Frederica Matthewes-Green has written an article called "Why We Need Hell. It has been posted on her own site as well as on Virtue Online. It is an apologetic for the concept of Hell from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. The reality of Hell is something fire and brimstone revival preachers often return to and is a topic which needs to be emphasized from time to time - the notion that there are eternal consequences to our actions. And that is a healthy thing, if it is balanced and not manipulative.
But Matthewes-Green’s article raises some troubling questions about the meaning of the very concept of Hell. I had read before, in Franky Schaeffer's brutal Dancing Alone of an Eastern understanding of Hell which states that Hell is not so much a place where one is punished for his or her deeds and rejection of salvation, but rather is simply a state of natural consequence for the pattern of one’s life. Such a view removes the image of God as an angry executioner. In this view, all human beings wind up in a state of eternal existence in the presence of God, but for some, for those who have rejected God’s grace, His very presence is itself a state of torment. God is described in scripture as a consuming fire, so, according to this understanding, to reject God and then spend eternity in His presence will be a Hellish eternity. Mathewes-Green's article refers to more detailed explanations of this view from Peter Chopelas and Dr. Alexander Kaomiros.
Eastern Christians generally are critical of Western Augustinian notions of “forensic” or legal justification, the concept of a penal satisfaction as the theme of the atonement. They tend to see sin as not so much a transgression of law, but a flaw of character and therefore see God not so much as a righteous judge but simply a pure being. Hence judgment and justification are not matters of punishment and pardon, but more matters of pollution and purification.
Dr. Kaomiros' essay refers to the conception of Hell as a place and of God as a punisher of evildoers as a western misunderstanding, a complete distortion of the true character of God. Chopelas cites particular alleged misinterpretations of Greek words as evidence of this false theology.
The problem is that there is much biblical language that implies a legal declaration of guilt or innocence and corresponding punishment and forgiveness, language that has to be interpreted away to uphold a view of hell as the negative side of God's presence. Hebrews 10:26-30, for example, is difficult to explain away by misunderstandings of individual Greek words.
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Leaving aside the question of whether the writer is speaking to genuine believers or not, how are western Christians to understand words like "judgment", and "raging fire?", "punished", "avenge", "repay", "dreadful"?
Revelation 20:14-15 speaks of the final judgment not in terms of God’s presence, but with a vivid description of a lake of fire prepared for the rebellious angels, a place into which the unrighteous are thrown.
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
This is not the language of passive self-condemnation. It is an active judgment. Jesus spoke of the unfaithful being cast out into an outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, using active language of “casting out” rather than passive allusions to everlasting discomfort in God’s presence.
Matthew 25:41 also seems to say fairly clearly that those who reject the path of life are not left in torment in God's presence, but are ushered out of his presence, into a place of torment.
Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
These passages cannot be dismissed as mere misunderstandings of individual words. These are whole sentences with a context and a thrust that is hard to miss. And can anyone who reads the Old Testament really believe God does not judge?
In addition, I find this an odd position for the Orthodox to take, as devotees of the Seven Councils and the great creeds. The Nicene Creed speaks of Heaven as a place, since God is “Maker of Heaven and Earth”. So Heaven is something made, something that has dimension, not merely the eternal presence of God. If all go to God’s presence, but only some enjoy it, do unbelievers then exist in heaven, but merely perceive it as Hell? These Orthodox thinkers again state that it is a Western misconception to thing of heaven as a place. If so, then what did God make as stated by the creed?
Likewise the Apostle's Creed speaks of Christ descending into Hell. If not a place, but a state, how then did Christ descend to it? Did he descend into a state of rejection of God? Or is the creed in error?
All in all this seems to be one of the dangers of the understanding of many Orthodox regarding Tradition. If, as some Orthodox believe, tradition is the teaching of the apostles as understood by the church and scripture is but one element of that tradition, there is always the danger that tradition can develop to a point where it teaches things not found in written scripture and can subtly redefine the plain meaning of the ispired text.
It can be helpful to think, as Easterners do, of sin as something more than just a legal transgression, as something that is in fact a character flaw, a distortion of God’s image in man. But cannot sin be BOTH a flaw in our character AND a specific transgression of a law code? Must we toss out biblical language of legal penalties and legal justification to embrace other Biblical language regarding the transforming work of grace in our character and the erosion of character that takes place when we choose our own way?
Many evangelicals have looked to Orthodoxy to satisfy a need for a connection to the church of history and because of weaknesses in both evangelical ecclesiology and theology. It seems to me that all current expressions of Christianity have weaknesses, places where we have strayed from the original intent of classic Christian understanding. This issue is, in my mind, a major concern about the Eastern Church. And one reason why I would not be likely to ever follow evangelicals like Mathewes-Green and Frank Schaeffer to Constantinople.
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