Red Flag Churches: Rethinking the Doctrine of Hell

Rethinking the Doctrine of Hell

Anyone attending church is probably well indoctrinated into the concept of a fiery eternal hell awaiting the disobedient. It has become a major part of church doctrine for centuries, just accepted by most and taught as a given. But there is more and more information available now that shows another perspective, another way to see those verses, and another way to see God. To understand it all, you have to delve into the history of Christianity and find out how this originally got injected into church doctrine.

As power structures got entrenched in church systems over the centuries, the doctrine of hell was introduced to, first, protect the power of the clergy, and second, to keep the peons in line by instilling fear. There are many books out now on the history of this lovely doctrine, how it was taken from other traditions, then inserted into the Bible via mistranslations. Intentionally.

Original Schools of Thought

Those that have dissected the history behind the doctrine of hell explain the 3 different schools of thought prevalent in the first few centuries of church history. These ways of thinking were labeled Eternal Suffering, Conditional Immortality and Universal Reconciliation.

There were 6 main centers or schools in the first several hundred years of Christianity, with 4 of them adhering to the Universalist view, one teaching Conditional Immortality, and one teaching Eternal Suffering. For the first 500 years of Christianity, the vast majority held to the universalist teaching. But the only one adhering to Eternal Suffering was located in Rome. Let that sink in.

Original Languages

Next, those that explore the history of this doctrine will go through the original languages, clarifying those words and what they meant at the time. In the Old Testament, the word is Sheol (the grave).

Sheol is the concept people devised in ancient times to imagine and describe the afterlife experience that they had no knowledge about.¹

The word Sheol is translated as hell in some places and grave in others depending on the meaning the translators wished to convey in a particular passage. This has been a key finding in revealing how our beliefs have been manipulated. There are NO references to an eternal fiery hell in the Old Testament. None. Only Sheol as a place of the dead and the grave is mentioned. That’s it.

In the New Testament, Gehenna (or the Valley of Hinnom, an actual location near Jerusalem), Hades (like Sheol, the place of the dead), and Tartaroo (to confine in hell) are the 3 words that are inconsistently translated as “hell” in our Bibles today. Tartaroo appears only once in 2 Pet. 2:4 and is apparently a place for certain spirits (not people) until judgment. Hades is the equivalent of Sheol, the grave. The word most often translated “hell” is Gehenna an actual location that was essentially a body dump in previous centuries, a place of death and fire, and of child sacrifice, and later a garbage dump.

To understand how this word was used, the word “hyperbole” needs to be defined. That’s when you take things to an extreme to make a point. “You’re killing me here!” doesn’t mean you’re actually killing me. It’s understood as dramatization. This is the language used in New Testament times- hyperbole was commonly used and understood as taking things to an extreme to make a point. Jesus was saying that yes, you will pay a price. But it wasn’t until much later that Persian thought and Zoroastrianism crept in, the doctrine of hell took off, and an eternal fiery torment became that price.

Julie Ferwerda, in her book Raising Hell, quotes the New World Encyclopedia:

Jews who embraced this view of hell [Gehenna as a place of torment] included the group known as the Pharisees. The larger, dogmatically conservative Sadducees maintained their belief in Sheol. While it was the Sadducees that represented the Jewish religious majority it was the Pharisees who best weathered Roman occupation, and their belief in Zoroaster’s heaven and hell was passed on to both Christianity and Islam.²

Persian Zoroastrianism was the source. Romans accepted that belief and passed it on in their occupation. The Catholic Church, headquartered in Rome with its oppressive, controlling hierarchy used it to control the masses. And then history headed into the Dark Ages with its threat of hell always at the forefront.

All Shall Be Saved

There are plenty of verses in the Bible that state that all will be saved. Here are a few:

I Cor. 15:22- For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

1Cor. 3:15- If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Rom 5:18- So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.

Then there’s the simple logic- how could a loving God that demands forgiveness from us condemn the bigger part of His creation to everlasting torment? This one doctrine has engendered fear and even PTSD in people brought up under the influence of this horrific belief.

For much more in-depth information on this topic with detailed dissection of verses typically quoted to support the hell doctrine, get the books. Both Julie Ferwerda and Keith Giles have gone the extra mile to explain it all beautifully.