Hell is Eternal
Objection: “The idea of hell is for those who have an Old Testament
mentality. It is unimaginable how the loving Christian God could
condemn one to Hell for all eternity.”
According to classical Catholic theology all who die at enmity with God—
that is, in a state of unrepentant mortal sin—are condemned to the eternal
punishment of hell where all therein will suffer the unimaginable pains of
loss and of sense.
The doctrine of an eternal hell is today assailed from both within and
without the Catholic Church. Within the Church there are Catholics
teaching the modernist notion of “universal salvation,” which is that in the
end all will be admitted into the kingdom of heaven because God’s mercy
is so great that He could not allow otherwise. These Catholics forget that
God is also a God of justice. On the other hand, Jehovah’s Witnesses, for
example, assert that the wicked have no eternal destiny, either in heaven or
hell, but instead they will be “annihilated” upon death. In holding such a
view they deny the immortality of the human soul, asserting that such a
belief is derived from the pagan Babylonians and Greeks.
The Old Testament certainly does refer to hell:
“A land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order,
but everlasting horror dwells” (Job 10:22).
“And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have
rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be
quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh” (Is. 66:24).
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2).
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