I’m going to give you more hell again in today’s post. I have often heard it described as a place where God does not exist, a place that is outside of God’s presence, and a place where the people sent there are totally separated from God. Not a place, we can all agree, that any of us would want to be there.

I’ve been meditating a lot recently on Colossians 1:15-20 – a passage that sings the praises of Jesus. (My particular interest in it has been about human worth – but that’s a whole different set of posts.) The passage can be split into two parts – being recreated (or born-again, if you prefer) in Jesus (verses 18-20) and being created in the first place in Jesus (15-17). The phrase that I’d like to draw your attention to is this – ‘For in him all things were created’. The list that follows would suggest that everything that exists – apart from God himself – has been created by Jesus, for Jesus, and crucially in Jesus. The passage then goes on to say, ‘in him all things hold together’, meaning all things in creation are upheld or sustained or keep their existence in Jesus.

My understanding of this passage and the sections highlighted is that all of creation has been formed within what we call God – or specifically God’s Son. The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann (I think!) has explained like this: God made a space within himself and in that space brought creation into being. Now hell – if it exists – has to form a part of creation. It did not exist with God from eternity – otherwise it too would be divine. And if it is a part of creation then according to the above passage it was created within God and still exists within God.

It seems to me, therefore, that using the language of total separation from God when we discuss hell is not in line with creation theology and that any passage from the Bible that seems to suggest this language would need to be interpreted from this perspective.
Any thoughts?

The previous post on the topic of hell can be found here.

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