Much of the defense of Eternal Hell relies on appeals to metaphorical language. The following text is perhaps the most powerful and can be used to illustrate the general principle.
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. (Mark 9:43-48 NRSV)
The argument is that since Hell is a place of fires that are never quenched and worms that never die, then Hell has to be eternal. But a careful examination of the above text in the original Greek reveals a more ambiguous picture.
As was mentioned previously there is no Hebrew word that unambiguously describes hell as we understand it today. The Hebrew word "sheol" literally means grave. That is why the word Hell appears 31 times in the King James Version of the Old Testament and disappears completely from the Old testament in the more modern translations which adopted a consistent approach to translating the Hebrew word "sheol" as grave.
The same problem exists in the New Testament where 3 different words are variously translated as Hell. They are:
1) "Hades" which literally means grave. Hades is a direct equivalent of the Hebrew "sheol." A word search on the Greek and Hebrew words for Hadessheol will show that godly men went there, even desired to go there. In other words they died.
2) "Tartaroo" which is only used once in the New Testament as follows:
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; (2 Peter 2:4 NIV)
Here Peter's description defines the place where these angels were sent.
3) "Gehenna" literally an open garbage dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem where there were permanent fires and worms (and no doubt other scavengers) who consumed the endless supply of garbage that was dumped there.
But it's important to see that permanent doesn't imply eternal. Here is an example from the Old Testament to illustrate that point.
But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched. (Jeremiah 17:27)
That fire did come. But it wasn't eternal. It isn't still burning. The meaning is that the fire would not be extinguished by human hands. The fire department wasn't going to put out that fire.
Likewise the fire in the literal garbage dump of Gehenna wasn't going to be extinguished as long as fresh garbage was added to be burned andor eaten by the worms and other scavengers.
Permanence does not unambiguously mean eternal. Unquenchable fires have gone out. The lasting (but not everlasting) old Covenant became obsolete and passed away. Here permanence implies permanent until it's purpose is complete. Fires burn and worms eat until everything that is intended to be burned and eaten is consumed.
Hell will be open for business as long as men are to be punished in that way. But God's punishments are not eternal. They are ultimately corrective and redemptive.
Clearly the judgements in view here have to be seen as being outside the control of men, unstoppable by human hands. But that by itself doesn't mean they are eternal.
It is a very dangerous thing to build fundamental doctrine from interpretations of metaphors. The clear has to interpret the ambiguous. Not the other way around.
Jesus was not teaching that Hell was a place populated by worms that would live forever. He was using a literal garbage dump as a metaphor to describe Hell as a place LIKE the literal garbage dump, where the endless (but not eternal) supply of garbage provided food for the worms and fuel for the fire.
There are a few other texts of interest raising other relevant points:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28 NIV)
Certainly God has the means to destroy, literally annihilate anything he wants. We have already seen how a man can be both destroyed and saved, even destroyed to be saved. (1Co 5:5).
What God can do, even what He has a right to do, is not necessarily a proof of what He will do.
Finally we have to deal with the lake of fire. If there is any case in scripture which closely describes the modern image of Hell it is the lake of fire.
A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name." (Revelation 14:9-11 NIV)
Here we see a common biblical term "for ever and ever." It's so common that we don't think much about it. But when one does think about it, it's a rather odd term. Why does one have to amplify "forever" with anything else. How can anything be longer than forever?
The Young's Literal Translation is again useful here. The YLT renders this as follows:
"the smoke of their torment goes up to ages of ages."
One might read that as the smoke of their torment goes up from age unto age. Once again we are dealing with the words aion and aionios.
Here it is useful to consider the question of ages. There have been ages past. Biblical history is often divided into ages. There was the age of the Garden of Eden, the age from Adam to Noah, the age for Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Jesus, and the age we are now in, the age of the Church. But this is not the last age. Here is Paul on the future of the Church:
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:7 NIV)
Here the word translated as ages is from the Greek word "aion." Certainly there is not more than one eternity, so it's translated as ages here. There are ages past and ages future. We know of at least two ages to come. There is the millennial age after the first resurrection of Revelation 20 and there is the age of the New Jerusalem at Revelation 21.
There are ages to come. Precisely how God executes judgment and deliverance in the world after death is not perfectly clear. That men are judged and punished after death is clear. How men are ultimately saved out of Hell isn't.
But the lack of perfect revelation on HOW God will accomplish his purposes can't be used to negate the clear teaching that his plan WILL be accomplished. God is under no obligation to tell us everything. Our obligation is to do our best to make sense out of what He does tell us.
We know that Hell exists and that people go there. But nowhere in scripture is there any proof that Hell is eternal. The apparent proof is nothing more than a translator's opinion of the meanings of ambiguous words. There is a perverse circular logic here. The predominant view of the church is that Hell is eternal. The translators translate to that bias thereby perpetuating the predominant view that Hell is eternal.
One has to understand that there is a forced choice here. If one starts by assuming the idea of eternal hell, then he will inevitably have to deny something else plainly taught by the Apostles. He will either have to deny that God's desire is to save all men (as scripture clearly teaches) or he has to deny that God sovereignly saves men (as scripture clearly teaches).
Both of those propositions are far stronger than the doctrine of eternal hell which depends on the arbitrarily translation of the ambiguous Greek words "aion" and "aionios" andor the assumption that permanence proves eternal in metaphorical passages.
Of the three propositions in view here, Eternal Hell is the weak proposition. It only appears strong because of the arbitrary translation bias used to support it. The weakest link in the confusion is the proposition that should be rejected in favor of the stronger doctrines. The strongest cases in scripture are that God's desire is to save all men, that being sovereign, God will save all men without exception, either from hell completely or out of it eventually.
At this point we have covered a lot of territory. In the next section I will try to pull it all together in a brief conclusion.
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