]. His defense is based on the many passages which urge the insatiable demand of Sheol for all men, such as those we have mentioned in the text, and Gen 37:35; 1 Samuel 28; Psa 6:6; Psa 89:49. See also Venema [on Psa 16:10]; J. A. Quensted, Tract. de Sepultura Veterum, 9, 1.) Bottcher (De Inferis, p. 76, 159) finds in the root to be hollow, a better origin for our word. Gesenius (Thes. p. 1347), who adopts the same derivation, supposes that means to dig out, and so contrives to unite and , by making the primary idea of digging lead to the derived one of seeking (see Job 3:21). Bottcher goes on to connect the German words Hohl (hollow) and Hohle (cavity) with the idea indicated by , and timidly suggests the possibility of Hlle (Hell) coming from Hohle. Whilst decidedly rejecting this derivation, we do not object to his derivation of the Hebrew noun; amidst the avowed uncertainty of the case, it seems to be the least objectionable of the suggestions which have been offered, and, to provide an intelligible sense for the word Sheol, most in harmony with many Biblical passages. Bottcher defines the term to mean vastus locus subterraneus (p. 72, 153). This agrees very well with the rendering of our A.V. in so far as it has used the comprehensive word Hell, which properly signifies a covered or concealed place.
2. Hades. The universally allowed statement that the N.T. has shed a light on the mysteries of life and immortality which is only in an inferior degree discovered in the O.T., is seldom more distinctly verified than in the uncertainty which attaches to Sheol (the difficulty of distinguishing its various degrees of meaning, which it is generally felt exist, and which our A.V. has endeavored to express by an equal balance between Hell and Grave), in contrast with the distinction which is implied in the about equally frequent terms of Hades and Gehenna, now to be described. The of the N.T. was suggested, no doubt, by its frequent occurrence in the Sept. The word was originally unaspirated, as in Homer’s v (II. 5, 646; 9:312), and Hesiod’s v (Theog. 311), and Pindar’s v (Pyth. 5, 130). This form of the word gives greater credibility to the generally received derivation of it from a privat. and , to see. (The learned authors of Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lex. [s.v. ] throw some doubt on this view of the origin of the word, because of its aspirated beginning, in Attic Greek. But surely this is precarious ground. Is it certain that even in Attic writers it was invariably aspirated? AEschylus [Sept. c. Theb. (Paley) 310] has v [with the lenis], according to the best editing. It is true that this is in a chorus, but in the Agam. 1505, also a choral line, we read [with the aspirate], as if the usage were uncertain. Possibly in the elliptical phrase [scil ] the aspirate occurs because the genitive is really the name of the God [not of the region, which might, for distinction, have been then unaspirated]). Plutarch accordingly explains it by (De Isid. et Osir. p. 382), and in the Etymol. Magn. ] is defined as , … . Hades is thus the invisible place or region; Locus visibus nostris subtractus, as Grotius defines it.
3. Gehenna () is composed of the two Heb. words (valley) and (Hinnon, the name of the proprietor of the valley). In the Sept. is used in Jos 18:16 to designate the valley of the son of Hinnom, the full expression of which is The shorter appellation occurs in the same verse. The Rabbinical writers derive from , rugire [to groan or mourn, in Eze 24:23], as if indicative of the cries of the children in the horrid rites of the Moloch- worship (see Buxtorf, Lex. Rab. p. 108; Glassius [ed. Dathii], Philolog. Sacr. i, 806). The etymological remarks have paved our way to the next section of our subject.
(II.) Biblical Meaning of these three Terms.
1. Meanings of , Sheol.
(1.) The Grave. Much controversy has arisen whether within the meaning of Sheoel should be included the grave; indeed this is the only question of difficulty. The fact, which we have already stated, that our A.V. translates quite as often by grave as by the general term hell, supplies aprima facie reason for including it. Without, however, insisting on the probability that polemical theology, rather than Biblical science, influenced our translators, at least occasionally, in their rendering of the word, we may here adduce on the other side the telling fact that of all the ancient versions not one translates in any passage the Hebrew Sheol by the equivalent of grave. The other Greek translators, like the venerable Sept., so far as their fragments show (see Origen, Hexapla, passim), everywhere give for (sometimes they use for the locative case the older and better phrase , , sometimes the more recent and vulgar , ). The Samaritan text in the seven passages of the Pentateuch has either (Siol) or . Onkelos and Jonathan everywhere, except in five passages, retain . The Peshito everywhere in both Testaments renders the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades by [] Shiul; and, as we have already seen, the Vulg. translates the same words in both the O.T. and the N.T. by inferus (plur. Inferi mostly), and, above all, Infernus (see above for particulars). It is to the later Targumists (the pseudo-Jonathan and the Jerusalem Targum), and afterwards to the Rabbinical doctors of the Middle Ages, that we trace the version of the sepulcher and the grave (thus in Gen 37:35; Gen 42:38; Gen 44:29; Gen 44:31, these Targumists rendered Sheol by [the house of burial]; similarly did they render Psa 141:7; Job 7:9; Job 14:13; Job 17:13; Job 17:16; Job 21:13; Ecc 9:10, and other passages, in which it is observable how often they have been followed by our translators). See, for more information on this point, archbishop Usher, Works [by Elrington], 3:319-321; and, more fully, Bottcher (p. 68-70, sec. 146-149), who quotes Rashi and Aben Ezra [on Genesis 37 55J; D. Kimchi (Lib. Radia. s.v. ); and other Rabbis who expressly admit the grave within the scope of the meaning of Sheol; Bottcher also quotes a very long array of commentators and lexicographers [Rabbi Mardochai Nathan, with extravagant one-sidedness, in his Hebr. Concord. gives no other sense to Sheol but , the grave], who follow the Rabbinical doctors herein; and he adds the names of such writers as deny the meaning of the grave to the Hebrew Sheol: among these occur the learned Dutch divines Vitringa and Venema. The latter of these expressly affirms, nullo modo ad sepulchrum pertinebit (Comment. ad Ps. i, 504). To the authorities he mentions we would add, as maintaining the same view, the learned Henry Ainsworth (on Gen 37:35, Works, p. 135), who draws an important distinction; , the grave, the word meaneth not the grave digged or made with hands, which is named in Hebrew , but it meaneth the common place or state of death (a similar distinction is drawn by Luther [Enarr. in Genes. 42:38]; is only the grave in which an actual interment takes place; none that die unburied can have this word used of them; their receptacle is , commune quoddam raceptaculum non corporum tantum sed et animarum, ubi omnes mortui congregantur. Ann. Seneca [lib. 8, controvers. 4] observes between natural burial and artificial Omnibus natura sepulturam dedit, etc. So Lucan, 7:818, says Capit omnia tellus Quae genuit; caelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam. Pliny [ Hist. Nat. 7, 54] distinguishes between natural burial by applying to it the Word sepelire, and burial by ceremony by using of it the synonym humare); Nicolaus (De Sepulchris Hebr. i, 8-14), who shows that is never used of funeral pomp, nor of the burial of the body in the ground; Eberhard Busmann, who [in 1682] wrote, Dissertatio philol. de Scheol Hebr., makes a statement to the effect that he had examined all the passages in the O.T. and pronounces of them thus Nullum eorumu (excepto forsan uno vel altero, de quo tamen adhuc dubitari potest) de sepulchro necessario est intelligendum multa tamen contra ita sunt comparata ut de sepulchro nullo modo intelligi possint neac debeant. Some modern writers, who have specially examined the subject, also deny that ever means the grave. Thus Breecher, On the Immortality of the Soul as held by the Jews (and Pareau, Comment. de Immort. ac vitae fut. notit. 1807).
These reasons have led learned men, who have especially examined the subject, to exclude the grave (specifically understood as a made or artificial one) from the proper meaning of Sheol. We cannot but accept their view in critical exactness. But there is an inexact and generic sense of Sheol in which the word grave well expresses the meaning of the Scripture passages just mentioned, and (in justice to the A.V. it may be admitted) of most of the others, which our translators rendered by this word. (The passages in which the A.V. renders by grave are these Gen 37:35; Gen 42:38; Gen 44:29; Gen 44:31.; 1Sa 2:6; 1Ki 2:6; 1Ki 2:9; Job 7:9; Job 14:13; Job 17:13; Job 21:13; Job 24:19; Psa 6:5 [Hebr. 61; 30:3 [4]; 31:17 [18]; 49:14 [15], twice; 49:15 [16]; 88:3 [4]; 89:48 [49]; 141:7; Pro 1:12; Pro 30:16; Ecc 9:10; Son 8:6; Isa 14:11 [marg. of Isa 5:9 has grave]; Isa 38:10; Isa 38:18; Eze 31:15; Hos 13:14, twice; and in Jon 2:2 [3] the maryin has grave.) Of this more vague sense Usher (Works, 3:324) says- When Sheol is said to signify the grave, the term grave must be taken in as large a sense as it is in our Savior’s speech (John 5, 28), and in Isa 26:19, according to the Sept. reading; upon which passage writes Origen thus–‘Here and in many other places the graves of the dead are to be understood, not such only as we see are builded for the receiving of men’s bodies-either cut out in stones, or digged down in the earth; but every place wherein a man’s body lieth either entire or in part’ otherwise they which are not committed to burial, nor laid in graves, but have ended their life in shipwrecks, deserts, and such like ways, should not seem to be reckoned among those which are said to be raised from the grave’ (In Esai. lib. 28 citatus a Pamphilo, in Apol.) We have here, then, the first meaning of the Hebrew largely applied, as we have seen, in our A.V. to the grave, considered in a universal sense (see the passages in the last note), commensurate with death itself as to the extent of its signification. (Comp. the grave and gate of death of the English Liturgy, Collect for Easter Even.) Though we carefully exclude the artificial grave, or , from this category, there is no doubt, as bishop Lowth has well shown (De Sacra Poesi Hebr. Prael. 7 [ed. Oxon. with notes of Michaelis and Rosenmller, 1821], p. 65-69), that the Hebrew poets drew all the imagery with which they describe the state and condition of the dead from the funeral rites and pomp, and from the vaulted sepulchers of their great men. The bishop’s whole treatment of the subject is quite worth perusal. We can only quote his final remarks: You will see this transcendent imagery better and more completely displayed in that noble triumphal song which was composed by Isaiah (Isa 14:4-27), previous to the death of the king of Babylon. Ezekiel has also grandly illustrated the same scene, with similar machinery, in the last prophecy concerning the fall of Pharaoh (32:18-32). For an excellent vindication of the A.V. in many of its translations of the grave, we refer the reader to the treatise of archbishop Usher (Answer to the Jesuit’s Challenge, Works [ed. Elrington], 3, 319-324 and 332-340). We doubt not that, if grave is an admissible sense of’ , our translators have, on the whole, made a judicious selection of the passages that will best bear the sense: their purpose was a popular one, and they accomplished it, in the instance of uncertain words and phrases, by giving them the most intelligible turn they would bear, as in the case before us. We undertake not to decide whether it would be better to leave the broad and generic word Sheol, as the great versions of antiquity did, everywhere; whether, e.g., Jacob’s lament (Gen 37:35; Gen 42:38) and like passages would be more suitably, if not correctly, rendered by the simple retention of the original word, or the equally indefinite hades. There is some force in the observation often made (see Corn. a Lapide, on Gen 37:35; Bellarmine and others, adduced by Leigh, Crit. Sacrae, 1, 239) that it was not the grave of Joseph which Jacob meant, for he thought indeed that his Son was devoured of wild beasts, and not buried. See more on this passage in Pearson, Creed [ed. Chevallier], p. 437; Fulke, Translations, etc., p. 314; both which writers defend the version of grave. Ainsworth ad loc. (among the older commentators) and Knobel (among the moderns) contend for the general word hell [Knobel, Schattenreich ]. Rosenmller learnedly states both views, and leans in favor of locum, ubi mortui umbrarum instar degunt (Scholia, 1, 576).
(2.) The other meaning of , Bell, so rendered in thirty-one passages of A.V., according to the more ancient and, as it seems to us, preferable opinion, makes it local, i.e. the place of disembodied spirits. ( , , , Andr. Caesaricus in Apocal. c. 63.) A later opinion supposes the word to indicate not the place where souls departed are, but the state and condition of the dead, or their permansion in death, as bishop Pearson calls it (Creed [ed. Chevallier], p. 439). On this opinion, which that great divine cannot admit as a full or proper exposition, we shall say nothing more than that it is at best only a deduction from the foregoing local definition. That definition we have stated in the broadest terms, because, in reference to Dr. Barrow’s enumeration (Serm. on the Creed [Art. He descended into Hell], Works [Oxford, 1830], 5, 416, 417) of the questions which have arisen on the subject before us, we believe that Holy Scripture warrants the most ample of all the positions suggested by that eminent writer, to the effect that the Sheol or Hell of which we treat is not merely the place of good and happy souls, or that of bad and miserable ones, but indifferently and in common, of both those. We propose to arrange the Biblical passages so as to describe, first, the state of the occupants of Sheol, and, secondly, the locality of it, in some of its prominent features. As to the first point, Sheol is (a) the receptacle of the spirits of all that depart this life. (Among the scriptural designations of the inhabitants of Sheol is [ in (in Pro 21:16) is rendered congregation of the dead (or departed) in the A.V. This is better than the Sept. rendering , and Vulg. coetus gigantum. There is force in the word thus applied, derived from the use of the word to designate the great congregation of the Jewish nation; SEE CONGREGATION. For the use of the word as applicable to the dead, see especially Bottcher, De Infe. p. 94-10, 193-204. The word occurs in this sense also in the grand passage of Isaiah 14. [In Isa 14:9 Sheol stirs up its Rephaim on the entrance of the spirit of the king of Babylon.] is met with in six other places in the same sense of departed spirits. It is connected with
, weak, which occurs in Num 13:18, and other passages [see Furst, Hebr. W. b. ii, 383]. The gentile noun [mentioned in Gen 14:5 and elsewhere, and rendered Rephain and Giants] is of the same form, but probably of a different origin [see Gesenius, Thes. p. 1302].) This general signification appears from Psa 89:47-48, and Isa 38:18-19 (in which latter verse the opposition in its universal sense between sheol and the state of life in this world is to be observed). We do not hesitate, with archbishop Usher (Works, 3:318), to translate in these passages hell or sheol, instead of grave, as in the A.V. Sheol, therefore, is (b) the abode of the wicked, Num 16:33; Job 24:19; Psa 9:17 (Hebr. 18); 31:17 (18); Pro 5:5; Pro 9:18; Isa 57:9; and (g) of the good [both in their disembodied condition], Psa 16:10, comp. with Act 2:27; Act 2:31; Psa 30:3 (4); 49:15 (16); 86:13; Isa 38:10, compared with Job in, 17-19; Hos 13:14, comp. with 1Co 15:55. With regard to the second point, touching some local features of Sheol, we find it described as very deep (Job 11:8); dark (Job 10:21-22); (yet confess and open to the eye of God, Job 26:6); with valleys (Gesenius, Thes. p. 1348) or depths of various gradations (Psa 86:13 [compared with Deu 32:22]; Pro 9:18); with bars (Job 17:16, comp. with Jon 2:6) and gates (Isa 38:10); situated beneath us; hence the dead are said to go down () to Sheol, Num 16:30; Num 16:33; Eze 31:15-17 (compared with Job 7:9; Gen 42:38). Comp. Josephus (Ant. 17:1, 3), who, when describing the tenets of the Jewish sects, attributes to the Pharisees the belief of a future state, in which rewards and punishments will be dealt out to men in their disembodied state ( ) under the earth ( , . . .). On the phrase of the creed descended into hell, and sundry uses of and as not necessarily implying local descent, but rather removal from one place to another, see Usher (Works, 3:392, 393). We have seen how some have derived the name of Sheol from its insatiability; such a quality is often attributed to it: it is all-devouring (Pro 1:12); never satisfied (Pro 30:16; Isa 5:14), and inexorable (Son 8:7).
2. There is in the Hades () of the N.T. an equally ample signification with the Sheol of the O.T., as the abode of both happy and miserable beings. Its characteristics are not dissimilar; it is represented as a prison (comp. 1Pe 3:19, where inhabitants of hades are called ); with gates and bars ( ], Mat 16:18; comp. with the phrase of Act 2:27; Act 2:31, with the ellipsis of , v); and locks (the keys of Hades, , being in the hands of Christ, Rev 1:18); its situation is also downwards (see the of Mat 11:23, and Luk 10:15). As might be expected, there is more plainly indicated in the N.T. the separate condition of the righteous and the wicked; to indicate this separation other terms are used; thus, in Luk 23:43, Paradise ( no doubt different from that of Pali, 2Co 12:4, which is designated, in Rev 2:7, as , the supernal Paradise; see Robinson, Lexicon, N.T., p. 13,547; Wahl, Clavis, N.T., p. 376; Kuinol [ed. London] on N.T. 2, 237; and especially Meyer, Kommentar u. d. Neue Test. [ed. 4] 6:292, and the authorities there quoted by him) is used to describe that part of Hades which the blessed dead inhabit a figurative expression, so well adapted for the description of a locality of happiness that the inspired writers employ it to describe the three happiest places, the Eden of Innocence, the Hades of departed saints, and the heaven of their glorious rest. The distinction between the upper and the lower Paradise was familiar to the Jews. In Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judenthun, 2, 295-322, much of their curious opinions on the subject is collected. In p. 298 are given the seven names of the heavenly Paradise, while in the next three are contained the seven names of the lower Paradise of Hades. SEE PARADISE.
Another figurative expression used to designate the happy part of Hades is Abraham’s bosom, , Luk 16:22. (St. Augustine who says [Quaest. Evang. 2, 38] Sinus Abrahn e requies est beatorum pauperim in quo post harc vitam recipiuntur, yet doubts whether hades is used at all in N.T. in a good sense: He says [Ep. 187, Works, 2, 689], Whether the bosom of Abraham, where the wicked Dives was, when in his torment he beheld the poor man at rest, were either to be deemed the same as Paradise, or to be thought to pertain to hell or hades, I cannot define [non facile dixerim]; so also he writes on Psalms 85 [Works, 4:912]). For an explanation of the phrase, SEE ABRAHAM’S BOSOM.
3. We need not linger over the Biblical sense of our last word . Gehenna. We refer the reader to a Discourse by the learned Joseph Mede (Works, p. 3133) on Gehenna, which he shows was not used to designate hell before the captivity. He, in the same treatise, dwells on certain Hebrew words and phrases, which were in use previous to that epoch for designating Hades and its inhabitants-among these he especially notes and , on which we have observed above. As is not limited to the finite happiness of Hades, but embraces in certain passages the ultimate blessedness of heaven, so there is no violence in supposing that (from the finite signification which it possibly bears in Mat 5:29-30; Mat 23:15, equivalent to the referred to by Peter, 2Pe 2:4, as the place where the fallen angels are reserved unto judgment, or until sentence, comp. Jud 1:6) goes on to mean, in perhaps most of its occurrences in the N.T., the final condition of the lost, as in Mat 23:33, where the expression probably means the condemnation [or sentence] to Gehenna as the ultimate doom. SEE GEHENNA.
IV. Synonymous Words and Phrases. (Most of these are given by Eisenmenger, Entdeck. Jud. 2, 324, and Galatinus, De Arcanis, 6:7, p. 345.)
1. , Dumah, in Psa 115:17, where the phrase , all that go down into silence, is in the Sept. ], while the Vulg. has omnes qui descendunt in infe rum (comp. Psa 94:17).
2. , Abaddn, in Job 26:6, is in poetical apposition with (comp. Pro 27:20 [Kethib], where is in conjunction with , forming an hendiadys for destructive hell; Sept. ; Vulg. Infernus et perditio; A.V. Hell and destruction). 3. , Beer Shachath, Psalm 55:24; A.V. pit of destruction Sept. ; Vulg. Puteus interitus (see also passages in which and occur separately).
4. Tsalmaveth, with or without , in Psa 107:10, and other passages; Sept. ; Vulg. Umbra smortis; A.V. shadow of death.
5. , Tachtiy6th Erets, in Isa 44:23; A.V. lower parts of the earth [Sheol or Hades, Gesen.]; Sept. ; Vulg. Extrema terrce (comp. Eze 26:20, etc., where the phrase is inverted, ); of similar meaning is , Psa 88:6 (7).
6. , Tophteh, in Isa 30:33 [according to Eisenmenger]; for another application of this word, see Gesenius, Thes. s.v.; and Rosenmller. ad loc.
7. The phrase first used of Abraham, Gen 25:8 (where it occurs, in the solemn description of the holy patriarch’s end, midway between death and burial), He was gathered to his fathers, is best interpreted of the departure of the soul to Hades to the company of those who preceded him thither (see Cajetan, ad loc., and Gesen. Thes., s.v. [Niphal], p. 131, Colossians 1).
8. , the outer darkness of Mat 8:12, et passim, refers probably to what Josephus (War, 3, 25) calls , the darker Hades.
V. Biblical Statements as to the Condition of those in hell. The dreadful nature of the abode of the wicked is implied in various figurative expressions, such as outer darkness, I am tormented in this flame, furnace of fire, unquenchable fire, where the worm dieth not, the blackness of darkness, torment in fire and brimstone, the ascending smoke of their torment, the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone (Mat 8:12; Mat 13:42; Mat 22:13; Mat 25:30; Luk 16:24; comp. Mat 25:41; Mar 9:43-48; Jud 1:13; comp. Rev 14:10-11; Rev 19:20; Rev 20:14; Rev 21:8). The figure by which hell is represented as burning with fire and brimstone is probably derived from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as that which describes the smoke as ascending from it (comp. Rev 14:10-11, with Gen 19:24; Gen 19:28). To this coincidence of description Peter also most probably alludes in 2Pe 2:6. SEE FIRE.
The names which in many of the other instances are given to the punishments of hell are doubtless in part figurative, and many of the terms which were commonly applied to the subject by the Jews are retained in the New Testament. The images, it will be seen, are generally taken from death, capital punishments, tortures, prisons, etc. And it is the obvious design of the sacred writers, in using such figures, to awaken the idea of something terrible and fearful. They mean to teach that the punishments beyond the grave will excite the same feelings of distress as are produced on earth by the objects employed to represent them. We are so little acquainted with the state in which we shall be hereafter, and with the nature of our future body, that no strictly literal representation of such punishments could be made intelligible to us. Many of the Jews, indeed, and many of the Christian fathers, took the terms employed in Scripture in an entirely literal sense, and supposed there would be actual fire, etc., in hell. But from the words of Christ and his apostles nothing more can with certainty be inferred than that they meant to denote great and unending miseries.
The punishments of sin may be distinguished into two classes:
1. Natural punishments, or such as necessarily follow a life of servitude to sin.
2. Positive punishments, or such as God shall see fit, by his sovereign will, to inflict.
1. Among the natural punishments we may rank the privation of eternal happiness (Mat 7:21; Mat 7:23; Mat 22:13; Mat 25:41; compare 2 Thessalonians 1, 9); the painful sensations which are the natural consequence of committing sin, and of an impenitent heart; the propensities to sin, the evil passions and desires which in this world fill the human heart, and which are doubtless carried into the world to come. The company of fellow-sinners and of evil spirits, as inevitably resulting from the other conditions, may be accounted among the natural punishments, and must prove not the least grievous of them.
2. The positive punishments have already been indicated. It is to these chiefly that the Scripture directs our attention. There are but few men in such a state that the merely natural punishments of sin will appear to them terrible enough to deter them from the commission of it. Experience also shows that to threaten positive punishment has far more effect, as well upon the cultivated as the uncultivated, in deterring them from crime, than to announce, and lead men to expect, the merely natural consequences of sin, be they ever so terrible. Hence we may see why it is that the New. Testament says so little of natural punishments (although these, beyond question, await the wicked), and makes mention of them in particular far less frequently than of positive punishments; and why, in those passages which treat of the punishments of hell, such ideas and images are constantly employed as suggest and confirm the idea of positive punishments (Knapp’s Christian Theology, 156).
As the sins which shut out from heaven vary so greatly in quality and degree, we should expect from the justice of God a corresponding variety both in the natural and the positive punishments. This is accordingly the uniform doctrine of Christ and his apostles. The more knowledge of the divine law a man possesses, the more his opportunities and inducements to avoid sin, the stronger the incentives to faith and holiness set before him, the greater will be his punishment if he fails to make a faithful use of these advantages. The servant who knows his lord’s will and does it not, deserves to be beaten with many stripes: To whom much is given, of him much will be required (Mat 10:15; Mat 11:22; Mat 11:24; Mat 23:15; Luk 12:48), Hence Paul says that the heathen who acted against the law of nature would indeed be punished; but that the Jews would be punished more than they, because they had more knowledge (Rom 2:9-29). In this conviction that God will, even in hell, justly proportion punishment to sin, we must rest satisfied. We cannot now know more; the precise degrees, as well as the precise nature of such punishments, are things belonging to another state of being, which in the present we are unable to understand. For a naturalistic view of the subject, with a copious review of the literature, see Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life (Bost. 1860). For the theological treatment of this topic, SEE HELL PUNISHMENTS.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Hell
derived from the Saxon helan, to cover; hence the covered or the invisible place. In Scripture there are three words so rendered:
(1.) Sheol, occurring in the Old Testament sixty-five times. This word sheol is derived from a root-word meaning “to ask,” “demand;” hence insatiableness (Prov. 30:15, 16). It is rendered “grave” thirty-one times (Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31; 1 Sam. 2:6, etc.). The Revisers have retained this rendering in the historical books with the original word in the margin, while in the poetical books they have reversed this rule.
In thirty-one cases in the Authorized Version this word is rendered “hell,” the place of disembodied spirits. The inhabitants of sheol are “the congregation of the dead” (Prov. 21:16). It is (a) the abode of the wicked (Num. 16:33; Job 24:19; Ps. 9:17; 31:17, etc.); (b) of the good (Ps. 16:10; 30:3; 49:15; 86:13, etc.).
Sheol is described as deep (Job 11:8), dark (10:21, 22), with bars (17:16). The dead “go down” to it (Num. 16:30, 33; Ezek. 31:15, 16, 17).
(2.) The Greek word hades of the New Testament has the same scope of signification as sheol of the Old Testament. It is a prison (1 Pet. 3:19), with gates and bars and locks (Matt. 16:18; Rev. 1:18), and it is downward (Matt. 11:23; Luke 10:15).
The righteous and the wicked are separated. The blessed dead are in that part of hades called paradise (Luke 23:43). They are also said to be in Abraham’s bosom (Luke 16:22).
(3.) Gehenna, in most of its occurrences in the Greek New Testament, designates the place of the lost (Matt. 23:33). The fearful nature of their condition there is described in various figurative expressions (Matt. 8:12; 13:42; 22:13; 25:30; Luke 16:24, etc.). (See HINNOM)
Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary
Hell
Representing two distinct words: Gehenna and Hades (Greek), Sheol (Hebrew). Gehenna) is strictly “the valley of Hinnom” (Jos 15:8; Neh 11:30); “the valley of the children of Hinnom” (2Ki 23:10); “the valley of the son of Hinnom” (2Ch 28:3); “the valley of dead bodies,” or Tophet, where malefactors’ dead bodies were cast, S. of the city (Jer 31:40). A deep narrow glen S. of Jerusalem, where, after Ahaz introduced the worship of the fire gods, the sun, Baal, Moloch, the Jews under Manasseh made their children to pass through the fire (2Ch 33:6), and offered them as burntofferings (Jer 7:31; Jer 19:2-6). So the godly Josiah defiled the valley, making it a receptacle of carcass and criminals’ corpses, in which worms were continually gendering.
A perpetual fire was kept to consume this putrefying matter; hence it became the image of that awful place where all that are unfit for the holy city are cast out a prey to the ever gnawing “worm” of conscience from within and the “unquenchable fire” of torments from without. Mar 9:42-50, “their worm dieth not.” implies that not only the worm but they also on whom it preys die not; the language is figurative, but it represents corresponding realities never yet experienced, and therefore capable of being conveyed to us only by figures. The phrase “forever and ever ” (eis tous aionas aioonoon) occurs 20 times in New Testament: 16 times of God, once of the saints’ future blessedness, the three remaining of the punishment of the wicked and of the evil one: is it likely it is used 17 times of absolute eternity, yet three times of limited eternity?
The term for “everlasting” (aidiois) in Jud 1:6, “the angels who kept not their first estate He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day,” is from a word meaning absolutely “always” (aei). Gehenna is used by our Lord Jesus (Mat 5:29-30; Mat 10:28; Mat 23:15; Mat 23:33; Luk 12:5); with the addition “of fire,” Mat 5:22; Mat 18:9; Mar 9:47; and by James (Jam 3:6). Our present meaning of “hell” then applies to Gehenna, but not to the other word Hades or Sheol. “Hell” formerly did apply when the KJV of the Bible was written; it then meant “hole,” “hollow,” or unseen place.
Sheol comes from a root “to make hollow,” the common receptacle of the dead below the earth (Num 16:30; Deu 32:22), deep (Job 11:8), insatiable (Isa 5:14; Son 8:6). “Hell,” Hades, often means the “grave” (Job 14:13). In the Old Testament time, when as yet Christ had not “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2Ti 1:10), death and the intermediate state represented by Hades suggested thoughts of gloom (as to Hezekiah, Isa 38:9-20), lit up however with gleams of sure hope from God’s promises of the resurrection (Psa 16:10-11; Psa 17:15; Isa 26:19; Hos 13:14; Dan 12:2). Hints too occur of the spirit’s being with God in peace in the intermediate state (Ecc 3:21; Ecc 12:7; Psa 23:6; Psa 139:8; Isa 57:2).
The passages which represent Hades and the grave as a place where God can no longer be praised mean simply that the physical powers are all suspended, so that God’s peruses can be no longer set forth on earth among the living. The anomalous state in which man is unclothed of the body is repulsive to the mind, and had not yet the clear gospel light to make it attractive as Paul viewed it (Phi 1:21-23; 2Co 5:6-8). To the bad Hades was depicted as a place of punishment, where God’s wrath reached to the depths (Deu 32:22; Amo 9:2; Psa 9:17; Psa 49:14; Isaiah 14). Thus, the unseen state even in Old Testament was regarded as having a distinction between the godly and the ungodly; Pro 14:32, “the wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death”; so Psalm 1.
This is further confirmed by the separation of the rich man and Lazarus, the former in “hell” (Hades), the latter in “Abraham’s bosom” (Luk 16:23), and in the penitent thief’s soul going to be with Jesus in “paradise,” the word implying the recovery in heavenly bliss of the paradise lost by Adam (Luk 23:43). “Tartarus,” the pagan Greek term for the place of enchainment of the Titans, rebels against God, occurs in 2Pe 2:4 of the lost angels; the “deep,” or “abyss,” or “bottomless pit,” (abussos) Luk 8:31; Rev 9:11. The firm faith and hope of an abiding heavenly city is unequivocally attributed to the patriarchs (Heb 11:16-35);. so all the believing Israelites (Act 26:7; Act 23:6-9). Hades, “hell,” is used for destruction (Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18). Jesus has its keys, and will at last consign it to the lake of fire which is the second death; implying that Christ and His people shall never again be disembodied spirits.
Rev 1:18; Rev 20:13-14; I can release at will from the unseen world of spirits, the anomalous state wherein the soul is severed from the body. The “spirits in prison” (1Pe 3:19) mean the ungodly antediluvians shut up in this earth, one vast prison, and under sentence of death and awaiting execution (Isa 24:22); not the prison of Hades. (See SPIRITS IN PRISON.) It is solemnly significant of the certainty of hell that He who is Love itself has most plainly and fully warned men of it, that they may flee from it. Tophet, the scene of human immolations by fire to Moloch amidst sounds of drums (tof) to drown the cries of the victims, symbolized the funeral pyre of Sennacherib’s Assyrian army, and finally the lake of fire that shall burn for ever the lost (Isa 30:33). (See TOPHET.)
In an Assyrian tablet of the goddess Ishtar, daughter of Sin, the moon goddess, Hades is described as having seven gates,” the house of the departed, the house from within which is no exit, the road the course of which never returns, the place within which they long for light, where dust is their nourishment and their food mud, light is never seen, in darkness they dwell, spirits like birds fill its vaults, over the door and its bolts is scattered dust!” What a contrast to the gospel (2Ti 1:10).
Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary
HELL
It is unfortunate that many of the older versions of the English Bible use the one word hell to translate several words in the original languages. In the minds of most English-speaking people, hell is a place of terrible torment where the wicked dead are sent for final punishment. Although this idea of hell may be true for the word gehenna, it is not true for other biblical words translated hell. The Hebrew sheol and its Greek equivalent hades mean simply the place of the dead or the state of the dead.
Gehenna was the name Jesus used for the place of final punishment of the wicked. The word appears in the New Testament as a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Valley of Hinnom.
The Valley of Hinnom was a place just outside the wall of Jerusalem where, in times of apostacy, the people of Israel burnt their children in sacrifice to the god Molech (Jer 7:31). In the place where the people committed this wickedness, God punished them with terrible slaughter (Jer 7:32-34). Broken pottery was dumped in this valley, and the place became a public garbage dump where fires burnt continually (Jer 19:1-13). Because of this association with judgment and burning, gehenna became a fitting word to indicate the place or state of eternal punishment (Mat 10:28; Mat 18:9; Mat 23:33; Mar 9:43-48; cf. Jam 3:6).
According to the New Testament, the punishment of hell (gehenna) is one of eternal torment. It is likened to eternal burning (Mat 13:42; Mat 18:8-9; Rev 20:10), eternal darkness (Mat 8:12; Mat 22:13; 2Pe 2:4; 2Pe 2:17), eternal destruction (Mat 7:13; Php 1:28; 2Pe 3:7; 2Pe 3:10) and eternal separation from God and his blessings (2Th 1:9).
Another symbolic picture of eternal punishment is that of a lake of fire prepared for the enemies of God (Rev 19:20; Rev 20:10; cf. Mat 25:41). Into this lake God throws his great enemy, Death (Rev 20:14; cf. 1Co 15:26), along with all whose names are not written in the book of life (Rev 20:15). Just as heaven is something far better than the material symbols used to picture it, so hell is something far worse than the material symbols used to picture it. (See also JUDGMENT; PUNISHMENT.)
Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
Hell
HELL.See Eschatology, Gehenna, and the following article.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Hell
HELL (Descent into).During the 16th cent. the Descent of Christ into Hades was made the subject of acrimonious debates. Though commentators still differ, they discuss the subject in a more peaceable spirit, and offer some hope of future agreement on the main question. We must review(1) the evidence of the NT, (2) early Christian tradition, to explain (3) the insertion of such teaching in Creeds and Articles of Religion. We may then (4) summarize the history of the controversy in modern times.
1. The evidence of the NT.It is important to distinguish between the bare statement of the Descent as a fact in the history of our Lord as the Son of Man, which is acknowledged by all who believe that He truly died, and any theory of His mission in the unseen world, which can claim acceptance only after careful scrutiny of incidental references to it in the NT supported by the independent testimony of the earliest Christian tradition.
Hades (), corresponding to the Heb. Sheol, which in the Authorized Version of the OT is rendered by hell, means both in the LXX Septuagint and in the NT the abode of departed spirits. This was the general meaning of the word hell, the unseen, hidden place which is the abode of the dead.
In the OT a sense of gloom and unreality was felt about the lot of the spirits of men taken away from the light and activity of earthly life. At first no distinction was supposed to exist in that shadowy realm between good and bad any more than between king and subject. But in NT times such ideas had grown up, and our Lord sanctioned current belief when in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luk 16:19-31) He contrasted happiness in the society of Abraham with misery in corments. This agrees with His promise to the penitent thief (Luk 23:43): To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. St. Peter in his first sermon (Act 2:24-31) quotes Psa 16:10 and explains the words, Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, as a prophecy of the Resurrection of Christ, which received no fulfilment in the case of David. He distinctly implies that Christs soul passed into Hades at His death.
St. Paul (Rom 10:7), adapting Deu 30:13, teaches the same truth inferring that it is not necessary to search the depth, since Christ is risen from the dead. He regards the Descent as the preparation for the Ascension, Eph 4:9 Now this, He ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? In the LXX Septuagint rendering of Psa 62:10 (Psa 63:9), this phrase, , is referred to Hades. It is therefore probable that St. Paul uses it in the same sense.* [Note: Some commentators explain the words as contrasting the earth beneath with the heavens above, and refer them to the Incarnation when Christ descended to the earth.] Obedience even unto death secured for the Lord the sovereignty of the underworld; His descent was the pledge of His lordship over it (Php 2:10).
The famous passage 1Pe 3:18-20 (cf. 1Pe 4:6) introduces the question of the object of the Descent: Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing; 1Pe 4:6 For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
The earliest Christian tradition, which was probably independent of this passage, certainly supports the interpretation that Christ preached to the spirits of the men and women who were drowned in the Flood. Not until the time of St. Augustine was any other interpretation offered. The Apostle is endeavouring to encourage his readers in Christlike patience under persecution. Christ died, the just for the unjust, but His death in the flesh was followed by quickening in the spirit. Therefore we need not fear death, which will bring us freedom from sin and increase of spiritual energy. The reference which follows (1Pe 3:22) to the Ascension suggests that this preaching took place after Christs death, and not that Christ in Noah preached to the men of Noahs time.
In view of modern interpretations, however, we must enter further into detail. in the NT generally refers to angels (Act 23:8), but it refers also to spirits of the dead (Heb 12:23, cf. Luk 24:37-39). And 1Pe 4:6 proves that this is the sense here. [Note: The tense of shows that the preaching was regarded as a completed act in the past.]
Some critics suppose that the preaching was to the fallen angels mentioned in 2Pe 2:4, Jud 1:6; according to Baur, after Christs death; according to Spitta, before the Incarnation. This view is regarded by Charles (art. Eschatology in Encyc. Bibl.) as the only possible alternative. But Charles holds that Christ preached a gospel of redemption between His death and His resurrection. Salmond thinks that the key may be found in a non-canonical Jewish book. Others, again, think that Enoch was regarded as an incarnation of the Messiah, and that the passage refers to his preaching. But as Clemen says (Niedergefahren, p. 131), while we hear in the Book of Enoch (12:4ff., 13:8, 14:1ff.) of a preaching of punishment to fallen angels, we hear nothing of a preaching of salvation to the souls of men.
Perhaps the most extraordinary interpretation of all is that which Clemen quotes from Cramer. An unknown person, in possession of 1 and 2 Pet., is supposed to have been reminded by v. 22 of a former of angels, and therefore on the basis of 2Pe 2:4 f. with which he compared Jud 1:6; Jud 1:14 and also the Book of Enoch, is supposed to have written in the margin: , …, understanding of angels and of a concio damnatoria. Some one else at a later time, referring the first word to the souls of the departed and the latter to the preaching of salvation, reading for , and this again for , took the whole into the text after 1Pe 3:18!
Such speculations are absurd. On the other hand, it is reasonable to explain the of the one passage by the of the other, to maintain that repentance was offered, rejecting the suggestion that Christ preached only to the righteous, or to those who had repented at the moment of death, or to some the gospel and to others damnation.
If it is asked, Why should only the generation of Noah profit by it? we can say that they were typical sinners, cut off in their sins, whose fate was questioned at that time. Bigg shows that it is possible that St. Peter is here expressing in a modified form a belief which was current in the Jewish schools. Certain passages in the Book of Enoch seem to mean that the antediluvian sinners have a time of repentance allowed them between the first judgment (the Deluge) and the final judgment; e.g. 69:26 There was great joy among them because the name of the Son of Man was revealed unto them, Bereshith Rabba: (a) But when they that are bound, they that are in Gehinnom, saw the light of the Messiah, they rejoiced to receive Him; (b) This is that which stands written: We shall rejoice and exult in Thee. When? When the captives climb up out of hell, and the Shekinah at their head.
We may hope that research will yet further enlighten us on these points. Enough has been said to prove that, in the words of Professor Charles (art. cited):
These passages in 1 Peter are of extreme value. They attest the achievement of the final stage in the moralization of Shl. The first step in this moralization was taken early in the 2nd cent. b.c., when it was transferred into a place of moral distinctions, having been originally one of merely social or national distinctions. This moralization, however, was very inadequately carried out. What they were on entering Shl, that they continued to be till the final judgment. From the standpoint of a true theism can we avoid pronouncing this conception mechanical and unethical? It precludes moral change in moral beings who are under the rule of a perfectly moral being.
2. Early Christian tradition.The belief that Christs descent into Hades changed in some way the condition of the faithful departed meets us in the earliest Christian tradition.
Ignatius (a.d. 115), writing to the Magnesians (c. ix.), says: Even the prophets, being His disciples, were expecting Him as their teacher through the Spirit. And for this cause He whom they rightly awaited, when He came, raised them from the dead.
Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho (c. 72) accuses the Jews of cutting out the following passage from Jeremiah: The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel, who lay in the graves, and descended to preach to them His own salvation.
Irenaeus quotes this passage both from Isaiah (in Isa 3:22) and from Jeremiah (in 4:36), and (in 4:55) without naming the author. It is probably a fragment from some Jewish Apocalypse. Irenaeus (4:42) also quotes a presbyter who had heard it from those who had seen the Apostles and from those who had been their disciples, as saying that the Lord descended to the underworld, preaching His advent there also, and declaring remission of sins received by those who believe in Him.
Tertullian (de Anima, c. 55) taught that Christ in Hades underwent the law of human death; nor did He ascend to the heights of heaven, until He descended to the lower parts of the earth, that there He might make patriarchs and prophets sharers of His life.
We may even claim the heretic Marcion as a witness to this widespread tradition, though in his view, according to Irenaeus (1. xxvii. 3), it was Cain and the Sodomites and other sinners who were released by the Lord from Hades.
The apocryphal Gospel of Peter, which may be dated possibly from about a.d. 165, contains the following passage: They see three men coming forth from the tomb, two of them supporting the other, and a cross following them; and the head of the two reached to heaven; but that of Him who was led by them over-passed the heavens. And they heard a voice from the heavens saying, Hast thou preached to them that sleep? and a response was heard from the cross, Yea.
The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, a name given in the 13th cent. to two much older books, the Acts of Pilate and the Descent into Hell, tells the same story of the two brothers with a considerable amount of dramatic power.
Clement of Alexandria is the first Christian writer who brings the passage in 1 Peter into connexion with the tradition that Christs Descent benefited OT saints. He taught that the heathen, as well as the Jews, shared in the revelation made to the souls in Hades. He quotes Hermas (Sim. ix. 16), who taught that the Apostles and first teachers of the gospel, when they entered into rest, preached to the souls in Hades. Clement (Strom. ii. 9, p. 452) explains the passage as including righteous heathens as well as Jews, though it is not clear that Hermas himself contemplated such an application of his words. The example quoted by St. Peter appeared to him to be only one example of a far-reaching law (Strom. vi. 6).
Origen seems to have been the first to suggest that, since the coming of Christ, the souls of the faithful can go at once to Paradise instead of Hades, regarding Paradise as an intermediate state (in Reg. Hom. 2). In his treatise against Celsus (2:43), to the scoff, You will not surely say that Christ, when He failed to persuade the living, went down to Hades to persuade those who dwell there? he replies: His soul, stript of the body, did there hold converse with other souls that were in like manner stript, that He might there convert those who were capable of instruction, or were otherwise in ways known to Him fit for it.
Athanasius speaks of the warders at the gates of Hell cowering in fear at the presence of the Lord, quoting in this connexion Mat 27:54. He thinks (de Sal. Aduent. 9) of the soul of Adam as held fast under the sentence of death, and crying to his Lord evermore, and of those who had pleased God, and had been justified by the law of nature, as mourning and crying with him, till God in His mercy revealed the mystery of redemption. He quotes 1Pe 3:19 in connexion with the Descent (Ep. ad Epict. 5).
The later Fathers, while they regarded Hades as a place of rest for the just, regarded Paradise as something better. Both Ambrose (de Fide ad Gratian. iv. 1) and Jerome (Com. in Eccles. c. iii.) followed Origen on this line of thought. This notion became the germ of the mediaeval doctrine of the Limbus Patrum.
Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat. iv.) classed the doctrine of the Descent among the ten necessary dogmas, interpreting it as designed for the redemption of the just. Could you wish, he asks, that the living should enjoy His grace, and that the holy dead should not share in freedom? Having named OT saints, he explains John the Baptists question Art thou he that should come? as referring to the Descent. In this opinion he was followed by Rufinus.
Hilary of Poitiers (on Psa 119:82) speaks of the souls of the faithful as knowing, on the witness of the Apostle Peter, that when the Lord went down into Hades, words of comfort were preached even to those who were in prison and were formerly unbelieving in the days of Noah. It is interesting to add that the Venerable Bede quoted the words, without naming the author, in order to condemn them, on the ground that the Catholic faith taught only the release of the faithful.
It was reserved for Augustine to give a new interpretation to St. Peters words. In his earlier books he accepts the current teaching, but confuses Hades and Gehenna. In de Gen. ad litt. xii. 63, he says that there is reason for believing that the soul of Christ descended to the regions where sinners are punished, that He might release from torment those whom He, in His righteous judgment, which is hidden from us, found worthy to be loosed.
In his letter to Euodius, Bp. of Uzala, oo the right interpretation of 1Pe 3:19, as Bp. Horsley puts it, he perplexes himself with questions. Why, out of all the tens of thousands who had died before the coming of Christ, some at least, though heathen, penitent and believing, did He bestow the knowledge of the gospel on those only who had perished in the Flood? He accepts the common belief that Adam was released. He notes that some believed this of Abel, Seth, Noah, and other patriarchs. Still confusing Hades with Gehenna, be asks, How could Abrahams bosom he a synonym for Paradise? Were the patriarchs worse off than Abraham? If they were at rest, how could they be benefited by Christs descent into Hades? What was done for the disobedient of Noabs time should be done for all who died in ignorance before or since. But the idea that a man might believe after death would weaken the appeal of Christian preaching to the terrors of the Lord. Not able to believe in salvation without Baptism, he cuts the knot of the difficulty by denying that the words of St. Peter had anything to do with the descent of Christ into Hades. Christ preached in spirit in the days of Noah as in Galilee in the days of His flesh. Plumptre truly says: he leaves all the questions which he had started as to the descent itself unanswered. Finally (de Heres. 79), he reckoned it a heresy to believe that Christ cleared Hell of all the souls that were then in torment.
3. Creeds and Articles of Religion.At the end of the 4th cent., Rufinus, commenting on the clause descended into hell in the Creed of his native city of Aquileia, noted that it was not contained in the Creed of the Church of Rome or in Eastern Creeds. This is true of Baptismal Creeds, but not of others. The words had found a place in three confessions of faith put forward by Arian Synods at Sirmium, Nice, and Constantinople.
Sirmium, a.d. 359.Nice, a.d. 359.Constantinople, a.d. 360.
, .
. .
It is interesting to compare also the recently discovered Faith of St. Jerome, which contains the words descended into hell, trod down the sting of death. It has been found by Dom G. Morin, O.S.B., in some four MSS [Note: SS Manuscripts.] , and is probably the Confession of Faith which Jerome notes in one of the letters he had drawn up for Cyril of Jerusalem. This Faith contains elements which may have been drawn from his Baptismal Creed of Pannonia. In like manner it is possible that the Sirmium Creed, quoted above, at this point quoted the Baptismal Creed of the district, since Sirmium is in the south-east corner of Pannonia. But it seems that the Creed was drawn up mainly by Mark, Bp. of Arethusa in Palestine; and there are traces of the influence of Cyril of Jerusalem elsewhere in this document. The doctrine was one on which he felt strongly; and, therefore, in default of further evidence as to the Pannonian Creed, it is safer to trace to his influence the occurrence of the words in the Creed of Sirmium, on which the Creeds of Nice and Constantinople are dependent.
As regards the interpretation put on the clause in the Creed of Aquileia, Pearson is incorrect when he suggests that Rufinus merely regarded it as equivalent to buried, which was omitted. The Creed certainly contained the word buried, and Rufinus was at pains to show that this word in the Eastern Creeds, as in the Roman, included the idea of a descent into Hades. Swete (p. 61) suggests that Rufinus had lost the clue to the interpretation of the clause, and that the addition was made long before his time, possibly to meet the Docetic tendency of the latter part of the 2nd century. The difficulty about this suggestion is that the Docetic apocryphal Gospel of Peter, as we have seen, distinctly teaches belief in the descent. The present writer would rather regard pseudo-Peter as witnessing to the common belief of the 2nd cent., and explain the addition in the Aquileian Creed as derived from the ordinary catechetical teaching, of which it may have been as necessary a dogma then in Aquileia as in Jerusalem in the 4th century.
In the time of Rufinus it might seem more necessary to insist on such teaching in view of the rise of the heresy of Apollinaris, who denied that the Lord had a human soul. But Rufinus himself gives no hint of this. There is more reason to connect the occurrence of the clause in the so-called Athanasian Creed, now generally accepted as a Gallican writing of the 5th cent., with opposition to Apollinarianism, because the author obviously had that heresy in view. There is no proof, however, that the clause had yet passed into any Gallican Creed. By the end of the century we find it in the Creed of Caesarius of Arles, and in the century following in the Creeds of Venantins Fortunatus of Poitiers and of the Spanish Bishop Martin of Bracara. Thus it passed into the Received Text of the Western Creed.
During the Middle Ages the idea of the Harrowing of Hell was made popular by the Gospel of Nicodemus, and as the theme of Mystery Plays, and at a later time by Christian Art. Discussion seldom arose. But the opinion of Abelard that the soul of Christ entered the underworld only virtually and not substantially, was condemned by the Council of Sens (1140) and Pope Innocent II. It found favour with Durandus and Pico della Mirandola, whose names may suffice to show that the debate was not extinct in the 15th century. During the Reformation period, controversy began to wax fierce, and was reflected in some of the more famous Articles of Religion. In the Confession of Augsburg the bare fact of the Descent is stated, but the Geneva Catechism taught that the Descent meant only the terrible anguish with which the soul of Christ was tried. The Catechism of the Church of the Palatinate explained that Christ descended in order that the Christian in all his mental and spiritual agonies might know that there was One who had borne them and could sympathize with them. These Catechisms reflect the opinion of prominent leaders of thought. Luther, in his Table Talk (ccvi.), spoke of the laying of the devil in chains as the purpose of the Descent. His view fluctuated, but in his Com. on Hos 6:1 he wrote that Peter clearly teaches that Christ preached to some who, in the time of Noah, had not believed, and who waited for the long-suffering of Godthat is, who hoped that God would not enter into so strict a judgment with all fleshto the intent that they might acknowledge that their sins were forgiven through the sacrifice of Christ.
It was Calvin (Institut. ii. 16) who taught the revolting doctrine that the Descent means that in His suffering on earth, in Gethsemane and on the Cross, Christ suffered all the horrors of hell. To which Pearsons words are a sufficient reply: There is a worm that never dieth which could not lodge within His breast; that is, a remorse of conscience, seated in the soul, for what that soul hath done; but such a remorse of conscience could not be in Christ. Zwingli (Fidei chr. exp., art. de Christo, 7) taught that when Christ died the weight of His Redemption penetrated to the Underworld.
The Westminster Standards practically ignore the question of the Descent. The Confession of Faith is wholly silent, and so is the Shorter Catechism. The only allusion to the subject is in the Larger Catechism, where the answer to Question 50 runs: Christs humiliation after His death consisted in His being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day; which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell.
Bishop Alley of Exeter, in a paper drawn up for the Convocation of 1553 wrote: There have been in my diocese great invections between the preachers. He asked that some certainty might be set concerning this doctrine. Perhaps this explains the form which was given to the third of the Forty-two Articles of 1553.
As Christ died and was buried for us: so also it is to be believed that He went down into hell. For the body lay in the sepulchre until the resurrection: but His ghost departing from Him was with the ghosts that were in prison or in hell, and did preach to the same, as the place of St. Peter doth testify.
Bishop Alleys hope of certainty was not fulfilled, and in 1563 the Elizabethan revisers, with rare wisdom, struck out the last clause.
The Roman Catechism* [Note: Rom. 95.] speaks of the release of holy and just men as the purpose of the Descent, of the imparting of the fruit of the Passion, and of the Beatific Vision.
4. Summary of the controversy in modern times.We may begin this section with the names of Pearson and Hammond, who agreed in teaching that the only meaning of St. Peters words was that Christ by His Holy Spirit inspired the preaching of Noah.
Hammond (ad loc.) writes: The spirits in the prison are those souls of men that lay so sheathed, so useless and unprofitable in their bodies, immersed so deep in calamity as not to perform any service to God, who inspired and placed them there. He quotes Isa 42:7; Isa 49:9; Isa 61:1 to prove that elsewhere it is a figurative speech to express wicked men. By His Spirit is evidently meant that Divine power by which He was raised from the dead after His crucifixion. We have already noted the objections to this interpretation, and also the fact that Pearson on this point confuses Hades and Gehenna. He writes, indeed, less lucidly than is his wont, but in regard of the Descent regarded as a fact his final summary strikes no uncertain note.
I give a full and undoubting assent unto this as to a certain truth, that when all the sufferings of Christ were finished on the Cross, and His soul was separated from His body, though His body were dead, yet His soul died not; and though it died not, yet it underwent the condition of the souls of such as die; and being [i.e. since] He died in the similitude of a sinner, His soul went to the place where the souls of men are kept who die for their sins, and so did wholly undergo the law of death.
Barrow taught to the same effect (Serm. xxviii.): If we do thus interpret our Saviours descent into hell, for His souls going into the common receptacle and mansion of souls, we shall so doing be sure not substantially to mistake. He adds: I cannot well be at the pain to consider or examine those conceits, which pretend to acquaint us why and to what effect our Saviour descended into hell. This almost contemptuous refusal to discuss the passages in St. Peter is partly explained by the gaps in the line of evidence of early Christian tradition which was known at that time. Coming from a man of Barrows calibre, it has probably had great weight.
On the other hand, Jeremy Taylor,* [Note: Eden, ii. 718, 720.] while he avoids any explanation of St. Peters reference to the Deluge, maintains the Patristic view that Christ improved the condition of holy souls.
And then it was that Christ made their condition better: for though still it be a place of relation in order to something beyond it, yet the term and object of their hope is changed: they sate in the regions of darkness, expecting that great promise made to Adam and the patriarchs, the promise of the Messias; but when He that was promised came, He preached to the spirits in prison, He communicated to them the mysteries of the gospel, the secrets of the kingdom, the things hidden from eternal ages, and taught them to look up to the glories purchased by His passion, and made the term of their expectation be His second coming, and the objects of their hope the glories of the beatific vision. But now it was that in the dark and undiscerned mansions there was a scene of the greatest joy and the greatest horror represented, which yet was known since the first falling of the morning stars. Those holy souls, whom the prophet Zechariah calls prisoners of hope, lying in the lake where there is no water, that is, no constant stream of joy to refresh their present condition (yet supported with certain showers and gracious visitations from God and illuminations of their hope); now that they saw their Redeemer come to change their condition, and to improve it into the neighbourhoods of glory and clearer revelations, must needs have the joy of intelligent and beatified understandings, of redeemed captives, of men forgiven after the sentence of death, of men satisfied after a tedious expectation, enjoying and seeing their Lord, whom, for so many ages, they had expected. But the accursed spirits, seeing the darkness of their prison shine with a new light, and their empire invaded, and their retirements of horror discovered, wondered how a man durst venture thither, or, if he were a God, how he should come to die.
Bishop Horsleys sermon on 1Pe 3:19 at the end of the 18th cent. is the next important contribution to the subject. He regretted the alteration of the Third Article of 1563. He found it difficult to believe that of the millions who died in the Flood all died impenitent. He taught that Christ certainly preached neither repentance nor faith, for the preaching of either comes too late for the departed soul. He faced the great difficulty why only this one class of penitents should be mentioned, having observed in some parts of Scripture an anxiety, if the expression may be allowed, of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations that the antediluvian race is not uninterested in the redemption and the final retribution. The following words also deserve quotation, for they go to the root of the matter. If the clear assertions of Holy Writ are to be discredited on account of difficulties which may seem to the human mind to arise out of them, little will remain to be believed in revealed or even in what is called natural religion.
About the same time, Dr. Hey, Norrisian Professor at Cambridge, gave in his lectures a succinet account of the history of the doctrine, and discussed the difficulty of using the metaphor of descent in popular language (3rd ed. p. 654).
There is an excellent survey of the literature of the subject down to the middle of the last century in Dean Alfords Greek Testament. Both he and Bishop Wordsworth accepted the Patristic view that Christ preached salvation to the disembodied spirits of those drowned in the Flood if found penitent. Thus light is thrown on one of the darkest enigmas of Divine justice. Bishop Harold Browne expounded the Article to the same effect, and has been followed recently by Bishop Gibson. But not all writers were equally bold. Bishop Harvey Goodwin was content with what was practically Pearsons position. Bishop Westcott (Historic Faith, p. 77) feared to say more on a mystery where our thought fails us and Scripture is silent. Surely this is too dogmatic in face of the great consensus of opinion which interprets 1Pe 3:19 literally.
There is a full account of modern German literature on this subject in Clemens Niedergefahren zu den Toten. He interprets 1Pe 3:19 as referring to human spirits, and builds on it an argument in favour of the larger hope, though he does not commit himself to any theory of Universal Restitution. He makes much use of English books, especially Dean Plumptres The Spirits in Prison.
This survey of the whole course of the controversy leads to the conclusion that eventually agreement will be reached as to the exegesis of the passage in 1 Peter. The weighty authority of Professor Charles may be invoked to prove that the interpretation which accepts Christs mission to the dead fits in with our fuller knowledge of contemporary Jewish literature. It throws light on one of the darkest enigmas of the Divine justice. At the same time full justice will be done to the early Christian tradition that in some way or other Christ benefited the souls of the faithful departed. But it must be admitted that the bare statement of the Apostles Creed asserts only that Christs soul passed into the condition which our souls will enter at death, sanctifying every condition of human existence. Harnack writes that the clause is too weak to maintain its ground beside the others, as equally independent and authoritative, but, as Swete (p. 62) says, he fails to point out in what the weakness lies, while to us it appears to possess in a very high degree the strength which comes from primitive simplicity and a wise reserve.
Thus the consensus of theological opinion justifies the teaching of the poet of the Christian Year:* [Note: Keble, Easter Eve.]
Sleepst Thou indeed? or is Thy spirit fled
At large among the dead?
Whether in Eden bowers Thy welcome voice
Wake Abraham to rejoice,
Or in some drearier scene Thine eye controls
The thronging band of souls;
That, as Thy blood won earth, Thine agony
Might set the shadowy world from sin and sorrow free.
Literature.C. Bigg, Com. on Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, Clark, 1901: C. Clemen, Niedergefahren zu den Toten, Giessen, 1900; Bishop Gibson, The Thirty-nine Articles2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , Methuen, 1898; Bishop Harold Browne, The Thirty-nine Article2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 1854; Bishop Pearson, Expos, of the Apostles Creed, ed. Burton3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 1847; E. H. Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison, labister, 1885; S. D. F. Salmond, Christian Doct, of Immortality5 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , Clark, 1903; F. Spitta, Christi Predigt an die Geister, 1890; H. B. Swete, The Apostles Creed, Cambridge, 1899.
A. E. Burn.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Hell
HELL.See Eschatology, Gehenna, Hades, Sheol.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Hell
The Hebrews called it Sheol. Some apply it to the grave; but the most general acceptation of it, according to Scripture language, is a place of torment. Thus the Psalmist saith, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” (Psa 9:17) And our blessed Lord, three times in one chapter, speaks of it in alarming terms. “If thine hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands, to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mar 9:43-48)
Some, however, have ventured to call in question the reality of hell torments, and the very existence of the place itself. But there is nothing so weak and so impious as disputes on these points; for unless men could satisfy their minds, that God cannot punish sin, or that he will not, it becomes a matter more presumptuous than becoming, to enquire the very particulars in which that punishment shall consist. The Lord hath declared, that the “wicked, and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power.” (2Th 1:8-9) Here is sufficient account to certify every one of the reality of the thing itself. And the fact itself being once admitted, the method may surely be well supposed, that it will be such as infinite wisdom, joined with infinite power, shall appoint and accomplish. Here let us rest-only following up the conviction with a prayer to Him that hath the keys of hell and death, that he will keep our souls from going down into hell, and preserve us to his everlasting kingdom. Amen.
Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures
Hell
hel (see SHEOL; HADES; GEHENNA):
1. The Word in the King James Version
The English word, from a Teutonic root meaning to hide or cover, had originally the significance of the world of the dead generally, and in this sense is used by Chaucer, Spenser, etc., and in the Creed (He descended into hell); compare the English Revised Version Preface. Now the word has come to mean almost exclusively the place of punishment of the lost or finally impenitent; the place of torment of the wicked. In the King James Version of the Scriptures, it is the rendering adopted in many places in the Old Testament for the Hebrew word she’ol (in 31 out of 65 occurrences of that word it is so translated), and in all places, save one (1Co 15:55) in the New Testament, for the Greek word Hades (this word occurs 11 times; in 10 of these it is translated hell; 1Co 15:55 reads grave, with hell in the margin). In these cases the word has its older general meaning, though in Luk 16:23 (parable of Rich Man and Lazarus) it is specially connected with a place of torment, in contrast with the Abraham’s bosom to which Lazarus is taken (Luk 16:22).
2. The Word in the Revised Version
In the above cases the Revised Version (British and American) has introduced changes, replacing hell by Sheol in the passages in the Old Testament (the English Revised Version retains hell in Isa 14:9, Isa 14:15; the American Standard Revised Version makes no exception), and by Hades in the passages in the New Testament (see under these words).
3. Gehenna
Besides the above uses, and more in accordance with the modern meaning, the word hell is used in the New Testament in the King James Version as the equivalent of Gehenna (12 t; Mat 5:22, Mat 5:29; Mat 10:28, etc.). the Revised Version (British and American) in these cases puts Gehenna in the margin. Originally the Valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, Gehenna became among the Jews the synonym for the place of torment in the future life (the Gehenna of fire, Mat 5:22, etc.; see GEHENNA).
4. Tartarus
In yet one other passage in the New Testament (2Pe 2:4), to cast down to hell is used (the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American)) to represent the Greek tartaroo, (to send into Tartarus). Here it stands for the place of punishment of the fallen angels: spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits (or chains) of darkness (compare Jud 1:6; but also Mat 25:41). Similar ideas are found in certain of the Jewish apocalyptic books (Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees, Apocrypha Baruch, with apparent reference to Gen 6:1-4; compare ESCHATOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT).
On theological aspect, see PUNISHMENT, EVERLASTING. For literature, see references in above-named arts., and compare article Hell by Dr. D. S. Salmond in HDB.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Hell
Hell, the name given in our Authorized Version of the Scriptures to the place of final punishment for sinners. It is also distinctively indicated by such phrases as ‘the place of torment’ (Luk 16:28); ‘everlasting fire’ (Mat 25:41); ‘the hell of fire, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’ (Mar 9:44). The dreadful nature of the abode of the wicked is implied in various figurative expressions, such as ‘outer darkness,’ ‘I am tormented in this flame,’ ‘furnace of fire,’ ‘unquenchable fire,’ ‘where the worm dieth not,’ ‘the blackness of darkness,’ ‘torment in fire and brimstone,’ ‘the ascending smoke of their torment,’ ‘the lake of fire that burneth with brimstone’ (Mat 8:12; Mat 13:42; Mat 22:13; Mat 25:30; Luk 16:24; comp. Mat 25:41; Mar 9:43-48; Jud 1:13; comp. Rev 14:10-11; Rev 19:20; Rev 20:14; Rev 21:8). The figure by which hell is represented as burning with fire and brimstone is probably derived from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as that which describes the smoke as ascending from it (comp. Rev 14:10-11, with Gen 19:24; Gen 19:28). To this coincidence of description Peter also most probably alludes in 2Pe 2:6.
The names which in many of the other instances are given to the punishments of hell are doubtless in part figurative, and many of the terms which were commonly applied to the subject by the Jews are retained in the New Testament. The images, it will be seen, are generally taken from death, capital punishments, tortures, prisons, etc. And it is the obvious design of the sacred writers, in using such figures, to awaken the idea of something terrible and fearful. They mean to teach that the punishments beyond the grave will excite the same feelings of distress as are produced on earth by the objects employed to represent them. We are so little acquainted with the state in which we shall be hereafter, and with the nature of our future body, that no strictly literal representation of such punishments could be made intelligible to us. Many of the Jews, indeed, and many of the Christian fathers, took the terms employed in Scripture in an entirely literal sense, and supposed there would be actual fire, etc. in hell. But from the words of Christ and His apostles nothing more can with certainty be inferred than that they meant to denote great and unending miseries.
The punishments of sin may be distinguished into two classes1. Natural punishments, or such as necessarily follow a life of servitude to sin: 2. Positive punishments, or such as God shall see fit, by His sovereign will, to inflict.
1. Among the natural punishments we may rank the privation of eternal happiness (Mat 7:21; Mat 7:23; Mat 22:13; Mat 25:41; comp. 2Th 1:9); the painful sensations which are the natural consequence of committing sin, and of an impenitent heart; the propensities to sin, the evil passions and desires which in this world fill the human heart, and which are doubtless carried into the world to come. The company of fellow-sinners and of evil spirits, as inevitably resulting from the other conditions, may be accounted among the natural punishments, and must prove not the least grievous of them.
2. The positive punishments have been already indicated. It is to these chiefly that the Scripture directs our attention. ‘There are but few men in such a state that the merely natural punishments of sin will appear to them terrible enough to deter them from the commission of it. Experience also shows that to threaten positive punishment has far more effect, as well upon the cultivated as the uncultivated, in deterring them from crime, than to announce, and lead men to expect the merely natural consequences of sin, be they ever so terrible. Hence we may see why it is that the New Testament says so little of natural punishments (although these beyond question await the wicked), and makes mention of them in particular far less frequently than of positive punishments; and why, in those passages which treat of the punishments of hell, such ideas and images are constantly employed as suggest and confirm the idea of positive punishments.’
As the sins which shut out from heaven vary so greatly in quality and degree, we should expect from the justice of God a corresponding variety both in the natural and the positive punishments. This is accordingly the uniform doctrine of Christ and his apostles. ‘The servant who knows his lord’s will and does it not, deserves to be beaten with many stripes:’ ‘To whom much is given, of him much will be required’ (Mat 10:15; Mat 11:22; Mat 11:24; Mat 23:15; Luk 12:48). Hence St. Paul says that the heathen who acted against the law of nature would indeed be punished; but that the Jews would be punished more than they, because they had more knowledge (Rom 2:9-29). In this conviction, that God will, even in hell, justly proportion punishment to sin, we must rest satisfied. We cannot now know more; the precise degrees as well as the precise nature of such punishments are things belonging to another state of being, which in the present we are unable to understand.
Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature
Hell
In the A.V. this is the translation of
1. sheol, which is often translated, ‘grave,’ and three times it is ‘pit.’ It refers to an invisible place or state, which may have several applications, according to the connection of each passage. Korah and his company and their houses went down into ‘sheol.’ Num 16:33. Jonah said, “Out of the belly of ‘sheol’ cried I” Jon 2:2. “The wicked shall be turned into sheol.” Psa 9:17. “Let them go down quick into ‘sheol,’ for wickedness is in their dwellings.” Psa 55:15; Pro 7:27. But for the redemption which faith looked for ‘sheol’ must have had to O.T. saints the character of eternal punishment, and so finally ‘hades’ will be cast into the lake of fire. The word also refers to the place of departed spirits. The Lord said, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in ‘sheol.'” Psa 16:10. This signification corresponds with
2. , hades, which occurs where this last passage is quoted in Act 2:27; Act 2:31; and has the same meaning in other passages: Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Luk 16:23; Rev 1:18; Rev 6:8; Rev 20:13-14.
3. , Gehenna, the Greek equivalent for two Hebrew words, signifying ‘valley of Hinnom.’ It was the place near Jerusalem where the Jews made their children pass through fire to heathen gods, and which was afterwards defiled. 2Ki 23:10. A continual fire made it a fit emblem of the place of eternal punishment. Mat 5:22; Mat 5:29-30; Mat 10:28; Mat 18:9; Mat 23:15; Mat 23:33; Mar 9:43; Mar 9:45; Mar 9:47; Luk 12:5; Jam 3:6. The above-named place of defilement and fire is also called in the O.T. TOPHET or TOPHETH. 2Ki 23:10; Isa 30:33; Jer 19:13.
4. , ‘to cast into Tartarus,’ a term used by heathen writers for the ‘deepest abyss of the infernal regions,’ a place of extreme darkness. 2Pe 2:4: cf. 2Pe 2:17 and Jud 1:13.
Whatever figurative meaning there may be in the use of any of the above words, it is plain and certain from scripture that there is a place of everlasting punishment. It is awfully described as the LAKE OF FIRE, ‘the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.’ Rev 19:20; Rev 20:10; Rev 20:15; Rev 21:8. It was prepared for the devil and his angels, but into it the wicked also will be cast. Mat 13:40; Mat 13:42; Mat 25:41; 2Pe 2:4; Jud 1:6, etc. See ETERNAL.
Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary
Hell
The translation of the Hebrew word »sheol,« which signifies the unseen state. Sheol is also translated as »pit,« »lowest pit,« »Sheol,« and »grave« in some versions
Isa 5:14; Isa 14:9; Isa 14:15; Isa 28:15; Isa 28:18; Isa 57:9; Eze 31:16-17; Eze 32:21; Eze 32:27; Amo 9:2; Jon 2:2; Hab 2:5; Deu 32:22; Psa 86:13; Psa 55:15; 2Sa 22:6; Job 11:8; Job 26:6; Psa 9:17; Psa 16:10; Psa 18:5; Psa 116:3; Psa 139:8; Pro 5:5; Pro 7:27; Pro 9:18; Pro 15:11; Pro 15:24; Pro 23:14; Pro 27:20; Gen 37:35; Gen 42:38; Gen 44:29; Gen 44:31; 1Sa 2:6; 1Ki 2:6; 1Ki 2:9; Job 7:9; Job 14:13; Job 17:13; Job 21:13; Job 24:19; Psa 6:5; Psa 30:3; Psa 31:17; Psa 49:14-15; Psa 88:3; Psa 89:48; Psa 141:7; Pro 1:12; Pro 30:16; Ecc 9:10; Son 8:6; Hos 13:14
The translation of the Greek word »gehenna«
Mat 5:22; Mat 5:29-30; Mat 10:28; Mat 18:9; Mat 23:15; Mat 23:33; Mar 9:43; Mar 9:45; Mar 9:47; Luk 12:5; Jas 3:6
The translation of the Greek word »hades,« which signifies the unseen world
Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Luk 10:15; Luk 16:23; Act 2:27; Act 2:31; Rev 1:18; Rev 6:8; Rev 20:13-14
The future abode of the wicked
Psa 9:17; Pro 5:5; Pro 9:13-18; Pro 15:24; Pro 23:13-14; Isa 30:33; Isa 33:14; Mat 3:12; Mat 5:29-30; Mat 7:13-14; Mat 8:11-12; Mat 10:28; Mat 13:30; Mat 13:38-42; Mat 13:49-50; Mat 16:18; Mat 18:8-9; Mat 18:34-35; Mat 22:13; Mat 25:28-30; Mat 25:41; Mat 25:46; Mar 9:43-48; Luk 3:17; Luk 16:23-26; Luk 16:28; Act 1:25; 2Th 1:9; 2Pe 2:4; Jud 1:6; Jud 1:23; Rev 9:1-2; Rev 11:7; Rev 14:10-11; Rev 19:20; Rev 20:10; Rev 20:15; Rev 21:8; Rev 2:11 Wicked, Punishment of
Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible
Hell
Hell. The English word hell is used to designate the place of the dead, the grave, and also the place of punishment after death and the abode of evil spirits.
It represents four different words in the original of ScriptureShel, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. 1. In the Old Testament it is used 31 times to render the Hebrew word Shel. Shel at first seems to have denoted the common subterranean abode of all human spirits, good and bad (Gen 37:35, R. V., death; Num 16:30), but afterward is represented as having in it two distinct regions, one for the righteous, Psa 16:11; Psa 17:15, the other for the wicked. Psa 9:17; Psa 49:14. All the dead are alike in Shel, hut in widely different circumstances. Shel is variously translated in our English Bible by the terms “hell,” “pit,” and “grave.” In many places it is rightly translated “grave.” 1Sa 2:6; Job 14:13, etc. Shel is represented as in the depths of the earth, Job 11:8; Pro 9:18; Isa 38:10, all-devouring, Pro 1:12, destitute of God’s presence, Psa 88:10-12, a state of forgetfulness, Psa 6:5, insatiable, Isa 5:14, remorseless, Son 8:6, and a place of silence, Ecc 9:10.
2. The New Testament. The two words translated “hell” are Hades and Gehenna. Hades occurs eleven times, and is once rendered “grave,” R.V.,” death,” 1Co 15:55; in all other places “hell.” Hades does not always refer to the ultimate abode of the impenitent and the final state of exclusion from God. Mat 16:27. After the crucifixion, our Lord descended into hades, Act 2:27, and this is an article of the Apostles’ Creed, where, however, we use wrongly the word “hell.” It was in this realm that our Lord “preached to the spirits in prison.” 1Pe 3:19.
The Greek word Gehenna occurs twelve times in Scripture. It early designated a place in the valley of Hinnom, which had been the seat of the worship of Moloch, Jer 7:31; 2Ch 33:6; 2Ki 23:10, and for the deposit of the filth and dead animals of the city. Hence it was used to denote the final state and abode of lost souls. Mat 5:29; Mat 10:28; Mat 23:15; Jam 3:6, etc. It is here that “their worm dieth not” and the “fire is not quenched.” Mar 9:48. Into this realm the rebellious angels were cast, 2Pe 2:4 (where the word is a derivative from the Greek word “Tartarus”). At the great day of judgment the cursed shall go away into this abode and receive everlasting punishment. Mat 25:46. It is referred to by our Lord in solemn and awful tones. Mat 5:22; Mat 5:29-30; Mat 10:28; Mar 9:43-48; Luk 12:5, and with such accompaniments as indicate everlasting and remediless ruin. Retribution will have degrees, Mat 10:15, in character, but none in duration.
Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible
Hell
Hell. In the Old Testament, this is the word generally, and unfortunately, used by our translators to render the Hebrew, Sheol. It really means the place of the dead, the unseen world, without deciding whether it be the place of misery or of happiness.
It is clear that in many passages of the Old Testament, Sheol can only mean “the grave”, and is rendered thus in the Authorized Version; see, for example, Gen 37:35; Gen 42:38; 1Sa 2:6; Job 14:13.
In other passages, however, it seems to involve a notion of punishment, and is therefore rendered in the Authorized Version by the word “hell”. But in many cases, this translation misleads the reader.
In the New Testament, “hell” is the translation of two words, Hades and Gehenna.
The word Hades, like Sheol sometimes means merely “the grave”, Act 2:31; 1Co 15:55; Rev 20:13, or in general, “the unseen world”. It is in this sense that the creeds say of our Lord, “He went down into hell,” meaning the state of the dead in general, without any restriction of happiness or misery.
Elsewhere in the New Testament, Hades is used of a place of torment, Mat 11:23; Luk 16:23; 2Pe 2:4, etc.; consequently, it has been the prevalent, almost the universal, notion that Hades is an intermediate state between death and resurrection, divided into two parts; one the abode of the blest and the other of the lost.
It is used eleven times in the New Testament, and only once translated “grave”. 1Co 15:55.
The word most frequently used, (occurring twelve times), in the New Testament for the place of future punishment is Gehenna or Gehenna of fire. This was originally the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; a fit symbol of the wicked and their destruction. See Hinnom.
Fuente: Smith’s Bible Dictionary
HELL
(1) (Greek, Gehenna) See FUTURE STATE OF THE WICKED
(2) (Greek, Hades), The Abode of the Dead
Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Luk 16:23; Act 2:27; Rev 1:18; Rev 6:8; Rev 20:13
–SEE The Grave, GRAVE, THE
(3) (Hebrew, Sheol) The Grave or Unseen State
Deu 32:22; 2Sa 22:6; Job 11:8; Job 26:6; Psa 9:17; Psa 16:10; Psa 18:5; Psa 55:15; Psa 86:13; Psa 116:3; Psa 139:8; Pro 5:5; Pro 7:27; Pro 9:18; Pro 15:11; Pro 15:24; Pro 23:14; Pro 27:20
Isa 5:14; Isa 14:9; Isa 14:15; Isa 28:15; Isa 28:18; Isa 57:9; Eze 31:16; Eze 32:21; Eze 32:27; Amo 9:2
Jon 2:2; Hab 2:5
–SEE The Grave, GRAVE, THE
(4) (Greek, Tartarus). See FUTURE STATE OF THE WICKED
Fuente: Thompson Chain-Reference Bible
Hell
represents the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom (the valley of Tophet) and a corresponding Aramaic word; it is found twelve times in the NT, eleven of which are in the Synoptists, in every instance as uttered by the Lord Himself. He who says to his brother, Thou fool (see under FOOL), will be in danger of “the hell of fire,” Mat 5:22; it is better to pluck out (a metaphorical description of irrevocable law) an eye that causes its possessor to stumble, than that his “whole body be cast into hell,” Mat 5:29; similarly with the hand, Mat 5:30; in Mat 18:8-9, the admonitions are repeated, with an additional mention of the foot; here, too, the warning concerns the person himself (for which obviously the “body” stands in chapt. 5); in Mat 18:8, “the eternal fire” is mentioned as the doom, the character of the region standing for the region itself, the two being combined in the phrase “the hell of fire,” Mat 18:9. To the passage in Matt. 18, that in Mar 9:43-47, is parallel; here to the word “hell” are applied the extended descriptions “the unquenchable fire” and “where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.”
That God, “after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell,” is assigned as a reason why He should be feared with the fear that keeps from evil doing, Luk 12:5; the parallel passage to this in Mat 10:28 declares, not the casting in, but the doom which follows, namely, the destruction (not the loss of being, but of well-being) of “both soul and body.”
In Matt. 23 the Lord denounces the scribes and Pharisees, who in proselytizing a person “make him two-fold more a son of hell” than themselves (Mat 23:15), the phrase here being expressive of moral characteristics, and declares the impossibility of their escaping “the judgment of hell,” Mat 23:33. In Jam 3:6 “hell” is described as the source of the evil done by misuse of the tongue; here the word stands for the powers of darkness, whose characteristics and destiny are those of “hell.”
For terms descriptive of “hell,” see e.g., Mat 13:42; Mat 25:46; Phi 3:19; 2Th 1:9; Heb 10:39; 2Pe 2:17; Jud 1:13; Rev 2:11; Rev 19:20; Rev 20:6, Rev 20:10, Rev 20:14; Rev 21:8.
Notes: (1) For the rendering “hell” as a translation of hades, corresponding to Sheol, wrongly rendered “the grave” and “hell,” see HADES. (2) The verb tartaroo, translated “cast down to hell” in 2Pe 2:4, signifies to consign to Tartarus, which is neither Sheol nor hades nor hell, but the place where those angels whose special sin is referred to in that passage are confined “to be reserved unto judgment;” the region is described as “pits of darkness,” RV.
Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words
Hell
This is a Saxon word, which is derived from a verb which signifies to hide or conceal. A late eminent Biblical critic, Dr. Campbell, has investigated this subject with his usual accuracy; and the following is the substance of his remarks. In the Hebrew Scriptures the word sheol frequently occurs, and uniformly, he thinks, denotes the state of the dead in general, without regard to the virtuous or vicious characters of the persons, their happiness or misery. In translating that word, the LXX have almost invariably used the Greek term , hades, which means the receptacle of the dead, and ought rarely to have been translated hell, in the sense in which we now use it, namely, as the place of torment. To denote this latter object, the New Testament writers always make use of the Greek word , which is compounded of two Hebrew words, Ge Hinnom, that is, The Valley of Hinnom, a place near Jerusalem, in which children were cruelly sacrificed by fire to Moloch, the idol of the Ammonites, 2Ch 33:6. This place was also called Tophet, 2Ki 23:10, alluding, as is supposed, to the noise of drums, (toph signifying a drum,) there raised to drown the cries of helpless infants. As in process of time this place came to be considered as an emblem of hell, or the place of torment reserved for the punishment of the wicked in a future state, the name Tophet came gradually to be used in this sense, and at length to be confined to it. In this sense, also, the word gehenna, a synonymous term, is always to be understood in the New Testament, where it occurs about a dozen times. The confusion that has arisen on this subject has been occasioned not only by our English translators having rendered the Hebrew word sheol and the Greek word gehenna frequently by the term hell; but the Greek word hades, which occurs eleven times in the New Testament, is, in every instance, except one, translated by the same English word, which it ought never to have been. In the following passages of the Old Testament it seems, however, that a future world of wo is expressed by sheol: They, the wicked, spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to sheol, Job 21:13. The wicked shall be turned into sheol, and all the nations that forget God, Psa 9:17-18. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on sheol, Pro 5:5. But he knoweth not that the ghosts are there, and that her guests are in the depths of sheol, Pro 9:18. Thou shalt beat him with a rod, and shalt deliver his soul from sheol, Pro 23:14. Thus, as Stuart observes, in his Essay on Future Punishment, while the Old Testament employs sheol, in most cases to designate the grave, the region of the dead, the place of departed spirits, it employs it also, in some cases, to designate along with this idea the adjunct one of the place of misery, place of punishment, region of wo. In this respect it accords fully with the New Testament use of hades. For though hades signifies the grave, and often the invisible region of separate spirits, without reference to their condition, yet, in Luk 16:23, In hades , he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, it is clearly used for a place and condition of misery. The word hell is also used by our translators for gehenna, which means the world of future punishment, How shall ye escape the damnation of hell, ?