Re: Heiser Lake of Fire
It has become trendy among American evangelicals to question whether Hell actually exists. Some go so far as to slip into universalism, but most just kind of edge away from historical evangelical theology about Hell, what it is, and who ends up there.
Review: The Hebrew language itself is first and foremost symbolic. Thus, no one should be surprised when Hebrew discussion of eternal truth is in terms of parables. It started out using expressions common across the Ancient Near East, but as the Lord continued revealing more about His realm and His ways, the Hebrews developed their own imagery. Sometimes they captured the ideas of competing religions and claimed all glories for Jehovah. At other times, they reworked the ANE concepts more thoroughly, along with having their own unique expressions.
Some of their lore was published as Scripture. A substantial amount of it remained oral for a time, then was eventually committed to writing during the Second Temple Period. Some of that lore was heavily embellished, and so those books were not accepted into the canon. Yet those materials was still either referenced or even quoted in the New Testament. Thus, we have Jude and Peter echoing some wording from the 1 Enoch.
Once you become aware of the core themes in 1 Enoch, you can find them echoed in more Scripture. As Heiser explains in the linked video, the notion that Hell is a place of fiery punishment first appears in Hebrew writing in Enoch. It’s not in the Old Testament at all, but it shows up in Enoch. Jesus Himself echoes the theme of fiery punishment when He mentions the term gehenna, pointing to the flaming trash heap in the Valley of Hinnom to defile the old shrine to Moloch.
We have other terms from Hebrew and Greek, translated into English words that may or may not come very close to the same ideas — Tartarus, Hades, Sheol, the grave, etc. There seems to be very little differentiation between them. To the Hebrews, Mount Hermon in particular, and the Bashan region in general, were somehow connected to this dark realm. Indeed, the entire eastern ridge above the Jordan Rift Valley was considered the home of the Rephaim and other clans of Nephilim, marked by all sorts of death cult shrines, plus Sodom and Gomorrah.
The writers, and many readers, of the New Testament are clearly familiar with the Second Temple literature in general, and 1 Enoch in particular. We don’t get wholesale copying from it, but certain core ideas that appear to represent the older, unembellished oral lore included within the ancient tale of Enoch.
The primitive notion of the underworld was depicted as a dark and foreboding place that was connected to the world we know. You can go there from here, but can’t come back. The whole concept was symbolic of everything people don’t like: dark, inside the ground with no fresh air, etc. Hebrews used various terms for such a place, including Sheol, with which we are most familiar. Only much later, in the Second Temple Period, does the theme of fiery torment get added.
In theory, Hell exists solely for the Devil and his allies. It was not made for humans; it was made for the elohim class of beings who had rejected God’s commands to His staff. It is not eternal. The space/time limitations apply there in some sense, likely as part of the punishment effect for the confinement of eternal beings.
In broad general terms, Heiser tells us that the Watchers are confined in the same realm, but it seems in their own peculiar dungeon within that realm. We get the concept that the Nephilim come and go, but we have no idea on what terms. Recall that the Legion of Nephilim infesting the Gadarene madman didn’t want to be sent back to the Abyss, as if it were hard for them to get back out.
However, there are no sharp definitions for any of this. In general terms, the Devil is Lord of the underworld, but he also seems free to wander this world. He reports to God on a regular basis regarding his new mission after demotion. If you recall the Fall in the Garden, the Devil was allowed to go there and make his bid for human submission. Once that submission was secured, humans were ousted from the Garden and forced to live in a world that has not been conformed to God’s image as the Garden is. East of Eden is not a pleasant place in symbolism, and one of Satan’s titles is Prince of This World.
One thing for certain is that Hell is virtually nothing like common American conceptions. Western mythology is alien to the Bible. The western notions include the skin-tight red suit, horns, tail and trident for the Devil. And strictly speaking, the Lake of Fire is not Hell, but the symbol of the final destruction of Hell, death, the Devil and his allies, both human and elohim.
Part of the problem with common understanding is the western concept of retributive justice. It presumes without saying so that humanity starts in a more or less neutral situation instead of already belonging to the Devil. It goes all the way back as early as Eusebius reasoning that sins create a debt to be paid due to a misreading of the New Testament — “wages of sin” became “debt of sin”. It depersonalized our standing before God, introducing an intervening system of justice between us and God. That’s another rabbit we’ve chased often enough before. But it produced an image of Hell as a punitive prison, rather than a simple continuation of one’s default slavery to the Devil and his realm.
At it’s most primitive conception among Hebrews, Sheol was simply the grave. While there were exceptions, people there did not come back to this life. They were confined, constrained, not in a position to operate with any degree of freedom as we do here in this world. But it wasn’t exactly Hell, either. It was a sad confinement from which a faithful servant of the Lord would hope to be freed, redeemed by God as His family.
It was the basic concept carried over from the Mesopotamian roots of Hebrew culture. The Egyptian mythology didn’t think of the grave as a bad place; it was privileged a existence for some. That’s why we have the symbolism of great figures buried in pyramids with what they might need in the afterlife. But the concept of afterlife as paradise waited until Persian exposure (Zoroastrianism). Regardless of the source, Jesus reaffirmed that concept (using a Persian word) from the Cross, telling the confessing thief they would meet together in paradise that very day.
The key was that the dying thief confessed Jesus as innocent and appealed to Him in submission. Not everyone declared their allegiance to Jesus. The New Testament flatly says that certain types of people would never see paradise after death. However, the portrayal is not that people failed to do certain things, but that they did those things because they weren’t the right kind of people to submit to God. The underlying cause was a matter of loyalties.
In other words, people end up in Hell because they never left the Devil’s domain in the first place. The route out is open to anyone who claims it. As previously noted, we use the Doctrine of Election to help us set our expectations for the kind of response we get from our efforts to portray what freedom from slavery to the flesh looks like.
