“Trust God, accept Jesus, confess, repent, and everything will go well for you. But if you don’t, well, the Bible is quite clear… Sin, refuse to repent, harden your heart, reject Jesus, and when you die, it’s over. Or actually, the torture and anguish and eternal torment will have just begun. That’s how it is – because that’s what God is like, correct? God is loving and kind and full of grace and mercy – unless there isn’t confession and repentance and salvation in this lifetime, at which point God punishes us forever. That’s the Christian story, right? Is that what Jesus taught? To answer this question, I want to show you every single verse in the Bible in which we find the actual word ‘hell.’
“First, the Hebrew scriptures. There isn’t an exact word or concept in the Hebrew scriptures for hell other than a few words that refer to death and the grave. One of them is the Hebrew word ‘Sheol,’ a dark, mysterious, murky place people go when they die, as in Psalm 18: ‘The cords of Sheol entangled me’ (NRSV). There’s also mention of ‘the depths,’ as in Psalm 30: ‘I will exalt you, LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths;’ the ‘pit,’ as in Psalm 103: ‘The LORD…who redeems your life from the pit;’ and the ‘grave,’ as in Psalm 6: ‘Who praises you from the grave?’ There are a few references to the realm of the dead, as in Psalm 16: ‘My body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,’ but as far as meanings go, that’s the extent of what we find in the Hebrew scriptures. So what do we learn?
“First, the Hebrew scriptures. There isn’t an exact word or concept in the Hebrew scriptures for hell other than a few words that refer to death and the grave. One of them is the Hebrew word ‘Sheol,’ a dark, mysterious, murky place people go when they die, as in Psalm 18: ‘The cords of Sheol entangled me’ (NRSV). There’s also mention of ‘the depths,’ as in Psalm 30: ‘I will exalt you, LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths;’ the ‘pit,’ as in Psalm 103: ‘The LORD…who redeems your life from the pit;’ and the ‘grave,’ as in Psalm 6: ‘Who praises you from the grave?’ There are a few references to the realm of the dead, as in Psalm 16: ‘My body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,’ but as far as meanings go, that’s the extent of what we find in the Hebrew scriptures. So what do we learn?
“First, we consistently find affirmations of the power of God over all of life and death, as in 1 Samuel 2: ‘The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up;’ and Deuteronomy 32: ‘There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life.’ We do find several affirmations of God’s presence and involvement in whatever happens after a person dies, although it’s fairly ambiguous at best as to just what exactly that looks like…Simply put, the Hebrew commentary on what happens after a person dies isn’t very articulated or defined. Sheol, death, and the grave in the consciousness of the Hebrew writers are all a bit vague and ‘underwordly.’ For whatever reasons, the precise details of who goes where, when, how, and with what, and for how long simply aren’t things the Hebrew writers were terribly concerned with.” (Pages 64-67)
· Rob says the description of the afterlife in the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) are “ambiguous at best.” Here are a few additional passages that don’t use the words heaven or hell but do seem to shed clear light on the afterlife:
According Daniel (12:1-3), at the end, “There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”
Job said, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” Job 19:25-27
Isaiah writes, “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the LORD. “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” Isaiah 66:22-24
Moses describes hell in Deuteronomy 32:22: “For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.”
In Psalm 16:9-11 David writes, “Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
According Daniel (12:1-3), at the end, “There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”
Job said, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” Job 19:25-27
Isaiah writes, “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the LORD. “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” Isaiah 66:22-24
Moses describes hell in Deuteronomy 32:22: “For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.”
In Psalm 16:9-11 David writes, “Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
· Based on the passages from the Hebrew scriptures, do you get a clear sense of what awaits people in the afterlife?
· Rob says, “what happens after a person dies isn’t very articulated or defined” in the Old Testament.” If you were to explain what happens to a person after they die just based on these passages, what would you say?
“Next, then, the New Testament. The actual word ‘hell’ is used roughly twelve times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus himself. The Greek word that gets translated as ‘hell’ in English is the word ‘Gehenna.’ Ge means ‘valley,’ and henna means ‘Hinnom.’ Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, was an actual valley on the south and west side of the city of Jerusalem. Gehenna, in Jesus’s day, was the city dump. People tossed their garbage and waste into this valley. There was a fire there, burning constantly to consume the trash. Wild animals fought over the scaps of food along the edges of the heap. When they fought, their teeth would make a gnashing sound. Gehenna was the place with the gnasshing of teeth, where the fire never went out. Gehenna was an actual place that Jesus’s listeners would have been familiar with. So the next time someone asks you if you believe in an actual hell, you can always say, ‘Yes, I do believe that my garbage goes somewhere…’
“James uses the word ‘Gehenna’ once in his letter to refer to the power of the tongue (chap.3), but otherwise all of the mentions are from Jesus. Jesus says, in Matthew 5, ‘Anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell,’ and ‘It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.’ In Matthew 10 and Luke 12 he says, ‘Be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.’ and in Matthew 18 and Mark 9 he says, ‘It is better for you to enter life with one eye rather than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.’ In Matthew 23 he tells very committed religious leaders that they win converts and make them ‘twice as much a child of hell’ as they are, an then he asks them, ‘How will you escape being condemned to hell?’
“Gehenna, the town garbage pile. And that’s it. Those are all of the mentions of ‘hell’ in the Bible. There are two other words that occasionally mean something similar to hell. One is the word ‘Tartarus,’ which we find once in chapter 2 of Peter’s second letter. It’s a term Peter borrowed from Greek mythology, referring to the underworld, the place where the Greek demigods were judged in the ‘abyss.’ The other Greek word is ‘Hades.’ Obscure, dark, murky – Hades is essentially the Greek version of the Hebrew word ‘Sheol.’ We find the word ‘Hades’ in Revelation 1, 6, and 20 and in Acts 2, which is a quote from Psalm 16. Jesus uses the word in Matthew 11 and Luke 10: ‘You will go down to Hades;’ in Matthew 16: ‘The gates of Hades will not overcome it;’ and in the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in Luke 16. And that’s it. Anything you have ever heard people say about the actual word ‘hell’ in the Bible they got from those verses you just read.” (Pages 67-69)
“James uses the word ‘Gehenna’ once in his letter to refer to the power of the tongue (chap.3), but otherwise all of the mentions are from Jesus. Jesus says, in Matthew 5, ‘Anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell,’ and ‘It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.’ In Matthew 10 and Luke 12 he says, ‘Be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.’ and in Matthew 18 and Mark 9 he says, ‘It is better for you to enter life with one eye rather than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.’ In Matthew 23 he tells very committed religious leaders that they win converts and make them ‘twice as much a child of hell’ as they are, an then he asks them, ‘How will you escape being condemned to hell?’
“Gehenna, the town garbage pile. And that’s it. Those are all of the mentions of ‘hell’ in the Bible. There are two other words that occasionally mean something similar to hell. One is the word ‘Tartarus,’ which we find once in chapter 2 of Peter’s second letter. It’s a term Peter borrowed from Greek mythology, referring to the underworld, the place where the Greek demigods were judged in the ‘abyss.’ The other Greek word is ‘Hades.’ Obscure, dark, murky – Hades is essentially the Greek version of the Hebrew word ‘Sheol.’ We find the word ‘Hades’ in Revelation 1, 6, and 20 and in Acts 2, which is a quote from Psalm 16. Jesus uses the word in Matthew 11 and Luke 10: ‘You will go down to Hades;’ in Matthew 16: ‘The gates of Hades will not overcome it;’ and in the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in Luke 16. And that’s it. Anything you have ever heard people say about the actual word ‘hell’ in the Bible they got from those verses you just read.” (Pages 67-69)
· This section of Rob’s book makes it sound like the Bible hardly speaks about hell and when it does it isn’t much more than a burning garbage dump. Actually, there are over 162 references in the New Testament that warn of Hell. Over 70 of these references are attributed to Jesus. According to the gospels, Jesus spoke more on Hell than on any other subject. Based on these statistics, do you think the topic of hell is of primary importance in the Bible?
· Following are a few statements of Jesus made about hell:
o “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matthew 13:41-43)
o “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” (Matthew 18: 8-9)
o “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25: 41-46)
Based on these passages, do you Jesus gives a clear idea of what hell is? How would you describe it?
“For many in the modern world, the idea of hell is a holdover from primitive, mythic religion that uses fear and punishment to control people for all sorts of devious reasons. And so the logical conclusion is that we’ve evloved beyond all of that outdated belief, right? I get that. I understand that aversion, and I as well have a hard time believing that somewhere down below the earth’s crust is a really crafty figure in red tights holding a three-pointed spear, playing Pink Floyd records backward, and enjoying the hidden messages. So how should we think, or not think about hell?
· Rob is having some fun with his description of Satan. How does the Bible actually describe him? (See Ezek. 28:13-17; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15; Revelation 12:9; 1 Peter 5:8).
From page 74 to 79, Rob refers to the following story Jesus told about hell:
· “There was a certain rich man who clothed himself in purple and fine linen, and who feasted luxuriously every day. At his gate lay a certain poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores. Lazarus longed to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Instead, dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried by angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. While being tormented in the place of the dead, he looked up and saw Abraham at a distance with Lazarus at his side. He shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I’m suffering in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received good things whereas Lazarus received terrible things. Now Lazarus is being comforted and you are in great pain. Moreover, a great crevasse has been fixed between us and you. Those who wish to cross over from here to you cannot. Neither can anyone cross from there to us.’ The rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father’s house. I have five brothers. He needs to warn them so that they don’t come to this place of agony.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. They must listen to them.’ The rich man said, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will change their hearts and lives.’ Abraham said, ‘If they don’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, then neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.’” (Luke 16:19-31 CEB)
· According to this story, do you think there is a place of torment that a person who is not ‘right with God’ will go to? Does it sound like a person can escape from this place of torment if they repent? In your opinion, should pastors and Bible teachers be “warn (people) so that they don’t come to this place of agony?”
· Rob observes that those who are “most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned about the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.” (Pages 78-79) While no one would deny the need to relieve the torment of people on earth, do you think it is still appropriate to warn people of a future tormet after death? Why or why not?
· Rob continures, “What we see in Jesus’s story about the rich man and Lazarus is an affirmation that there are all kinds of hells, because there are all kinds of ways to resist and reject all that is good and true and beautiful and human now, in this life, and so we can only assume we can do the same in the next. There are individual hells, and communal, society-wide hells, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. There is hell now, and there is hell later, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously.” (Page 79) After reading this story in the Bible, what do you think Jesus’s main point was?
“Now, on to the passages that seem to be talking about hell, but don’t mention it specifically. Let’s start with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the poster cities for deviant sinfulness run amok.” (page 83) Rob goes on to describe the severe judgment that resulted in total destruction of the two cities with fire and brimstone. “But that isn’t the last we read of Sodom and Gomorrah. The prophet Ezekiel had a series of visions in which God shows him what’s coming, including the promise that God will ‘restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters’ and they will ‘return to what they were before’ (chapter 16). Restore the fortunes of Sodom? The story isn’t over for Sodom and Gomorrah? What appeared to be a final, forever, smoldering, smoking verdict regarding their destiny…wasn’t” What appeared to be over, isn’t. Ezekiel says that where there was destruction there will be restoration. But that still isn’t the last we hear of these two cities. As Jesus travels from village to village in Galilee, calling people to see things in a whole new way, he encounters great resistance in some areas, especially among the more religious and devout. In Matthew 10, he warns the people living in the village of Capernaum, ‘it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you.’ …There’s still hope? And if there’s still hope for Sodom and Gomorrah, what does that say about all of the other Sodoms and Gomorrahs?” (Pages 83-85)
· Another pastor and author, Kevin DeYoung, writes, “In one place, Bell argues from Ezekiel 16 that because the fortunes of Sodom will be restored (Ezek. 16:53), this suggests that the forever destiny of others might end in restoration (page 84). But it should be obvious that the restoration of Sodom in Ezekiel is about the city, not about the individual inhabitants of the town who were already judged in Genesis 19. The people condemned by sulfur and fire 1,500 years earlier were not getting a second lease on postmortem life. The current city would be restored. And besides, the whole point of Sodom’s restoration is to shame wicked Samaria (Ezek. 16:54) so that they might bear the penalty of their lewdness and abominations (Ezek. 16:58). This hardly fits with Bell’s view of God and judgment. If that weren’t bad enough, the other discussion on Sodom is even worse. Because Jesus says it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for Capernaum (Matt. 11:23–24), Bell concludes that there is hope for all the other Sodoms and Gomorrahs (85). Bell takes a passage about judgment—judgment that will be so bad for Capernaum it’s even worse than God’s judgment on Sodom—and turns it into tacit support for ultimate universalism. Jesus’ warning says nothing about new hope for Sodom. It says everything about the hopelessness of unbelieving Capernaum.”
· After reading the passages in Ezekiel 16 and Matthew 11, do you think they express hope for second chances? Why or why not?
“This story, the one about Sodom and Gomorrah, isn’t the only place we find this movement from judgment to restoration, from punishment to new life. (Page 85) Rob points to Jeremiah 32 and 5 to show that “God crushes, refines, tests, corrects, chastens, and rebukes – but always with a purpose. No matter how painful, brutal, oppressive, no matter how far people find themselves from home because of their sin, indifferece, and rejection, there’s always the assurance that it won’t be this way forever.” Rob cites a number of Bible passages about restoration (Pages 86-87) and then concludes, “I realize that’s a lot of Bible verses, but I list them simply to show how dominant a theme restoration is in the Hebrew scriptures. It comes up again and again and again. Sins trodden underfoot, iniquities hurled into the depths of the sea. God always has an intention. Healing. Redemption. Love. Bringing people home and rejoicing over them with singing… Failure, we see again and again, isn’t final, judgment has a point, and consequences are for correction.
“We see this same impulse in the story Jesus tells in Matthew 25 about the sheep and goats being judged and separated. The sheep are sent to one place, while the goats go to another place because of their failure to see Jesus in the hungry and thirsty and naked. The goats are sent, in the Greek language, to an anion of kolazo. Aion, we know, has several meanings. One is ‘age’ or ‘period of time;’ another refers to intensity of experience. The word kolazo is a term from horticulture. It refers to the pruning and trimming of the branches of a plant so it can flourish. An aion of kolazo. Depending on how you translate aion and kolazo, then, the phrase can mean ‘a period of pruning’ or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of correction. In a good number of English translations of the Bible, the phrase ‘aion of kolazo’ gets translated as ‘eternal punishment,’ which many read to mean ‘punishment forever,’ as in never going to end. But ‘forever’ is not really a category the biblical writers used.
“The closest the Hebrew writers come to a word for ‘forever’ is the word olam. Olam can be translated as ‘to the vanishing point, in the far distance, a long time, long lasting, or that which is at or beyond the horizon.’ When olam refers to God as in Psalm 90 (‘from everlasting to everlasting you are God’), it’s much closer to the word ‘forever’ as we think of it, time without beginning or end. But then in the other passages, when it’s not describing God, it has very different meanings, as when Jonah prays to God, who let him go down into the belly of a fish ‘forever’ (olam) and then, three days later, brought him out of the belling of the fish. Olam, in this instance, turns out to be three days. It’s a versatile, pliable word, in most occurrences referring to a particular period of time.
“So when we read ‘eternal punishment,’ it’s important that we don’t read categories and concepts into a phrase that aren’t there. Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of forever. jesus may be talking about something else, which has all sorts of implications for our understandings of what happens after we die, which we’ll spend the next chapter sorting through. To summarize, then, we need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and gtrue and beautiful life that God has for us. We need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep within our hearts all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that come when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way. And for that, the word ‘hell’ works quite well. Let’s keep it.” (Pages 85-93)
“We see this same impulse in the story Jesus tells in Matthew 25 about the sheep and goats being judged and separated. The sheep are sent to one place, while the goats go to another place because of their failure to see Jesus in the hungry and thirsty and naked. The goats are sent, in the Greek language, to an anion of kolazo. Aion, we know, has several meanings. One is ‘age’ or ‘period of time;’ another refers to intensity of experience. The word kolazo is a term from horticulture. It refers to the pruning and trimming of the branches of a plant so it can flourish. An aion of kolazo. Depending on how you translate aion and kolazo, then, the phrase can mean ‘a period of pruning’ or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of correction. In a good number of English translations of the Bible, the phrase ‘aion of kolazo’ gets translated as ‘eternal punishment,’ which many read to mean ‘punishment forever,’ as in never going to end. But ‘forever’ is not really a category the biblical writers used.
“The closest the Hebrew writers come to a word for ‘forever’ is the word olam. Olam can be translated as ‘to the vanishing point, in the far distance, a long time, long lasting, or that which is at or beyond the horizon.’ When olam refers to God as in Psalm 90 (‘from everlasting to everlasting you are God’), it’s much closer to the word ‘forever’ as we think of it, time without beginning or end. But then in the other passages, when it’s not describing God, it has very different meanings, as when Jonah prays to God, who let him go down into the belly of a fish ‘forever’ (olam) and then, three days later, brought him out of the belling of the fish. Olam, in this instance, turns out to be three days. It’s a versatile, pliable word, in most occurrences referring to a particular period of time.
“So when we read ‘eternal punishment,’ it’s important that we don’t read categories and concepts into a phrase that aren’t there. Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of forever. jesus may be talking about something else, which has all sorts of implications for our understandings of what happens after we die, which we’ll spend the next chapter sorting through. To summarize, then, we need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and gtrue and beautiful life that God has for us. We need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep within our hearts all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that come when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way. And for that, the word ‘hell’ works quite well. Let’s keep it.” (Pages 85-93)
· Rob is revisiting some of the same discussion of original languages. I’m not an expert in the original languages of the Bible, so for this section, I’ll cite again the comments made by Dr. Jim Samra, the pastor of Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, MI. “A central point Rob makes throughout the book centers on what he identifies as the Greek word aion. He writes that the word can mean “age” (which is true), but implies that aion cannot mean “forever” as in the sense of eternity. However, more than 50 times in the New Testament, an throughout ancient Greek literature, aion does refer to “a time to come of which, if there is no end, is known as eternity” according to the standard Greek lexicon in use today (known by the initials BDAG).
Also, Rob seems to confuse aion with a different, though related Greek word, aionios. Although they look similar, aion is a noun and aionios is an adjective. This makes quite a difference. For example, in English we could say of someone, ‘it seems like he’s been a pastor for an eternity.’ But we would never say ‘it seems like that pastor is eternal.’ The same is true in Greek. While the noun aion can refer to a fixed period of time, aionios is never used that way in all the New Testament. Aionios always means ‘unending’ or ‘without duration’ (from BDAG). So English translations are right to use the words ‘eternal life’ because the word is aionios, not aion, as Rob would have us believe.
“Rob’s confusion of these two different words contributes to an unusual interpretation of Matthew 25:46 in the third chapter (of Love Wins). In the passage about the sheep and the goats, Rob tells us the goats are sent to ‘an aion of kolazo.’ By saying it in this way, Rob is claiming that Matthew uses the word aion in this passage. He does not. Matthew uses aionios. Compounding the confusion, Rob writes kolazo (which is a verb) instead of kolasis (which is the noun that Matthew actually uses). Rob implies that this word is in the genitive case. It is not.
Also, Rob seems to confuse aion with a different, though related Greek word, aionios. Although they look similar, aion is a noun and aionios is an adjective. This makes quite a difference. For example, in English we could say of someone, ‘it seems like he’s been a pastor for an eternity.’ But we would never say ‘it seems like that pastor is eternal.’ The same is true in Greek. While the noun aion can refer to a fixed period of time, aionios is never used that way in all the New Testament. Aionios always means ‘unending’ or ‘without duration’ (from BDAG). So English translations are right to use the words ‘eternal life’ because the word is aionios, not aion, as Rob would have us believe.
“Rob’s confusion of these two different words contributes to an unusual interpretation of Matthew 25:46 in the third chapter (of Love Wins). In the passage about the sheep and the goats, Rob tells us the goats are sent to ‘an aion of kolazo.’ By saying it in this way, Rob is claiming that Matthew uses the word aion in this passage. He does not. Matthew uses aionios. Compounding the confusion, Rob writes kolazo (which is a verb) instead of kolasis (which is the noun that Matthew actually uses). Rob implies that this word is in the genitive case. It is not.
“So, when Rob tries to tell us that Matthew wrote ‘an aion of kolazo,’ which might mean ‘an age of pruning,’ he has not correctly told us what Matthew wrote in the Greek. What Matthew actually wrote is ‘into aionios kolasis,’ which cannot mean an age of pruning’ but ‘eternal punishment.’ The reason why no English translation has ‘an age of pruning’ is not because the translators didn’t know what they were doing. It is because this is not what the Greek text actually says. Even a non-Greek reader can figure out that Matthew cannot be talking about ‘an age of pruning’ in this lifetime because five verses earlier Jesus says to the same people, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire (aionios pur) prepared for the devil and his angels.’ Matthew 25:46 cannot be referring to something that is currently happening, ‘hell now,’ even if Rob was reading the Greek correctly, because the devil and his angels are not experiencing eternal fire during this age. This is a significant problem in Love Wins. Rob makes authoritative statements and tries to use Greek to support his ideas; however, I found his use of Greek to be dangerously misleading.”
· Apparently Rob’s use of the Greek to support his view is not consistent with the views of most Bible translation scholars. When authors or pastors tell us that the words in our Bible are not accurately translated from the original languages, it always raises a question in my mind. Who should we trust, a group of translation scholars who have devoted their lives to understanding original languages, or a pastor who has spent a few years in seminary? The fact that all of the English translations of the Bible translate the word “Aion” as “eternal” makes me think it must be the more accurate meaning. Do you agree? Why or why not?
· Rob is building toward one of his primary points in Love Wins, that God’s punishment of humans is always with the intention of restoration and that, therefore, hell is not forever. He wants us to think about the word hell as a description of the consequences people receive for actions on this earth and as a temporary punishment with the view toward repentance and restoration. Are you following his logic? Do you agree with his conclusions? Why or why not?
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