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T h e F a t h e r s K n o w B e s t
THE HELL THERE IS
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Hell is so frightening that almost every heretical cult ends up denying its reality. Unitarians, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, practitioners of Religious Science, New Agers, and Mormons all have rejected hell or have modified the doctrine so radically that it is no longer a serious threat. In recent decades, even some Evangelical figures have been advocating the view that there is no eternal hell and that the wicked will be annihilated.
The reality of and eternity of hell are stressed in the Bible (Matt. 7:22-23, Mark 9:47-48, Rev. 14:11). In response to the specific question "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" Christ responded, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to" (Luke 7:23-24).
For this reason, the Catholic Church is absolutely firm in teaching that hell is real (cf. CCC 1035). In his 1994 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote that too often "preachers, catechists, teachers . . . no longer have the courage to preach the threat of hell . . . [But] the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Mt. 25:46)" (pp. 183-6).
The Church Fathers also were absolutely firm on the reality of an eternal hell.
Ignatius
"Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil reaching the faith of God, for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire, and so will anyone who listens to him" (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1-2 [A.D. 110]).
Second Clement
"But when they see how those who have sinned and who have denied Jesus by their words or by their deeds are punished with terrible torture in unquenchable fire, the righteous, who have done good and who have endured tortures and have hated the luxuries of life, will give glory to their God saying, ‘There shall be hope for him that has served God with all his heart!’" (Second Clement 17:7 [A.D. 150]).
"If we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest; but if not, if we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment" (ibid., 5:5).
Justin Martyr
"We have been taught that only they may aim at immortality who have lived a holy and virtuous life near to God. We believe that they who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in everlasting fire" (First Apology 21 [A.D. 151]).
"No more is it possible for the evildoer, the avaricious, and the treacherous to hide from God than it is for the virtuous. Every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve. Indeed, if all men recognized this, no one would choose evil even for a short time, knowing that he would incur the eternal sentence of fire. On the contrary, he would take every means to control himself and to adorn himself in virtue, so that he might obtain the good gifts of God and escape the punishments" (ibid., 12 [A.D. 151]).
Martyrdom of Polycarp
"Fixing their minds on the grace of Christ, [the martyrs] despised worldly tortures and purchased eternal life with but a single hour. To them, the fire of their cruel torturers was cold. They kept before their eyes their escape from the eternal and unquenchable fire" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:3 [A.D. 155]).
Mathetes
"When you know what is the true life, that of heaven; when you despise the merely apparent death, which is temporal; when you fear the death which is real and which is reserved for those who will be condemned to the everlasting fire, the fire which will punish even to the end those who are delivered to it—then you will condemn the deceit and error of the world" (Letter to Diognetus 10:7 [A.D. 160]).
Athenagoras
"[W]e [Christians] are persuaded that when we are removed from this present life we shall live another life, better than the present one . . . Then we shall abide near God and with God, changeless and free from suffering in the soul . . . or if we fall with the rest [of mankind], a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere incidental work, that we should perish and be annihilated" (Plea for the Christians 31 [A.D. 177]).
Theophilus
"Give studious attention to the prophetic writings [the Bible], and they will lead you on a clearer path to escape the eternal punishments and to obtain the eternal good things of God. . . . For the unbelievers and for the contemptuous, and for those who do not submit to the truth but assent to iniquity, when they have been involved in adulteries, and fornications, and homosexualities, and avarice, and in lawless idolatries, there will be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish; and in the end, such men as these will be detained in everlasting fire" (To Autolycus 1:14 [A.D. 181]).
Irenaeus
"The penalty increases for those who do not believe the Word of God and despise his coming . . . [I]t is not merely temporal, but eternal. To whomsoever the Lord shall say, ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire,’ they will be damned forever" (Against Heresies, 4:28:2).
"[God will] send the spiritual forces of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, and the impious, unjust, lawless, and blasphemous among men into everlasting fire" (ibid., 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
"After the present age is ended he will judge his worshipers for a reward of eternal life and the godless for a fire equally perpetual and unending" (Apology 18:3 [A.D. 197]).
"Then will the entire race of men be restored to receive its just deserts according to what it has merited in this period of good and evil, and thereafter to have these paid out in an immeasurable and unending eternity. Then there will be neither death again nor resurrection again, but we shall be always the same as we are now, without changing. The worshippers of God shall always be with God, clothed in the proper substance of eternity. But the godless and those who have not turned wholly to God will be punished in fire equally unending, and they shall have from the very nature of this fire, divine as it were, a supply of incorruptibility" (ibid., 44:12-13).
Hippolytus
"Standing before [Christ’s] judgment, all of them, men, angels, and demons, crying out in one voice, shall say: ‘Just if your judgment!’ And the righteousness of that cry will be apparent in the recompense made to each. To those who have done well, everlasting enjoyment shall be given, while to the lovers of evil shall be given eternal punishment. The unquenchable and unending fire awaits these latter and a certain fiery worm which does not die and which does not waste the body but continually bursts forth from the body with unceasing pain. No sleep will give them rest; no night will soothe them; no death will deliver them from punishment; no appeal of interceding friends will profit them" (Against the Greeks 3 [A.D. 212]).
Minucius Felix
"I am not ignorant of the fact that many, in the consciousness of what they deserve, would rather hope than actually believe that there is nothing for them after death. They would prefer to be annihilated rather than be restored for punishment. . . . Nor is there either measure nor end to these torments. That clever fire burns the limbs and restores them, wears them away and yet sustains them, just as fiery thunderbolts strike bodies but do not consume them" (Octavius 34:12-5:3 [A.D. 226]).
Cyprian
"An ever-burning Gehenna and the punishment of being devoured by living flames will consume the condemned; nor will there be any way in which the tormented can ever have respite or be at an end. Souls along with their bodies will be preserved for suffering in unlimited agonies. . . . The grief at punishment will then be without the fruit of repentance; weeping will be useless and prayer ineffectual. Too late will they believe in eternal punishment who would not believe in eternal life" (To Demetrian 24 [A.D. 252]).
Lactantius
"[T]he sacred writings inform us in what manner the wicked are to undergo punishment. Because they have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh, that they may make atonement in their bodies, and yet it will not be that flesh with which God clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible, and abiding for ever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and everlasting fire, the nature of which is different from this fire of ours, which we use for the necessary purposes of life and which is extinguished unless it be sustained by the fuel of some material. But that divine fire always lives by itself and flourishes without any nourishment . . . Thus, without any wasting of bodies, which regain their substance, it will only burn and affect them with a sense of pain. But when he [Christ] shall have judged the righteous, he will also try them with fire" (Divine Institutes 7:21 [A.D. 307]).
Patrick
"In everlasting punishment they [the soldiers who murdered his new converts] will become slaves of hell along with him [Coroticus], for truly whosoever commits sin is a slave and is called a son of the Devil" (Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus 4 [A.D. 452]).
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