Straight Talk About Damnation
It's a Mistake for Christians to Deny the Flip Side of Salvation, Some Pastors Say

By Greg Garrison
Religion News Service
Saturday, August 8, 2009

BIRMINGHAM -- Just when it seemed to have cooled off, the topic of hell is back on the front burner -- at least for pastors learning to preach about a topic most Americans would rather not talk about.

Only 59 percent of Americans believe in hell, compared with 74 percent who believe in heaven, according to recent surveys from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

"I think it's such a difficult and important biblical topic," said Kurt Selles, director of the Global Center at Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. "There's a big change that's taken place as far as evangelicals not wanting to be as exclusive."

At the recent annual Beeson Pastors School, Selles led two workshops on the topic "Whatever happened to hell?" He asked how many of the pastors had ever preached a sermon on hell. Nobody had, he said.

"I think it's something people want to avoid," he said. "I understand why. It's a difficult topic."

The Rev. Fred Johns, pastor of Brookview Wesleyan Church in Irondale, Ala., said after a workshop discussion that pastors do shy away from the topic of everlasting damnation.

"It's out of fear we'll not appear relevant," he said. "It's pressure from the culture to not speak anything negative. I think we've begun to deny hell. There's an assumption that everybody's going to make it to heaven somehow."

The soft sell on hell reflects an increasingly market-conscious approach, Selles said.

"When you're trying to market Jesus, sometimes there's a tendency to mute traditional Christian symbols," Selles said. "Difficult doctrines are left by the wayside. Hell is a morally repugnant doctrine. People wonder why God would send people to eternal punishment."

Some see Jesus's dying for humanity's sins as reflecting the gravity of what's at stake, the difference between salvation and damnation. "If you don't mention God's judgment, you are missing a big part of the Christian gospel," Selles said. "Without wrath, there's no grace."

Pope John Paul II stirred up a debate in 1999 by describing hell as "the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."

Although the pope was reflecting official Roman Catholic teaching, some U.S. evangelicals expressed misgivings about the implication that hell is a state of mind, an abstract separation from God, rather than a literal lake of fire as described in the Book of Revelation.

Evangelical Christians have traditionally offered a stern view of salvation and damnation. A Southern Baptist Home Mission Board study in 1993 estimated that 70 percent of all Americans are going to hell, based on projected numbers of those who have not had a born-again experience.

The theological concept of hell has a rich cultural heritage, according to historian Alan Bernstein, author of "The Formation of Hell." The ancient Hebrews focused on the afterlife following the Babylonian captivity, when they experienced the torment of ungodly enemies who seemed to have an unjustifiably good life on Earth. During the Babylonian exile, Jews were exposed to Zoroastrianism, which asserts there is an eternal struggle between good and evil, with good triumphing in the end.

The Hebrew concept of Sheol -- the realm of the dead -- might also have been influenced by the Greek mythology of Tartarus, a place of everlasting punishment for the Titans, a race of gods defeated by Zeus, Bernstein writes.

From about 300 B.C. to 300 A.D., those influences combined with Hebrew speculation about an eventual comeuppance to the worldly wicked.

In translating the Bible from Hebrew to Greek, the Greeks used the terms Tartarus, Hades and Gehenna. In Greek thought, Hades is not a place of punishment; it is where the dead are separated from the living.

The term "Gehenna" referred to a ravine outside Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump. It had once been a place of child sacrifice and became a symbol of pain and suffering, Selles said. As a dump, it was probably a place where trash was burned, contributing to the symbolism of the flames of eternal damnation, he said.

Jesus never soft-pedaled the concept of hell, Selles said. "It's not metaphorical in Jesus's mind; it's a real place," he said.

In 410 A.D., Saint Augustine defined four states of afterlife: for those so good they go to heaven; for those so bad they go to hell; for those who deserve some relief from eternal torment; and for those who deserve to be lifted out of torment after repenting of their sins. That set the stage for the doctrine of purgatory in A.D. 1237.

The Bible contains a litany of colorful images of hell as both fire and darkness, as in the Gospel of Matthew, which refers to "the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" and "the outer darkness" where "men will weep and gnash their teeth."

Either way, Selles said, pretending that hell doesn't exist, or trying to preach around it, short-circuits the Bible.

"This is a doctrine, a teaching, that's being neglected in churches," Selles said. "It needs to be preached. It's part of the Gospel."