Hell

A reality Jesus warned of

Jesus, who showed the love of God most fully, also warned of hell most solemnly.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 10:28

The word is geenna (γέεννα), Gehenna, named after the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem, where children had once been burned in sacrifice (Jeremiah 7:31). Jesus spoke of the place "where ‘their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.’" (Mark 9:48) and of "the outer darkness" (Matthew 8:12). That fire was "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41). It is distinct from Hades (ᾍδης), the realm of the dead; at the end, Revelation says, "Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death" (Revelation 20:14).

At its heart hell is being cut off from God. Those who reject the gospel will be "separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). The judgment is just: the servant who knew his master's will and ignored it is beaten with many blows, the one who did not know with few (Luke 12:47-48), so there are degrees of punishment.

What the church confesses

The Athanasian Creed confesses that at Christ's coming all will rise with their bodies and give account of their works, and then:

And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire.

Athanasian Creed

Augustine argued from Matthew 25:46 that since the same word ‘eternal’ is used of the punishment and of the life, the punishment too is without end Augustine, City of God, Book 21. Wesley makes the same point on that verse: "Either therefore the punishment is strictly eternal, or the reward is not" Wesley. The Westminster Confession teaches that the wicked will be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord" Westminster Confession 33.2.

Where the traditions differ

Most of the church, East and West, has confessed hell as endless conscious punishment. Conditional immortality, or annihilationism, holds instead that immortality is not ours by nature but God's gift, so that those who are not saved, after just punishment, finally perish and cease to be; it takes "eternal destruction" (2 Thessalonians 1:9) and "the second death" (Revelation 20:14) at their plainest. Seventh-day Adventists and some evangelicals hold it, and John Stott said he inclined to it, tentatively John Stott, Evangelical Essentials. The hope that all will finally be saved appears in the speculations of Origen in the third century Origen, On First Principles, but the teaching of his later followers on this point was condemned in the sixth century, and the historic creeds and most of the church have not accepted it. Purgatory is a different teaching from hell.

On every view hell is real and judgment belongs to God. So we do not pronounce on anyone's final end or use hell to frighten people, and we hear these warnings with the heart of the God who says, "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked should turn from their ways and live" (Ezekiel 33:11). For more, see Are heaven and hell real? and the lesson Resurrection, judgment and the new creation.