A DEFINITION OF HELL

“Hell is that state of being bound up perpetually in an unexpanding self.”—Geddes McGregor

This definition of hell might not pass in a seminar on theology, nor will it satisfy the demands for a scriptural description. But we believe it points to the ultimate of personal degradation, and may not be far from the meaning of the biblical symbols of hell after all. One who is stunted in physical growth, or in some way grossly deformed, we call a freak. We cruelly pay money to see such ones in a side show at a circus. How much more grotesque must be the soul that never grows! How tragic and how unbearable it would be to be imprisoned forever within the shriveled confines of a proud and egoistic soul!

This would be eternal pettiness, eternal littleness, eternal self-pity. God forbid us such a hell!

It took nine levels of hell to satisfy the imaginative mind of Dante. The lowest level of the insufferable depths was dominated not by flames buy by freezing winds and eternal ice. Even the first of the levels, which he called circles, is a prison for those who committed no sins on earth, but were unbaptized and without knowledge of Christ. Each level or circle becomes increasingly worse, consistent with the degree of the guilt of the sinner.

But even in Dante’s complex description of man’s destiny the chief point is that one makes his own heaven or hell in part by the way he responds to selfhood. His seventh circle of hell consists of those who have done violence to themselves. He uses much imagery, such as darkness and noise for hell and music and agility for heaven, and he explains in his commentary on the Divine Comedy that, while his poem is to be read literally, it also has symbolic meaning. The symbols point to those who destroy themselves through self-deception.

Plato too has a view of a self-made hell. The soul that never grows through voluntary ignorance wanders endlessly in a netherland, while the souls that grow in the face of hardship move upward toward the Good. Virtue is knowledge to Plato, and one is prepared only for hell when he deliberately chooses to be ignorant. He excuses involuntary ignorance, and finds a way, through reincarnation, to give the innocent another chance.

It is Dostoevsky, however, who seeks to come to terms with the biblical imagery of hell. He has the Russian monk in The Brothers Karamazov to ask pointedly, “What is hell?” The answer is that it is the suffering of being unable to love. In this life man receives an invitation from God to love, and he is shown by Christ what love means. If still he refuses, rejecting his only chance to say “I am and I love,” then he is doomed to an eternity in which he can see those who love but cannot join them. Such was the rich man who saw Abraham and Lazarus in an atmosphere of love. He could not be with them because he was incapable of love. Even if taken into heaven he would be most miserable, for having despised love on earth there is no place for it in his heart in eternity. Dostoevsky can hardly see how the symbol of fire and brimstone could be literal, but he thinks a lake of fire could never be as agonizing as a soul that is eternally conscious of his rejection of love so graciously proffered.

Many of us would question Augustine’s view on the literalness of hell. He says: “That hell, which also is called a lake of fire and brimstone, will be material fire and will torment the bodies of the damned” This presents grave difficulties, not the least of which is the problem of there being anything to burn. We see the body buried and know that it decays. How could it also be literally burning? Or must we believe it awaits a resurrection, at which time fire will be put to it? The scriptures hardly require us to believe such as this.

Yet Melville in his Moby Dick contends with this very problem. The white whale had taken Ahab’s leg, and Ahab was bargaining with a carpenter to make him a substitute of wood. In the conversation Ahab assures the carpenter that he can still feel the missing leg just as if it were there, even to a hair. Then he jarrs the carpenter with these words: “If I still feel the smart of my crushed leg though it be now so long dissolved, then, why mayest thou not, carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah!”

Our Lord does, of course, refer to the body going to hell. Matt. 5:29 is unmistakable: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” Matt. 10:28 is equally clear: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

We have all heard of that ravine south of the walls of Jerusalem, called Gehenna (the valley of Hinnom) , where the city’s refuse was burned, and where fires had continued to burn since the time of King Ahaz, who desecrated the valley by burning little children as a sacrifice to Molech. Commentators always refer to this bit of history in reference to Jesus’ warning about hell or Gehenna, as if this settles the question of the nature of hell.

While it is almost certain that Jesus was indeed referring to the stench and smoke of the valley of Hinnom in his reference to hell, it is highly doubtful that his hearers supposed that the damnation he was pointing to would be a ride out to the city dump. Jesus was not saying that they would be burned up in the valley of Hinnom, as a dead dog would be, if they cursed their brothers. He was talking about hell, the place of the damned, and Gehenna served as a fitting symbol of such horror. The rabbis before Jesus had used the same symbol. The Talmud says: “The sinner who desists from the words of the Law will in the end inherit Gehenna.”

The symbols about hell are calculated to convey the grimest and most terrible picture. It is referred to as “the pits of nether gloom” in 2 Pet. 2:4 and as “eternal chains” in Jude 6. Sometimes the metaphors conflict: in Rev. 19:20 the wicked are “thrown alive into the lake of fire, while in Matt. 22:13 the wicked are bound hand and foot and cast into “the outer darkness.” It will be difficult to have both literal fire and literal darkness.

So what does it all mean? The conclusion certainly cannot be that there is no real hell, for the imagery used not only points to its reality but also to its utterly unbearable horror. The imagery does not have to be interpreted literally, which we presume to be impossible, in order for it to convey reality. Hell is unquestionably real in Jesus’ thought, and he makes it just as bad as language makes possible.

To be bound hand and foot suggests helplessness, a state that man will do nearly anything to avoid. Chains symbolize the permanence of the helpless state, while the lake of fire indicates torment. Darkness and nether gloom strips man of all light, suggesting his separation from God.

But the imagery does not stop here. Even in this state man can think about his past life, as does the selfish rich man in Luke 16, and even contemplate those in heaven. This story shows that the rich man had all these experiences while his body was buried in the ground (verse 22). He even speaks of “being in torment in this flame.” Abraham talks to him, suggesting that he remember how selfish he was back on the earth.

So we conclude by again suggesting that McGregor’s definition gets close to hell after all. It is indeed a state, it is real, and one can “go there” so to speak. It is a state of being bound, pointing to the enslavement that sin brings. It is perpetual in that it is forever, or better, it is irreversible. An unexpanding self is about as far from God as one can go, for it harbors pride, self-pity, and arrogance.

The weary traveler who thought hell would be “an unending line of railway terminals” may not have as good a definition as McGregor, but even here there is truth. Endless, meaningless isolation that makes only for boredom is unbearable for man. The point of the Christian message is that this is man’s destination without God, and that through the Christ the way to meaningful being is revealed. Religion is a love story between God and man. If man rejects, yea even detests, God’s loving pursuit of him, hell is the only possible consequence.

In one of his many books, C. S. Lewis dramatizes this truth. A man who has prepared himself only for hell by not cultivating the love that God makes possible is waiting at the bus stop for the bus for hell. By mistake he gets on the bus for heaven. At once he feels uncomfortable and out of place, for those on the bus are not his kind of people. Even in heaven he feels divorced, for he is nor equipped to enjoy it. The only thing he can do is to take the bus for hell, a hell he made ready by his own choices in life.

Another story about heaven and hell depicts those in hell gathered around a banquet table filled with appetizing foods, but none was eating and all were starving, for they all had stiff arms and were unable to get the food to their mouths. The scene was similar in heaven. There was the same table overflowing with delicious foods and people with stiff arms, but here the people were filled and satisfied. The difference was that in heaven the people fed each other, while in hell selfishness was so overbearing that each perished trying to fill his own stomach.

Perhaps hell is something like all this. For our purposes we can be busy doing something for others, even with stiff arms, and we can concern ourselves in being prepared for the right bus.—the Editor