May I Get A Critique?

[Basilisa Marie]

hell as in "the place of the dead" yes. Hell as we commonly understand it as a place of eternal damnation and separation from God? No, obviously not. This is why atonement theory falls on its face. If that is the just punishment for sins then clearly Jesus (being God and all) cannot be damned nor separated from God did not undertake this punishment. The etymology of the word "hell" causes some confusion.

 

holla

 

Yeah, separation sounds like a clean break. It does work in some contexts, but I think it causes more problems than it solves. 

 

Also in Judaism Sheol was the "land of the dead," a neutral place where pretty much everyone went. Gehenna, on the other hand, was both an actual place on Earth in the Valley of Hinnom, but also a place where the wicked went after death that was "burning" (so it's kind of the ideological predecessor of our idea of Hell). The problem is that most translations of the Bible call both "Sheol" and "Gehenna" Hell, when they're two very different things. So while it might be okay to say that Jesus "descended into Hell," we need to be careful when we think about what that means in that context.