Featured The foundational text for the doctrine of hell

Genesis 3:22-24

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

This text is the foundational text on the doctrine of hell. Unfortunately, it is not often discussed as part of our understanding of hell. A recent popular book on the doctrine hell, Hell Under Fire, never mentions these verses once.

What is interesting is that hell (everlasting death) is not presented as a judgment of God. Hell is presented as the result of humanity’s attempt to circumvent the judgments of God and reverse the curse of death by eating of the Tree of Life. Eating from the Tree of Life while in a state of sin, death, and judgment leads to the continuation and confirmation of sin and judgment into the everlasting. Adam and Eve would live forever, but live forever as spiritually dead, enslaved to sin, and under God’s Genesis 3 judgments in which their labor is cursed etc. Scholars throughout church history have agreed on this point:

-Philo of Alexandria:

But from the time when he began to be converted to depravity, wishing for the things which belong to mortal life, he wandered from immortality; for it is not fitting that craft and wickedness should be rendered immortal, and moreover it would be useless to the subject; since the longer the life is which is granted to the wicked and depraved man, the more miserable is he than others, so that his immortality becomes a grave misfortune to him.

-Irenaeus:

Wherefore also He drove him out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied him the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because He pitied him, [and did not desire] that he should continue a sinner for ever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. But He set a bound to his [state of] sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, Romans 6:7, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.”

-John Chrysostom:

Now there is a risk that at some time he may put out his hand and pick fruit from the tree, eat it and live forever.'" In other words, since he had given signs of considerable intemperance through the command already given him (he is saying) and had become subject to death, lest he presume further to lay hold of this tree which offers endless life and go on sinning forever, it would be better for him to be driven from here. And so the expulsion from the garden was a mark of care rather than necessity. Our Lord, you see, is like this: he reveals his care for us in punishing no less than in blessing, and even his punishment is inflicted for the sake of admonition. Because if in fact he knew that we would not get worse by sinning and escaping, he would not have punished us; but to check our decline into greater evil and to stem the tide of wickedness, he applies punishment out of fidelity to his own loving kindness which is exactly what he did in this case: in his care for the firstformed human being he bade him be driven out of the garden.

-Theodoret of Cyrus:

Now, God had forbidden Adam to partake of the fruit of the tree of life, not because he had begrudged him of eternal life, but to check the course of sin. Indeed, death is healing, not punishment, for it checks the onset of sin: "he who has died has been acquitted of sin. Rom 6:7" He ordered him to live directly opposite the garden so that he would remember his trouble free existence and hate sin for causing his life of hardship.

-Jumping ahead to pastor John MacArthur:

We've got a problem because now man might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. Would that be bad? Absolutely. Why would it be bad? Because he'd be eternally...What?...evil...be eternally evil. And he might stretch out his hand and take the tree of life and be evil forever. Why would he be prone to do that? Because he for the first time now understands what death means, because God has just killed an animal. There's a carcass there; he has seen that dead form; he knows the reality of death, the finality of death, the horror of death; and he's going to be tempted to avoid death and to stretch out his hand and take the tree of life. And if they eat, they will live forever. That is not in the botany of the tree. But that is what God decreed. And then what you've got is hell forever. What is hell forever? It is the eternal life of a sinner, eternal sin. No hope for deliverance, no hope; and it would be no decay, no disease, no diminishing of human powers, just endless evil, endless evil. A horrible existence, that's what hell is. It causes weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth.

-Theologian Michael Horton:

Graciously, God kept Adam from eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, which would have confirmed him and his posterity in everlasting death (Gen 3:22-24). Instead, God opened up a history of promise leading to the Last Adam, who won the right for all who are in him to eat the fruit of everlasting life (Rev 22.2).

-The Crossway commentary on the ESV bible:

For man to live forever (in his sinful condition) is an unbearable thought, and God must waste no time in preventing it.

Final observations:

First, we must see that God’s exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden is a punishment that is also for their protection. God’s sentence of exile and consignment to physical death is part of an act of saving humanity from self-imposed hell. As Boethius says, “If wickedness is the cause of [humanity’s]misery, it follows that their wickedness makes them the more wretched the longer it lasts. If death did not at last end their evil, I would count them the unhappiest of men. For obviously if our conclusions about the misfortune of wickedness are true, any misery which is agreed to be everlasting is infinite.” We cannot always pit grace and judgment against one another as if they are opposites. The most gracious acts for sinners can take the form of judgment—judgments that protect sinners from a worse fate that their own sin would cause.

Second, again we learn that hell, foundationally, is not a judgment of God upon humanity. It is a product of human rebellion against God’s judgments. Humanity attempts to escape God’s judgments and recover paradise, but in yet another cosmic backfire, humans consign themselves to live forever in spiritual death, under God’s judgments. Hell must be understood as a result of the attempt to reject God’s judgments, for if a person were to accept God’s judgments and agree with God about sin’s deserved punishments, that would amount to a confession of sin that would save the sinner’s soul. As CS Lewis says, “the doors of hell are locked from the inside.” Additionally, as philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig has repeatedly pointed out, Jesus describes hell as the place “prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 24:41),” not originally prepared for humans. CS Lewis says as well, that “the saved go to a place prepared for them, the damned go to a place never made for men at all.”

Third, it is true that though hell is not originally designed as a judgment of God, it does include His judgments. Hell is the destiny of those who reject God’s offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, where they will be punished in accordance with their evil deeds. But the punishments of hell, like the act of exile from the Garden, are acts of judgment and mercy simultaneously. The purpose of God’s punishments in hell is to regulate the suffering of the sinner in accordance with the sinful deeds of the person’s finite lifetime, no more and no less. The New Testament insists many times that sinners in hell are punished in accordance with their deeds (Romans 2:6, Galatians 6:8, 2 Corinthians 5:10, 11:15, 2 Timothy 4:14, Revelation 2:23, 14:13, 20:12). This is the law of retribution, that the sinner receives his own sin upon his own head. This means that God does not allow the suffering of sin to go unrestrained and unregulated, and hell would be much worse if God did not have these restraints in place. Imagine if God did not use retribution as the standard for punishment in hell. Imagine if God gave sinners over to sin, completely unrestrained by His justice and fairness. There would be no limit to the amount of sin that the damned would suffer. There would be a continual descent into deeper and deeper depravity. This would be a fate worse than hell. As Boethius says, “the wicked are much more unhappy when they are unjustly allowed to go scot free, than when a just punishment is imposed upon them.” It is an eternal mercy that the damned are judged only in accordance with their deeds committed in a finite lifetime.

 

I specifically mention Matthew 25:41. Did you read my post?

Are you saying that all of those commentators I listed are wrong?

 

This is the foundational text for the rationale behind hell. Some tell us that "we have sinned against an infinitely holy God, and therefore deserve infinite punishment in hell," but that is not the rationale here.

Everlasting death is the result, not initially of what humanity deserves as a punishment, but what we desire and what we do. The origin of sin's torments is not God's punishment, but humanity's own sin.

 

"It is a shame to make these attempts a novelty teachings, when there is still so much work needed on the Old Paths."

Hahaha. Did you not see the list of quotations all throughout church history, going back to Philo? These are not novelty teachings. What is novel is forgetting these teachings.

The Bible uses a multitude of images for hell. But yes, Genesis 3:22-24 is the first mention of the concept of everlasting death in sin, which is hell.

 

As you have said, the Bible has a multitude of images for hell. Our word "hell" use used to refer to a multitude of things. One of the those images, the first one and foundational one, is the image of humans living forever in a state of sin and death because they ate from the Tree of Life.

Do you disagree with commentators throughout church history from Irenaeus to John MacArthur?

It's kind of weird that you would say "well, of course it is okay to use "hell" to refer to these 5 things that refer to everlasting torment, but THAT depiction of everlasting torment we CANNOT use the word "hell" in association with."

 

Okay, let's omit the word "hell" from the discussion and say "Genesis 3:22-24 is the foundational text for the idea of everlasting torment due to sin."

I have no interest in semantic games. Call it "snurf" if you want.