What is Hell Like?

There is probably no doctrine in the church that is as universally hated as the doctrine of Hell.  It truly is a hot topic (pun intended) but listen to these words from R. V. G. Tasker,

[The Bible’s teachings on Hell contain] sayings of terrible severity, but they are just as much part of the revelation of God made known in Christ Jesus as those sayings and deeds of the Master which so conspicuously display the divine love and mercy.  To thrust these severe sayings on one side and to concentrate attention solely upon passages of the Gospels where the divine Fatherhood is proclaimed is to preach a debilitated Christianity, which does not and cannot do what Christ came into the world to do . . . save men from the wrath to come.1

No one likes the doctrine of Hell.  We would all like to believe that everyone is going to Heaven because we have loved ones who are headed towards an eternity of suffering.  But, as Christians, we do not have the right to make up our own theology.  We must believe what the Bible teaches us and we must teach it to others.

So what does the Bible teach about Hell?

1. Hell is Gehenna. 

Matthew 5:21-22 says,

You have heard that the ancients were told, “You shall not commit murder” and “Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.”  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever shall say to his brother, “Raca,” shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever shall say, “You fool,” shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Matthew 5:27-30 says,

You have heard that it was said, “you shall not commit adultery;” but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.  And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to go into hell.

Matthew 23:15, 33 says,

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves . . . You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?

In the Bible, no one spoke more about Hell than Jesus Christ.2  The Apostle John said that Jesus was “from above” or from Heaven3 and one would think that most of His teachings would revolve around that glorious place.  Yet the opposite is true in the New Testament.  Jesus spent a lot of time talking to His followers about Hell.  As Kenneth Kantzer writes,

Those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord cannot escape the clear unambiguous language with which He warns of the awful truth of eternal punishment.4

Jesus spoke often of Hell.  He spoke clearly of Hell.  He spoke frighteningly of Hell because He was warning us.  Heaven is an awesome and wonderful place but Hell is an awesome and terrifying place and the one from Heaven told us about Hell to scare us away from it.

And the word that Jesus used to describe Hell in these passages in Matthew was Gehenna.5  Gehenna had a double meaning.  Jesus used it to describe the eternal place of punishment for the wicked but the word also referred to a physical place in Israel.

The Greek word Gehenna when translated into Hebrew is Hinnom.  In the Old Testament, the Valley of Hinnom was located just south of Jerusalem and was notorious for its grotesqueness.  Human sacrifices were offered there during the reign of King Manasseh.6  King Josiah later defiled the valley by dumping rubble and human bones into it so that the sacrifices of Manasseh would never happen again.7  In Jeremiah 7:30-33, the Prophet Jeremiah says that the valley’s name will later be changed to the Valley of Slaughter because the Lord will judge Judah for her sins in that valley.

In Jesus’ day, Hinnom / Gehenna had become a garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem.  First Century Jews would take their trash and their sewage and their normal household waste products and burn them in this valley.  During Israel’s annual pilgrim festivals  (Passover, Tabernacles, and Pentecost) the valley would literally overflow with the burning carcasses of lambs, bulls, and goats.  The priests would sacrifice these animals in the Temple and dispose of them by burning them in the Valley of Gehenna, just south of the city.

So when Jesus spoke of Hell this was the place He referred to: Gehenna.  All the unwanted trash in the city was disposed of there.  It was a stinky, rotten, disease-filled dump.

And it is safe to guess that there were probably times when Jesus was preaching on Hell in view of this valley.  During those times, the Lord could have pointed at Gehenna and said, “See that?  See all of that burning trash?  That is what Hell is like.”  If He could not see it, Jesus could definitely remind His audience of it.  Gehenna was a familiar place to all of them.  “Hell is Gehenna.  It is a place full of burning garbage and the wicked are the ones who will burn there.”

2. Hell is Eternal. 

In Biblical language, the eternality of Hell is communicated with the expression, “Their worm shall not die.”  Isaiah 66:22-24 gives that expression this way,

“For just as the new heavens and the new earth which I make will endure before Me,” declares the Lord, “So your offspring and your name will endure.”

“And it shall be from new moon to new moon and from sabbath to sabbath, all mankind will come to bow down before Me,” says the Lord.

“Then they shall go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me.  For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be an abhorrence to all mankind.”

Those who rebel against God will eventually be punished with a worm that shall not die and with a fire that shall not be quenched.

For a New Testament example of this, in Mark 9:42-48, Jesus says,

And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”  And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than having your two feet, to be cast into hell, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

And if your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

Worms are nature’s way of disposing of a dead carcass.  If a man is being eaten by worms, it is because he is dead.  And, with that imagery in mind, Isaiah and Jesus tell us that Hell is a place where the worm will not die.  Hell is a place where this grotesque process of decay will continue throughout eternity.  Hell is a place where people are dying forever.8  Jude 7, 12-13 describes the extent of Hell this way,

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire . . . These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

Revelation 14:9-11 describes it this way,

And another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the best and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”

Hell is a place where the wicked are punished forever.  It is a place where their judgment never ends.  It is a place where the worm does not die.

At this point, the question is often asked, “Why can’t the damned just be annihilated?”  “Why can’t they be judged once and left alone after that?”  “To punish them for all of eternity sounds cruel.  It makes God out to be a monster!”

A modern-day scholar said essentially the same thing to Christianity Today in the 1980’s.  Listen to these words from Clark Pinnock:

. . . the semiofficial position of the church since approximately the sixth century has been that hell lasts forever and that human beings thrown into it are tormented endlessly.  To some, this has conveyed the picture of unceasing physical burning, while to others in recent times the torment has been re-imaged in terms of mental and psychological suffering.  Whatever the image, the traditional understanding of hell is unspeakably horrible.  How can one imagine for a moment that the God who gave his Son to die for sinners because of his great love for them would install a torture chamber somewhere in the new creation in order to subject those who reject him to everlasting pain?9

Let me answer a scholar with a scholar.  In the 1200’s, Thomas Acquinas answered Clark Pinnock’s argument this way,

The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin . . . Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin – it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen – and God is of infinite greatness.  Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against him.10

Despite what we are naturally prone to think, the punishment of Hell does fit the crime of sin . . . of any sin.  To disobey the laws of the state is to be thrown in jail for a period of time, but to disobey the laws of God is to be punished forever.  Our sin insults Him and, without the forgiveness that is offered through Jesus Christ,11 we would all be consumed by God’s wrath.  It would be poured out on us forever and forever.

In one of his letters to the German nobility of his day, Martin Luther described what our reaction should be to this terrible reality.

 Since God is a just Judge, we must love and laud His justice and thus rejoice in God even when He miserably destroys the wicked in body and soul; for in all this His high and inexpressible justice shines forth.  And so even Hell no less than Heaven, is full of God and the highest good.  For the justice of God is God Himself; and God the highest good. Therefore even as His mercy, so His justice and judgment must be loved, praised, and glorified above all things.12

Although we shrink at the thought of an eternal punishment, we must trust that God is just and His justice is the highest good.

3. Hell is Painful. 

In Biblical terms, Hell is a place where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Matthew 13:24-30, 36, 40-42 says,

[Jesus] presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.  But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away.  But when the wheat sprang up and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.  And the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, “Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?  How then does it have tares?”  And he said to them, “An enemy has done this!”  And the slaves said to him, “Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?”  But he said, “No; lest wile you are gathering up the tares, you may root up the wheat with them.  Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn . . .’”

Then [Jesus] left the multitudes, and went into the house.  And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field . . .”

[Jesus said to them], “Therefore just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.  The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” refers to pain and suffering.  “Gnashing” in Greek is brugmas and it means “gnashing, grinding, snarling, or growling.”13  The idea is that someone is in extreme anguish and suffering and the pain is literally causing them to clamp down on their teeth.

You see it a lot in the old cowboy movies where someone has been shot and they have to undergo surgery without anesthetics.  The doctor gives the cowboy a drink of alcohol and then has him bite down on something.  Why?  To keep him from hurting himself when he gnashes his teeth in pain.

When someone is in severe pain, they gnash their teeth.  They bite down hard on them.  Jesus says that in Hell, because of the pain that they are suffering, the wicked will weep and gnash their teeth.  Brugmas.  Grind.  Growl.  Snarl.  Gnash.

4. Hell is a Lake of Fire

This is seen in Revelation 20:11-15 and 21:8,

And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.  And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.  And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  This is the second death, the lake of fire.  And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire . . .

But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murders and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

The “lake of fire” is the Biblical description of Hell that most people are familiar with.

“Fire” is often used in Scripture to denote God’s anger and judgment.  In Genesis 19, the Lord reigned down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah as a judgment against their wickedness.  In Second Peter 3:7, the Apostle Peter said that the earth will be destroyed in fire as a judgment against godless men.  In Revelation 19:2, Jesus’ eyes are like blazing fire when He returns to rule the earth and to judge the lost.

With all of this imagery of how “fire” is used in the Bible comes the idea of a Lake of Judgment.  The wicked are judged eternally with fire.

Fire consumes everything it touches.  It is never satisfied.  As long as there is fuel, there is fire.  Fire also destroys everything it touches.  Everything that burns decays.  Hell is compared to a Lake of Fire because, in Hell, the wicked are unceasingly consumed with God’s judgment.  They are continually destroyed.  They are placed into a Lake of Fire / Judgment where God pours out His anger on their sins forever.

5. Hell is Where God Pours Out His Justice. 

Second Thessalonians 1:5-10 says,

This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering.  For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed – for our testimony to you was believed.

Notice Paul’s line of reasoning here.  In verse 5, the Thessalonians were suffering and wondering if God even cared.  So Paul tells them that God’s judgment is right and that they will see God’s kingdom because they have believed.  In verses 6-7, Paul reminds them that God is just and that He will pay back those who trouble them when Jesus returns.  What will that payback look like?  Verses 8-10 say that those who do not believe will be punished with an everlasting destruction and shut out from the Lord’s presence.

God will reward the righteous and He will punish the wicked because He is just.  He rewards those who do right and He punishes those who do wrong.  Those who come to His Son in faith and repentance are rewarded in Heaven.  Those who do not come to His Son in faith and repentance are punished in Hell, where God’s justice is poured out on the wicked.

6. Hell is Where God Reveals His Wrath. 

Romans 2:5-8 says,

But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to His deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality and eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.

The work for “wrath” in Greek is orgei.  It means “anger, temper, violent emotion, agitation of the soul.”14  Orgei is not when you stub your toe and let out a foul word.  It is not when you get lost and cannot find a place to stop and ask for directions.

Orgei is deep-seated fury.  It is the anger you experience when someone offends you over and over and over again.  It is the anger you have over an affront that has occurred during a period of several years.  It is the rage you experience when someone insults your wife.  It is the resentment you feel when someone hurts your children.  It is the kind of anger that finds a way into your soul.

In fact, that is a good way to describe it.  Orgei is soul anger.

And Paul says in Romans 2:5 that unbelievers store up God’s orgei for a day of judgment when it will be revealed.  When the lost are judged by God, they will experience His soul anger and they will keep experiencing it for all of eternity.  Because Hell is where God reveals His wrath.

7. Hell is Ruled by God. 

Matthew 10:28 says,

And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

There is a great misunderstanding today among Christians regarding what Hell is actually like.  Many believe that Hell is a place where God is not present and, in one sense, that is true.  Second Thessalonians 1:9 says the wicked will be kept “away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” in Hell.  Matthew 25:41-42 records these words from Jesus,

Then He will also say to those on His left, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink.”

But, on the other hand, there are passages like Matthew 10:28 where it says that God is able to destroy both the soul and the body in Hell.  Just to get you thinking along these lines, here are some questions to consider: If God is not in Hell, then who is doing the punishing?  If God is not pouring out His wrath on sinners, then who is?  Does Satan rule in Hell?  Does he punish sinners there?  Some Christians believe that today.  But is it true?  Does the Devil rule in Hell and God rules in Heaven and all of us on earth are caught in the middle of some cosmic battle?

Despite what some may think, Satan cannot rule in Hell because he will be punished there.15  As Robert Peterson writes, “Instead of reigning over hell, Satan will suffer the worst punishment there.”16  Satan cannot punish others if he is being punished himself.  That makes no sense.

If God is not in Hell, then how can He destroy the wicked who are there?  You cannot destroy someone from a distance.  You cannot punish someone without being near them.

And one more question to add to this discussion: If God is not in Hell, then how can He be omnipresent?17  How can the Lord be everywhere if He is not in the place where the wicked are judged?

King David answers this question in Psalm 139:7-10, which says,

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from They presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

There is a frightening truth left out of most churches today and that truth is that God rules in Hell.  God punishes the wicked.  God releases His wrath and His justice and His fury in that place.  God is responsible for the pain of those who are damned.

And that means that God’s is in Hell.  He is in Heaven, as King David says but He is also in Sheol.  The Hebrew word “sheol” meant “death” or the “grave.”  It can also be translated “Hell.”18  In other words, God is in the place of eternal damnation because He rules there.

So what does the Bible mean when it says that unbelievers are “shut out” from God’s presence?  It means the same thing that prophets meant when they told Israel that God would leave them if they did not cease from worshipping idols.19  God did not cease being omnipresent when He “left” Israel to her sins.  He did not leave Israel like I will leave my office when I am finished writing this article.

When Israel continued to worship idols and ignore the prophets, the Lord poured out His wrath on them by sending Babylon and Assyria to take them off into slavery.  His favor left them and He began to chastise them.  His role changed from that of a lover to that of a judge and, in that sense, He left them.

The same thing happened when Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”20  Was God leaving His Son?  Was He departing from Him?  If you think about it, God the Father did not leave Jesus on the cross because God the Father punished Jesus on the cross.  On the cross, the Father poured out His wrath on the Son for our sins.  He did not do that with His back turned, He did that facing Him.

That was the horror of the cross.  That was the forsaking of it.  It was the difference between affection and anger.  It was the difference between the role of a lover and the role of a judge.  For all of eternity, the Father approved of the Son but, on the cross, the Father punished Him.  He poured out His orgei on Him.  Jesus became sin to Him.21

When God “left” Israel, He stopped protecting and blessing her and He began to judge her.  No more affection.  No more approval.  Only anger.  It was the same idea on the cross and it is the same idea in Hell.  In Hell, God is there punishing the wicked and, when Scripture says that they are shut out from His presence, it is speaking figuratively.  It means they are shut out from His pleasure.  Nothing can ultimately be shut out of God’s presence.  He is everywhere, all the time.  That is what omnipresence means.

Hell is when the unrighteous will be shut out of God’s banquet hall and placed into His dungeon.  Hell is an awesome and terrifying place because God is an awesome and terrifying God Who has an awesome and a terrifying anger.  After all, who destroys both body and soul in Hell?  God does.

8. Hell is a Place of Rejection. 

Matthew 7:21-23 says,

Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?”  And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”

Matthew 8:10-12 also says,

Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled, and said to those who were following, “Truly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.  And I say to you, that many shall come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Hell is a place where men and women will be rejected by their Creator.  It is a place where people who once knew the blessing of the Lord’s natural creation will experience it no longer.  It is a place where those who knew something of God’s attributes22 in creation will only experience His attribute of wrath.  For the unrighteous, God’s favor stops when they die.

The only thing that men in Hell will experience from God is rejection.  The wicked will be shut out and closed off from finding any approval with God.  It will be like the criminal who begs for mercy from the King and the King says, “I have had enough.  Get him out of my sight and throw him in jail.”23  Complete.  Irrevocable.  Once-and-for-all rejection.

CONCLUSION

Hell is a terrifying place.  It is a place where men will experience no joy and no hope and no relief from their suffering.  It is a place where once you enter, you can never return.  In Dante’s Inferno, the entrance to Hell had these telling words over it:

Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost . . .
Before me nothing but eternal things were made, and I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, all who enter here.24

While that is not Biblical, it does have a Biblical point to it.  No one in Hell has any hope.  Hope is abandoned there.

And I point that out because many of you have unbelieving relatives and co-workers and friends and neighbors who will go to Hell when they die.  They will enter its gates and never return.  It is my prayer that, as you read this, you will be challenged to tell them that God has provided a way out of that horror.  He has punished His Son so that sinful men and women can be forgiven and not undergo His punishment on their own.

We should be doing everything we can to tell them that.

  1. R. V. G. Tasker, quoted in Leon Morris’ The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman Publishing Co., 1965) 183. []
  2. Some of Jesus’ statements about Hell are quoted in this article but there are many more that are not (Matt 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mk 9:43-47; Lk 12:5. []
  3. Jn 3:31; 8:23. []
  4. Kenneth Kantzer, “Troublesome Questions” in Christianity Today (March 20, 1987) 45. []
  5. The following information regarding Gehenna is taken from The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume Two, ed. by Merrill C. Tenney (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975) 670-672 and The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume Two, ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982) 423. []
  6. 2 Chron 33:6. []
  7. 2 Kings 23:8-25. []
  8. Walter W. Wessel, “Mark” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984) 708. []
  9. Clark Pinnock, “Fire Then Nothing,” Christianity Today (March 20, 1987) 40. []
  10. Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) Ia2ae.  25 []
  11. Jn 14:6; Acts 4:12. []
  12. Quoted in Hell on Trial, 111-112. []
  13. G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: T & T Clark, 2001 ed.) 86. []
  14. Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 452. []
  15. Rev 20:10. []
  16. Hell on Trial, 47. []
  17. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Volume Seven (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1976) 243-244.  Omnipresence “suggests quite well how God fills the scene personally everywhere, not merely with His power or authority . . . This particular doctrine indicates that the whole of God is in every place.” []
  18. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. by William L. Holladay (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988) 356. []
  19. An example of one of these warnings is found in Isaiah 44. []
  20. Matt 27:46. []
  21. 2 Cor 5:21. []
  22. Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001 ed.) 18. The attributes of God are “The characteristics or qualities of God that constitute him as what he is.” []
  23. Jesus actually gives this response to an unrighteous man in His Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt 18:21-35). []
  24. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, A Verse Translation by Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1982) 21. []

Posted

in

by

Tags: