The concept of a physical place of eternal torture called Hell looms large in contemporary Christian pop-theology. And has for years. But is this because the Bible makes it central?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
We’re told – or assume – that “salvation” means “being saved from Hell”. But if that is the sole focus of salvation, why is there so little talk of Hell in the Bible?<\/p>\n\n\n
Out of curiosity I did a search of all mentions of “Hell” in the New Testament. I was shocked at the numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
First the gospels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Matthew takes the lead with 7 uses of “Hell”. And that is significant because they are all from the mouth of Jesus himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But Mark has just 3.<\/p>\n\n\n
And Luke has just 1.<\/p>\n\n\n
And John? John has zero.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Can you imagine? A gospel with no mention of Hell?<\/p>\n\n\n
Then we move into Acts. With all the evangelistic preaching recorded throughout the 28 chapters of Acts there has to be quite a bit of Hell talk, right?<\/p>\n\n\n
Acts also has zero mentions of Hell.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And how about Romans, where Paul lays out his theology in great detail? Surely some Hell talk there you would think.<\/p>\n\n\n
Romans, too, has zero Hell.<\/p>\n\n\n
In fact, look through the rest of the New Testament and you will find just two more references to Hell – one in James and one in 2nd Peter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Compare those 13 mentions of Hell in the New Testament overall to the 137 references to “righteousness” and the 257 for “love”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I know this doesn’t prove anything – and I have left out other references that could be read as synonymous to “Hell”, such as “outer darkness” and “lake of fire” – but it still seems to me that Hell might not deserve the place of prominence it holds in our theology.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
What do you make of the concept of “annihilationism” – the concept that those who die apart from faith in Christ do not suffer eternal torment in Hell but rather simply cease to be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The concept of a physical place of eternal torture called Hell looms large in contemporary Christian pop-theology. And has for years. But is this because the Bible makes it central?\u00a0 We’re told – or assume – that “salvation” means “being saved from Hell”. But if that is the sole focus of salvation, why is there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4300,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4299\/revisions\/4300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}