Is there a hell, and does it last for ever?

No one in the Bible speaks of hell more often than Jesus. He warns of “hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43) and of “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). As for how long it lasts, Matthew 25:46 uses one Greek adjective, aiōnios, for both destinies in a single sentence: “everlasting punishment” and “life eternal”. Most Christians through the centuries, from Augustine onwards, have concluded that the one lasts as long as the other. Revelation 20:10 says the same of the devil and his allies: “for ever and ever”.

The passages about death and destruction need not contradict this. In Scripture death is above all separation and ruin, not simply ceasing to exist, and Revelation calls the lake of fire “the second death” (20:14). Paul’s “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9) is a ruin that lasts for ever and consists in being shut out from God. The psalms that say the wicked will perish (as Psalm 37:20) mostly speak of their downfall in this life.

The ‘universal’ texts are qualified within themselves. First Timothy 4:10 distinguishes “all men” from “those that believe”: God preserves all and offers salvation to all, but those who believe are actually saved. In 1 Corinthians 15:22 the “all” who are “made alive” in Christ are, as the next verse says, “they that are Christ’s at his coming”. And John, who calls Christ the propitiation “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2), adds “he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (5:12).

Conditional immortality

A minority of evangelicals, John Stott tentatively among them, and Seventh-day Adventists hold that the lost will be raised, judged and punished, and then destroyed for ever. They take ‘everlasting punishment’ and ‘everlasting destruction’ to be everlasting in their result, and read ‘death’, ‘perish’ and ‘destruction’ in their plainest sense.

Universal restoration

Some Christians, from early writers such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa to some theologians today, have hoped or held that all will at last be reconciled to God, pointing to texts such as Colossians 1:20 and 1 Corinthians 15:28. The main churches have rejected universal salvation as a firm teaching, though some theologians allow a hope for it.

Separation from God

The Catholic Church teaches the existence and eternity of hell, and says its chief punishment is eternal separation from God (Catechism, 1033-1035). Many Orthodox and Protestant writers likewise stress that the heart of hell is the loss of God, whatever the fire and darkness picture.

Christians agree that there is a judgement and that rejecting God brings real and final loss. Evangelical scholars in particular remain divided between everlasting conscious punishment, the view of most churches through history, and final destruction. Universal salvation is a small minority view.