The lake of fire is a concept that appears in both the

ancient Egyptian Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

and

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

religions. In ancient Egypt, it appears as an obstacle on the journey through the underworld which can destroy or refresh the deceased. In Christianity, it is a concept of after-death punishment of the wicked. The phrase is used in five verses of the

Book of Revelation The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse or the Apocalypse of John, is the final book of the New Testament, and therefore the final book of the Bible#Christian Bible, Christian Bible. Written in Greek language, Greek, ...

. In the biblical context, the concept seems similar to the Jewish

Gehenna Gehenna ( ; ) or Gehinnom ( or ) is a Biblical toponym that has acquired various theological connotations, including as a place of divine punishment, in Jewish eschatology. The place is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as part of the border ...

. The image of the lake of fire was taken up by the

early Christian Early Christianity, otherwise called the Early Church or Paleo-Christianity, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and be ...

Hippolytus of Rome Hippolytus of Rome ( , ; Romanized: , – ) was a Bishop of Rome and one of the most important second–third centuries Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communitie ...

in about the year 230 and has continued to be used by modern Christians.

Ancient Egyptian religion

Fiery rivers and lakes in the underworld are mentioned in works such as the

Coffin Texts The Coffin Texts are a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary spells written on coffins beginning in the First Intermediate Period. They are partially derived from the earlier Pyramid Texts, reserved for royal use only, but contain substantial n ...

and the Egyptian ''

Book of the Dead The ''Book of the Dead'' is the name given to an Ancient Egyptian funerary texts, ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC ...

''. Around their edges sit flaming braziers or baboons. Ra would pass through this lake on his journey through the

Duat The Duat or Tuat (Ancient Egyptian: Hieroglyph: 𓇽 romanized: dwꜣt) is a concept in ancient Egyptian mythology involving death. It is most often seen as a realm where people go after they die. Due to linguistic shifts within Ancient Egypt, th ...

, renewing his boat. Chapter 126 of the Egyptian ''Book of the Dead'' is associated with this vignette and the text is addressed to the "four baboons who sit in the prow of the Barque of Re." The lake was one of the dangers encountered on the journey through the Duat and had a dual nature. The baboons who guarded the pool were a force that could refresh and protect the deceased if they knew the correct recitation or destroy them if they did not. In the 21st Dynasty, human figures are depicted within the lakes. These represent enemies of the king or gods and their inclusion within the pools ensures their permanent destruction. In this way, the deceased could avoid meeting a similar fate, and be victorious over the forces of chaos like Ra. Am-heh, whose name means "devourer of millions" or "eater of eternity", is a hunting dog headed god from the underworld who lived in a lake of fire.

Christianity

Book of Revelation

The

has five verses that mention a "lake of fire" (): A traditional interpretation is that the "lake of fire" is symbolic of the pain of being separated from God, as punishment for wickedness. The Greek words translated "torment" or "tormented" in English come from the root with the original meaning of "the testing of gold and silver as a medium of exchange by the proving stone" and a later connotation of a person, especially a slave, "severely tested by torture" to reveal truth. It can also have a connotation of restraint.

Denominational views

Anabaptism

Anabaptist Christians distinguish between the

intermediate state Intermediate state may refer to: Science * an intermediate chemical state * Virtual state, a very short-lived, unobservable quantum state * Meissner effect, the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the supe ...

that one enters after death, and the final state after the

Last Judgment The Last Judgment is a concept found across the Abrahamic religions and the '' Frashokereti'' of Zoroastrianism. Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, res ...

Restorationism

Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination that is an outgrowth of the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. The denomination is nontrinitarian, millenarian, and restorationist. Russell co-fou ...

interpret the "lake of fire" and "second death" of the Book of Revelation as referring to a symbol, not a literal lake, of a complete and definitive

annihilation In particle physics, annihilation is the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle to produce other particles, such as an electron colliding with a positron to produce two photons. The total energy a ...

of those cast into it.

Seventh-day Adventists The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabba ...

believe in

as well. They too believe that the lake of fire passage is referring to extinction, not to eternal torment. Members of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...

and other churches within the

Latter Day Saint Movement The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by ...

read of a concept of the "lake of fire" in the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith as ''The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi''. The book is one of ...

in several passages. The most descriptive instance of a "lake of fire" in the Book of Mormon occurs in Jacob 6:10, which reads, "Ye must go away into that lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever, which lake of fire and brimstone is endless torment." The Book of Mormon also refers to the lake of fire as a state of

spiritual death The concept of spiritual death has varying meanings in various uses and contexts. Buddhism Although Buddhists occasionally use the term 'spiritual death,' there is no consensus about the meaning because the Buddha himself never used the term, he ...

, where there is no hope for redemption or salvation until after the resurrection or, for sons of perdition, never.

Third century

( 235) pictured Hades, the abode of the dead, as containing "a lake of unquenchable fire" at the edge of which the unrighteous "shudder in horror at the expectation of the future judgment, (as if they were) already feeling the power of their punishment". The lake of fire is described by Hippolytus unambiguously as the place of eternal torment for the sinners after the resurrection.

20th-century views

The

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

Portuguese visionary Lúcia Santos reported that the

Virgin Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...

(

Our Lady of Fatima Our or OUR may refer to: * The possessive form of " we" Places * Our (river), in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany * Our, Belgium, a village in Belgium * Our, Jura, a commune in France Other uses * Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), a governm ...

) had given her a vision of a sea of fire:

Universalist eschatology

Early Christian Universalists, most notably

Origen Origen of Alexandria (), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an Early Christianity, early Christian scholar, Asceticism#Christianity, ascetic, and Christian theology, theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Early cent ...

of Alexandria (), and

Gregory of Nyssa Gregory of Nyssa, also known as Gregory Nyssen ( or Γρηγόριος Νυσσηνός; c. 335 – c. 394), was an early Roman Christian prelate who served as Bishop of Nyssa from 372 to 376 and from 378 until his death in 394. He is ve ...

(), understood the lake of fire as a symbolic purifying fire used to eliminate the

dross Dross is a mass of solid impurities floating on a molten metal or dispersed in the metal, such as in wrought iron. It forms on the surface of low- melting-point metals such as tin, lead, zinc or aluminium or alloys by oxidation of the metal. Fo ...

from the gold, or a "refiner's crucible". Origen refers to the "lead of wickedness" that must be refined out of the gold. Origen obtained his Universalist views, known then as

apocatastasis In theology, apokatastasis (, also spelled apocatastasis) is the restoration of creation to a condition of perfection. In Christianity, the term refers to a form of Christian universalism, often associated with Origen, that includes the ultimate s ...

, from his mentor

Clement of Alexandria Titus Flavius Clemens, also known as Clement of Alexandria (; – ), was a Christian theology, Christian theologian and philosopher who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. Among his pupils were Origen and Alexander of Jerusalem. A ...

(), who was a student of

Pantaenus Saint Pantaenus the Philosopher (; died c. 200) was a Sicilian theologian and a significant figure in the Catechetical School of Alexandria from around AD 180. This school was the earliest catechetical school, and became influential in the dev ...

. Origen explained the refining metaphor in response to a philosopher named

Celsus Celsus (; , ''Kélsos''; ) was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity. His literary work '' The True Word'' (also ''Account'', ''Doctrine'' or ''Discourse''; Greek: )Hoffmann p.29 survives exclusively via quotati ...

who accused Christians of representing God as a merciless tormentor armed with fire. In the view of Origen: 19th-century scholar

Charles Bigg Charles Bigg (12 September 1840, Higher Broughton, near Manchester – 15 July 1908, Oxford) was a Church of England clergyman, theologian and church historian. Life Bigg was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxfor ...

summarized Origen's view as, "Slowly yet certainly the blessed change must come, the purifying fire must eat up the dross and leave the pure gold. One by one we shall enter into rest, never to stray again. Then when death, the last enemy, is destroyed, when the tale of his children is complete, Christ will 'drink wine in the kingdom of his Father.' This is the end, when 'all shall be one, as Christ and the Father are one,' when 'God shall be all in all.'" In the view of Gregory of Nyssa, "when death approaches to life, and darkness to light, and the corruptible to the incorruptible, the inferior is done away with and reduced to non-existence, and the thing purged is benefited, just as the dross is purged from gold by fire." Further evidence corroborating their interpretation of the lake of fire as a "refiner's crucible" is that the Greek word commonly translated as "lake" also refers to something small, like a pond or a "pool", as translated in the Wycliffe and

New American Bible The New American Bible (NAB) is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Bible first published in 1970. The 1986 Revised NAB is the basis of the revised Lectionary. In the Catholic Church it is the only translation approved ...

(NABRE).

Notes

References

External links

Geoffrey W. Bromiley (ed.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:K–P (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing 1995
), p. 61, s.v. "Lake of fire"
Geoffrey W. Bromiley (ed.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:Q–Z (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing 1995
), p. 947, s.v. "Unquenchable fire" {{Doomsday Afterlife in Christianity Biblical phrases Book of Revelation Christian terminology Fire in religion Hell (Christianity) The Beast (Revelation) Lakes Places in Egyptian mythology Punishments in religion