HELL, HADES AND THE LAKE OF FIRE

The Authorised Version renders Revelation 20:14 as, ‘And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.’  My New English Bible version has it, ‘Then Death and Hades were flung into the lake of fire.’  This creates grounds for confusion.

     Hades, for those with a smattering of Greek mythology, is the common destination for the dead, with better areas like the Elysian Fields and worse ones like Tartarus.  Understood in Christian terms as a sort of temporary holding area, its destruction after the Last Judgement – when the Lake of Fire takes effect – would make sense.

     The destruction of Hell – the place of symbolic fire – by being thrown into another symbolic fire is more difficult. Indeed, in the minds of many, Hell and the Lake of Fire are one and the same thing. 

     If we think of a new Heaven and a new Earth, however, then it becomes easier.  The current frame of things is provisional.  New Heaven, new Earth, new Hell: which the Lake of Fire.  Hell as a sort of separate temporary Hades then makes more sense.

Literary treatments of Hell, and medieval illustrations, have added to the confusion. Dante is the worst culprit in this respect.  Dante’s Inferno is a sort of funnel with a three-headed Satan at the bottom of it gnawing on Brutus, Cassius and Judas.  That suggests Satan is fixed where he is; otherwise, what happens to Judas and the others when he’s away?

     Nevertheless, if Satan is confined to Hell in the medieval understanding, his minions are free to visit Earth.  In Chaucer’s The Friar’s Tale a summoner meets a yeoman even more demonic that himself; for the yeoman turns out to be a fiend, riding to the world’s end in search of prey. At the end of the story, of course, the fiend returns to Hell, taking the summoner with him to the special shelf reserved for summoners.  (Chaucer’s Summoner is not pleased, but gets revenge by pointing out that friars in Hell are in an even worse location.)

     Even in a later example, such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Lucifer himself still remains in Hell, and sends his servant, Mephistopheles. 

            FAU.  Where are you damn’d?

            MEPH.          In hell.

            FAU.   How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

            MEPH. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. 

     Although we might applaud the perception that Hell is a spiritual condition as well as a physical location, what about 1 Peter: 5:8, where ‘The devil goes about like a roaring lion.’ ? That says pretty unequivocally that Satan is still free to roam.  So does Satan’s temptation of Christ. True to this spirit, in Coleridge’s satirical little poem ‘The Devil’s Thoughts’, the gentleman in question leaves his “brimstone bed”  and visits Earth to pick up some new ideas for torment.  Coleridge  is much more biblical than the other literary examples I have cited. 

If the biblical devil is not yet confined, neither are his demons.  In Matthew 8 the demons who later flee into the Gadarene swine ask Christ if he has come to torment them “before their time”.  That suggests they are still free; although they know of a future doom.  Why they choose the pigs is puzzling.  Don’t they have another location they could go to?  What happens to the other demons that are cast out?  Where do they go? 

     Is Hell, in fact, an option for them at this stage?   In Matthew 12:48, Christ says, “When an unclean spirit comes out of a man it wanders over the deserts seeking a resting-place, and finds none.”  It returns with seven other spirits more wicked than itself.  None of them, it seems, has any other fixed abode.  (I concede, of course, that the whereabouts of demons in not the main point of Christ’s words: he is talking about keeping one’s spiritual house in order, and allowing no opening for evil.)

     A counter to all this is the difficult verse in Jude about the rebel angels:  ‘God has reserved them for judgement on the Great Day, bound beneath the darkness in everlasting chains.’  One suggestion is that these are a special case.  These are the Nephilim of Genesis: too dangerous to be allowed on Earth.  They have been found guilty, but await their sentence. Yet a problem remains.  What and where is this darkness – even metaphorically speaking – that they are beneath?  Are they in the same place as condemned humans; or are they in a special place for condemned angels? 

In Matthew 25:41 Christ says to the ‘goats’; “Go from me to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”    That suggests a future location about to come into effect and not yet operative.  That is clear enough for the ‘goats’ alive at the time of Christ’s return.  But what of those ‘goats’ already dead?  Where have they been in the meantime?

      Christ says to the penitent thief, “This day you shall be with me in Paradise.”  Paul says that the dead will be ‘asleep’ in Christ: aware, but still waiting for their resurrection bodies.  This suggests that judgement happens immediately after death.  The redeemed, like the thief, are with Christ in Paradise. 

      The damned are in Hell: a place of metaphorical fire (the Lazarus and Dives parable) and metaphorical darkness: the darkness, perhaps, below which the chained angels are to be found.   It is a place where there is consciousness of loss: hence the wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It would appear to be a place/condition simply for humans.  The idea of tormenting devils seems to be as unbiblical as their supposed pitchforks.   Satan is described in the New Testament as “the prince of this world,” and “the prince of the power of the air.”  It is not the Bible that describes him as the Prince of Hell.   To that extent, Coleridge’s poem, too, is unbliblical; although, given its satirical nature, we need not take it any more seriously than we need take Chaucer. 

Christ returns, and there is the Last Judgement.  Those alive are judged.   The revived dead receive their resurrection bodies and have their fate confirmed.  The present order of things comes to an end.  The redeemed are with God in the new Heaven and New Earth.  The Devil, his demons and unregenerate humanity are cast into the Lake of Fire.  Even here the idea of devils punishing humans seems amiss: the devils will themselves be punished.  Unless, of course, all the self-willed of whatever description are consigned together and left to fight it out for precedence.  

This has been a sombre topic to discuss, and limited in scope.  My purpose has not been to consider the literal versus the figurative; the grounds for redemption and damnation; or the vexed issues of Purgatory, Annihilationism and Universalism.   My purpose has been to clarify for myself – and hopefully for others – a problem of biblical chronology.