Chapter two of Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle’s Erasing Hell, in my opinion was one of the most informative parts of the book. The title of the chapter is “Has Hell Changed? Or Have We?”

Chan starts this chapter, impressively enough, by arguing that we need to set aside the cultural and subjective portraits of Jesus that we have projected onto him. He says “I am embarrassed to admit this, but when I hear the name Jesus, a picture often appears in my mind. It’s a painting of a Caucasian male with long blond hair, staring into the sky. It hung on the wall of a church I once attended. It bothers me now, because it is ridiculously inaccurate.” The facts are, Jesus didn’t have long blond hair; and as Schweitzer long ago argued, let’s view Jesus in light of the culture he lived in, not the culture we live in.

From here Chan argues we do the same thing with hell. Often enough we try to sensor hell because it hurts our post-modern feelings. He says:

“For Origen, hell was a plae where the souls of the wicked were purified so they could find their way back to God. Dante depicted hell as a place under the earth’s surface with nine levels of suffering, where sinners were bitten by snakes, tormented by beasts, showered with icy rain, and trapped in rivers of blood or flaming tombs; some were even steeped in huge pools of human excrement. C.S. Lewis’s portrayal of hell was significantly less creepy. For Lewis, it was kind of like a dark, gloomy city, or a place where ‘being fades away into nonentity.’ A happier portrait of hell was painted by the band AC/DC, who said that ‘hell ain’t a bad place to be’ — it’s where all our friends are. Most recently, Rob Bell said that hell not ‘about someday, somewhere else’ but about the various ‘hells on earth’ that people experience in this life.”

Chan argues it isn’t so important what Lewis, Origen, Bell, or AC/DC thought of hell; what matters is what Jesus thought about hell.

The First Century Jewish View of Hell:

Chan argues that for Second Temple Jews, “hell is a place of punishment after judgment.” He says:

“The typical afterlife scenario among Jews in Jesus’ day was that after the wicked die, they go to a place called hades, sometimes called sheol. This is not the same thing as hell. Hades is not usually depicted as a place of punishment, though the wicked may suffer there. It is a place where the wicked wait until judgement day. After they are judged, the wicked are then thrown into hell as punishment for their sins.”

Chan supports this by citing: 4 Ezra 7:32-36; 4 Ezra 7:38, 80, 82; and 1 Enoch 22:10-13; 1 Enoch 27:2-3.

Hell is described in images of Fire, Darkness, and Lament:

Chan argues that of all the images used to describe hell, fire is the most common amongst ancient Jewish literature. To support the contention that hell is described by using all three of these images types, he cites: 2 Baruch 44:15; T. Zeb. 10:3; 1 Enoch 100:9; 2 Enoch 10:2; 1 Enoch 108:3-4; 1 Enoch 103:5-8; 1 Enoch 90:26-27; 2 Enoch 40:13.

Hell is a Place of Annihilation:

Before going into detail on this part, it surprised me that a Neo-Calvinist gave this position even the time of day. Though I’m happy he did at least give it a hearing, he didn’t give it  one that was vocal enough. I could be entirely wrong, but I tend to think he did this because it could have caused him grief from the extra-conservative community he finds himself in. Unfortunately, he only quoted (though he cited in the bibliography others) one (amongst many) passage from the Second Temple corpus that depicts the annihilation of the wicked. I, an annihilationist myself, find this to be the most convincing view to deduce from Scripture. Though he didn’t give it as much attention that it deserves, I’m glad he attempted to stretch the minds of other very conservative believers to the possibility of annihilation.  Chan works as a pastor-gone-academic by showing there were Jewish believers who viewed the punishment after sheol to be one of annihilation (L.A.B. 16:3; Wisdom 4:14-15; 1 QS 4:11-14; 1 Enoch 91:9-14).

Hell is a Place of Never-Ending Punishment:

In comparison to the position of annihilation, he spends quite a bit of time expounding upon this view. In support of it, he cites the following: 2 Enoch 10:1, 3 (he believes 2 Enoch is a first-century text); 2 Enoch 40:13; 1 Enoch 63:1-7; 4 Macc. 12:12. He contends that with the exception of the Sadducees, these were the Jewish views of hell.

Hell isn’t a garbage dump:

Something I found kind of interesting is the blurb on the back of the book “This is not a book about who is saying what.” Well, the contrary is actually true. At this point, Chan has already mentioned Bell quite a few times. He now goes on to critique Bell’s proposition that hell is a garbage dump. A common misunderstanding (one I believed for a long while) is that the word used for hell in the New Testament, gehenna, actually was a first-century trash dump. Well, the evidence for this happens to be extremely scarce. As Chan points out, the first time we hear of Gehenna the Garbage Dump was from a text written in AD 1200.

He then shows what the “Hinnom Valley” (which forged the word gehenna into an image of fiery judgment) really was. “In the Old Testament, the Hinnom Valley was the place where some Israelites engaged in idolatrous worship of the Canaanite gods Molech and Baal. It was here, in fact, where they sacrificed their children to these gods (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6) making them ‘pass through fire’ (Ezekiel 16:20-31).” He also points out that Jeremiah took it on as a metaphorical reference for the place where the bodies of the wicked would be cast (Jer. 7:29-24; 19:6-9; 32:35) “The word gehenna was widely used by Jews during the time of Jesus to refer to the fiery place of judgment for the wicked in the end times.”

Something that Chan blatantly ignores is that the imagery evoked from gehenna is still of people being “burnt up” to the point of them being no more. This, I think stands powerfully in support of the annihilationist position.

My Thoughts:

I’m quite pleased with this book. I think Chan and Sprinkle’s work together produced a great layman level book that will dispel misconceptions concerning the doctrine of hell, and also open the minds of the ultra-conservative.
Part three will come soon!