The Bible is much stranger than people allow. That’s where theology can go wrong—by trying to make it less strange than it is.
I have been exploring the topic of “hell” in a series of blog posts, explaining the Biblical reasons that lead me to accept eternal conscious torment (ECT) over and against annihilationism and universalism.
In my discussions with annihilationists and universalists, I have found they tend to have a “smoothed out” view of eschatology. Most are not Dispensational. They find it too complicated. But rejecting Dispensationalism leads to a two-dimensional view of the afterlife.
For example, many (not all) universalists and annihilationists reject the idea that there is an intermediate state. And if they admit its existence, they reject the idea of different “places” within it.
As I understand the Bible, heaven and hell are not the only two “places” in the afterlife. The underworld has many different compartments. For example, according to 2 Peter, where did the fallen angels go?
For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment (2 Pet 2:4, HCSB).
Tartarus.
Wait…Tartarus?
What’s that? Where is that?
Many of your translations will say hell instead of Tartarus. That’s misleading. I think it’s an example of letting theology determine the translation. The Greek refers to Tartarus. It is the only mention of Tartarus in the Bible, but it’s not the only mention in Greek literature. On the contrary, Tartarus was well known as a place of special punishment for the very worst sinners.
For example, I’m sure you are familiar with Homer, the great Greek poet. He wrote two works, the Odyssey and the Illiad. Besides the Bible, no other works had a comparable influence on ancient Western culture. Every literate Greek and Roman would have been familiar with these books.
There is a line from the Illiad where Zeus addresses the gods and issues them a warning. He speaks about a realm as far below Hades as Hades is below the earth. The place is called Tartarus:
“I shall take and hurl him into murky Tartarus, far, far away, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth, the gates whereof are of iron and the threshold of bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth: then shall ye know how far the mightiest am I of all gods” (Illiad 8.17).
In the Illiad, Tartarus and Hades are two different places. And of the two, Tartarus is worse—a deeper, darker, more threatening realm, meant for the punishment of Zeus’ enemies.
This sheds light on 2 Pet 2:4. Notice who inhabits Tartarus, according to Peter:
For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment (2 Pet 2:4 HCSB).
Tartarus is not a place for men, but for the angels who rebelled against God. Their crime was especially heinous, because they should have known better, having been in God’s own presence. So they were thrown down into Tartarus, chained, and kept in darkness until the final judgment.
Jude also referred to this place:
And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day (Jude 1:6).
Do you notice how similar this is to Peter’s description? Is there any doubt Jude is referring to the same place—Tartarus? Here again, the angels left their domain and were cast down and kept in another. Notice the “eternal bonds” which is surely the chains that Peter referred to. See how they are confined to darkness and that it lasts until the day of judgment?
As I understand it, Tartarus is a separate compartment in the underworld—the special abode of fallen angels (see Clarence Larkin, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, pp. 21-22, 280; R. B. Thieme, The Angelic Conflict, pp. 55-56).
How does 2 Pet 2:4 and Jude 1:6 verses support ECT over the other options? Ask yourself—which option best explains the reality of Tartarus?
Insofar as many versions of annihilationism and universalism deny there is an intermediate state, deny consciousness without a physical body, and deny any kind of existence in an underworld, Tartarus is proof positive against them.
Moreover, I believe that Tartarus is consistent with ECT because it shows that prolonged conscious torment in an afterlife is part of God’s righteous judgment. These angels have been confined (“chained”) in darkness for thousands of years and may remain for at least a thousand more (i.e., until after the Millennium) until they are cast into the Lake of Fire.
Prolonged conscious torment is what you would expect if ECT were true; not if annihilationism or universalism were true. The existence of Tartarus may be unusual and unexpected. But Biblical truth can be stranger than fiction.
Ken Tamashiro
Thank You, Shawn
For the Great Explanation and Powerful Illustration.
Those Fallen Angels must have done some evil things to be bound like that, to be awaiting that kind of Judgement, while the rest of them are running around free.
Gerry T. Neal
In addition to Peter’s use of the actual word Tartarus and Jude’s reference to the angels kept in eternal bonds under darkness, I would suggest that the abyss or “bottomless pit” that features in Revelation is also best understood as referring to this place. It is described as a place where demons (fallen angels) are imprisoned and in Revelation 20 where Satan will be chained, and the imagery of a “bottomless pit” matches the classical image of Tartarus.
Curtis Smale
I agree. I think a lot of people do ~not~ find the Bible endlessly fascinating because they do not see the nuances and complexities of real situations, places, and people in the Bible. We get our view of what the Bible presents from our preconceived theology, instead of letting the Bible speak. Great post, Shawn.
Rod Norville
Shawn, I have been following this series but not necessarily agreeing with some of your arguments and conclusions. For this one I felt compelled to to speak. I hold a ThM from DTS (2010) and have been a pretrib premillennial dispensationalist for over sixty years. I believe the Bible predicts ultimate restoration of all creation as well as God’s judgement on all appropriate to their deeds. I am neither annihilationist nor universalist as you seem to be defining or using those terms. But I fail to follow your logic or conclusion when you equate prolonged confinement pending judgment for spirit beings (the angels who are in their original created state) with prolonged conscious torment of deceased humans who are not spirit beings but are in an intermediate state pending resurrection. Perhaps you are referring to Luke 16:23, to the relative torment of the rich man in Hades (not Tarturus) as he observes Lazarus in the “bosom of Abraham” (which itself appears to be a reference to the paradise section of the OT Sheol). Again, this may be prolonged, but it is certainly not eternal since Hades itself will be emptied prior to the Great White Throne Judgment at which it and Death will be subjected to the Lake of Fire judgment. It doesn’t appear to follow that prolonged can be equated with eternal even in the English meaning of the word. And that is without getting into the problem with the qualitative as opposed to the chronological meanings of the Greek words being translated into the English word “eternal”. Plus, those Greek words can also mean a prolonged period of time, which I am not disagreeing with. I simply am saying that evidence of prolonged conscious torment does not support eternal conscious torment.
Further, the Lake of Fire appears symbolic of God’s special judgment prepared for Satan and his angels, and which will be applied to certain resurrected embodied humans at the Great White Throne. That it is a symbolic term for God’s judgment seems to be implied not only by its presence in an apocalyptic writing but by the image of personified death and the entire realm of the dead (Hades) being subjected to such judgment. I concur that some will experience prolonged judgment. But the essence of God’s judgment seen throughout scripture seems to consist of multiple parts: Vengeance for the wrongs committed by those persons and peoples subject to such judgment, then purification and cleansing, followed by some level of restoration (see, e.g., the restoration of Sodom in Ezekiel 16). As with Sodom, in some cases there will continue to be perpetual shame rather than honor. But all will rise, some to honor and some to shame (Dan 12:2).
I do not believe in eternal conscious torment as Augustine proposed it. That his was a minority view in the Early Church is evidenced by his statement that “some–indeed very many–yield to merely human feelings and deplore the notion of the eternal punishment of the damned and their interminable and perpetual misery.” (Enchiridion, sec. 112). By the time of that writing (420) he had also long since forsaken his original premillennial views.
SavedMan
Shawn, thank you for writing this article. You are right about Tartarus, it is all of that and worse.
Gerry and Ken, thank you for your great comments, too.
I am convinced from years of Bible reading and studying alot of subjects that this is correct. Those Pre flood fallen angels are bound in Tartarus and that is the Bottomless Pit, the Abyss, and they will be released to wreak havoc against the lost anti-christ people on earth during the Tribulation.
I am also glad you are defending the Biblical truth of eternal conscious torment.
Why are unsaved people often times so angry when we saved people tell them the straight forward truth about the reality of Hell?
Kent
If I’m not mistaken, Shawn, the Greeks viewed Tartarus as where the Titans, the enemies of the gods of Olympus, were held. Hades, in Greek mythology, was the more neutral dwelling place of the dead, where those who really offended the gods got sent to Tartarus. The New Testament seems to borrow the terms, using Hades to describe the intermediate state for dead human beings, and Tartarus as the prison some of the fallen angels are held in until the final judgment. Does that line up with what you have found?
Jeff AYers
The actual strange (i.e. shocking) statement you made was: “This sheds light on 2 Pet 2:4.” with the antecedent for “this” referring to the Illiad’s teaching on tartarus and hades; where greek mythology is now “shedding light” on our exegesis of scripture!
If you believe that the devils (i.e. demons in modern translations) who possessed so many people during the Gospel and Acts period, are actually the fallen angels “who kept not their first estate”, then you must understand that whatever chains under darkness (and chains of darkness- the only biblical definition of tartarus) allowed these fallen angels to possess humans on the surface of the earth.
And how any of this teaching on Tartarus ties in with or proves “eternal conscious torment [ECT]” is specious reasoning at best.
I too, have been studying this issue for the last decade, and still hold to the ECT position. ( I am an IFB) However, I have come to the conclusion that ECT is not explicitly taught in the scriptures. And the only reason I have not left the ECT position is because I am not sure whether annihilation-ism or universal-ism is the more biblical position.
John W Reed
thanks for writing about this important subject. Universalism and the annihilationism nonsense are simply man reimagining God and reforming Him to their own concepts and making Him more appealing to this present culture. ECT is clearly seen in Scripture. Glad to see a Grace ministry proclaiming the truth.