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What did the earliest Christians think about Hell?

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I thought it might be a good idea for us to take a look at the doctrine of Hell, and see how far back it goes. These days, people seem to have lost sight of the idea that there will be eternal separation from God for people who reject him. But this idea is a core part of Christianity, and it goes right back to the early church fathers. Not to mention how much Jesus has to say about it.

Here’s an article from Cold Case Christianity, by J. Warner Wallace, that talks about what early Christians thought of Hell.

Introduction:

As we seek to understand what the Bible teaches about Hell, it may be helpful to understand what the earliest believers believed and taught. The teachings of the early believers have been preserved for us in the writings of the earliest church leaders (known as the Early Church Fathers). While their writings are not canonical (they are not on par with the words of the Bible), they do help us to see what those closest to the apostles first understood as Biblical Truth.

As we assemble the teachings of these first church leaders, several patterns emerge related to the nature of Hell. The Early Church Fathers, with very few exceptions, agree with the teaching of the Bible in the way they describe Hell:

1. Hell is a place of judgment for those who have rejected God and denied Jesus as their Savior
2. Hell is a place of separation from God
3. Hell is a place of torment in which the rebellious are in anguish and pain
4. Hell is a place where the rebellious are tormented forever and are CONSCIOUS of this torment for all eternity (In fact, the eternal duration of their torment is often compared to the eternal duration of the reward of the saved)

At the same time, the earliest Church Fathers are ambiguous on those areas where the Bible is ALSO ambiguous.

1. The exact nature of the torment of the rebellious is unknown
2. The manner in which the rebellious are kept alive in spite of ‘deathly’ anguish is also un-described

The Early Church Fathers simply reflected the clearest teachings of the Bible related to the nature of Hell. They believed that Hell was a place of eternal conscious torment, reflecting the clearest teaching of the scriptures.

Excerpt:

From Ignatius of Antioch (110AD)

Ignatius was a student of the Apostle John, and succeeded the Apostle Peter as the Bishop of Antioch. He wrote a number of important letters to believers in churches in the area:

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)

From Clement of Rome (150AD)

Clement was Bishop of Rome from 88 to 98AD, and his teaching reflects the early traditions of the Church. “Second Clement” reportedly a recorded sermon, and Clement discusses the nature of Hell:

 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 (“Second Clement” 5:5)

 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)

From Irenaeus (189AD)

Irenaeus was bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul (now Lyon, France) at the end of the second century. He was a disciple of Polycarp and a notable early apologist for the faith. He wrote several volumes defending the faith against Gnosticism and other early heresies of the Church, and he often compared eternal punishment to eternal reward, drawing the conclusion that one endured as long as the other:

…Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, ‘every knee should bow, of things in heaven,, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess’ to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send ‘spiritual wickednesses,’ and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning of their Christian course, and others from the date of their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory. (“Against Heresies” 1:10:10)

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)

 From Clement of Alexandria (195AD)

Titus Flavius Clemens was the first significant and recorded Christian from the church of Alexandria, Egypt. His parents were Greek and he was raised with a solid, formal Greek education. While he had a tendency to blend Greek and Christian philosophies, his view on the issue of Hell was derived from the scriptures:

All souls are immortal, even those of the wicked. Yet, it would be better for them if they were not deathless. For they are punished with the endless vengeance of quenchless fire. Since they do not die, it is impossible for them to have an end put to their misery. (from a post-Nicene manuscript fragment)

From Tertullian (197AD)

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was a Romanized African citizen who was born in Carthage (now Tunisia). He became a Christian and was a powerful and influential apologist for the faith, writing prolifically in defense of the doctrines of orthodoxy:

These have further set before us the proofs He has given of His majesty in judgments by floods and fires, the rules appointed by Him for securing His favor, as well as the retribution in store for the ignoring, forsaking and keeping them, as being about at the end of all to adjudge His worshippers to everlasting life, and the wicked to the doom of fire at once without ending and without break, raising up again all the dead from the beginning, reforming and renewing them with the object of awarding either recompense. (“Apology” 18:3)

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 worshipers 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 (“Apology” 44:12–13)

Therefore after this there is neither death nor repeated resurrections, but we shall be the same that we are now, and still unchanged–the servants of God, ever with God, clothed upon with the proper substance of eternity; but the profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner shall be consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire–that fire which, from its very nature indeed, directly ministers to their incorruptibility. (“Apology” 48:12)

Just to be clear, I am one of those Christians who holds to the traditional doctrine of hell. Eternal, conscious punishment for eternity. I think most, if not all, people who object to the traditional doctrine of hell do it for one reason only – because they don’t want to appear to be mean, so that non-Christians will like them. Well, I don’t think there is any wiggle room here – conscious, eternal torment is what the Bible teaches, and what the earliest Christians believed.

Having said that, if someone has a historical case to make, then I’d like to see how they interpret the Bible and where the line of tradition is for their view. There is always room for scholars to make a case against the traditional view, but that case has to be on the merits. But I think for the vast majority of people who reject the traditional notion of hell, they are just asserting their emotions and intuitions over the Bible and the traditional interpretations of the early church. I don’t think that wanting to feel “nicer” than others, or wanting to be liked by others, is a good rationale for overruling the text and the traditional interpretations.

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UK parents accuse school of secretly brainwashing their child into transgenderism

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Young people seem to like gay marriage more than they like individual liberties
Where do young people get their positive view of LGBT issues?

Last week I blogged about a case from Canada where the teachers and administrators conspired with doctors to get a child onto the transgender track. Here is another case that was just reported on the weekend, this time from the UK. What was shocking to me was that this school is apparently a “free school” – the UK term for a private school.

Here’s the story from the UK Daily Mail:

A school has been accused of secretly allowing a 13-year-old girl to attend ‘radicalising’ mentoring sessions that convinced her that she was transgender.

Ashleigh and Ged Barnett allege that until the one-to-one sessions began last September, their daughter appeared comfortable in her body and showed little interest in transgender issues.

But they say she had changed completely by November, sporting a short haircut and talking about feeling that she was really a boy.

They were confused by the transformation until they met her headteacher to discuss another matter and learned that their daughter had been having weekly sessions with the head of the school’s LGBT group.

[…]‘The teaching assistant also pointed her in the direction of a YouTube website of a trans activist, which featured a video where they showed off their mastectomy scars and told how well the operation had gone.’

The couple said they were furious when they found school staff had let the teenager attend the sessions ‘behind our backs’. 

Mrs Barnett said: ‘The school didn’t think it was fit to tell us. We are her parents, but responsibility to care for our child has been taken away. The attitude is that it’s the child’s choice and it’s got nothing to do with us.

The teachers are very clear that although they are being paid to do a job by parents, they are not going to their job. They deserve to be paid by parents to do whatever they want. Not what parents want. In fact, the schools are in league with organizations on the radicl left, and the teachers and administrators are much more interested in getting the approval of these far-left groups than the parents who pay their salaries.

Mrs Barnett also claimed that the teaching assistant encouraged their daughter to change in a boy’s cubicle and that staff began using a male name for her.

She alleges the teaching assistant had no formal counselling qualifications and only received training from local charity Eikon that provides ‘LGBT+ awareness sessions’ for schools.

In recent email correspondence with the couple, headteacher Jane Davies said she believed their daughter should be left to use the changing facilities she preferred.

‘We will continue to provide a safe environment for [your child], but it is not our place to alert you to how she feels,’ she wrote.

‘It is important that you understand that she is old enough to make her own decisions.’

This is not an unusual attitude for teachers to take about handling the children who are entrusted to them. There was a time in the past when teachers were more humble, and saw themselves as partners with parents. But that went out of fashion way back during the time of progressive President Woodrow Wilson.

He said this:

The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life.

Instead of seeing their purpose a serving parents, they see themselves as masters of the child, and the parents just pay their salaries and feed and clothe the child. The worldview transfer is done by the teachers, because they are the keepers of all wisdom and morality.

Well, as always in these matters, it’s good to look at the studies. So let’s look at a recent one that should help parents to understand transgenderism.

Here’s how the study was first reported by Science Daily:

This month, a Brown University researcher published the first study to empirically describe teens and young adults who did not have symptoms of gender dysphoria during childhood but who were observed by their parents to rapidly develop gender dysphoria symptoms over days, weeks or months during or after puberty.

[…]The study was published on Aug. 16 in PLOS ONE.

Peer pressure / The Internet:

The pattern of clusters of teens in friend groups becoming transgender-identified, the group dynamics of these friend groups and the types of advice viewed online led her to the hypothesis that friends and online sources could spread certain beliefs.

[….]”Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” Littman said. “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.”

This article at The Federalist had a few examples to illustrate the conclusion of the study. I’ll pick two.

The study includes other eye-opening information, such as case studies of several children’s stories.

  • “A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends were taking group lessons together with a very popular coach. The coach came out as transgender, and, within one year, all four students announced they were also transgender.”

  • “A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends are part of a larger friend group that spends much of their time talking about gender and sexuality. The three natal female friends all announced they were trans boys and chose similar masculine names. After spending time with these three friends, the 14-year-old natal female announced that she was also a trans boy.”

I thought this quote from that article was interesting as well, given the culture’s obsession with “bullying”, which is a nebulous term that can mean actual bullying, or mere disagreement.

The study also may indicate that school “anti-bullying” programs typically created by LGBT activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign may help accelerate children identifying as transgender by pushing peers and authority figures to profusely express their support.

Coming out as transgender means instant fame and popularity, because you’re a victim, and everyone has to be nice to you… or else:

“Great increase in popularity among the student body at large. Being trans is a gold star in the eyes of other teens,” wrote one parent on the study response form. Another wrote, “not so much ‘popularity’ increasing as ‘status’ … also she became untouchable in terms of bullying in school as teachers who ignored homophobic bullying …are now all at pains to be hot on the heels of any trans bullying.”

People on the left are always faking hate crimes against themselves or making false rape accusations. Being a victim gets them attention and makes people treat them nicely.

The response from LGBT activists to this study was to claim that it was full of errors, so it was pulled and submitted to rigorous review. You won’t be surprised to find that the second review process found no major errors in the paper.

News

Where does Pete Buttigieg stand on infanticide and religious liberty?

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Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg
Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and his partner

I saw a short video from the Iowa caucuses recently, in which a female Democrat voted for Pete Buttigieg, then was shocked to learn that Pete is a gay man in a “marriage” relationship with another man. This woman knew enough about the Bible to accurately state that God’s design for marriage is for one man and one woman. So she had concerns about what she had just done.

Here’s the video:

This is why we should urge voters to not pick their political candidates based on looks. Maybe put down the romance novels and the unicorn mug, and turn off the “your best life now” sermon long enough to do a policy assessment on the candidates, before you vote?

Anyway, let’s learn a bit about Pete Buttigieg, since he seems to be a favorite of Bible-believing Christian women, apparently.

Here’s a story from Life News.

Yesterday on “The View,” Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said that infanticide was not a thing. He claimed that nobody really seriously believes babies are killed and infanticides across United States.

But figures from the Centers for Disease Control show hundreds of babies are born alive and left to die after they survive failed abortion attempts.

The issue is serious enough that Congress has previously passed legislation requiring babies to receive medical care if they survive an abortion and Congress is currently considering legislation to hold doctors accountable for failing to provide that appropriate medical care.

During questioning, Meghan McCain asked Buttigieg about comments from Virginia Governor Ralph Northam defending infanticide and whether he would support any limits on abortions up to birth — even opposing partial-birth abortions.

“My point is that it shouldn’t be up to a government official to draw the line, it should be up to the woman who is confronted with the choice,” Buttigieg said defending abortions up to birth and infanticide.

I’m sure that the Christian Democrat lady would be surprised that Mayor Pete also supports infanticide. He looks so clean cut and handsome, and women can tell everything about a man’s character just by looking at him, am I right?

Next article is from Daily Wire:

Buttigieg has unabashedly embraced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Equality Act legislation that would strike a massive blow to our nation’s religious institutions. Specifically, the Equality Act would create a federally protected status for gender identity, defined as the “gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.”

Any faith-based establishment — including churches, schools, and hospitals — with theological beliefs in conflict with this definition would likely face expensive legal battles, lawsuits, and public scrutiny. Case in point: A Catholic hospital was sued last year by the ACLU because it would not perform a risky sex-change surgery on a 16-year-old girl.

Unfortunately, the Equality Act would coerce health care and mental health professionals into providing dangerous gender-transition treatments for young children and adolescents, counter to their medical advice — and for many, against their religious beliefs.

Just as alarming, Buttigieg has imposed litmus tests based on what he deems theologically acceptable. We witnessed this first-hand when the former South Bend, Indiana mayor attacked Second Lady Karen Pence for teaching at a private school that adheres to her Judeo-Christian belief about marriage. In response, Buttigieg ridiculed the Pences and likened their religious views to that of “Pharisees.”

As a private institution, like thousands of such private schools that have long existed in our country, the school where Mrs. Pence teaches has the right to govern its school according to its own religious beliefs. Islamic schools, Buddhist schools, and Jewish schools are also free to do so under the United States Constitution.

As an individual running for our nation’s highest office, Pete Buttigieg is signaling how a Buttigieg administration would handle religious liberty. And his signals should frighten many.

I posted this story with the video, because I’ve been polling Christian women to find out how they keep themselves informed about politics. Although they all are anxious to vote, there doesn’t seem to be much work being done to read anything about the candidates, their achievements, their policies, etc. And it’s not just reading about the candidates, it’s reading about economics, foreign policy, etc. in general. It’s almost like they have a tremendous confidence in their intuition, such that they can tell everything about a person just by looking at that person’s appearance.

This reminds me of a girl I used to work with who was married to a libertarian. She came up to me one day with a set of photographs and asked me to guess which ones were serial killers. I thought it was stupid to do that, because “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face” as Shakespeare says. Well, she told me proudly how she had gotten them all right, because of her amazing skill at knowing all about people from their appearance. I remember talking to her about her libertarian husband, and whether she knew what libertarians believed about social issues like marriage and abortion, etc. She had no concern at all about it. Later on, she left the company, and wrote to me about her divorce.

It’s so strange to me that we are living in a world where character matters less than appearance. We all feel entitled to vote based on almost no real knowledge, just on our gut feelings. So you have Bible-believing people voting for candidates who disagree with the Bible from start to finish, who are in lifestyles that repudiate the words of Jesus about what marriage is, and who support legislation that would effectively end the practice of Christianity that is authentic to what the Bible teaches.

And then people tell me that I need to get married, and lower my standards because I’m “asking for too much”. Wow. I don’t think that women putting in a little work to find out what the candidates for PRESIDENT believe and have achieved is asking for too much.