Visions of Hell

Visions of Hell

JV [A.A. Milne’s father] believed in a God of love. At one of the schools where he taught early on in his career, the headmaster one Sunday preached a fire-and-brimstone sermon to the boys, warning them that they were destined for an eternity in Hell unless they pulled up their socks and concentrated in class. JV was given permission to preach to the boys the following Sunday and told them there was no such place as Hell and no such thing as Everlasting Fire, but encouraged them to work all the same because work was worthwhile and working hard now meant you wouldn’t have to work so hard later. After delivering his sermon, he offered the headmaster his resignation, but the headmaster wouldn’t have it. JV was too good a teacher to lose. (Giles Brandeth)

“What I am going to say is not a dogma of faith but my own personal view: I like to think of hell as empty; I hope it is,” Pope Francis

It is interesting to survey different approaches to the theology of hell.

 

The older hell fire and brimstone is still around, but more muted and nuances. Back in the 1960s (as a friend told me from experience), some Roman Catholic schools used to terrify young pupils with visions of hell if they were caught in wrongdoing. 

So here is a map of different theologians views on visions of hell.

I would comment that I think the Western view is totally wrong! And yet it is so influential in  paintings, in Dante's Inferno, and in the "Hell Fire" preaching which even permeates some strands of Protestantism. 

Traditional Western View: Eternal Conscious Torment

Whenever I was being raised, Hell was often taught. Hellfire and Brimstone sermons, they used to call them. I used to get scared out of my.......sin.....because I didn’t want to go to hell! I have told you before that I used to pray that we could be in a car crash on the way home after a really good altar call so I could be sure I would get to Heaven. (Robert Cox)

Historically dominant in Western Christianity, this view holds that Hell is a place of eternal, conscious punishment for the unredeemed. Rooted in texts like Matthew 25:46 (“eternal punishment”) and Revelation 14:11 (“the smoke of their torment goes up forever”), it emphasizes divine justice and retribution. 

Augustine and Aquinas shaped this doctrine, stressing the irrevocability of judgment and the moral seriousness of sin. This view is largely absent in Eastern Orthodoxy, which leans toward therapeutic and mystical interpretations of postmortem judgment.

The classic Western tradition-shaped by Augustine, Aquinas, and later Protestant scholastics-takes the “fiery” texts at near‑face value. Passages like Revelation 20:14–15 (“lake of fire”), Matthew 25:41 (“eternal fire prepared for the devil”), and Matthew 8:12 (“outer darkness… wailing and gnashing of teeth”) are read as descriptions of objective, external, divinely imposed punishment. 

Fire is not merely metaphorical but signifies real torment; “cast out” indicates irreversible exclusion; “gnashing of teeth” expresses conscious anguish. This view fits squarely within the Western legal‑forensic imagination: Hell is the just penalty for sin, enacted by God in response to moral rebellion.

The classic Western doctrine-Augustine, Aquinas, the Reformers-stands alone as the full penal model. Here, Hell is God’s active punishment of sin. The fiery imagery (Revelation 20, Matthew 25, Mark 9) is taken as describing a divinely imposed penalty proportionate to moral rebellion. “Wailing and gnashing of teeth” is the anguish of receiving just retribution; “cast out” is God’s judicial exclusion; the “lake of fire” is the arena of divine wrath. 

This is the only view in your set that treats Hell as a sentence rather than a state, and the only one that sees the fire as God’s direct act of justice rather than the soul’s experience of God or the consequences of its own choices.

Glen Scrivener: Christocentric Reframing

Scrivener, an evangelist and Anglican minister, reframes Hell through a relational and Christ-centered lens. He emphasizes that Hell is not merely a place but a trajectory-“the outer darkness” of rejecting God’s love. Drawing on Romans 1 and John 3:19–20, Scrivener sees Hell as the culmination of human autonomy, where people “choose” separation from God. He resists speculative geography and instead focuses on the relational rupture. His approach resonates with Eastern emphases on freedom and love, though his evangelical roots keep him tethered to Western soteriology.

Scrivener affirms the biblical imagery but reframes it relationally. He takes seriously texts like Romans 1 (God “giving them over”), John 3:19–20 (people “loving darkness”), and Jesus’ warnings about “outer darkness” and “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” For him, these images describe the end‑point of a chosen trajectory: fire is the consuming consequence of rejecting divine love; “cast out” is the natural result of refusing communion; “gnashing of teeth” is the bitterness of entrenched self‑will. He does not deny divine judgment, but he interprets the fiery imagery through the lens of human autonomy and Christ’s relational invitation. This places him between traditions: Western in seriousness about judgment, Eastern in seeing Hell as the soul’s posture toward God.

Scrivener takes the warnings seriously and retains the gravity of divine judgement, but he reframes the mechanism. He does not present Hell as God inflicting pain; instead, he emphasises God “giving people over” (Romans 1). The fiery imagery is real, but it describes the relational consequences of rejecting Christ. Scrivener is still more Western than Eastern in tone-he keeps the seriousness of judgement and the finality of exclusion-but he avoids the idea of God actively tormenting. He is the closest of the modern thinkers to the penal model, but still significantly softened.

Tom Wright (N.T. Wright): Eschatological Renewal

“Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire…decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn’t believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn’t believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.” (N.T. Wright)

Wright critiques the caricature of Hell as a cosmic torture chamber. He emphasizes the biblical narrative of new creation, arguing that Hell represents exclusion from God’s renewed world. Drawing on passages like Revelation 21–22 and Romans 8, Wright sees judgment as restorative and covenantal. He rejects universalism but also resists eternal torment, suggesting that those who persistently reject God may “cease to exist” (annihilationism). His view blends Western biblical scholarship with Eastern themes of cosmic renewal and divine mercy

Wright reads the fiery texts within the biblical story of new creation. Revelation’s “lake of fire” becomes the symbolic end of all anti‑creation forces; “wailing and gnashing of teeth” marks the tragic collapse of human identity when it refuses God’s kingdom. He draws on passages like Matthew 10:28 (“destroy both soul and body in Gehenna”) and Romans 8 (creation’s renewal) to argue that Hell is the destiny of those who persistently refuse the life of the age to come. Fire is not torture but un‑making. Wright comes closest to annihilationism: the imagery of burning signifies the final dissolution of what refuses God. This aligns partly with Eastern cosmic themes but remains Western in its historical‑critical method.

Wright rejects the penal model outright. For him, Hell is what happens when a human being becomes less and less truly human. The fiery imagery is symbolic of un‑making-the dissolution of identity when it refuses God’s new creation. Matthew 10:28 (“destroy both soul and body in Gehenna”) is central: destruction, not torture. Wright’s God does not punish; God renews creation, and those who refuse that renewal simply cannot participate. This is not penal but ontological. Fire is the collapse of what cannot survive the age to come.

C.S. Lewis: Psychological and Volitional Hell

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”  C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Lewis, especially in The Great Divorce and The Problem of Pain, portrays Hell as self-imposed exile. He argues from texts like Luke 16 (the rich man and Lazarus) and Romans 1 that Hell is the natural outcome of a soul turned inward. “The doors of Hell are locked from the inside,” he famously wrote. 

Lewis’s Hell is less about divine punishment and more about the soul’s refusal to be healed. This aligns with Eastern Orthodox views of Hell as a state of being rather than a place, though Lewis remains within Western metaphysical frameworks.

Lewis treats the fiery imagery as profoundly true but not literal. In The Great Divorce and The Problem of Pain, he interprets “fire” as the burning exposure of reality; “outer darkness” as the shrinking of the soul; “gnashing of teeth” as the self‑torment of pride. He draws on Luke 16 (the rich man’s torment), Romans 1, and Jesus’ parables to argue that Hell is the soul’s refusal to be healed. 

Fire is the pain of resisting joy; being “cast out” is self‑exile; “gnashing of teeth” is the clenched jaw of refusal. Lewis is Western in imagination but deeply Eastern in seeing Hell as the soul’s experience of God’s love when it rejects transformation.

John V. Taylor: Missional and Relational Judgment

Taylor, in The Go-Between God and other writings, rarely systematizes Hell but critiques Western dualisms. He emphasizes the Spirit’s presence in all human experience and sees judgment as the unveiling of truth. 

Taylor rarely systematizes Hell, but when he touches on judgment, he reads the fiery texts through the lens of the Spirit’s work of unveiling. Drawing on John 16:8–11 (the Spirit “convicts the world”) and 2 Corinthians 3–5 (the unveiling of truth), he sees fire as the purifying, exposing presence of God. “Cast out” becomes the experience of resisting communion; “wailing and gnashing of teeth” the agony of truth resisted. 

Taylor’s approach is the least punitive: fire is illumination, not retribution. This aligns strongly with Eastern patristic thought-especially St. Isaac the Syrian-where divine fire is the same love experienced differently by the receptive and the resistant.

Taylor is the least penal of all. For him, judgement is the Spirit’s unveiling of truth. Fire is illumination; “cast out” is the experience of resisting communion; “gnashing of teeth” is the agony of truth confronted. There is no sense of God inflicting pain. Taylor’s view is deeply Eastern: Hell is the soul’s experience of divine love when it refuses transformation.

Eastern Orthodox View: Hell as Divine Encounter

St. Isaac the Syrian: “I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the scourge of love. ... It is utterly senseless to believe that the tormentors in hell are greater than the love of Christ” (Ascetical Homilies).

Love will enrobe everything with its sacred Fire which will flow like a river from the throne of God and will irrigate paradise. But this same river of Love — for those who have hate in their hearts — will suffocate and burn. (Alexandre Kalomiros )

In Eastern Orthodoxy, Hell is not primarily a place of external punishment but a state of being in relation to God’s unmediated presence. Drawing from passages like 1 Corinthians 3:13–15 and Hebrews 12:29 (“our God is a consuming fire”), Eastern theologians argue that the same divine light that brings joy to the righteous causes torment to those who reject love. 

Hell is thus the experience of God’s love by those who refuse it-a painful exposure rather than imposed suffering. This view is deeply rooted in patristic sources like St. Isaac the Syrian and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who emphasize healing, purification, and the mystery of divine mercy.

The Eastern tradition rejects the penal model entirely. The Eastern tradition reads the fiery texts through the lens of divine presence rather than divine punishment. Passages like Hebrews 12:29 (“our God is a consuming fire”) and 1 Corinthians 3:13–15 (works tested by fire) are central. 

Fire is God’s unmediated love; the righteous experience it as warmth and light, the resistant as burning. “Cast out” refers to the soul’s inability to bear the divine presence; “gnashing of teeth” is the pain of unhealed passions exposed by truth. Revelation’s “lake of fire” is the final unveiling of God’s glory, not a torture chamber. This view is mystical, therapeutic, and relational-far from the Western penal model.