What is hell?
Short answer
Hell, in the Bible, is the definitive loss of communion with God (2 Thessalonians 1:9). The New Testament describes it with images of fire (Mark 9:42-47), of darkness (Matthew 8:12) and of a second death (Revelation 20:14-15). Whether those images are literal description or figurative language is a point on which Christians disagree.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 5 min read
Before arguing about what it is, it helps to separate what the word translates. In English one word covers several different things in the original. Sheol, in the Old Testament, and Hades, in the New, name the world of the dead — where everyone goes, with no judgment built in; that is what appears in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 16, where this edition prints the word Hell for the place both men end up. Gehenna is another thing: a valley on the outskirts of Jerusalem, with a grim past, and it is the image Jesus uses when speaking of condemnation. And the pool of fire is vocabulary from Revelation, tied to the final judgment. A good share of the heated arguments on this subject are, in fact, people using one word for three things.
With that separated, what remains is what the texts affirm without dispute between the traditions. It is a real possibility, and Jesus speaks of it more often than any other figure in the New Testament — it is not a medieval invention. It is definitive, not corrective. And what defines it is not the temperature: 2 Thessalonians 1:9 describes the state with no image at all, as being shut out from the Lord’s own presence. Losing that is the content of the word.
The disagreement begins with the status of the images, and it runs through Catholics and Protestants from the inside — there are defenders of both readings in both groups. On one side, those who hold that fire, worm and gnashing of teeth describe the reality, and that softening them empties a warning Jesus repeated three times in a row in Mark 9. On the other, those who observe that the same Gospel describes the same destiny as fire and as outer darkness, and that the two cannot both be literal — therefore they are language for a loss no description reaches.
There is also a third reading, a minority one but ancient, present in both groups as well: that the end of those who are lost is destruction rather than endless torment. It rests on the verb of Matthew 10:28, which speaks of destroying soul and body, and on the phrase second death, from Revelation. The churches that hold it are few; ignoring that it exists would give the reader an answer they are going to discover is incomplete.
On one thing there is no disagreement at all, and it tends to be what actually troubles the person searching: no Christian tradition claims to know the destiny of a particular person. There is no list, no statement with a name attached. Judgment is attributed to God in every text that mentions it, and anyone sentencing someone by name is speaking on their own authority.
What the passages say
22Then it happened that the beggar died, and he was carried by the Angels into the bosom of Abraham. Now the wealthy man also died, and he was entombed in Hell.
23Then lifting up his eyes, while he was in torments, he saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.
The word in the original here is Hades, the world of the dead, and not Gehenna — both men die and both go there. This edition renders it Hell, which is exactly the ambiguity at issue: it is the text that shows why confusing the words scrambles the whole discussion.
42And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off: it is better for you to enter into life disabled, than having two hands to go into Hell, into the unquenchable fire,
43where their worm does not die, and the fire is not extinguished.
44But if your foot causes you to sin, chop it off: it is better for you to enter into eternal life lame, than having two feet to be cast into the Hell of unquenchable fire,
45where their worm does not die, and the fire is not extinguished.
46But if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out: it is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into the Hell of fire,
47where their worm does not die, and the fire is not extinguished.
The hardest passage on the subject, and the most repeated: the same warning three times, with the same closing line each time. The image of the worm and the fire comes from Isaiah 66, and the valley of Gehenna was a place the listeners knew by sight — which made the saying concrete for them before it was doctrinal for us. Note the numbering: in this edition the passage runs 42 to 47, one verse earlier than in most Bibles.
12But the sons of the kingdom shall be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The same destiny appears here as darkness rather than fire. It is the datum that supports the figurative reading: fire and outer darkness do not describe the same room, and the Gospel uses both without explaining itself.
28And do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. But instead fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.
The verb is destroy, applied to soul and body. Those who read hell as endless torment understand that destruction as the irreversible loss of true life; those who read it as annihilation take it at face value. The verse is the same, and both readings come out of it.
9These shall be given the eternal punishment of destruction, apart from the face of the Lord and apart from the glory of his virtue,
The definition with no metaphor at all: the punishment is being shut out from the Lord’s own presence. All the rest of the vocabulary — fire, worm, darkness, pool — is an attempt to say what that means. This is the sentence both readings accept without reservation.
14And Hell and death were cast into the pool of fire. This is the second death.
15And whoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the pool of fire.
Notice what is thrown in first: death itself and the realm of the dead. Before it is the destiny of people, the pool of fire is, in the text, the end of the things that kill. And the phrase second death is what feeds the minority reading mentioned above.