Fort Bend Christian Academy Department of Worldviews and Apologetics Chris Henderson
Hell, a Heresy A Proposition for the Theory of Annihilationism
A Thesis Submitted To the Teacher and Students of Advanced Apologetics
By Marla Asensio
May 2018
Asensio 1
Table of Contents
Note to the Reader ...... 2 Introduction ...... 3 Historical Analysis ...... 4 Purpose of Religion...... 4 Polytheistic Religions ...... 7 Ancient Mesopotamia ...... 7 Ancient Egypt ...... 9 Greece ...... 12 Eastern Religions ...... 13 Buddhism ...... 13 Hinduism ...... 16 Abrahamic Religions ...... 17 Islam ...... 17 Christianity ...... 18 The Soul ...... 28 Greek Philosophy ...... 28 Gnosticism ...... 30 Misconception by Theologians ...... 33 The Fallacy...... 33 Philo of Alexandria ...... 34 Justin Martyr ...... 35 Clement of Alexandria ...... 36 Athenagoras ...... 37 Tertullian ...... 37 Saint Augustine ...... 38 Origen ...... 39 Essence of the Soul ...... 41 Rhetorical Analysis ...... 44 Asensio 2
The Fallacy...... 44 Sheol ...... 44 Gehenna ...... 46 Hades...... 49 Eschatological Theories ...... 51 Traditionalism ...... 51 Conditionalism ...... 52 Universalism ...... 53 Conclusion ...... 55 Bibliography ...... 58
Asensio 3
Note to the Reader
This thesis strives to place a spotlight on a traditional belief and question its theological validity through a logical, rhetorical, and analytical approach. Through this thesis, I, the author, will seek to propose a reasonably sound argument of what seems to be the most biblically supported view in revealing man/woman’s final destination. It remains to be true, however, that eschatology can be a densely speculative topic as it has evidently not been experienced and scripture can only reveal so much. As a result, this thesis is not intended to hold annihilationism as the correct theory, but to offer a contrasting viewpoint to such a wide held belief that may not possess as strong of theologically rooted foundations. First, I will present a historical analysis in order to discover where the Christian misconception of hell originated from. This thesis will then offer three other eschatological theories: traditionalism, conditionalism, and universalism that will be refuted and deconstructed in alliance with scripture. Additionally, while I will discuss the beginnings and potential ends of the being, I will not discuss what happens in between. That is, I will engage in a discourse about the acquired immortality of the being that can be obtained after the resurrection of the dead, but I will not discuss what happens immediately after a physical death. My goal is to deny the notion of eternal suffering and I do not have the sufficient amount of knowledge nor does scripture reveal enough information on this topic for me to determine if one will endure some notion of “sleep” before the resurrection.
All biblical texts will be taken from the Young’s Literal Translation as it includes the proper Greek and Hebrew diction needed to formulate my rhetorical approach that supports the argument of annihilationism.
Asensio 4
Introduction
A human’s destiny after life has been a heavily pondered topic by many cultures, groups, and people and for centuries, it has been various religions’ goal to uncover the truth behind man/woman’s finality. For many, the battle between good and evil is settled at the end of one’s life as the righteous are blessed with the gift of eternity in some notion of paradise and the wicked are damned to a fiery underworld. However, this perfect balance seemingly fails to be in compliance with God’s promise to the wicked made during the fall of man and is ultimately not biblically supported in scripture nor through Jesus’ teachings. More than ever, this traditional view of hell is being put into question; some hold tight to this view as they feel secure in its deeply rooted origins, but for others, it is being increasingly abandoned as they find truth in the idea of conditionalism, annihilationism, and even universalism.
Sin was first introduced into the world when Adam and Eve fell into temptation and defied God’s authority. The ultimate punishment for their disobedience was death; Adam and
Eve lost their immortality and became susceptible to pain, sin, and death. From then on, the rest of mankind was plagued with the disease of sin and because of it, they earned the punishment of death as promised. However, Jesus descended from heaven in order to offer salvation by defeating death; the ultimate death payed the price so that eternal life could once again be granted to God’s people. However, if one is to deny this and continue to indulge in sin, they cannot receive this gift of life and must, therefore suffer death as they forfeit existence.
Everyone must experience a physical death; however, through God, one may be able to acquire immortality, but without this grant of immortality, one will become a nonentity and as a result of Asensio 5 this, there fails to be a purpose behind the existence of a hell; God promised death as the punishment of sin, not boundless persecution.
Additionally, the concept of hell is never alluded to in scripture, but it is rather an idea formulated by other religions, primarily those that believed in a god of the dead that ruled this fabricated prison. Early church leaders adopted this pagan belief of everlasting suffering for sinners by blatantly disregarding the teachings of Jesus and scripture and misconstruing translations of the text in order to instill fear in the people and exhort them to turn away from their wrongdoings and be in accordance with the Church’s own practices. As a result, the doctrine of hell as a place of eternal anguish for the unrighteous is a fallacy produced by the loss of truth through translation of scripture, the influence of different religions, cultures, and traditions on early Christians and their leaders, and the misconception of God’s final judgement and promise to the sinful.
Asensio 6
Historical Review
Importance of Religion
Man/woman’s first companion bestowed by God was nature, but this relationship, however, was complicated. Man was created from the dust of the ground and to that dust, he will return; man was free to be one with nature in the Garden of Eden and was initially given dominion over nature and the creatures of the earth. However, following the fall of man, man/woman became slaves to the occurrences and patterns of nature; it controlled their harvests, their concept of time, and, ultimately, their way of life. As a result, nature, by many, was held as a supernatural and undefiable force that could curse the people with destructive storms or bless them with a good harvest. Subsequently, religion was constructed in order to satisfy one who sought after more comprehensive explanations of these unfathomable occurrences of life and nature. Perceptively, it is built on a basis of reason and observation, but is also founded in a great amount of faith so that a set of beliefs and practices could be created to support a religion’s own philosophy of existence.
This relationship between man, nature, and religion dates back to the prehistoric era in which cave art depicts an influence of religion. This art was created in order to please the spirits that were believed in or to become in contact with them. Evidence of this is also seen in burial practices in which primitive beings would bury their dead with earthly possessions in hopes that it would be useful to them in the afterlife or in their next life. From here, religion continued to develop and spread globally through different groups, people, and cultures.
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Polytheistic Religions
Ancient Mesopotamia
The ancient Mesopotamian religion appeared in approximately 3500 BC and reached an end in 400 AD after it was dominated by Syriac Christianity, an Eastern religion that utilizes the
Aramaic dialect of Jesus, Syriac, in its liturgies. The Mesopotamian religion encompasses the middle eastern regions of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria and its inhabitants believed in the powers of thousands of deities. Because of this, the ancient Mesopotamian religion can also be classified as henotheistic in which gods were ranked according to importance and superiority, the highest being An, the god of the heavens. Therefore, each god was essentially assigned to a specific power or place. Some gods such as Enlil, the god of the air, and Enki, the god of water represented forces of nature while others were patron gods of a region such as Ashur of Assyria.
This religion, however, was not solely influenced by the movement of various groups and people into its region but, “rather it forms a uniform, consistent, and coherent Mesopotamian tradition changing in response to its own internal needs of insights and expression.”1 Moreover, the development of this religion can be separated into three different stages: spiritual, physical, and personal.2 The first stage, or the pre-Hammurabi3 period, was the foundation of the religion as it was essentially founded on and expanded by the belief that few, powerful spiritual forces ruled the earth in the 4th millennium BC. However, by the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, hundreds of deities were beginning to be recognized and this idea of solely spiritual gods was somewhat
1 Jacobsen, Thorkild. “Mesopotamian Religion.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 26 July 1999. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mesopotamian-religion. 2 Ibid. 3 The period before the sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty came to power and established Hammurabi’s Code Asensio 8 abandoned as the gods were now viewed as physical masters whom were to be obeyed, honored, and feared by the people. As a result, the people strived to keep the gods satisfied and fulfilled because they feared that if they angered the gods, destruction would be brought upon them, hence the occurrences of natural disasters. Therefore, large structures or Ziggurats were built to honor the gods, but these temples, however, were not just solely a symbol of honor, but they were also believed to be the dwelling places of the gods. Priests were recognized as powerful members in Sumerian society as they were the only ones permitted in the temple to serves the gods’ needs and desires. It was also at this time, that Hammurabi’s Code4 was put to practice in the Babylonian Empire.
Ancient Mesopotamians imagined the afterlife to be a time of desolate solitude. They
“conceptualized the netherworld as the cosmic opposite of the heavens and as a shadowy version of life on earth.”5 However, unlike many religions’ perception of the underworld, the Ancient
Mesopotamians did not associate the netherworld with eternal suffering and torment; “the
Mesopotamian netherworld was neither a place of punishment or reward. Rather, it was the only otherworldly destination for dead spirits whose bodies and graves or cult statues had received proper ritual care”6 Although it was understood as the geographical opposite of heaven, it was not necessarily deemed as a typical “hell.”
Conclusively, life did not end after death for the ancient Mesopotamians as it continued in the form of etemmu, a spirit or ghost dwelling in the netherworld.7 It is believed that the gods
4 Code of law established by Hammurabi in Ancient Mesopotamia. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. Asensio 9 created humans through a mixture of clay and blood to construct a physical component, but they also possess a spiritual component as well. However, this divine element did not guarantee that they were immortal as the etemmu8 retained corporeal needs in order to be sustained.9 Death, therefore, was perceived as a transitionary stage in which one would lose awilu, life, and take on pagaru10 so that the etemmu could separate from the physical body. Moreover, the corporeal needs of the etemmu were required to be fulfilled by the living, that is, its “life force” was contingent on the performance of the post-mortem rituals, cultic offerings at the grave of the deceased, and offerings of food and beverage by the living.11 As long as these offerings continued, the etemmu could remain at peace in the netherworld.
Ancient Egypt
The religion of Ancient Egypt emerged in approximately 3000 BC possessing a
“combination of beliefs and practices which, in the modern day, would include magic, mythology, science, medicine, psychiatry, spiritualism, herbology, as well as the modern understanding of religion as belief in a higher power and life after death.”12 Similar to that of
Ancient Mesopotamia, the early Egyptians believed that the phenomena of nature consisted of divine forces and as a result, they recognized various gods as the causes of those forces each having its own roles and manifestations ranging from major gods to minor deities. These gods,
8 Spirit. 9 Ibid. 10 Deep sleep. 11 Ibid. 12 Choksi, M. “Ancient Mesopotamian Beliefs in the Afterlife.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 20 June 2014. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.ancient.eu/article/701/ancient-mesopotamian-beliefs-in-the-afterlife/. Asensio 10 however, were not just “…seen as the lords of creation and custodians of order…”13 but also as benefactors to their people guiding them and blessing them.
The gods were not the sole focus of the Ancient Egypt religion, however, as the pharaoh also played a major role in the beliefs and practices of the early Egyptians. Though the people recognized the pharaoh as a physical being similar to themselves, they also believed that he was of divine importance as he had the power of kingship bestowed on him by the gods; he was perceived to be the intermediary force between the gods and the people as he partook in both worlds. Upon his death, they believed that the pharaoh would become a god in the afterlife and they paid their honor and respects to him through the construction of a pyramid as his tomb and physical body’s final resting place.
“Religion played a part in every aspect of the lives of the ancient Egyptians because life on earth was seen as only one part of an eternal journey, and in order to continue that journey after death, one needed to live a life worthy of continuance.”14 In order to fulfill this, “…one was expected to uphold the principle of ma’at…”15 or harmony. Ma’at16 was the most important aspect of the ancient Egyptian religion as it “…was the will of the gods in order to produce the greatest amount of pleasure and happiness for humans through a harmonious existence.”17 As a result, the people were expected to rely on each other to maintain this balance as they believed that by honoring this principle they would find favor in the eyes of the gods and ensure a positive judgement by Osiris, the Lord of the Dead. If they failed to please the gods or essentially
13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ancient Egyptian value of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. 17 Ibid. Asensio 11 become agents of chaos, then the “entire, uncontrollable rage of the deity was directed against those who were condemned through their evils. They were tortured in every imaginable way and destroyed, thus being consigned to nonexistence.”18 They, therefore, become the “gang of
Seth”19 the god who brought death into the world by murdering Osiris as:
“They are excluded from the eternal cosmic cycle of renewal and are instead assigned to the outer darkness, the primeval chaotic world before creation, which is situated in the deepest recesses of the underworld, outside the created world. They are continuously punished by demons, who are the representatives of chaos. Indeed, the demons are often recruited from the ranks of the damned themselves, so that they torture and kill one another. They are subjected to knives and swords and to the fire of hell, often kindled by fire spitting snakes.”20
It has also been depicted that Osiris would demand that “…the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of ma’at on a scale”21 and if “evil deeds outnumber his good deeds he is delivered to the Swallower…; his soul as well as his body are destroyed.”22
Evidently, it can be concurred that the early Egyptians believed in the termination of the complex soul that is illustrated to be of nine different parts: Khat, the physical body, Ka, one’s double-form, Ba, a human headed bird aspect which could speed between earth and the heavens,
Shuyet, the shadow self, Akh, the immortal, transformed self, Sahu and Sechem, aspects of the
Akh, Ab, the heart and source of good and evil, and Ren, one’s secret name.23 All nine of these aspects are present during life and at death so that Akh could appear before Osiris in the Hall of
Truth and the Ab be judged. If one’s Ab failed to be lighter than the feather of truth, their Ka
18 Watson, John. “The Hell of Ancient Egypt.” Tour Egypt, 2013. Accessed 09 February 2018. http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/hell.htm. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Mark, Joshua J. “Ancient Egyptian Religion.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 20 January 2016. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Religion/. Asensio 12 would be thrown down from paradise and become subject to unbearable torment and eventually, nonexistence.
Ancient Greece
The religion of the Ancient Greeks began its influence on the Mediterranean world in approximately 9th to 8th century BC and lasted until the 4th century BC during the reign of Julian and the Romans. Similar to that of the ancient Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, the Greeks believed in many gods of varying hierarchies and manifestations that symbolized certain aspects of nature or regions. The gods were immortal, but they were not all-powerful as they were subject to moirai, or fate. According to Ancient Greek writings, the personas of the gods were two-fold as they had a physical aspect and a god-like aspect; they would interact with humans and intervene in their affairs, have children with them, and even wed, but they also resembled a figure of superiority to their people. Because of this, it was also believed that the gods’ naos24 was among the people and therefore, temples were built as shrines, places of worship, and sites for animal sacrifices to the gods.
The Greeks developed their own idea of the afterlife to reject an idea of a “heaven in the sky” as “heaven” was a place reserved for only the gods. Instead, every soul was destined to spend eternity in the Underworld, ruled by Hades, god of the dead. Upon death, the soul would be guided by Hermes, messenger of the gods, to the entrance of the Underworld where the soul would be greeted by Charon, the ferryman of Hades who would transport the soul across the river Acheron and to the Underworld. The soul would then appear before a panel of three judges
24 Dwelling place. Asensio 13 where they would be judged on their deeds in their previous life. The souls who were then deemed as heroic and virtuous were destined to Elysium, paradise, while those who failed to find favor in the gods were damned to Tartarus, a place of eternal suffering and torment. However, those who did not cross the gods nor evoke favor in them were sent to the Fields of Asphodel where they would sit in solitude for eternity.
Spiritual immortality was not a foreign concept to most of the Greeks as they believed that the soul survived the death of the body and continued to remain as a permanent entity in the
Underworld. Although, throughout time and as different philosophers emerged with their own beliefs and ideas, different ideas of the soul and what it was continued to develop. Epicureans considered the soul to be physical as if it consisted of atoms like the rest of the body and that both soul and body were terminated upon death while Platonists viewed it as an incorporeal substance. Plato and Socrates accepted the immortality of the soul, while Aristotle “considered only part of the soul, the nous, or intellect to have that quality. ”25
Eastern Religions
Buddhism
In the mid-6th and mid-4th centuries BC began the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama in
Eastern India which soon developed into the widespread philosophy known as Buddhism.
Siddhartha Gautama, despite being brought up by a wealthy family, “increasingly collided with the harsh realities of life, and concluded that human life is associated with grief and suffering.”
As a result, he gave up his life of wealth and prosperity and set out on a quest to end his
25 Nakamura, Hajime. “Buddhism.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 28 September 1998. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Religion/. Asensio 14 suffering. Finally, at the age of 35 he attained enlightenment and became known as Buddha,
“the awakened one” where he spent the remaining 45 years of his life traveling across India teaching of his epiphany; “Buddha declared that he had found the path of nirvana, and it led beyond sorrows and sufferings into the boundless Light and Delight.”26 From this, he developed the Four Noble Truths: Dukkha meaning life is always accompanied by sufferings, Samudaya meaning the source of all existence lies in passion and lust, Nirodha meaning that to rid oneself of the rotating wheel of birth and death is only possible through the destruction of lust, and
Marga meaning one can achieve this by climbing on the subsequent four steps to nirvana.27
Buddha strived to bring peace to those in suffering and relieve them of the pains of existence by encouraging them to attain enlightenment.
Like many religions, there are varying views of the afterlife in Buddhism, but the most prominent being that there is life after death. This life, however, is not a spiritual one as held by many religions, but a physical one; upon death, the deceased endures bardos, a judgement process that lasts 49 days divided into three separate stages:
The first stage, chikai, begins immediately at death and lasts about four days. This time period is designed for one to realize that they have abandoned their physical body after they catch a fleeting glimpse of light. The more spiritually developed experience this phenomena longer while the lesser drops into a lower state of the secondary clear light. In chonyid, the second stage, the individual encounters the hallucinations resulting from the karma they have created in life. Unless highly developed, the individual will feel as though they are still in the body. The departed then encounter various apparitions to which determines if they continue onto the third stage, sidpa, or rebirth.28
26 “When Did Buddhism Begin, and What Does It Teach?” World Atlas. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/when-did-buddhism-begin-and-what-does-it-teach.html. 27 Ibid. 28 “Buddhist Afterlife Beliefs.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife, 2014. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.near-death.com/religion/buddhism/afterlife-beliefs.html. Asensio 15
Upon completion of this process, one either enters reincarnation or nirvana.
Reincarnation is perceived as a vicious cycle regulated by karma that one is subject to if they fail to reach nirvana, “which means ‘extinction’ or ‘blowing out’, also often translated as ‘bliss,’ is the letting go of individual identity and desires.”29 Thus, in the state of nirvana (the state toward which enlightenment drives one) there is no longer an ‘individual’ and there is no survival of subjective experience.30 Therefore, Buddhist do not believe in a notion of afterlife; it is either a rebirth or nonexistence.
Consequently, Buddhist do not believe in the concept of a soul as there is believed to be no permanent substance which endures the physical death of the body (anatta). Instead it was believed that an “…endless array of phenomena”31 made up the individual which “…can be divided into five basic categories: physical phenomena, emotions, sensory perceptions, responses to sensory perceptions, and consciousness.”32 Buddhist, therefore, replaced the idea of an immortal soul with the view of these elements that “dissolved upon the attainment of nirvana or even upon reincarnation.”33
This idea goes hand in hand with the idea of no-self or anatman that is constituted by the five khandhas or aggregates of human existence: rupa, corporeality or physical forms, vedana, feelings or sensations, sanna, ideations, sankhara, mental formations or dispositions, and vinnana, consciousness. Human existence is only a composite of the five aggregates, none of which is the self or soul. A person is in a process of continuous change, and there is no fixed underlying entity.34
29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Gray, Jason D. “Buddhist Views of the Afterlife.” The Immortality Project. Accessed 09 February 2018. http://www.sptimmortalityproject.com/background/buddhist-views-of-the-afterlife/. 34 Tucci, Giuseppe. “Buddhism.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 28 September 1998. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism. Asensio 16
Hinduism Originating on the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism is believed to have emerged in the 2nd millennium with the wide held belief that “truth or reality cannot be encapsulated in a creedal formulation” 35 as it “emphasizes its continuous, seemingly eternal (sanatana) existence and the fact that it describes a web of customs, obligations, traditions, and ideals (dharma) that far exceeds the Western tendency to think of religion primarily as a system of beliefs”36 which allows Hinduism to be a living and fluctuating philosophy and way of life. Hinduism involves the worship of many pratima37, murti,38 or archa39 which is referred to as puja40, therefore, classifying it as a polytheistic religion.
Hinduism practices a more complex belief in the afterlife as they believe that hell is
“…not just one place, but consists of several realms”41 that is ruled by the god of the dead,
Yama. This hell plays the role of purifying souls that have accumulated negative karma in their past life and after the soul has completed its process of purification, it is released to be reincarnated into its next life.
One of the most important beliefs in Hinduism remains to be the belief in aatma, or the soul. Followers of this religion believe that “every creature on this planet has a soul, and all these souls are part of the Supreme Soul called Parmatma”42 and the ultimate goal in life is to
35 Gold, Ann G. “Hinduism.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20 July 1998. Accessed 09 February 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hinduism. 36 Ibid. 37 Another word for gods. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Collective definition for all gods. 41 Moore, Ian. “Hell and Heaven in Hinduism.” Classroom, 29 September 2017. Accessed 09 February 2017. https://classroom.synonym.com/hell-heaven-in-hinduism-12085776.html. 42 “Basic Beliefs of Hinduism.” Hinduism Facts, 08 June 2011. Accessed 10 February 2018. http://www.hinduismfacts.org/basic-beliefs-of-hinduism/. Asensio 17 become one with it. Additionally, they believe in their own notion of reincarnation, that is,
“before entering a human body, the soul travels through 84 million species and then is able to gain the human body”43 and after death, the soul “enters a new body depending on the karma of past life.”44 This cycle continues until the soul becomes one with the Parmatma, therefore allowing the support of the absence of a spiritual death as death can only defeat the physical body.
Abrahamic Religions
Islam
Islam, founded in 622 BC in Makkah by Muhammad, is a monotheistic religion that teaches that there is only one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his last prophet. The Quran is the fundamental sacred text of Islam and it is composed of the teachings of the Prophet which were revealed to him by Allah. Within this text, the defining characteristics of Islam are laid out including the Five Pillars of Islam. “These five practices include a ritual profession of faith, ritual prayer, the zakat (charity), fasting, and the hajj (a pilgrimage to Mecca). Many Muslims are characterized by their commitment to praying to Allah five times a day.”45
Hell, for Muslims, is somewhat like that of the Christian viewpoint; they believe that
Hell, Jahannam, is a place where sinners are destined to be punished, but they also believe that for some sinners, Jahannam is not a permanent place. That is, certain sinners, after fully compensating for their sins through punishment will ultimately be able to attain paradise.
43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 “Islam.” Patheos, 2008 Accessed 10 February 2017. http://www.patheos.com/library/islam. Asensio 18
However, they do not assert that this notion of punishment occurs immediately after the physical death of the body. Instead, “deceased souls bound for hell (Jahannam) experience some suffering”46 while “deceased souls bound for paradise (Jannah) experience peace”47 as they wait for Allah’s final judgement. Moreover, it is believed that on Earth’s final day, the world will be destroyed by Allah “and he will raise all dead people including jinn (supernatural creatures) in order to judge them according to their deeds.”48 This concept of the afterlife strongly encourages those of Muslim faith to obey the Quran as “there is not a sharp distinction between the religious and secular aspects of life in Islam; all aspects of a Muslim's life are to be oriented to serving
Allah.”49
The Islamic belief of the soul involves the notion that the soul is an intangible material created by Allah to be pure at birth and its purpose in life is to achieve maximum nearness to
Allah. Upon death, the soul survives and transitions into a period of growth until the day of
Allah’s judgement where the soul reconnects with the body and is assessed. From here, the soul is either blessed with Jannah or damned with Jahannam for eternity, therefore proving that the
Islamic faith is based on the concept of an inherently eternal soul.
Christianity
Christianity, an extension of Judaism, is a monotheistic religion based on the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ, the “anointed one” who lived in approximately 4 BC to 30 AD and spent the majority of his life as a religious leader in various parts of Israel before ascending to
46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. Asensio 19
His throne in heaven. Christianity, however, remains to be a controversial religion in its fundamental beliefs of its deity, that is, the manifestations of its deity are believed to be threefold: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While Christians hold their religion to be monotheistic, they are often times deemed as polytheists because of the complexity of their triune god. Ultimately, the doctrine is as follows: God, the Father, is the creator of the universe who sent his son, Jesus Christ, as the incarnate Messiah to His people who suffered the physical susceptibilities of human life as the embodiment of the deity. Through His sacrifice, grace could be restored to the sinful through the Holy Spirit which would dwell in the lives of those who reconciled with God, therefore allowing salvation to become attainable. Essentially, these three separate beings are all one essence and through this doctrine, Christianity ultimately becomes distinctive from every other religion in the fact that salvation is not contingent upon works, but through grace by the Creator and faith in Him.
Christianity’s history is extremely intricate as it is characterized with multitudes of schisms, extensions, and theological disputes that have resulted in three preeminent branches:
The Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Early
Christianity, the “…period in which the religion spread across the Greco-Roman world and beyond, from its beginnings as a first century Jewish sect, to the end of the imperial persecution of Christians after the ascension of Constantine the Great in 313 CE, to the First Council of
Nicaea in 325”50 can be divided into the apostolic period in which the church was initially organized by the apostles and the post-apostolic period where an episcopal structure was developed. However, the doctrines of the apostles established in the apostolic period “brought
50 “History of Christianity.” New World Encyclopedia, 10 January 2016. Accessed 12 March 2018. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/History_of_Christianity. Asensio 20 the Early Church into conflict with some Jewish religious authorities, and this eventually led to the martyrdom of Stephen and James the Great and expulsion from the synagogues. Thus,
Christianity acquired an identity distinct from Rabbinic Judaism.”51 As a result, while
Christianity continued to retain many of the fundamental beliefs and practices of Judaism, a dichotomy began to appear after the destruction of the Second Temple.
“Christianity came to dominance during the reign of Julian’s successors, Jovian,
Valentine I, and Valens. On Feb. 27, 380, Theodosius I issued the edict De Fide Catolica, establishing ‘Catholic Christianity’ as the exclusive official state religion”52 therefore outlawing all other religious practices. Soon, “a hierarchical and episcopal structure became clearly visible”53 and “this structure was based on the apostolic succession in which, by the ritual of the laying on of hands, a bishop becomes the spiritual successor of the previous bishop in a line tracing back to the apostles themselves.”54 The bishop’s primary role consisted in the removing of and preventing of heresy in the church which gave rise to the Ecumenical Council in which church authorities convened to settle “Christological disputes.”55 The two Councils of Nicaea, the Council of Ephesus, and the Council of Chalcedon condemned the beliefs of the Nestorians,
Monophysites, and the Monothelites which ultimately resulted in theological disunity as the East began experiencing splits in the churches.
While minor fractures and disputes continued to plague the churches and their leaders, it ultimately reached a point of culmination in 1054 when the Eastern Orthodox Church and the
51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. Asensio 21
Roman Catholic Church split in what would be known as the Great Schism. “The schism was the result of an extended period of tension and sometimes estrangement between the Latin and
Greek Churches”56 and “the break became permanent after the sack of the Byzantium
Constantinople by the Western Christians in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. ”57 Political, liturgical, territorial, and doctrinal discords all played major roles in worsening tensions between the East and the West, but the primary cause of the dissension lied in:
“the dispute over the authority of the Western papacy to make rulings affecting the whole Church, and specifically, the Pope’s insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed. Eastern Orthodoxy holds that the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome (the Pope) is one of honor only, and that he does not have the authority to determine policy for other jurisdictions or to change the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils.”58 The supremacy of the papacy remained to be an undeniable force as the Italian
Renaissance brought great cultural change and achievement to the city of Rome. As a result of this, political rulers and church leaders became ambitious as they yearned to extend their power and control over the Church; the papacy felt as though they were not subject to any authoritative law and that they were the supreme authority in political and religious affairs. This, therefore, allowed for corruption to plague the Roman Catholic Church as it had now become a focal point of greed and manipulation through the use of indulgences, relics, and other heretical practices.
The Greek writer, Plato, the Roman author, Virgil, fourth-century bishop, Augustine, and the Roman Catholic politician, poet, and philosopher, Dante Alighieri are a few of the many pivotal figures that helped contribute to the false doctrine of punitive eternal damnation through their aggressively vivid and dense depictions of what they believed the afterlife of sinners looked like.
56 “Great Schism.” New World Encyclopedia, 14 July 2017. Accessed 12 March 2018. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Great_Schism. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. Asensio 22
Plato, for example, described hell to be one of “everlasting rivers of huge size under the earth, flowing with hot and cold water; there is much fire, and great rivers of fire”59 where:
“those who appeared to be incurable, on account of the greatness of their wrongdoings, because they have committed many great deeds of sacrilege, or wicked and abominable murders, or any such other crimes, are cast by their fitting destiny into Tartarus (Hell), whence they never emerge.”60 Augustine also wrote “that hell, which is also called a lake of fire and brimstone, will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned”61 with “everlasting pains.”62
Additionally, this realm of fiery torment was further illustrated in Virgil’s Aeneid in which the
Greek hero, Aeneas, experiences the “revengeful cares and sullen sorrows”63 of the underworld and in Dante’s Divine Comedy where the he relates the journey the soul takes to reach God in three different parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Inferno vividly depicts the excruciating journey through “doleful shades, horrifying tortures, and unending lamentation”64 as Dante’s persona trudges through the nine circles of hell witnessing the atrocities afflicted on the sinful.
The second installment, Purgatorio, details Dante’s and Virgil’s experience as they emerge from hell and find themselves facing and overcoming the seven deadly sins as their means of purging.
Finally, Paradiso employs Dante’s voyage through the nine spheres of heaven where his soul ultimately finds God and obtains peace in unity with Him.
Subsequently, much of this ancient literature was studied and utilized by succeeding philosophers and religious leaders which greatly aided in sparking a misconception of the
59 Sarris, George. “Hell: Where Did It Come From?” The Christian Post, 02 December 2011. Accessed 15 March 2018. http://blogs.christianpost.com/engaging-the-culture/hell-where-did-it-come-from-really-7697/. 60 Ibid. 61 Burky, Richard and Jeanette B. Anderson. “Hell: Origins of an Idea.” Vision, 2011. Accessed 20 March 2018. http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/origin-of-hell/41044.aspx. 62 Ibid. 63 “Inferno.” The World of Dante. Accessed 30 March 2018. http://www.worldofdante.org/inferno1.html. 64 Ibid. Asensio 23 ideology of the afterlife in the Church. That is, while these stories were often times created for fictitious purposes or even metaphorical warnings, much of the ideals introduced in these texts were taken very literally by its audiences, even in instances where the teachings would be deemed as heretical in accordance with scripture. Dante, for example, wrote his epic poem in order to expand his imagination of what he wondered the afterlife to encompass; he strived to tie together classical and biblical contemporaries at the time to entertain his audience and exercise his ingenuity, hence allowing the association of pagan beliefs with biblical fundamentals. Due to this mindset, he strived to exemplify how happiness could be achieved while he was coping with his personal calamities surrounding his banishment from Rome. Additionally, Augustine, often described as the “Christian Neoplatonist,”65 merged “the Greek philosophical tradition and the
Judeo-Christian religious and scriptural traditions.,”66 as it is described:
“a doctrine of unending conscious torment did develop within Judaism during the time between Malachi and Matthew. However, it is not true that this doctrine developed from Old Testament principles. Instead it evolved from a blend of biblical symbolism and a generous input of ideas from the larger Hellenistic culture. This was the same culture that earlier led the apocryphal heroine Judith to change Isaiah’s vision of corpses consumed by external fire and worms into a vision of living people tormented by internal worms and fire.”67 Therefore, as these writings were accepted literally, pagan culture, beliefs, and practices were able to infiltrate the Christian religion and the abstract concept of hell as a spiritual realm of perpetual damnation and eternal torment existing solely for the purpose of punishing the sinful and unrighteous became widely accepted as a core belief by the Early Christians and their leaders:
65 Burky, Richard and Jeanette B. Anderson. “Hell: Origins of an Idea.” Vision, 2011. Accessed 20 March 2018. http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/origin-of-hell/41044.aspx. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. Asensio 24
“By the second century, however, the church leaders, in their zeal to convert people to become followers of Yeshua, read references to fire and judgement in the Bible to mean that people who did not convert to their version of Yeshua’s theology would not simply die—they would be thrown into a fire that would burn eternally. They based this off of the pagan descriptions of hell at the time. The first adoption of the pagan beliefs by a Christian writer was in the Apocalypse of Peter, probably written between 125 and 150 CE that remained in various church lists as a canonical text for centuries. It contains what the author claimed were the words of Yeshua as he instructed Peter after the resurrection about the signs of the end times. It also contains a variety of punishments awaiting sinners in hell and the pleasures in heaven. The descriptions clearly came from Homer, Virgil, Plato, and Orphic and Pythagorean traditions. The hell myth wasn’t in the Old Testament or Christian traditions before this writer developed it out of pagan traditions.”68 Therefore, while the doctrine of hell gained ground as wide held belief, the Roman
Catholic Church was able to thrive off the fears that these writings were able to manufacture in the people. The fabricated ideas of a fiery underworld gave the Church leverage as they gained the power to use the peoples’ dismays to their advantage through the sale of indulgences. As a result of “Pope Leo X’s agreement (1514) to allow the sale of indulgences”69 the Church was able to siphon money from the people by promising a reduced amount of punishment for them or a loved one condemned to Purgatory as “the very moment the money clicks against the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from purgatory and flies free to heaven.”70 Other heretical practices included the merits of the saints, relics, and pilgrimages that were all utilized for the sole purpose of centralizing the power in the Church leaders and constructing St. Peter’s Basilica at the people’s expense. However, this corruption of the church did not go unnoticed; an upheaval began to arise that challenged the papal authority and questioned its infallibility and ability to define Christian practices. Martin Luther, the most pivotal figure in what would be known as the
68 “The Church’s Development of the Hell Myth.” Yeshua Before 30 CE, 2006. Accessed 02 April 2018. http://30ce.com/developmentofhell.htm. 69 “Purgatory, Indulgences, the Treasury of Merit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Reformation Theology. Accessed 10 April 2018. http://www.reformationtheology.com/2013/07/purgatory_indulgences_the_trea.php. 70 Ibid. Asensio 25
Protestant Reformation, demanded a redistribution of power and exposed the papacy for the rapacious and manipulative behavior it had been exhibiting. He emphasized the significance of sola fida and sola scripture and by nailing his 95 Theses to the doors of the Wittenberg Church in 1517, Luther gave rise to massive theological debates that ultimately led to a split in the
Roman Catholic Church, therefore giving birth to Protestantism.
The Protestant Reformation “was the 16th century religious, political, intellectual, and cultural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe, setting in place the structures and beliefs that would define the continent in the modern era.”71 The upheaval over the reign of the Catholic
Church was deeply rooted in disagreement over the supreme power of the papal authority and the perversion of the Church’s biblical doctrines. Some of the Reformation’s most preeminent leaders, Martin Luther and John Calvin were avid supporters of the concept of conditional immortality; however, contrary to popular belief, Luther did in fact support the notion of heaven, hell, and purgatory, but he did not necessarily support the way in which the Catholic Church was perceiving them as he writes:
“The existence of a purgatory I have never denied. I still hold that it exists, as I have written and admitted many times, though I have found no way of proving it incontrovertibly from Scripture or reason. I find in Scripture that Christ, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Job, David, Hezekiah, and some others tasted hell in this life. This I think was purgatory…in short, I myself have come to the conclusion that there is a purgatory, but I cannot force anybody else to come to the same result.”72 In this instance and in his work Against Latomus, Luther is seen defending the idea of purgatory, but not condemning those who have a different perspective than him. However, later:
“In a letter to his friend Nicholas von Amsdorf later that year, Luther wrote that he was unsure what happened after death but felt that "with few exceptions all sleep without possessing
71 “The Reformation.” History. Accessed 14 May 2018. https://www.history.com/topics/reformation. 72 Luther, Martin. Defense and Explanation on All the Articles (1521). Asensio 26 any capacity of feeling," waiting to the resurrected at a later date. He further said that the existence of purgatory was uncertain and that he wasn't convinced that all those not in heaven or hell were in purgatory.”73 He ultimately contradicts his initial belief and expels the idea of purgatory in his
Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper where he “explicitly stated for the first time that purgatory was a false teaching.”74 Finally:
“Two years later, in "Exhortation to All Clergy Assembled at Augsburg" Luther condemned the doctrine of purgatory and wrote that falsely claiming the ability to free souls from purgatory had brought great shame but "lots of money" for the church. Also in 1530, he wrote Revocation of Purgatory, a tract denouncing the doctrine of purgatory.”75 Ultimately:
“When Luther wrote his 95 Theses in 1517, he firmly believed in purgatory. By 1521, he wrote that belief in purgatory was a matter of personal choice, but said that he personally continued to believe in purgatory. Beginning in 1522, he began to express doubts in the doctrine and removed a prayer for souls in purgatory from his prayer book in 1524. In 1528, Luther explicitly rejected the idea of purgatory for the first time, a position he apparently held until his death.”76 Regardless of his view of purgatory, Luther supported the doctrine of hell such that he knew of his duty to honor and serve God, but at the same time, feared the possibilities of hell; he believed that the soul would separate from the body upon death and endure a notion of soul sleep before the resurrection of the dead where the righteous would be rewarded with heaven and the wicked would be condemned to hell. Lutheranism was thus created revolving around the challenges that Luther expressed towards the Roman Catholic Church and by the Reformation’s end, became the state religion of Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltics and later, spread across the globe.
73 “The Reformation.” History. Accessed 14 May 2018. https://www.history.com/topics/reformation. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. Asensio 27
John Calvin gave rise to a Protestant movement known as Calvinism which emphasizes the notion that man/woman is spiritually helpless as they suffer total depravity and inability and can only be relieved of this through the means of divine intervention. This concept also supports the idea of predestination in which one group, known as the “unconditional elect” have the capability of seeking God and ultimately finding him through irresistible grace while the other group is destined to indulge in sin, never achieve God’s goodness, and be eternally condemned to hell without any hope of salvation. In order to validate this belief, limited atonement must be integrated such that Jesus did not die for all the sins of every human and therefore, some are subject to a cruel fate. Additionally, John Calvin also promoted the theory that after Christ’s crucifixion, he descended into hell where he defeated the devil and freed its prisoners with the biblical support that “Christ one for did suffer—righteous for unrighteous—that he might lead us to God, having been put to death indeed, in the flesh, and having been made alive in the spirit, in which also to the spirits in the prison having gone did he preach.”77 However, this verse does not necessarily pertain to a descent and defeat of hell, but rather Christ’s descent unto the earth in order to save His people from their sins through his teachings and his sacrifice. Again, this remains to be another case in which scriptural text is being taken literally when it was written with the intent of being understood with a metaphorical mindset. Moreover, this notion
“was not found in any of the early versions of the Creed (in the versions used in Rome, in the rest of Italy, and in Africa) until it appeared in one of the two versions from Rufinus in A. D. 390. Then it was not included again in any version of the Creed until A. D. 650. Rufinus, the only person who included it before A. D. 650, did not think that it mean that Christ descended into hell, but understood the phrase simply to mean that Christ was ‘buried.’ In other words, he took it to mean that Christ ‘descended into the grave.’ We should also note that the phrase only appears in two forms of the Creed that we have from Rufinus: It was not in the Roman form of the Creed that he preserved. This means, therefore, that until A. D. 650 no version of the Creed included this phrase with the intention of saying that Christ ‘descended into
77 I Peter 3:18-20 Asensio 28 hell’--- and the only version to include the phrase before A. D. 650 gives it a different meaning.”78
The Soul
Greek Philosophy ελληνική φιλοσοφία
The most prominent conception of the soul in Greek philosophy is attributed to Plato who believes that the soul is an immortal substance distinct from the body as he specifies in his work
Phaedo:
“The soul whose inseparable attitude is life will never admit of life's opposite, death. Thus the soul is shown to be immortal, and since immortal, indestructible…Do we believe there is such a thing as death? To be sure. And is this anything but the separation of the soul and body? And being dead is the attainment of this separation, when the soul exists in herself and separate from the body, and the body is parted from the soul. That is death…Death is merely the separation of the soul and body."79 In Plato’s thinking, the soul, or psyche, “was self-moving and indivisible. Ungenerated and eternal, it existed before the body did that it inhabited, and it would survive the body as well.
To be apart from the body was the soul’s natural and proper state.”80 Through his teachings,
Plato strives to create a strong distinction between the physicality of the body and the incorporeal essence of the soul as to prove that a physical death did not necessarily guarantee the death of the soul which would therefore, reduce it to a mortal substance. This idea of dual separability
78 Grudem, Wayne. “Did Jesus Really Descend into Hell.” Zondervan Academic, 14 April 2017. Accessed 14 May 2017. https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/did-jesus-really-descend-into-hell/. 79 Kioulachoglou, Anastasios “The Origins of the Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul.” The Journal of Biblical Accuracy. Accessed 10 April 2018. http://www.jba.gr/The-origins-of-the-doctrine-of-the-immortality-of-the- soul.htm. 80 Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011. 19. Asensio 29 preserves this concept of an immaterial and immortal soul that rules and eventually conquers the perishable essence of the body.
Plato viewed the soul as an element that could transcend the corrupt physical world and connect with the world of Forms (μορφές); that is, he believed that “the soul was fundamentally pure but becomes deformed through association with the body. Despite this it retains something of its true nature---and shows this through longing for wisdom”81 which cannot be attained in the sensible world in which humankind presides, but in a greater realm. In Gorgias, Plato furthers this concept of a less real and impure physical world by creating a substantial contrast between reason and perception through his strong distinction:
“between two existing arts: techné and flattery. The opposing qualities of the two art forms are subsequently connected to the body and the soul; like a techné the soul is real, or actual, while the body, like a flattery, is spurious and seeming. Furthermore, Plato uses the Gorgias to distinguish the difference between knowledge and conviction: knowledge being what corresponds to techné and the soul: that which is real and rational. Conviction, on the other hand, is what corresponds to flattery and the body: that which is not real and irrational.”82 Moreover, he argues that “ideas are not physical things, so they must belong to a spiritual realm which is more real than the material realm. The soul is that which can grasp these ideas and so it too must belong to that realm. Since forms are immutable; so too must the soul be.”83 Ultimately, the purpose of the soul, according to Plato, remained to be an element of being that could escape the pains and nefariousness of the material world as it is inherently wicked and cannot reveal truth being only physical reflections of something greater. Instead, “the truth is to
81 “Plato’s Immortal Soul.” Scandalon, Accessed 10 April 2018. http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/plato_immortality_soul.htm. 82 “Philosophy of Religion: Plato’s Realm of Forms.” Scandalon. Accessed 10 April 2018. http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/plato_forms.htm. 83 “Plato’s Immortal Soul.” Scandalon, Accessed 10 April 2018. http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/plato_immortality_soul.htm. Asensio 30 be found somewhere else, on a different plane, in the non-material world of ideas and forms.”84
He supported this notion by stating that there is an instinctive understanding of the forms within one; as qualities have a sort of universal existence, they attain their own reality so that “when we call something beautiful, it is because we have an innate knowledge of True Beauty, or the Form of Beauty.”85 He argues that the beauty that one sees in the world is always imperfect, and although one has ever seen perfect beauty, they are subconsciously are aware of it because
“knowledge is a kind of recollection”86 that stems from the immortal essence within one. With this mindset, the soul is held as an intangible and immortal force that’s sole purpose is to escape the false realities of the tangible world and collide with purity and immortality in the rational realm where truth is attained.
Gnosticism Γνώση
Gnosticism, “a second century heresy”87 successfully combines these Platonic philosophies with that of Christianity so as to create a set of views surrounding the belief that the physical world “was the creation of an inferior being, the Demiurge. He alongside his aids the archōns, kept mankind imprisoned within their material existence, and barred the path of individual souls trying to ascend to the spiritual world after death.”88 Moreover, it is held that the tangible world is plagued with corruptions and sufferings and only those “who possessed a
84 “Philosophy of Religion: Plato’s Realm of Forms.” Scandalon. Accessed 10 April 2018. http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/plato_forms.htm. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Zavada, Jack. “An Explanation of Gnosticism.” Thought Co., 28 June 2017. Accessed 22 April 2018. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gnosticism-700683. 88 Ibid. Asensio 31 divine spark, pneuma could escape from this corporeal existence.”89 However, this spark could only be obtained after one receives gnosis, knowledge, and becomes aware of their spiritual capabilities which could only be bestowed by “a divine redeemer who descends from the spiritual world in disguise and is often equated with the Christian Jesus.”90 Salvation for a
Gnostic, therefore, “is to be alerted to the existence of the divine pneuma91 and then, as a result of this knowledge, to escape on death from the material world to be spiritual.”92
Similar to Platonism, the fundamental belief of Gnosticism lies in the fact that the physical world is cruel and corrupt, but this corruption did not originate in the fall of man; instead, it is believed to be the fault of the Creator. However, “there is a true, ultimate and transcendent God, who is beyond all created universes and who never created anything in the sense in which the world ‘create’ is normally understood.”93 Thus, human nature is two-fold; “it mirrors the duality found in the world: in part it was made by the false creator God and in part it consists of the light of the True God”94 therefore allowing humans to contain a “perishable physical and psychic component, as well as a spiritual component which is a fragment of the divine essence.”95
Although early church Father, Irenaeus, declared Gnosticism a Christian heresy, that did not prevent its influence on some of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity as it is proven to be developed by early Christian sects, and therefore, first viewed as a branch of Christianity.
89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Spirit or creative force of a person. 92 Zavada, Jack. “An Explanation of Gnosticism.” Thought Co., 28 June 2017. Accessed 22 April 2018. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gnosticism-700683. 93 Hoeller, Stephan A. (Tau Stephanus, Gnostic Bishop). “The Gnostic World View: A Brief Summary of Gnosticism.” The Gnosis Archive. Accessed 30 April 2018. http://www.gnosis.org/gnintro.htm. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. Asensio 32
Additionally, it is agreed that “Gnosticism has Jewish or Judeo-Christian origins and many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers.”96 As concluded earlier, many of the gnostic beliefs are adopted from Christian texts including the teachings of
Paul and John “with a growing emphasis on the opposition of flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law.” 97 In that same regard, Tertullian refers to
Paul as the “apostle of the heretics”98 as much of his writings were utilized to form the foundational beliefs of Gnosticism. Moreover, “the Gnostics did not believe we should take the
Scriptures literally, but instead taught that they must be understood allegorically. They were constantly looking for hidden spiritual meaning”99 and as a result, ignored the true meaning behind the texts.
The major proponent of formulating and popularizing the Gnostic beliefs is accredited to
Marcion:
“originally a Christian bishop, but around the year 144 AD, he concluded that the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of the God in the Old Testament and developed a dualistic belief system that he used to reconcile the supposed contradictions he saw between the Hebrew Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus and Paul.”100 He eventually completely rejected all of the Old Testament and Hebrew scriptures and painted God to be a vengeful and wicked being, and thus, Marcion was the first to suggest that we separate the Old Testament from the New Testament”101 and he ultimately created his own
New Testament canon that “included only a modified version of the Gospel of Luke, and Paul’s
96 Meyer, Lex. “Gnosticism and Its Influence on Christianity.” Unlearn the Lies, August 2017. Accessed 25 April 2018. http://www.unlearnthelies.com/gnosticism-and-its-influence-on-christianity.html. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. Asensio 33 epistles”102 where he denied the fact that Jesus was a physical being, but instead, some sort of supernatural force. Through his teachings and interpretations of scripture, the belief that the soul escapes the body when one dies and ends up in some notion of afterlife became a widely accepted belief despite its heretical roots.
Misconception by Theologians
The Fallacy
The idea of the Platonic soul was not a foreign concept to many of the early church leaders and theologians as much of their writings alluded to Plato’s teachings; that is, much of their beliefs about the soul “were indeed directly influenced by these Greek debates on the nature and function of the human soul; some of the religious interpretations of the human condition certainly point back to the main element of the Platonic theory.”103 Moreover, “these theologians frankly admit that the expression ‘immortal soul’ is not in the Bible, yet they confidently declare that the Scripture assumes the immortality of every soul.”104 However, what they failed to realize was that “Plato’s teachings about the soul was given to illustrate his other principles”105 and he did not intend to be taken literally, but they “literalized and systematized what he had said.
Along the way they somehow lost all the disarming tentativeness of Plato’s original dialogues.”106 “Many Christian writers of the second and third centuries wanted to show their pagan neighbors the reasonableness of the biblical faith”107 and by completely disregarding the issue of associating pagan beliefs with that of the Christian faith, “they freely borrowed the
102 Ibid. 103 Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011. 20. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. Asensio 34
Platonic conception of the soul, the chief characteristic being its separability from the body.”108
For example, when these “Christian defenders argued for the resurrection and last judgement, they often used the pagan doctrine of immortality to show that these things were not ‘logically absurd.’”109 Additionally:
“Platonists believe that all humans have an immortal element within them, normally referred to as “soul” … In the New testament, however, immortality is something that only God possesses by nature and that he then shares, as a gift of grace rather than as an innate possession, with his people.”110 Therefore, the idea of an inherently eternal soul was not a biblically derived concept, but that of pagan practices that infiltrated Christian texts and gained ground as a widely accepted belief.
Philo of Alexandria
Philo of Alexandria (20 BC) was a Jewish philosopher during the Hellenistic era who, being raised under Jewish and Greek traditions and teachings, constructed what he believed to be a clearer understanding of the Septuagint with his knowledge of Stoic and Platonic practices.
Additionally, he was:
“the first thinker in any of the great religious traditions who drew attention to the Greek understanding of the human soul, was the first to Hellenize the Bible and to interpret many of what were known as the books of Moses (in effect, the Pentateuch), in full agreement with Greek concepts.”111 Spanning across both the Hebrew and Greek cultures, Philo wrote a number of philosophical treatises, biblical interpretations on Moses, and historical-apologetic writings
108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Elkaisy-Friemuth, Maha and John M. Dillon. The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul. Boston, Ma: Leiden, 2009. 14. 111 Ibid, 5. Asensio 35 representing “contemporary Platonism”112 and “Pythagorean ideas”113 where he manages to
“relate the human soul directly to God and assure its destiny through it.”114 In order to prove this,
Philo is seen alluding to Plato’s concept of a separability between soul and body: “rational and irrational.”115 He related the rational soul to a “divine origin which according to the Bible is the breath of God into Adam’s body.”116 The irrational soul “he identified with the blood, connecting it to the Bible verses Gen. 9:4, Lev. 17:11, and Deut. 12:23 ‘the blood is life.’”117
Regardless of the density of Greek influence in his writings, “the church preserved the Philonic writings because Eusebius of Caesarea labeled the monastic ascetic group of Therapeutae and
Therapeutrides, described in Philo’s The Contemplative Life, as Christians.”118 Additionally,
“Jerome (345-420 C.E.) even lists him as a church Father.”119 Philo thus lays a strong basis for the adoption of Greek philosophy into biblical teachings and practices.
Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr (100 AD), considered a Saint by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and East
Orthodox churches, is upheld as the “foremost interpreter of the theory of Logos120 in the 2nd century.”121 He was an avid supporter of Plato and Socrates’s philosophies as he believed
112 Hillar, Marian. “Philo of Alexandria.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 01 May 2018. http://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/. 113 Ibid. 114 lkaisy-Friemuth, Maha and John M. Dillon. The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul. Boston, Ma: Leiden, 2009. 14. 115 Ibid, 5 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 118 Hillar, Marian. “Philo of Alexandria.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 01 May 2018. http://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/. 119 Ibid. 120 Means divine reason in Greek philosophy 121 Severance, Diane, Ph.D. “Justin Martyr: 1st Christian Philosopher.” Christianity.com. Accessed 01 May 2018. https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/justin-martyr-1st-christian-philosopher- 11629596.html. Asensio 36
“Plato’s God was the God of the Bible and Socrates was a Christian before Christ, just as Abraham was. Moses and the Old Testament writings were older than the Greek philosophies, and any truth the Greeks had was borrowed from the Jewish prophets.”122 Conclusively, Martyr, in his writings, intertwined Greek philosophy and Christian teachings as he believed that they coincided and supported one another.
Saint Clement of Alexandria
Similarly, Clement of Alexandria (150 AD), a theologian who “attempted to mediate between the heretical Gnostics and the legalistic orthodox Christians,”123 remains to be another example of a critical Christian figure who was heavily influenced by the beliefs and values of
Platonism. More specifically, he believed that “Greek philosophy was the handmaid of theology” which is made apparent in his statement:
“…before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety; being a kind of preparatory training to those who attain faith…philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring the ‘Hellenic mind,’ as the law, the Hebrews, ‘to Christ.’ Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.”124 As a missionary, theologian, and polemicist, Saint Clement of Alexandria, “developed and touched upon many ideas that were to influence the Christian world in the areas of monasticism, political and economic thought, and theology.”125
122 Ibid. 123 Fredricksen, Linwood. “Saint Clement of Alexandria.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20 July 1998. Accessed 01 May 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Clement-of-Alexandria. 124 Nelson, Shawn. “Christianity’s Platonic Heaven.” Geeky Christian, 23 February 2013. Accessed 01 May 2018. http://geekychristian.com/christianitys-platonic-heaven/. 125 Fredricksen, Linwood. “Saint Clement of Alexandria.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20 July 1998. Accessed 01 May 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Clement-of-Alexandria. Asensio 37
Athenagoras
A Father of the Church and second century Ante-Nicene Christian apologist, Athenagoras
(133 AD) was raised studying “the pagan classics of Greek literature and philosophy before becoming a prominent theologian”126 and is accredited with being the “first church father to outwardly espouse the immortality of the soul doctrine.”127 Athenagoras premise in supporting this Greek derived concept stood that “God’s purpose in creating man was that he should live--- that the divine purpose of man’s existence is existence itself. And God’s purpose cannot be defeated. It must be accomplished. It is therefore impossible for man to cease to exist”128 and he therefore concluded that since one could not possibly cease to exist, “wicked people had no choice but to live forever in the eternal misery of hell.”129 Undoubting that the pagan beliefs and
Christianity were compatible, “he skillfully wove the two together and frequently combined the beliefs of the Greek poets and philosophers, particularly Plato, with the doctrines of
Christianity”130 hence adding to the heresy of an immortal soul in the Christian faith.
Tertullian
Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus (155 AD) remains to be another Christian father who was raised by Greek traditions and values, but coincidentally, played a huge role in authoring many Christian texts, specifically those in Latin. Moreover:
126 “Plato and the Immortal Soul.” Hell Truth. Accessed 01 May 2018. https://www.helltruth.com/history/id/1854/plato-and-the-immortal-soul. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. Asensio 38
“he confessedly altered the sense of Scripture and the meaning of words, so as to interpret ‘death’ as eternal misery and ‘destruction’ and ‘consume’ as pain and anguish. ‘Hell’ became perpetually dying, but never dead.”131 Additionally, Tertullian, in his work On the Resurrection of the Flesh, references Plato as he bases his support of the immortality of the soul on the Greek philosopher instead of Scripture:
“For some things are known even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many; the knowledge of our God is possessed by all. I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato, when he declares, ‘Every soul is immortal.’”132
Saint Augustine
Augustine Aurelius (354 AD) remains to be one of the most influential Christian theologians as “his adaption of classical thought to Christian teaching created a theological system”133 that deeply developed Western Christianity, but he also “represents the most influential adaptation of the ancient Platonic tradition with Christian ideas that ever occurred in the Latin Christian world.”134 Regardless of the Platonic influence, however, Saint Augustine’s writings were still able to leave a major mark on the teachings and practices of Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism. De Civitate Dei remains as evidence of Saint Augustine’s profound knowledge and utilization of Plato’s philosophies as he “thanked God that he became familiar with Plato first, because had he not, he probably would have never been able to receive the gospel.”135 As a result, his works have been referred to as “the ripest fruit of the inward union of Christian and Platonic wisdom”136 and his teachings of the immortality and afterlife of the
131 Ibid. 132 Resurrection of the Flesh, 7308 133 O’Donnel, James. “Saint Augustine.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20 July 1998. Accessed 02 May 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine. 134 Ibid. 135 Nelson, Shawn. “Christianity’s Platonic Heaven.” Geeky Christian, 23 February 2013. Accessed 01 May 2018. http://geekychristian.com/christianitys-platonic-heaven/. 136 Ibid. Asensio 39 soul that he adopted from Plato ultimately “remain as the dominant view within the Catholic
Church, as well as a popular view within the Protestant church at large, and general Western secular thought”137 being that the soul awaited an eternal life in heaven or hell.
Origen
Origen Adamantius of Alexandria (185 AD), “the most important theologian and biblical scholar of the early Greek church,”138 was a major proponent in normalizing the conception that the soul was inherently immortal in order to achieve purely intellectual existence by drawing upon “pagan philosophy in an effort to elucidate the Christian faith in a matter acceptable to intellectuals”139 and therefore, gave rise to a movement in the Christian church known as
Origenism. Origen’s main premise was that God’s first creation was of collectively rational beings which he calls logika and although Origen speaks of the logika as being created, they were not created in time and the number of these rational beings is limited as an infinite creation would be incomprehensible, and unworthy of God.140 These souls, originally existing as psukhê141, fell away from God and became psukhesthai142 as they obtained bodies; these minds initially possessed a “fine ethereal and indivisible nature”143 but as they became estranged from
God, their essences transformed to be that of a more physical and solid state. As a result, no
137 Ibid. 138 Chadwick, Henry. “Origen.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 20 July 1998. Accessed 02 May 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Origen. 139 Moore, Edward. “Origen of Alexandria.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 04 May 2018. http://www.iep.utm.edu/origen-of-alexandria/. 140 Ibid. 141 Minds 142 Physical 143 Ibid. Asensio 40 rational spirit can exist without a body unless it is redeemed through God. Additionally, he asserted that:
“These souls were originally created in close proximity to God with the intention that they should explore the divine mysteries in a state of endless contemplation. They grew weary of this intense contemplation, however, and lapsed, falling away from God and into an existence on their own terms, apart from the divine presence and wisdom to be found there. This fall was not, it must be understood, the result of any inherent imperfection in the creatures of God, rather it was the result of the misuse of the greatest gift of God to his creation: freedom.”144 With this mindset, Origen revealed that Christ’s soul retained no difference than any of the other souls such that “Christ’s soul possessed the same potential for communion with God as that of all other souls”145 and the only distinction remained in the fact that was Christ’s possession of supreme free choice therefore, remaining immersed in divinity.
Additionally, Origen did not support the notion that those who were sinful were destined to suffer eternally in hell as he believed that “all souls, including the devil himself, will eventually achieve salvation, even if it takes innumerable ages to do so.”146 However, while he was a strong advocate of this belief as he was convinced that “the human intellect-being the image of God-will never freely chose oblivion over proximity to God”147 it directly contradicted his assertion that every soul possessed free will: the choice to follow or deny God. Regardless, he denied that God would create souls that were capable of succumbing to the “oblivion,”148 but he also reasoned that “a single lifetime is not enough for a soul to achieve salvation” and he therefore, affirmed the concept of metempsychosis. However, Origen did not utilize the typical belief of reincarnation, but that in which “souls would be reborn, to experience the educative
144 Ibid. 145 Ibid. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. Asensio 41 powers of God once again, with a view to ultimate salvation” through some sort of continuation of the present body and the body that was to come which acted as the necessary form of the soul’s limitation instead of an imprisonment, a view held by many of the traditional Greek philosophers.
Origen’s assertion of apokatastasis149 was later adopted by bishop Gregory of Nyssa who was responsible for “articulating more clearly than did Origen the notion that redeemed souls will remain in a state of dynamic intellectual activity”150 therefore allowing it to become a widespread belief in the church. However, later in the fifth century, Origen was condemned as a heretic by a church council held in Constantinople in 553 AD largely on the fact that his teachings fell short of biblical truth as “Origen’s strength resided in his philosophical ability to use reason and dialect in support of humane doctrines, not in his ability to use scripture in support of dogmatical and anti-humanistic arguments.”151 Ultimately:
“The church’s consensus on hell continued to be widely held for another thousand years. Rejections of hell during these years were limited to sects and heretics. Indeed, hell was such a fixture of the Christian mind that most persons understood all off of life in terms of their ultimate destination. Men and women longed for heaven and feared hell.”152
Essence of the Soul
Essentially, Plato’s teachings and philosophical beliefs about the soul remain to be a myth; ultimately, as the ideal does not possess biblical validity, it is proven that the human being does not entail any notion of a spiritual essence within them. This fallacy first begins with the
149 Universal restoration 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Keller, Timothy, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., J.I. Packer, and Robert W. Yarbrough. Is Hell for Real or Does Everyone Go to Heaven? Zondervan, 2011. 12. Asensio 42 mistranslation of biblical texts in which “living creature” is translated to say “soul” such that the modern translation states that “and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”153 However, when
ne’phesh, which translates to ,נֶפֶׁש looking at the original text, the word soul is replaced with living being (with life in the blood) referring to its tangibility and material substance.154
Therefore, when Christians utilize this verse to prove that the human being has a soul, they are improperly rendering the original meaning of the text which is to mean that through God, the human was given life, rather than some sort of spiritual force that could give one immortality or guarantee their survival into the afterlife.
Every aspect of God’s creation was given the breath of life; however, there remains to be one major difference that stands between the creatures of the earth and human beings: human beings were created in the image of God as He, “prepareth the man in his image; in the image of
God He prepared him, a male and female He prepared them.”155 What separates humans from the rest of creation lies in the fact that they are made in God’s image, not so that one resembles him physically, but that in the same way that God has dominion over the human being, so does the human being have dominion over the rest of nature; human beings resemble God in the fact that
He has bestowed unto them the power that he also possesses over them. This is not to mean that humans resemble God in a physical or spiritual sense, but in a sense of authority and powerfulness. It, therefore, becomes evident that “man’s returning to dust is qualitatively different from the simple physical returning to dust of a simply physical being.”156
153 Genesis 2:7 154 Blue Letter Bible Hebrew Translator 155 Genesis 1:27 156 Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011. 39. Asensio 43
Additionally, more misinterpretations of the text exist when, “for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.”157 The word “spirit’ here is often times associated with an immortal essence inside the body that acts as a life force; however, when interpreted correctly, the original word used in this verse was πνεῦμα, pneuma, and was therefore, referring to the Holy Spirit so that it would read, “for as the body without the Holy
Spirit is dead.” Here, the author was trying to convey the warning that if one lacks the holiness of God within them, they resemble death and oblivion just as works without faith lack life and
ruwach, is applied in the text, “the dust returneth to the earth it , רּוח ,meaning. In the same regard was, and the spirit returenth to God who gave it.”158 Spirit in this context is translated to refer to the breath of life as the verse implies that God has the ability to take the life that He has given to
His creations; this verse simultaneously expels the concept of an immortal essence that withstands the death of the body as God possesses the capability to take away one’s life and the belief that every human being possess some notion of a spiritual essence within them that is separate from their material essence. Only God “hath immortality”159 and therefore, this verse also proves the life’s dependability on God; without him, there remains to be no life.
Additionally, “passages of scripture speak of human immortality, noting that in every instance, immortality is associated with the glorified resurrection body still future,”160 but as:
“irrepressible and universal as it is, the doctrine of man’s immortality is an astonishing one, and difficult to entertain. For it means that every frail finite man is to be as long-enduring as the infinite and eternal God; that there will no more be an end to the existence of the man who died today than there will be of the Deity who made him. God is denominated the “Ancient of Days.”161
157 James 2:26 158 Ecclesiastes 12:7 159 I Timothy 6:16 160 Fudge, Edward William. 161 Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011. 55. Asensio 44
Ultimately, life is sustained and thus, immortality is granted to those who are righteous therefore, expelling the notion that immortality is an inherent quality that each person possesses, but rather a gift and the fulfillment of God’s promise.
Rhetorical Analysis
The Fallacy
Ultimately, in the original texts, the word “hell” was never employed as it failed to be a concept that was believed of by theologians until the interaction of Hellenistic and Greek philosophies; Jesus never preached of an afterlife full of pain and suffering for the sinful and thus, it was not a concept that was promoted by biblical authors. Moreover, any instance in which death was referred to within the biblical texts, it was illustrated through metaphors and similes such as through the promotion of the Hebrew world, sheol, the Israeli valley, Gehenna, and the Greek underworld, Hades. The idea of hell, therefore, lacks any notion of scriptural validity as it remains to be a fallacy resulting from a mistranslation and misconception of the original manuscripts.
Sheol שְׁ אֹול In the oldest manuscripts, the Hebrew world sheol is used 65 times; in the King James
Version, sheol is translated 31 times as “hell,” 31 times as “grave,” and 3 times as “pit.”162
However, “nowhere in the Old Testament is the abode of the dead regarded as a place of
162 Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011. 45. Asensio 45 punishment or torment. Sheol is uniformly depicted in the Old Testament as the eternal, amoral abode of both the righteous and unrighteous alike;”163 it represents a place in which all the dead would reside therefore, giving it a neutral connotation. Biblical proof of this lies in Job 14:13
is ׁשְׁ אֹול when “Job longed to hid in sheol until God’s anger passed him by”164 in which the word utilized to convey the “abode of the dead,”165 “grave,”166 or “realm of the dead”167 and in Psalm
49:15 as “David, the man after God’s heart, viewed sheol as his resting place, though he trusted
God to redeem him from his grasp.”168 This, therefore, defeats the idea that there exists to be an unremitting suffering after death or that “sheol was an exclusive place of punishment for the wicked”169 but instead, an intermediate between the death of the body and the resurrection of the dead as alluded to in Revelation. However, many theologians decide to associate sheol with hell so that “it is never threatened to the righteous vanishes into thin air upon a moment’s thought,”170 but only to the wicked. Sheol can, therefore, be recognized as a metaphor of mankind’s fate: death; rather than referring to it as place where the wicked is condemned to endure eternal torment. However, what separates the wicked from the righteous in their abode remains to be that the righteous have hope in salvation, as bestowed by God being the “giver and sustainer of life” and “life is manifested in God’s entering into covenant with His people…the righteous can
163 Ibid. 164 Ibid, 44 165 Ibid, 45. 166 Ibid. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid, 44 169 Ibid. 170 Ibid, 45 Asensio 46 have life only by holding fast to the God of salvation who is the God of life. Life is understood as a gift”171 far more than “bare existence.”172 Additionally:
“Wherever God is, there is life Where God is not, there is death (Psalm 104:29-30; Job 34:15) …Whoever does not have this contact with the breath of God, whoever lives in protest against him or in internal detachment from him, is already dead regardless of how much vitality he might have externally (Ephesians 2:5; Romans 5:21; 7:10; I John 3:14-15). His life is disconnected from its actual source of power, though still rolling along ‘in neutral’ according to the law of inertia.”173 Death, therefore, remains to be the lack of a relationship with God.
Gehenna γέεννα
Gehinnom,174 or the Valley of Hinnom, was initially a place in which the Kings of Judah and other pagans would engage in child sacrifices by fire to the idol Moloch and was as a result, deemed a cursed land earning the name “’Topeth,’ a place to be spit on or abhorred;”175 “the
Valley of Hinnom had become crusted over with connotations of whatever is condemned, useless, corrupt, and forever discarded.”176 Jesus, when referring to eschatology, is often times noted applying metaphors and figurative language in his teachings in order to appeal to his audience and successfully convey the extent of the fate that lies ahead for the wicked. That is, when Jesus preached that sinners would be destined to hell fire in Gehenna, he did not literally mean that the unrighteous would be blazed in this valley outside of Judah, but that the punishment for sin would be great; it would result in death as they would be apart eternally from
171 Ibid, 49 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid, 48 174 Hebrew translation used twelve times in scripture. 175 Ibid, 117 176 Ibid, 118 Asensio 47
God. Jesus strived to put his teachings into terms that would relate to the people so that they would be able to comprehend the density of their decisions to indulge themselves in sins; simply stating that they would be apart from God eternally would possess a lesser impact than warning that they would be subject to perpetual pain and torment. That is not to say that Jesus was striving to feed on the fears of the people, but instead, was figuratively conveying God’s promise so that it could be better apprehended. Regardless, “it has been taken with absolute literalness; it has been spiritualized; it has been regarded as subject to interpolation, greater or less; or its originality is admitted, but its expected fulfillment is regarded as a mistake and an illusion.”177
Additionally:
“Jesus said nothing about hell as place of individual final punishment, and that biblical passages thought to speak of such are instead things that people said and wrote at particular moments in a historical narrative, in response to particular developments, drawing on particular memories and traditions connecting particular misconceptions, encouraging particular attitudes and actions.”178 One example of this lies when Jesus cautions, “and be not afraid of those killing the body, and are not able to kill the soul, but fear rather Him who is able to kill both soul and body in Gehenna.”179 In the original manuscripts, σῶμα, sōma, is used to convey the death of the living body and ψυχή, psyche, is portrayed to mean the breath of life so that it reads that although men can destroy the body, they cannot destroy the life force that one can have invested in them by God “as the death that humans inflict is not final;”180 however, God can destroy the body and
177 Ibid, 116 178 Ibid, 120 179 Matthew 10:28 180 Ibid, 123. Asensio 48 the being completely by not continuing to fulfill that life force. Ultimately, “God will call forth the dead from the earth and give the righteous immortality.”181
Moreover, Gehenna is utilized in this instance to represent the day of judgement at the end of time:
“Between the Testaments a tendency arose in Jewish literature to relate visions of last things to names and persons form the Old Testament. Armageddon, Jerusalem, and the Garden of Eden all became stylized descriptions of things to come. So did the Valley of Hinnom--- gehenna. The picture of Gehenna as a place of eschatological punishment appears in intertestamental literature shortly before 100 B. C.E. though the actual place is unnamed. It becomes ‘this accursed valley’ (1 En. 27:2-3), the ‘station of vengeance’ and ‘future torment’ (2 Bar. 59:10-110, the ‘pit of destruction’ (Pirke Aboth 5:19), the ‘furnace of Gehenna’ and “pit of torment’ (2 Esd. 7:36).”182 Therefore, Gehenna is often times associated with the end of times as:
“Jeremiah predicted that it would be filled to overflowing with Israelite corpses when God judged them for their sins (Jeremiah 7:31-33; 19:2-13). Josephus indicates that the same valley was heaped with dead bodies of the Jews following the Roman siege of Jerusalem about A. D. 69-70.”183 Additionally: “Some of these developments show traces of foreign influence, perhaps by the Zoroastrian eschatology of Iran. There, fire is the means of testing at the last judgement. The mountains, which are made of metal, melt and flow over the earth like a river. As men pass into this molten metal, they are either purified or destroyed.”184 As a result, Jesus utilized this common connotation of Gehenna in order to emphasize the destruction of the dead at the end of time; instead of a referring to it as a burning realm that would condemn the wicked eternally, it is employed to caution the punishment of sin. Later,
“rabbinic lore embellished Gehenna even more. Originally, a place of punishment for Jews
181 Ibid. 182 Ibid, 118 183 Ibid, 117-118. 184 Ibid, 119 Asensio 49 alone, it was broadened to include all sinners. From about the time of the apostle Paul, Gehenna became the rabbi’s general term for the intermediate state and, after that, a purgatory.”185 This, therefore, shows a misconception of Jesus’s teaching as his metaphors were literalized and interpreted to support heretical ideologies, such as purgatory. Additionally, Edward William
Fudge186 asserts:
“I do not suggest that final punishment will occur in the literal valley outside of Jerusalem. Nor does one under-interpret Gehenna who simply uses the symbol as Jesus did, although it probably appears so to the person accustomed to over-interpreting Gehenna by making it mean more than Jesus did.”187 Essentially, if one is to engage in Jesus’s instruction, but interpret them too literally, they are misconstruing and ultimately denying His truth; Jesus purposed Gehenna to act as a symbol of ultimate destruction of the wicked and utilizing the idea that Gehenna meant eternal torment of the unrighteous remains to be a fallacy. Ultimately, just as Gehenna acted as a means of purification during the first century, it symbolizes as such in reference to the end of time to indicate God’s final promise to the sinful.
Hades ᾅδης
Hades is a Greek originated mythology that plays the role of the New Testament equivalent to the Old testament sheol and is exercised in the original manuscripts eleven times to be elucidated as two different translations: “hell”188 and “grave”189 and thus, Hades is the only
185 Ibid. 186 Theologian and lawyer who is most famous known for his argument supporting the ideology of annihilationism. 187 Ibid, 122. 188 Bedore, W. Edward, T.h.D. “Hell, Sheol, Hades, Paradise, and the Grave.” Berean Bible Society. Accessed 08 May 2018. https://www.bereanbiblesociety.org/hell-sheol-hades-paradise-and-the-grave/. 189 Ibid. Asensio 50 word used in scripture that is directly interpreted to mean “hell.”190 However, this hell is not to entail the fallacy that has been produced through misinterpretations of the text, but is rather in reference to the Greek underworld that is dominated by the Greek lord of the dead, Hades.
Similar to sheol, Hades was the dwelling place for all the dead, both righteous and unrighteous so as to not refer to a place that existed solely for the punishment for the wicked. Although, there does remain to be different levels of afterlife in this underworld, such as Tartarus,191 it is purposed to encompass all of the dead regardless of one’s level or righteousness.
This pagan reference was integrated into scripture through the cultivations of Jesus Christ with the purpose of establishing his assertions into terms that could easily be conceptualized by
His people. Greek philosophy was widely acknowledged and by referencing such a well-known topic, Jesus could effectively convey His objective of warning the people against the terrible fate that would await the sinful; just as He employed Gehenna as a metaphor in order to symbolize the judgement at the end of time, Hades was utilized in the same way to exemplify what would occur when God was to cut off the life force of the wicked: immediate destruction. The inclusion of Hades in scripture was not intended to verify the pagan doctrine of the Greeks, but instead to expand and maximize on God’s eschatological cautions towards the sinful, ultimately expelling the idea of a remitting imprisonment for the sinful.
190 Ibid. 191 The deepest part of the underworld where the most wicked suffer eternal torment. Asensio 51
Eschatological Theories
Traditionalism
As established earlier, the typical traditionalist holds the belief that those who fail to live a life of righteousness and exemplify complete faith in Christ are to be condemned to an eternity of pain and torture in a place referred to as hell. Subsequently, this concept of hell has been the most wide held perception of the afterlife for Christians as it possesses such deeply rooted origins, but ultimately remains to be a fallacy as it lacks in biblical validity. Despite this, hell has been adhered as the foundational eschatological belief of Christianity by some of the highest and most powerful leaders in its history such as the Long Parliament in England and
Westminster Assembly when they rendered in the Westminster Larger Catechism:
“What has God especially decreed concerning angels and men? Answer: God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of his mere love, for the praise of the glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, has elected some angels to glory; and in Christ, has chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof: and also, according to his sovereign power, and the unsearchable counsel of his own will (whereby he extends or withholds favors as he pleases), has passed by and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath, to be their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of his justice.”192 Additionally, the Westminster Confession of Faith expands on this idea by assuring that the non-elect "shall be cast into eternal torments and be punished with everlasting destruction."193 Similarly, the Vatican warns that “if anyone says that the punishments of the damned in hell will not last forever, let him be anathema.194”195
192 Westminster Larger Catechism, Volume 7. 193 Westminster Confession of Faith (1648 BC), Section 33.2. A foundational document of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism. 194 A formal curse or excommunication by the Pope or council of the Church as a result of heresy. 195 Vatican I, 1870. Asensio 52
However, what these traditionalists have failed to acknowledge is that all these beliefs are strongly rooted in pagan origins and have fallen short of scriptural evidence; hell was a concept adopted from other religions and utilized by the Catholic Church as a means of authority and power and as their fails to be any biblical proof supporting the evidence of a soul, there fails to be a purpose for the existence of hell. God’s promise to the sinful was death, expelling the need for an eternal prison and supporting the notion that the faithful shall be resurrected and live in harmony with God at the end of time.
Conditionalism
Conditionalism is most synonymous to the belief of annihilationism such that it supports the belief that the unrighteous would not be condemned to a fiery underworld, but instead, cease to exist as their life force would no longer be supported by God. However, there still remains to be a heresy in this ideology as conditionalists hold steadfast to the belief that in order for the righteous to not forfeit existence, their soul must acquire immortality through God. However, this theory falls short in the fact that the human being does not possess a soul and therefore, this grant of immortality cannot be obtained by it.
The conditionalist belief:
“became a current in Protestantism beginning with the Reformation, but it was only adopted as a formal doctrinal tenet by denominations such as early Unitarians,196 the churches of
196 Christian denomination that denounces the trinity and thus, perceives God as one entity. Asensio 53 the English Dissenting Academics,197 then Seventh-Day Adventists,198 Christadelphians199, the Bible Students200 and Jehovah’s Witnesses.201”202 The rejection of the idea of innate immortality and the support to the notion that the soul must acquire mortality through God is argued by Thomas Hobbes that it:
“stems not from Hebrew thought as presented in the Bible, but rather from pagan influence, particularly Greek philosophy and the teachings of Plato, or Christian tradition. While Bishop of Durham N. T. Wright noted verses for examples that Paul teaches in I Timothy 6:15- 16 that ‘God…alone is immortal,’ while in II Timothy 1:10 he writes that immortality only comes to human beings as a gift through the gospel. Immortality is something to be sought after (Romans 2:7) therefore it is inherent to all humanity.”203 However, conditionalists fail to grasp that this immortality does not necessarily pertain to the existence of a soul within the being; the life force of the being is not rooted in a spiritual essence, but instead rooted in God. Death, in this case, is not the separation of the body from a spiritual entity, but the permanent separation from God.
Universalism
Also referred to as universal salvation, reconciliation, restitution, or restoration is the ideal that on the day of judgement, every being will come to acknowledge the glory and honor of
Christ and all will be welcomed into His kingdom in Heaven as “the main argument for universalism is that a good and loving God would not condemn people to eternal torment in hell.”204 Moreover, universalism “applies passages like Acts 3:21 and Colossians 1:20 to mean
197 School run by English Dissenters who did not support the church of England. 198 A Protestant denomination that observes Saturday as the Sabbath and emphasizes the Second Coming of Christ. 199 Millenarian group that denies the trinity and the immortality of the soul. 200 Movement that emerged from the teachings of Charles Taze Russel and is associated with the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society, a group that directs doctrines for Jehovah’s Witnesses. 201 A group that emerged from the Bible Student movement. 202 “Christian Conditionalism.” Revolvy. Accessed 08 May 2018. https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Christian%20conditionalism. 203 Ibid. 204 Zavada, Jack. “What is Universalism?” Thought Co., 29 March 2018. Accessed 08 May 2018. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-universalism-700701. Asensio 54 that God intends to restore all things to their original state of purity through Jesus Christ,”205 but it fails to look at the original intent of the text and thus, makes broad assumptions and connections in order to support these notions. Ultimately, this idea of an all-encompassing salvation for everyone “focuses exclusively on God’s love and mercy and ignores his holiness, justice, and wrath.”206 That is, while God deeply loves his creations, He made a promise that the consequence for sin was death and He is just in delivering that punishment; any notion otherwise therefore “assumes that God’s love depends on what he does for humanity, rather than being a self-existing attribute of God present from eternity, before man was created.”207 Another issue with the idea of universalism is that it imposes
“human judgement upon God, saying that logically he cannot be perfect love while punishing sinners in hell. However, God himself warns against attributing human standards to him: ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’ (Isaiah 55:8-9).”208 Conclusively, the doctrine of universal salvation is flawed in the fact that God promised the sinful that they would be properly judged as he had initially asserted in the Garden of Eden after the first sin; the wages of sin is death and while God is a loving and caring God, He is also just and authoritative and will execute the unrighteous’ consequences as forewarned.
205 Ibid. 206 Ibid. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid. Asensio 55
Conclusion
This thesis has sought to put a traditional eschatological view into question by testing its theological validity through the historical, scriptural, rhetorical, and logical analysis of the most widely accepted belief of the afterlife. Beginning with the influence of pagan philosophies and cultures on Christian thinkers gives birth to the false conception of what the afterlife holds for man/woman. Conclusively, the traditional view of hell as well as the beliefs in universalism and conditionalism lack biblical validity and are evidently proven to be fallacies produced by the misconception and mistranslation of scripture by biblical interpreters, theologians, and the majority of church leaders throughout history.
When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, God promised them that the punishment for their sin was death; Adam and Eve were no longer granted immortality as sin had separated them from the gift of life bestowed by God. Subsequently,
Jesus mended and repaired this fracture in humankind’s relationship with God as His death compensated for the sins that had separated man/woman from the Father so that eternal life could once again be granted to His people. Ultimately, God remains to be the life force of the being; without God, there is no life in the being. This life force, however, is not some form of a spiritual essence within one, but the inner workings of God and if one is to indulge in sin and fail to exemplify faith in God, they will, as a result, forfeit existence as God will no longer continue to sustain the being. Thus, there remains to be no purpose for hell as God promises death, not permanent suffering and torment. Ultimately, the worst punishment fathomable would be a life apart from God because being apart from God would entail the lack of life as without God, there remains to be no life. Asensio 56
Additionally, the belief of a spiritual entity within every being and the idea of a hell are never alluded to in scripture, but are the product of the influence of pagan religions and philosophies on the Christian faith and the manipulation and misconstruction by church authorities and theologians throughout history. Plato, the most commonly attributed influencer to the pagan ideas, beliefs, and practices of the Christian faith, played a major role in producing a misconception in the minds of the biblical authors and scholars as they allowed their Greek upbringings and learnings to impact their translations of the text and other works that had the capability of allowing the heresies that were formulated as a result to gain ground as a wide held belief. When looking at the original translations of the text, one will find that the real initial intent of the works was to metaphorically and literarily convey the extremity of punishment209 that would plague the sinful if they did not turn against their ways instead of alluding to a pagan concept of a fiery underworld that would eternally damn the souls of the wicked. What many fail to realize is the cultural difference between the era in which the bible was written and the eras that followed; the bible was written during a time that emphasized metaphorical writings in order to convey the concepts that were written, but they are now interpreted, especially today in such a scientifically advanced age in which everything is perceived literally.
However, while some of these misconstructions of the text were not executed with intent, it was eventually able to cause a power struggle as the Catholic Church strived to take control of the people by turning their fears of eternal damnation against them and thus led to the schisms and formations of different dominations in Christianity. Regardless, the doctrine of hell is a fallacy produced by the pagan influences on the most influential Christian thinkers, authors,
209 Separation from God, thus permanent death. Asensio 57 theologians, and leaders and their writings, mistranslations of the text, and the misconception of
God’s promise to the unrighteous as the wages for sin is death, an unfathomable yet, just punishment as sin and death entails the absence of God, and the absence of God thus entails, the unfulfillment of one’s life force and ultimately, the absence of life. Asensio 58
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