The Gnostic Heresy of Heaven When We Die: Part 2

In this part of the series, we look at how the word Hell has been mistranslated into many Bible versions, causing the confusion about where the righteous and unrighteous pass into at the point of death. We also look at how this caused heresy to become cemented into the Westminster Confession of Faith by the Puritans. Finally, we explore how the early Church treated the belief of immediate transport into heaven for the righteous as a teaching of the Gnostics and was condemned as heresy.

One Hell of a Translation Problem

When the Bible was being (illegally!) translated into English by William Tyndale in the 16th Century, he was faced with a choice of which word to use for terms such as Sheol, Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus, words which were used to describe the afterlife.

At this point we need to consider the word Hell to discover its origins (its etymology):

Proto-Germanic *haljō “the underworld” (source also of Old Frisian helle, Old Saxon hellia, Dutch hel, Old Norse hel, German Hölle, Gothic halja “hell”). Literally “concealed place” (compare Old Norse hellir “cave, cavern”), from PIE root *kel- (1) “to cover, conceal, save.”

Etymology Online: Hell

So the English word Hell had connotations with

• The underworld (abode of the dead)
• A concealed place (grave)
• A cave / cavern (similar to the 1 Enoch 22 regions in the “mountain of the dead”)

If you recall that Hades / Sheol could be used of both the grave and the afterlife where all souls went, you can begin to understand why the word Hell might be used as a catch-all term for a number of places within the underworld / afterlife.

Unfortunately, using an English catch-all term for a range of words can lead to much confusion. Take for instance the word “love” in John 21:15-17, where the words agapas and philō, words with different meanings of “love” are used; the casual reader will completely miss the rich pastoral depths buried in the way Jesus is restoring Peter after being betrayed by him.

Tyndale understood that those reading and hearing his translation wouldn’t have the means to go into the original languages. He therefore decided to take advantage of the expensive spare last blank page to help clarify some translation issues. These included the Latin Vulgate word Infernus (originally underworld until its range narrowed to only meaning a fiery place of torment by the time of Aquinas in his Summa Theologica) and Gehenna (understood at the time as a place of fiery torment from the Valley of Ben Hinnom):

Infernus and Gehenna differ much in signification, though we have none other interpretation for either of them, than this English word, hell. For Gehenna signifieth a place of punishment: but Infernus is taken for any manner of place beneath in the earth, as a grave, sepulchre or cave.

Hell: it is called in Hebrew the valley of Hennon. A place by Jerusalem, where they burnt their children in fire unto the idol Moloch, and is usurped and taken now for a place where the wicked and ungodly shall be tormented both soul and body, after the general judgement.

D. Daniell (1989), Tyndale’s New Testament, Yale University Press, 429.

By using the word Hell to translate the Latin Vulgate Infernus which means Hades / Sheol and Gehenna (the place of fiery torment), Tyndale committed the English speaking world to a misunderstanding, even with his last page commentary to try and clear things up.

Tyndale’s work was used extensively for the translation of the King James, including the translation of Sheol / Hades and Gehenna by the word Hell, but they omitted Tyndale’s explanation at the back of his Bible. Readers were therefore left with the impression that Hell was an immediate destination of the unrighteous, as given by mistranslations of Hades.

Hades

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell [hades] he lift up his eyes, being in torments – (KJV / [NKJV])

In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up – (NRSV)

And being in torment in Hades, he looked up – (HCSB)

The day came that the rich man also died. In hell he looked up from his torment – (TPT)

Luke 16:23 (interlinear)

Thankfully this hasn’t carried through into most modern day translations for this verse, having resorted to leaving the transliteration of the word hades. But notice, The Passion Translation has reverted back to the incorrect word, hell (but then the Passion Translation is not a true translation, merely one person’s beliefs spliced into the text – here clearly eisegesis).

However, whilst some modern translations have left the word hell in the above verse, they have left it in other places where hades should have been used (at least some have put a footnote in, but who really reads those when in church services?). A few examples as follows:

Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. – (KJV)

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. – (NRSV)

because You will not leave me in Hades or allow Your Holy One to see decay. – (HCSB)

Acts 2:27 (interlinear)

If hell is the final destination of the unrighteous, then it doesn’t make sense that someone can be brought up from it once they’ve entered it. But, if hades is the right translation, and means the realm of the dead, then the understanding of Jesus being in Paradise (with the “thief on the cross”, within the realm of the dead / hades) during the three days in the tomb make perfect sense.

Actually, it’s the KJV version of the above passage, Acts 2:27, that confuses many into thinking Jesus actually went into hell during his three days in the tomb. Nothing is further from the truth! He descended to hades, the realm of the dead, not the “Gehenna style” hell, as in the fiery end point of the unrighteous. This is needless confusion caused by a mistranslation.

Gehenna

There does seem a different sense of usage within the KJV when it comes to translating gehenna, as per Tyndale’s last page notes.

but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. – (KJV)

if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell^[gehenna] of fire. – (NRSV)

But whoever says, ‘You moron!’ will be subject to hellfire.^{[the gehenna of fire]} – (HCSB)

And whoever calls down curses upon a fellow believer^[e] is in danger of being sent to a fiery hell. – (TPT)

Matthew 5:22 (interlinear)

Sheol

Sheol is the Old Testament Hebrew term for hades. Again, confusion is wrought by the single word translation of “hell” for sheol:

The sorrows of hell [Sheol] compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me – (KJV / [NKJV]

the cords of Sheol entangled me, the snares of death confronted me. – (NRSV)

The ropes of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. – (HCSB)

2 Samuel 22:6 (interlinear)

The passage above is one of David lamenting. Given the very verse is describing death, the use of Sheol to mean the underworld is more contextually correct than hell as a fiery end-point place of the unrighteous. Note that the NKJV corrects the earlier mistranslation.

Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. – (KJV)

Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering. – (NRSV)

Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering. – (HCSB)

Job 26:6 (interlinear)

At least the KJV usage of the word hell from its original meaning of “covering” would fit with this passage. But, who could decouple hell as being a place of fiery torment when elsewhere in that translation it is used to mean that?

The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. – (KJV)

The wicked shall depart to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. – (NRSV)

The wicked will return to Sheol — all the nations that forget God. – (HCSB)

Psalm 9:17 (interlinear)

Given the very language of the KJV that the wicked shall be turned into hell, one is given the impression that this refers to some sort of “gehenna style” the Lake of Fire in Revelation 20…

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. – (KJV)

And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. – (NRSV)

Then the sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up their dead; all were judged according to their works. Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. – (HCSB)

Revelation 20:13-14 (interlinear)

So, if the KJV is correct, then hell is not a permanent place but is a place which is destroyed in the lake of fire. If hades is used, one can better understand that in a world where there will no longer be any death, then there’s no place for an underworld where the dead reside.

Tartarus

Tartarus, the place where the fallen Watchers are confined until the final Judgement, is labelled as hell whilst others transliterate Tartarus from the original Greek. The only place Tartarus is used in the Bible is 2 Peter 2:4, the location of the fallen Watchers, where they are said to be in chains, as per Jude 6:

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment – (KJV)

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment – (NRSV)

For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment – (HCSB)

2 Peter 2:4 (interlinear)

Translation Conclusion

Despite the newer translations beginning to accept that transliteration of technical terms is the best way to go to avoid confusion, it’s an uphill struggle for educators as the word hell being used for over 400 years. Cemented into the mindset of many is the belief that hell is the immediate destination of the unrighteous, and to even question it is seen as divisive and controversial. And if hell is their immediate destination, then heaven should be the immediate destination of the righteous is the logical argument provided.

The lesson is to always cross check the translation you’re using, understand that words don’t necessarily carry the same meaning that they have always done, and that we need to get our heads around what the original writers were trying to communicate by learning the language and cultural contexts that they lived in..

Purging Purgatory

But what of the destination of the righteous? For this we need to look at Church politics.

The Reformation partially grew out of the disagreement with the way the Roman Catholic Church was selling indulgences – “get out of Purgatory quick” cards. Purgatory is a Roman Catholic doctrine, believed to be an intermediate state where the righteous, (but not “saints”, who were already in heaven) went for a spiritual clean-up before entering heaven.

Whilst the Reformers were at pains to purge the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory as an intermediate state of being, early Reformers like Calvin still believed in an intermediate state, but downplayed it back to that which the Protestant Bible (minus Apocrypha) stated clearly:

Moreover, to pry curiously into their intermediate state is neither lawful nor expedient…

Scripture, after telling that Christ is present with them, and receives them into paradise (John 12:32), and that they are comforted…

… the dimension of the soul is not the same as that of the body.

… the souls of the righteous, after their warfare is ended, obtain blessed rest where in joy they wait for the fruition of promised glory, and that thus the final result is suspended till Christ the Redeemer appear.

Calvin, Institutes III, Ch 25.6

The Puritans Remove the Intermediate State

Calvin unfortunately set up his readers to downplay the intermediate state, another mistake which would water the seeds of Scripture mistranslation.

For the Puritans who followed on in the wake of the Reformation, without Purgatory, and very little theological reflection on Scriptures which discuss the intermediate state, there could only be one place left for the righteous. And so, Paradise became heaven.

In just over 100 years since Calvin’s Institutes was published the Puritans, who had risen to power in England, cemented their Westminster Confession of Faith into English law in 1648.

I. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption, (Gen 3:19; Act 13:36): but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them, (Luk 23:43; Ecc 12:7): the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies, (Hbr 12:23; 2Co 5:1, 6, 8; Phl 1:23; Act 3:21; Eph 4:10). And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day, (Luk 16:23-24; Act 1:25; Jud 6-7; 1Pe 3:19). Beside these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.

Westminster Confession of Faith, XXXII.

Thus the Westminster Confession of Faith, the creedal bedrock for the Reformed Church and the Puritan faith which shipped across the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers, stripped out any intermediate state. It was now immediate heaven or hell (devoid of Tyndale’s expansion of the terminology) for the human soul.

The Gnostic Heresy in the Westminster Confession

As we saw in Part 1, the Early Church believed in an intermediate state called Hades where the righteous and unrighteous souls went.

The confusion wrought by

• Tyndale’s decision to translate one Hebrew and three Greek words into hell,
• the KJV which dropped Tyndale’s reasoning,
• Calvin’s downplaying of the intermediate state,
• and the legal adoption of immediate heaven or hell in the Westminster Confession of Faith

has led to modern Protestants by and large believing in the immediate transport of the soul to either heaven or hell, and that the intermediate state either doesn’t exist, is a state of soul sleep or immediate resurrection in the new heavens and earth through some kind of time compression in the afterlife (both refuted here).

The Early Church condemned the teaching of immediate heaven when we die as Gnostic heresy, as the Gnostics taught this belief:

You may have fallen in with some [Gnostics] who are called Christians. However, they do not admit this [intermediate state], and they
venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham… They say there is no resurrection of the dead. Rather, they say that when they die, their souls
are taken to heaven. Do not imagine that they are Christians.

Justin Martyr [1]

The heretics [Gnostics] . . . do not acknowledge the salvation of their flesh . .. but claim that immediately upon their death, they will pass above the
heavens and the Demiurge [Creator] and go to the Mother or to that Father whom they pretend exists…. For they do not choose to understand, that if these things are as they say, the Lord Himself, in whom they profess to believe, did not rise again upon the third day.
Rather, immediately upon His expiring on the cross, He undoubtedly departed on high, leaving His body to the earth.. . . The Lord
observed the law of the dead so that He might become the First-Begotten from the dead. And He waited until the third day “in the lower parts of the earth.” . . . [Accordingly,] these men [the Gnostics] must be put to confusion, who allege that “the lower parts” refer to this world of ours, but that their inner man, leaving the body here, ascends into the super-celestial place….The Lord “went away in the midst of the
shadow of death,” where the souls of the dead were. However, afterwards, He arose in the body. And after the resurrection, He was taken up [into heaven]. From this, it is clear that the souls of His disciples also (upon whose account the Lord underwent these things) will go away into the invisible place allotted to them by God. And they will remain there until the resurrection, awaiting that event. Then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety (that is, bodily), just as the Lord arose.
they will come in that manner into the presence of God.

“No disciple is above the Master.” … Our master, therefore, did not at once depart, taking flight [to heaven]. Rather, He awaited the time of his Resurrection, as determined by the Father… Likewise, we also should await the time of our resurrection determined by God.

Irenaeus [2]

Series Conclusion

We have seen that the Scriptures contain a variety of words describing the afterlife and life after the afterlife:

• Sheol / Hades – the place the dead go to, which can mean physical grave, but mainly implied a conscious afterlife. This underworld is emptied and thrown into the Lake of Fire at the Final Judgement, as there is no more death to be found in the new heavens & earth.
• Paradise – the place within Sheol / Hades where the righteous immediately go and find rest and refreshment, and are in the presence of Jesus there. This is also known as Abraham’s Bosom (or the Elysian plains as Tertullian referred to them [3], or the Vale of Abraham [4]).
• Gehenna – a fiery region of Hades which is eventually emptied and thrown into the Lake of Fire as well.
• Tartarus – a prison region of Hades where the fallen Watchers are held.
• Heaven – the place which comes down to earth at the consummation of all things.
• Lake of Fire – the place into which death, hades and all that is not pure and holy is destroyed within.

We have seen that the early Church believed that the human soul descended to Sheol / Hades, whether good or bad, and that they stayed there until the resurrection at the Final Judgement. To go straight to heaven was a gnostic belief, which was condemned as heresy by the early Church.

We have seen that Tyndale, in trying to translate the Bible into the English language, inadvertently sowed the seeds for this gnostic belief to return to Protestant Christianity by combining several words for regions of the afterlife into one English word, hell. This was perpetuated into the King James Bible and continues into some modern Bible translations.

We have seen that Calvin, in his attempt to put distance between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church, chose to downplay the intermediate state of the soul, watering the seeds of Tyndale’s error. These seeds grew as later Puritans abandoned the intermediate state altogether, preferring to transport the believer immediately to heaven, and the unbeliever immediately to hell upon death.

Thus, gnostic teaching condemned by the early Church entered the Westminster Confession of Faith, and confusion has reigned ever since amongst Protestant believers regarding the soul in the afterlife. Any attempt to derive a theology of the intermediate state is frowned upon and denounced as heresy, when it is gnostic heresy which is embedded in their creedal statement that is keeping them from looking at this state more closely!

In a 21st Century world where interest in the paranormal is on the rise in public perception, perhaps the Protestant Church should break open the ancient wells of teaching about the intermediate state, approaching it esti doctrina non daretur (as if doctrine is not given). By daring to draw from these ancient wells, bringing out the hidden treasures within, we can surely build a theology of the dead which can account for the paranormal experiences of the early believers, which are still being experienced today.

---

Bibliography

Bentley Hart, D. (2017), The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart, London: Yale University Press.

Bercot, D. W. (ed) (2008), A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Footnotes

[1] Bercot, 191.

[2] Ibid, 192.

[3] Ibid, 193.

[4] Bentley Hart, 146, n. 1.