What Happens After Death? NT Wright on Heaven, Hell, and Salvation

In the modern Western World and in the church, we were all taught as children, "Yeah, there's these two destinations, and this is the thing that matters in Christianity: you're going to heaven or you're going to hell." And I want to say the New Testament really doesn't see it like that. The real toing and froing in the Bible is between heaven and earth, not between heaven and hell.

In the Western medieval Church, there was a massive development of hell. And you see this not only in Michelangelo but in Dante, of course, Dante's Inferno. Part of the logic of being an image bearer, because that's what you're made to be, is that if you decide to worship that which is not God, your image bearing of the true God will corrupt and fracture, distort, and eventually decay entirely. And so, um, "be careful what you wish for" kind of thing. An easy universalism might not be as easy as we imagine.

The Ask NT Wright Anything podcast. Tricky one today. Um, hell and heaven is what we're talking about, and lots of people asking questions specifically about hell. There seems to be weighing on many people's minds. Um, that I think it's because it's not just an abstract issue for many people. It feels like it comes directly into their world when they know people who are not Christians who seem to have rejected faith, and inevitably provokes lots of questions for them about what happens next. So let's, let's, we'll come to some of those more personal questions in a moment, but let's, let's sort of sketch out your overall thinking on this, this concept of hell.

A few questions came in. Um, Samuel in India asks, "What is hell? Is the Lake of Fire a metaphor?" Bob in Orange County says, "The traditional view of salvation says that if someone is not a follower of Jesus, they'll spend eternity in hell. What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree? Is there another option?" So similar sorts of questions, essentially. Is that what we're supposed to mean by hell? A lake of fire? Eternal, yeah, yeah, damnation, whatever. Yes.

Um, one needs to go back and deconstruct the way in which the modern Western picture has come about. And I've often told the story of how, 10 years or so ago, I was at a big service in Rome, um, sitting next to a Greek Orthodox archimandrite. And we were in the Sistine Chapel. And before the procession and all the music started, we were looking around. And he looked at one wall and the other wall. There's pictures of Moses over here, pictures of Jesus over here. He said, "This, I understand. This, I understand." And then he pointed at the great picture of Christ in Majesty, sending some people downstairs and bringing other people upstairs. And he said, "That, I don't understand. That's not how we do eschatology in Greece." Now, one of those frustrating moments, because then the music started and the procession came in, and I never got to say, "Okay, so will you explain to me how you do?"

But I think we need to remind ourselves that in the Western medieval Church, there was a massive development of hell. And you see this not only in Michelangelo but in Dante, of course, Dante's Inferno, um, where great detailed tour of hell. And what is happening there is a retrieval in some parts of the Church of bits of ancient paganism. And I was reading, for quite another reason, one of Plato's dialogues recently, and quite clear that Plato was happy to play along with the idea that those who embraced wisdom or truth or or whatever, their souls would go upwards into a place of bliss, and those who didn't would miss out, and their souls would go to a place of torment. And that is not a, a Christian or a Jewish idea. It's an ancient pagan idea. The Christians, uh, are not thinking about where souls are going because, basically, the idea of a soul, and that's the real thing that matters, that's Platonic, that's not Christian. Though heavens, there are huge debates still rumbling along, and many systematic theologians today say, "Oh, no, no, we've got to put place turn Christianity together." I'm saying, "Be very careful, because in my experience, Plato usually wins when you do that." But it isn't just Plato, lots of others as well. So, uh, when we read, depending on which translation of the Bible you've got, the word "hell," we have to be very careful. If that immediately conjures up those medieval visions, then distance yourself from that.

This is, I mean, may I just make a general point here? Because it comes up in my teaching a lot, and did just in a class yesterday. Um, that where people only speak one language, characteristically English and Americans, um, uh, then it's very easy for them to imagine that this word is a counter which refers to one clear object. So that whenever we meet that word, that's what it means. And as a Bible translator, I want to say, with lots and lots and lots of words, words are very slippery things. And between language, anyone who grows up in Central Europe speaking four or five languages knows perfectly well that words aren't exactly the same. And likewise, that they pick up different layers of meaning from what the cultures they've been in.

So in the modern Western World and in the church, we were all taught as children, yeah, there's these two destinations, and this is the thing that matters in Christianity: you're going to heaven or you're going to hell. And I want to say the New Testament really doesn't see it like that. Um, and whether you go with the Greek Orthodox and say, "We've got to do it differently." It's quite clear in the New Testament, we're talking about new creation, new heavens and new earth. And the real toing and froing in the Bible is between heaven and earth, not between heaven and hell. And Paul says in Ephesians 1, that God's design is to sum up in Christ all things in heaven and on earth. And that summing up, that new creation, is the reality.

One of the best writers who grappled with this, um, was one of C.S. Lewis's early works, *The Great Divorce*, where he has, okay, this sharp opposition between hell and heaven. But he, for him, hell is this thin, insubstantial place which consists almost entirely of denial. It's denial of goodness, denial of the goodness of creation, denial of the goodness of oneself. So that all that is left is a grumble and a moan, and something which is as near to nothingness as it could be, in a sense, because it's all very inwardly focused. In that sort of, it's inwardly focused, but it's rejecting God the Creator, and therefore rejecting the wonderful new creation, which is more real than the present world. And Lewis manages in that book to convey this idea of a heaven which is actually a new earth, where every blade of grass is so strong that if you walk on it barefoot, it'll go straight through you, etc. And that's one way of looking at it, different kinds of reality, in other words.

Let's get away from the idea that these are equal and opposite destinations. And particularly, let's get away from the idea, um, which sadly was common coin in much medieval Christianity, that one of the delights of heaven was contemplating the tortures of the damned. And, and that's, that's there in some ordinary Christian spirituality through to the 19th century. And I think the 20th century has rather ruled that out. Of course, if and when God does justice and mercy for all the earth, we will all celebrate that. And if that means God saying "affirm no" to anyone and anything that has utterly corrupted themselves and everybody else as best they can, then we should rejoice that God, and God's way, and God's justice have won the day. But we should grieve over the fact that some who are made in God's image have actually said, "I don't want to reflect the Creator God into the world. I want to do my own thing," which is, it is about nothingness, it's about denial, it's about saying "no" rather than saying "yes." Is, is that helpful?

Helpful. It's a very good starting point. And to, to go on from there, it might be helpful if, if you have any thoughts on some of the predominant different ideas that have been put out by theologians and thinkers about hell. So Jennifer in Louisville, Kentucky says, "What do you believe the Bible teaches about hell? For instance, there's eternal conscious torment, annihilationism, or indeed Christian universalism or ultimate reconciliation?" And Danny in Portland has a similar question asking, "Is there a strong case for annihilationism in the Bible, or is eternal conscious torment the only option? And also, why doesn't the Hebrew Bible make a stronger case for hell?" Seems important, maybe to lay it out clearly. Um, are humans eternal, even if they don't accept eternal life in Jesus? So there's a kind of a whole variety of questions in there. But let's, let's start with some of the terminology first. Are you familiar with the idea of annihilationism?

Oh, yeah. So what do you understand that to be?

Um, I would understand when people talk about annihilation, that this is about saying that those who do not choose to follow Jesus in this life, and do not have themselves transformed by his spirit in this life, will find that after this life, they don't have an immortal soul which is going on and on and on. Because immortality, according to First Timothy, is something that only God has, and that remains God's gift. And so there's a case to be made on that basis. And this is basically a denial of Platonism, a denial of the idea that we all have a soul which pre-existed our bodies and which will post-exist our, our death. Um, it's a way of saying, "No, that's a Greek Hellenistic philosophical idea, it's not a biblical idea." Of course, and this is another of those linguistic slippages. You find the word "soul" quite frequently, but that translates in the New Testament, the Greek word *psyche*, as in psyche or psychedelic or whatever. Um, but the Greek term *psyche*, as spoken by a first-century Jew, would be translating the Hebrew word *nephesh*, which actually means the whole person, more what we would call a person than a soul as a disembodied thing. So the, these are typical of the mels that we get into.

So back to the eternal conscious torment or the, um, anihil... or but then, is the Lake of Fire a metaphor?

Well, so much of the biblical language is a, is a web of not entirely consistent metaphors. They don't have to be consistent. Metaphors don't need to be. You can mix them, and it's a way of saying, "It's something like that," and "It's something like that." But the fact that there's these different pictures alerts us to the fact that these are not sort of chemical labels on the bottle, this is what's in this.

So back to annihilation. I think my view, some have mistaken my view for annihilation. The way that I would put it is this. I think I say this briefly in *Surprised by Hope*, but, um, let me spell it out. That we are made in God's image. And I take that to mean that we are designed to stand at the dangerous interface between heaven and earth, reflecting God into the world and reflecting the praises of the world back to God. It's one of the reasons Christian worship matters so much, as we're summing up the praises of creation and articulating them. But we're designed to be two-way mirrors like that, reflecting in both directions. And we are also called, as Christians, to stand at the dangerous interface between present and future. That God's new world has broken in in Jesus and by the Spirit, and we are called to be part of that, even while our bodies and so much about us is still dirty and dusty with the muck of this world, and will one day decay and die. Um, so we're called to be in-between people. And that's dangerous and difficult. So dangerous and difficult that often people say, "I don't want to do that. I don't want to be a God-reflector. I don't want to be part of God's future in the present. I'll just live in the present the way it is." And the dangerous thing is that that is a vote to say, "I really don't want to be an image bearer." But part of the logic of being an image bearer, because that's what you're made to be, is that if you decide to worship that which is not God, your image bearing of the true God will corrupt and fracture, distort, and eventually decay entirely. So that, it seems to me, is possible to hold in one's mind a category which would be of a creature that once was a genuine God-reflector, but is now no longer. And again, back to C.S. Lewis in the Narnia stories, um, there are some of the talking beasts who choose not to follow Aslan, and they remain as animals, but they're no longer talking animals. And I think Lewis is saying, it's another metaphor, there is something about being a creature that once was and now isn't. And there's something about that way of telling the story, which is to say, I'm not, I'm not a universalist. The warnings about final loss in the New Testament are so clear that I don't think these are just designed to scare people, etc. I think these are real. That is the prospect of final loss. And Paul, Paul himself says, "I pommel my body and subdue it, lest having preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." And if even Paul could say that about himself.

So coming back to the labels, because people often, it's helpful. Let's, let's put universalism to one side for the moment. But eternal conscious torment, annihilationism, it strikes me from what you said that there's, there's things you're taking possibly from both, but you're not committed to either. So there's a sense in which could be an eternal nature to this constant sort of becoming of nothing, this, this, if you like, rejection ongoing. I mean, part, again, part of our difficulty with the word "eternal" is that we hear it in Platonic, a-temporal. And I think time matters, actually. But, but then equally, annihilationism, the idea, you know, which to put it very bluntly, is someone ceases to exist if they, if they don't choose to be with Christ. Then, um, that, in a sense, it sounds like what you're describing there is, is the loss of anything significant in terms of what it means to be human and so on. And, and of course, this is difficult because, um, the older you get, the more you realize we're actually talking about people that I know and love, of course. Um, and if that isn't so for us, then we've got a very small circle of friends, as it were. Um, and so it can never be said in an arrogant way, or as we said in a previous podcast, as though we were playing God and we can decide who's in, who's out. Um, God has got many, many surprises.

But I do think that there is the possibility and the reality that those who say, "Not for me, thank you," in whatever way, not necessarily an explicit rejection of an explicit message, but who see that possibility of opening themselves to the demanding love of God and who say, "No, not for me." That for them, there would be a state of having once been, in some strong sense, a genuine human, and now being that no longer. Some people find that offensive. Seems that's, we have to say something in the middle there, without wanting to put Lewis on a par with the Bible here. He did make some, I think, very, in my view, quite quite helpful ways of understanding the idea of the gates of hell, a lot from the inside, those sorts of metaphors. When, when we won't say to God, "Thy will be done," God says, "Thy will be done." It's, what do you make of that idea that that hell, in that sense, is not something imposed upon? And I see this very vividly in Matthew chapter 18 with that parable of the unforgiving servant, who can't possibly pay the millions that his debt has run up. So the master says, "I forgive you." And then he goes out straight away and grabs somebody by the throat and says, "You owe me 10 pence. I want it right now, or you're in jail." And the master hears about it and says, "Okay, you're in jail until..." And Jesus then says, scarily, "That's what my heavenly Father will do to you if you don't forgive your brother from your heart." Um, and people have said, "Oh, Jesus can't possibly have said that." But I think the point is this, that that the bit of us, bit is a metaphor, but you know what I mean, the bit of us which opens the door to forgive is the bit of us which opens the door to forgiveness. If we shut that door, then we shut that door. Um, and I think that's getting at the same point that Lewis is making there. Um, something psychological, personal going on there. As, as you said, this, this does have have a personal dimension to it. There are people we know and love. Um, and, and this idea that we won't share, you know, again, we're using picture language, but but eternity with them, that weighs heavily on many people.

Now, I've had two people, interestingly, both in Australia, ask similar questions. I don't know if they're related. Um, and submitted these separately. But, firstly, Rusty in Australia says, "How can there be no tears in heaven if there are some members of our family that we dearly love who perish due to their own choice to reject God?" And follows that up to say, in the context of one of your past writings, *Rethinking the Tradition*, to quote, "If God is indeed to put the world to rights, and if he has indeed given his human creatures the freedom we sense ourselves to have, including the freedom to reject his will and his way, the eventual judgment will involve the loss of those who have exercised that freedom to their own ultimate cost." And Will on Australia asks a very similar question, saying, "How would you advise someone to deal with the deep pain of eternal damnation of a deceased loved one who was full of kindness for their family and community, but could never embrace Christianity because they didn't see it providing strong enough evidence for them to adhere to it with any kind of honesty, and found they, indeed, found it led to deeply inhuman ways of living?"

Well, as I said before, and that's a great question. As I said before, the, the way in which many people have been totally put off by what they have seen in the church is an utter scandal. And as one looks back through church history, of course, there have been many periods of history when you look at what the church had become, and it was thoroughly corrupt and politicized. As you know, it is a miracle that the church is still there, granted all the things that have gone on. But of course, the church has always really been at its heart the very ordinary men and women who've said their prayers and loved their neighbors. Um, and, uh, if people haven't seen that, then that is a real shame and reflects extremely badly on the Christians who they have seen. So that's back to, God knows that person's heart. And the way the question was asked was in such a way as to, "What a fine person, what a fine example of Christianity." And the reason they rejected explicit faith was understandable. And I want to say, God knows that person's heart. I don't, nor does the person who's asking the question. And God will do the right thing. And I think that sense of utter trust in God, which also comes through then to the first of those questions, um, that ultimately, uh, it's very interesting in the New Testament, we come to the idea of death and a funeral and so on, wanting to be told that we will be reunited with those whom we've loved and lost. And I think part of the renunciation involved in the gospel, which is really hard, is to say, God demands our 100% allegiance. And God will give us whatever he wants us to have with that. And just as there are many people for whom, as we say, life hasn't turned out as they hoped, nevertheless, God loves them and cherishes them and will one day wipe away all the tears of disappointment and frustration, etc., from their eyes. So we just have to believe that if God is as we know him to be in Jesus, then he will, in fact, wipe away tears from our eyes. And I think the fact that God will do that, it doesn't say God will do it in the way we want, or God will give us the kind of comfort we want. There will be a layer of comfort which will be beyond what we can presently imagine. Because I, we have to face the fact that all our language about the future, as I've said often enough, is like a set of signposts pointing into a fog. Um, and we can tell the truth as best we can, but the signpost isn't a photograph of what we'll find when we go through the fog and end up there. So the difference between the signpost and the reality is really rather important.

I mean, this question from Rusty, I think reflects for me when they say, "How can there be no tears in heaven if some members of our family we dearly love perish because of their choice to reject him?" I suppose I think a lot of images, and I hear many Christians throughout Christians saying this, "I'm so looking forward to being reunited with X, Y, and Z dearly." You know, and, and in a sense, yes, for those who, who are, who are in Christ, there is that sense. But it strikes me if that's all that heaven is, a sort of reunion with friends and family, that's, it's a sub-biblical. Oh, very much so. And, and I mean, there's, there's two things going on there, and you would expect me to tease this out at this point. Curiously, the Bible isn't very interested in where people are immediately after death. If that was the name of the game, then the New Testament is very misleading, because there's only half a dozen passages which even touch on that. There's Jesus saying to the brigand, "Today you'll be with me in Paradise." But we know that three days later, according to Luke, he's back again, and he's not bringing that brigand with him. So what happened to him? Well, Paradise is the holding place, the temporary resting place before the resurrection. John 14, "In my Father's house are many dwelling places," but Jesus then says he will come back, he will return. And John makes it quite clear throughout the gospel that that what happens after death is only temporary before the eventual new creation. And Paul saying in 2 Corinthians 5, "Our desire is to be, um, away from the body and at home with the Lord." But then he says that there is coming a great judgment, and then there will be the resurrection. So that the, the temporary "at home with the Lord," like in Philippians 1, he says, "My desire is to depart and be with the Messiah." That's the two-stage of the Christian hope, which most Western Christians still stumble over. And I, you know, I've been banging on about this for a long time, and many people I know have got it, many others simply haven't, and they flick back into the default mode of the, the going to heaven thing, which is ultimately Platonism.

Yeah, just to finish up with this question by, by Rusty. Granted that we may, once we're in the new creation, look back on things with a very different perspective to how we see things now. Nonetheless, right now, that person is, is feeling a pain for those who have reject, chosen to reject, or appear to at this point, at least, have rejected that. So what, what might be your practical advice to someone who simply is just grieved for the fact that many people they know, loved ones, are not following, um, Christ?

Yeah, I mean, obviously to hold such people in prayer. And I find for myself, within my tradition, and as many, many Christians have done, that the breaking of bread, the communion, the Eucharist, call it what you will, is a moment when we can come with our hopes and fears, and we kind of lay them on the altar, and we receive back the broken bread, which is Jesus' own life. And as we, something about the empty hands which are stretched out to receive, which are saying, "I have put my hopes and desires and dreams on the altar, and there they are. And what I get back is what I get back." And there's a humility about that, which doesn't take the pain away, but kind of relocates it. It does something different. I found, as a pastor, again and again, some of the real difficulties when you wrestle with people facing real problems, to go through that discipline of saying, "Here they are, and now God gives me back what he gives me back." And in the light of that, I can go and sit with them again, and weep with them again, and pray with them again. Um, and that, that's, I don't think we should expect God to solve all our problems overnight and say, "Okay, here's the answer, so that's quite all right." But I do think one can, in prayer, entrust people to the care of God. I'm not saying that one should pray that somebody who has explicitly rejected Jesus in this life should have a second chance here after. Many people have toyed with that idea. I'm saying that one can perfectly reasonably say, "Lord, so-and-so's life is bound up with mine, and I have loved them, and I would love to believe that you love them as well. Um, please can I leave them with you?" And maybe that's a discipline of prayer which will take years in some cases. But, um, like many other things, it's a modern idea that if there is a God, he should sort out all our problems straight away. Most of the ancient Christians would never have thought like that.

Let's just turn with the last five minutes we've got to the other label that we've, we've raised earlier on, Christian universalism or ultimate reconciliation. Two similar-ish questions, uh, interestingly similar names as well. Josh in Boston, first of all, says, um, "First of all, thank you, Tom, for your incredible work. It's been so helpful in my faith. My question is, I've always assumed the Evangelical teaching I received was mostly correct, but I began reading certain ancient fathers, Gregory of Nyssa being a good example, and they seem to think that salvation is universal. Would love to hear your thoughts on that." And then we've been talking about C.S. Lewis, who of course was a great fan of George MacDonald. And Joshua in San Diego says, "I was, of course, as to your thoughts on a hopeful universalism, similar to that of George McDonald. If, as you have indeed described so beautifully, it is in God, his intention to sum up all things on heaven and on earth, and himself, and wishes to free all creation from its bondage, would this not at the very least lead you to hope in the reconciliation of all?"

Yeah, I understand that. I mean, it's interesting that Lewis himself, having made George MacDonald quite a guru, didn't go that route. And Lewis is quite clear that he is sticking with some sort of ultimate, um, both and, rather than saying all goes together into universalism. I mean, as I read the New Testament, both the Gospels and Paul, it just seems to me that universalism has to dodge some of the really tough issues. I ran into this recently, rather uncomfortably, when I reviewed David Bentley Hart's translation of the New Testament, and I was asked to review it, and so I did. And I was particularly struck with the way in which he, who is obviously a universalist, um, was twisting and turning to avoid saying what the text actually says at certain points, which do see, um, the possibility of whether you call it final loss or something. And, uh, clearly he wanted to say that, um, the idea of any sort of loss or hell is a Western invention going back to Augustine, rather than in the Bible. But it does seem to be there in the Bible, unless you really are going to distort it. So that, for me, is, is kind of an anchor. But then I do think, as we've been exploring before, we have to say that our pictures of heaven and hell as equal and opposite are simply wrong. That's not how the Bible sees it. And that it's a major issue for us to unthink the mental habits of the last two or three centuries of Western Christianity, and to think in terms of a new creation in which God will sum up all things in heaven and earth, but within which there will be no place for, as the Book of Revelation says, for people who love and make lies, for people who are opposed to the truth, for people who are implacably saying "no" to to God's will. And that's part of the dignity of being human, it seems to me, that God will say, as you said before, "Okay, having made you in my image, I, you sadly seem not to worship me, and so you are becoming progressively less and less human." Um, and it is only those who are reflecting my image who will be welcome in the final new creation. Unless you're get, there are easy ways out, like John Hick, last generation would say, that in eternity, God will have an infinite number of chances to present the gospel to such people again. To which I think the New Testament would say, the revelation of God's self in Jesus was the ultimate revelation. And if you deny that, then you've, that was the last chance. I mean, what's often implicit in any kind of universalism or hopeful universalism is the idea of post-mortem ability to, to be presented again and to be won over by the love of God and so on. So do you, do you simply say, I don't think that's there?

Well, I don't see that at all in the New Testament. Um, and, you know, I'm, I'm old-fashioned about this. I think the New Testament is actually the, the gold standard here, and the teaching of Jesus within that. And by the way, many of Jesus' warnings about the danger of loss are very specific to political and social warnings. So that in Luke 13, when he says, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish," he's talking about pilgrims being cut down by Roman swords in the temple. And Luke's gospel is very clear that the danger of a Roman invasion, with all the loss of life that that would involve, is hanging on the decision as to whether, um, the Jewish people of Jesus' day will follow his way of peace or not. And that comes to a head in Luke 19, where those warnings are very explicit. These are not warnings about frying in hell after you die. They're warnings about the devastating destruction, which of course is what happened in AD 70. So we have to be careful not instantly to translate those into, um, traditional pictures of hell. Um, so there's a lot of hermeneutical reading work to be done.

But out of all of that, um, I think there is a sort of romantic hope within modern, modern Western Christianity that that actually God is such a nice old chap that that he, he will, he will eventually say, "There, there, that's all right." Um, and I, I feel the tug of that myself. One of my friends and colleagues where I teach now says, "We should all want to be universalists, even if we then find we can't be." And there is, because we should want, as an act of love, that all these people we know and love would actually come to the fullness of life which God has for them. We, we ought to want that. We ought not to relish the thought, "Oh, so-and-so's going to hell." You, I mean, we'll, we'll close off with this, but I've often felt when the person says, "Well, I, you know, I've lived a good life and I don't think God's going to reject me when I get there." You know, the question is, well, for me, is often, well, will you want what's on offer? Because we, we're very often used to being the king of our own world, but we're being asked to enter someone else's kingdom. And that's a very different prospect to, I don't know, an eternity of playing golf and, sort of, having a nice life, which I think is the modern, very often, the conception people have, that they're being denied something that other people are being given.

Yes, though, though it's interesting in contemporary secular thought, think of Julian Barnes's novel, *History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters*, which ends with a kind of a secular heaven, which is so sort of nice and schmaltzy that after a little while, the chap sighs, "That's enough of that. Got bored of that place. Going." Go and, and so, um, "be careful what you wish for" kind of thing. An easy universalism might not be as easy as we imagined.

[Music]