Have you ever questioned the traditional view of Hell?
Well…you wouldn’t be alone.
For the first 400 years of the Church, the understanding of God’s end-time/final judgment remained open and was not dogmatically defined, leaving broad room for variation and interpretation. Throughout Church history, numerous respected scholars, theologians, and church leaders have proposed alternative, biblical views on the matter. For example, the Eastern Orthodox Church still holds a much more open view of hell than most Evangelical churches in the West.
Growing up in the Worldwide Church of God, I was taught annihilationism (conditional immortality). We didn’t just believe in the end-times—we lived it, evangelizing passionately that God’s final judgment would soon come. We believed that everyone who had not heard the gospel and had not been “called” in this life would be given an opportunity at the resurrection, and that those who still resisted God would ultimately be non-violently destroyed.
In my late teens and early twenties as an everyday Evangelical, it was ingrained into the deepest parts of my soul that hell was a place of eternal conscious punishment (torment by all definitions), with that destiny sealed at the moment of one’s physical death. It wasn’t until my late thirties and early forties that I began digging into this topic on my own and reevaluating the traditional view of hell through a Jesus-looking, healing and restorative hermeneutic.
What I found was a treasure trove of biblical resources, along with an A-list of critical thinkers, Spirit-filled disciples, and devoted followers of Jesus who had arrived at alternative, Jesus-centered views of hell—views that have often been met with harsh criticism and accusations of betraying the very faith they profess.
Maybe you’ve struggled with some of these same questions—Is hell merely a divine torture chamber for those who resist God? Are the references to fire in the Gospels a literal description of hell, or are they metaphors? Is there truly no hope for those who die unrepentant?
If you come from a conservative Christian background like I do, you’ve probably been warned that any alternative view on this issue amounts to heresy. You’ve probably been told that true, biblical Christians can hold no position other than eternal conscious punishment.
I would like to challenge those opinions and invite you to explore the subject more deeply with me.
This six-part video series hosted in an interactive classroom setting explores these questions and offers an alternative, biblical, Jesus-centered view of hell.
NOTE: The course presentation was done in partnership with Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN, so at times a name and/or reference may not be familiar to you, but the overall content is broad and comprehensive.
The Flowage 