Pope John Paul II stirred up a theological hornets' nest when he described hell as "more than a physical place," while at the same time calling it "the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and death."

Hell, he stated, is "not a punishment imposed externally by God." The pontiff's remarks, in which he said the Bible "uses a symbolical language" when it refers to the heat and flames of hell, came after an editorial last summer in an influential Jesuit magazine declared that hell "is not a 'place' but a 'state,' a person's 'state of being,' in which a person suffers from the deprivation of God."

Howls of protest quickly rose from prominent American evangelicals. The Washington Post quoted R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., as saying the pope was "soft-selling hell."

"Jesus Himself spoke of hell as a lake of fire," Mohler said, "where the worms would not die and the fire would not be quenched. It's all very graphic."

Who Is Right?
So who is right? The pope, with his "anguished state of existence?" Or Christians who continue in the tradition of Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan preacher who traveled throughout 18th-century New England proclaiming that "there will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery" of the ever-burning fires of hell?

U.S. News and World Report magazine's Jan. 31, 2000, cover article highlighted this growing debate. It reported that society's views regarding hell have undergone a decided metamorphosis in recent years. While 64 percent of Americans think there is a hell, only 34 percent believe it is "a real place where people suffer eternal fiery torments" (compared to 48 percent only three years ago). A surprising 53 percent view hell as "an anguished state of existence eternally separated from God" (up from 46 percent in 1997). This is the view being promulgated by Pope John Paul II.

Room for a Third View?
Hath hell no fury? Or are sinners suffering right now in eternal torment? A third view on hellfire is currently gaining greater acceptance in modern theological thought. Asserting that the belief of eternal torment is based on pagan philosophy, scholars such as England's Dr. John Stott argue that such a view of God is inconsistent with the biblical portrait of His character and with Scripture itself. Stott and other prominent Bible teachers propose that the fires will ultimately put the unsaved out of existence.

The Bible is not ambiguous on the subject. While Jesus did make it very clear that there is a real hell (see Matthew 10:28), He explained something vitally significant in the parable of the wheat and the tares.

"As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire," Jesus said, "so shall it be in the end of this world" (Matthew 13:40). The point is repeated just nine verses later in the parable of the net. The implications of such a position are obvious. First, in sharp contrast to the claims of Vatican City, hell is a real place where the "children of the wicked one" (Matthew 13:38) will be "burned" (verse 40). We also learn that, contrary to the other commonly held view on the subject, nobody has gone there yet.

It is worth noting that for the majority of times the word translated "hell" is used in Scripture, it literally means "the grave." In only 12 of the 54 times we read the word "hell" does the original word mean "a place of burning."