Sorry, I really couldn’t resist, I love a pithy rhyme. (Unfortunately now I don’t remember what chapter it is!)
And I mostly appreciated Bell’s thoughts in this chapter. A few times I cringed at his choice of how to present something and once or twice I understood, because of his style of communicating, the point he was trying to make but felt he was in error in the details of how he made the point. Though probably not for what you might think.
Basically, his point is that “hell” as presented in much of Churchianity is little more than a repackaged Greek or Roman underworld controlled by Satan–the modern Church name for the god Hades. With this I agree 100%. He does not believe such a “place” is presented in Scripture. I don’t either.
He explains the reality of the garbage pit in the Valley of Gehenna, though he leaves out one point I think is incredibly relevant. Yeshua speaks of fearing the one who can send you there, but never explains who that is and if you don’t understand how the Jewish legal system worked this can be lost in translation. See, the bodies that went to the garbage pit in the Valley of Gehenna were the ones that had been found guilty of a death-deserving offense against God’s Law. They had been warned by two individuals who were aware of the sin about to be committed; they had been witnessed by two separate individuals who saw them actually commit the crime; charges had been brought; no witnesses could be excluded as false witnesses; and death had been the God-commanded penalty for that sin. After that person was put to death, their body would not be buried, or put into a tomb. Instead, their body would be thrown out into the garbage heap where Josiah, centuries before, had cleansed all of Israel by burning the pagan priests and their pagan junk in that spot. That’s why it was the garbage pit and nothing good went there. So the warning to avoid Gehenna (often translated “hell” or “hades”) is a warning to avoid a life that will cause your fate to be that of being thrown into the heap with all the pagans and the trash. Or, put another way, live according to Torah and God’s commands.
I think that the way Bell presented God’s punishment conveyed the way that the word is used in Biblical texts, but I’m not sure if Bell himself understood what he was presenting. I say that because the takes so many things to that next level, that next step, and this he let hang there in midair. Rather than recount his entire discussion of the purpose of punishment, let me highlight the pieces of the text that I think are very important for making sure you walk away with a more Hebraic understanding of the word.
Pg 90:
“His [Paul’s] assumption is that giving this man over to “Satan” will bring an end to the man’s “sinful nature.” It’s as if Paul is saying, “We’ve tried everything to get his attention and it isn’t working, so turn him loose to experience the full consequences of his actions.”
He then concludes, farther down on the same page:
“The point of this turning loose, this letter go, this punishment, is to allow them to live with the full consequences of their choices, confident that the misery they find themselves in will have a way of getting their attention.”
THAT is what punishment is in Scripture. It is God letting you do what you insist on doing. It is God no longer holding back the consequences of your choices. It is God saying to Israel through the prophets that the reason He is sending them out from the Land is that He loves them SO MUCH that He can’t let them stay–because to stay in the Holy Land and continue to live as they are will bring them full destruction and death. THAT is love! And what the Bible is speaking of when it speaks of “punishment.” (pg 91)
Bell also touches on something I think he could have developed a bit more with an explanation of the Jewish understanding of the idea he presents–though I understand why he may have held back. For all he is accused of being a heretic about, this idea might have pushed some critics into full on apoplexy! When Bell presents the separating of the sheep and the goats he explains that the phrase for where the goats get sent off to, that is often translated “eternal punishment” is really a phrase that can mean, “‘a period of pruning’ or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of correction.” In Hebraic thoughts about death there is a belief that those who die and are unrighteous from in this life will have their soul put through a time of trial and testing while it is separated from the body that hindered it with sensual desires in this life. While separated from the flesh their soul has an opportunity to learn lessons unheeded in life and they have the opportunity to grow in righteousness in response to the trials and tests they undergo in death. The belief is that at the resurrection of the flesh the body will instantly, upon being restored with the soul, change to the place that the soul has ascended to in righteousness and it is in this state that the individual will stand before the throne of Judgment. This is the understanding that a Jewish audience of mature Torah teachers and Pharisees would have understood upon hearing of an aion of kolazo or “period of pruning.”
Absent from this chapter as well are the two things I hear Bell most criticized for–Universalism (he acknowledges that some will reject God) and Preterism (he continues to speak of future plans from God). What he does do is caution against taking every verse that speaks about future events and hurling them all to some future date and some eschatalogical horror story. I happen to appreciate that level of restraint.
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