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ETERNAL FIRE.—An expression twice used by Christ in reference to the future punishment of the wicked. In Matthew 18:8 βληθῆναι εἰς τὸ πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον stands in contrast to εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ζωήν; and from Matthew 25:41 we learn that this eternal fire, into which the wicked are to be cast, was prepared not for them but for the devil and his angels. These are the only passages in which the expression is found in the Gospels; but equivalent terms occur. In Matthew 18:9 the eternal fire is identified with the fire of Gehenna; and in Matthew 25:46 we have κόλασις αἰώνιος. In Matthew 3:12 and Mark 9:43 it is the unquenchable fire (ἄσβεστον), and in Mark 9:48 Gehenna is the place of punishment where their worm dieth not, καὶ τὸ πῦρ οὐ σβέννυται. The wicked after their separation from the righteous (Matthew 13:42; Matthew 13:50) are to be cast into a furnace (κάμινος) of fire.

A brief account of the origin of this phraseology will throw light on its meaning. The idea of punishment by fire comes from the OT. The destruction by fire of Sodom and Oomorrah supplied the typical example, and it is frequently referred to as such (Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 1:9; Isaiah 13:19, Jeremiah 49:18, Amos 4:11, Wisdom of Solomon 10:7, 3 Maccabees 2:5; cf. such well-known NT passages as Judges 1:7). A similar judgment is spoken against Edom (Isaiah 34:8; Isaiah 34:10, where it is said that the fire is eternal and will not be quenched). In Amos 1, 2, Damascus, Gaza, etc., are threatened with the fire penalty. See for other examples of the unquenchable fire, 2 Kings 22:17, Isaiah 1:31, Jeremiah 4:4; Jeremiah 21:12, Ezekiel 20:47-48, Amos 5:6. The ‘everlasting burnings’ of Isaiah 33:14 refer, like the preceding, to temporal judgments. But there are passages which at least suggest the extension of the idea and its imagery to the future world. According to Deuteronomy 32:22 the fire of Jehovah’s anger reaches down to Sheol. Cheyne finds in Isaiah 50:11; Isaiah 66:24 a reference to the punishment of souls in the underworld: but Salmond and A. B. Davidson see in the latter passage only the description of a present-world penalty: and this seems the more natural interpretation. This passage seems to have suggested the later Jewish belief regarding eternal punishment, for certain expressions in it are used in this sense in the Apocryphal writings (e.g. Judith 16:17, Sirach 7:17) and by Christ (Mark 9:47). The scene of this judgment is, in all probability, the Valley of Hinnom, regarded by the Jews as a place accursed on account of its Molech sacrifices; and the fires which were kept burning, through which the victims passed, would readily suggest the idea of Gehenna and its eternal fire.^{* [Note: Kimchi’s statement, that a fire was kept constantly burning in Hinnom to consume the offal and the dead bodies which were thrown into it, comes too late (a.d. 1200) to he accepted without evidence.]}

In the Apocryphal writings the fire penalty is extended without reserve to the future world, and in a greatly intensified form. Most of the writers have ceased to expect an equitable distribution of rewards and penalties in this life: their hopes are fixed on the future; and they, therefore, transfer the OT imagery of retribution to the life after death. The Book of Enoch is the great storehouse of teaching on this subject. For the impure angels and the faithless angelic rulers an abyss of fire is prepared, in which, after the judgment, they will be tortured for ever (10:6, 13, 18:11, 21:7, 10, 54:6, 90:24, 25). For human offenders, a fiery abyss is opened on the right hand of the Temple (90:26, 27); this is Gehenna. They descend into ‘the flame of the pain of Sheol’ (63:10), or into the ‘burning fire of Sheol’ (103:7, 8). Thus it appears that the NT ‘eternal fire’ of Gehenna is anticipated in this book: the only difference being that, while in the NT the fire prepared for the devil and his angels is identified with that into which wicked men are cast, in the Book of Enoch they are always distinguished.

Two questions arise regarding the nature of the eternal fire. Is it material? And in what sense is it eternal?

(1) In many OT passages, even where it is said that the fire is unquenchable, and will burn for ever, material fire is undoubtedly meant, for fire is one of the physical agents which God commonly employs in His temporal judgments, and its burning for ever must refer to the lasting destruction which it effects. Sodom, Gomorrah, and Edom are given as examples of places on which the doom of eternal fire fell, and they still bear its proof-marks. But in other passages the literal sense cannot be maintained, as, e.g., where God’s anger or jealousy and man’s wickedness are said to burn like fire. Nor can it be allowed in passages like Isaiah 66:24 if Cheyne’s interpretation is accepted; since undying worms, preying on souls or bodies that are being consumed by unquenchable fire, is an impossible idea. In the NT, as we have seen, Christ drew largely on OT imagery in speaking of the ‘last things.’ But the whole drift of His interpretation of prophetic language is at variance with the literal sense of the fire penalty. What He gives in His eschatological teaching is not a dogmatic but an imaginative presentation of the truth; and the imagery He employs belongs, not to the substance, but to the form of His thought. The prophet, like the poet and the artist, must present the future in terms and forms borrowed from present experience, and the underlying truth must be spiritually discerned. If, as Christ tells us, the eternal fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, it cannot be material fire; for spirits cannot undergo physical torture.^{* [Note: Yet the contrary has been maintained on high authority. Augustine held that the fire was material, and that spirits may be tortured by it, since it is always the mind and not the body that suffers, even when the pain originates in the body. He also suggests that devils may have bodies made of air, ‘like what strikes us when the wind blows, and thus be liable to suffering from fire’ (de Cimt. xxi. 3, 9, 10). Th. Aquinas held that the fire is material (Summa Theol. pt. iii. supplmt. lxx. 3). And in our own day Ed. White inclines to the view that the wicked before extinction will be punished by material fire (Life in Christ, p. 352),]}

Death by fire was the severest penalty under the Jewish law, and as it was inflicted only for the most shameful sins (Leviticus 20:14; Leviticus 21:9, Joshua 7:25), a peculiar infamy was associated with it. Christ, therefore, when He employed this imagery in speaking of the doom of the wicked, intended to warn men that God has attached a terrible retribution to sin. At the very least it signifies an ordeal of suffering analogous to that which fire causes in the living tissues. To the question, How will the suffering be caused? Scripture gives only the figurative answer, ‘as by fire.’ Bp. Butler (Anal. pt. ii. ch. v.) thought that it might come in the way of natural consequence, without any direct infliction on the part of God. Sin, which yields pleasure here, becomes misery there without changing its nature, through the natural working of moral law. The agony of remorse, which sometimes overwhelms the sinner in this life, has been regarded as a foretaste of the eternal fire. The pœna damni, or the consciousness of being for ever cut off from the sight of God, the only satisfying good, will be, it has been said, intense suffering as by fire, when the distractions of the world have ceased to dazzle. And these will, doubtless, be elements in the retribution. But if this were all, a possible consequence would be that the penalty would fall most lightly on the most degraded. A soul that can be made miserable through remorse, or the conscious loss of God’s presence, has not reached the lowest stage of hardening; while experience tells us that those who have reached this stage are least liable to suffering from such a source. In them remorse can be awakened, not by the pœna damni, but by suffering externally caused. And the language of the NT suggests that in the future world an environment is prepared, with its appropriate agencies and influences, for the punishment of those who are morally and spiritually dead. Such expressions as ‘Depart into the eternal fire,’ ‘shall be cast into the lake of fire,’ etc., clearly presuppose such an environment, one in which the least worthy shall suffer the most, ‘be beaten with many stripes.’

(2) Why is the fire called eternal?—In Matthew 25:41-46 the adjective αἱώνιος is used with reference to ‘the fire,’ ‘punishment,’ and ‘the life,’ and no satisfying reason has been given for saying that, as regards the first two, it means ‘time limited,’ and, as regards the last, ‘time unlimited.’ If Christ’s purpose had been to call attention to the duration of each, then ‘endlessness’ is the idea emphasized. But, except where this word or its Hebrew equivalent is applied to objects that, for the nonce, are invested with a quasi-eternity (Leviticus 3:17, Genesis 17:8; Genesis 49:26), it takes us into a sphere of being to which time measurements are inapplicable, and in which objects are presented in their relation to some eternal aspect of the Divine nature. Thus eternal life does not mean natural life prolonged to infinity; such a life might be lived without any experience of the eternal life, which signifies life in fellowship with, or that partakes in, the eternal life of God. God’s relation to believers is such that between them and Him there is a community of life. Eternal fire, on the other hand, figuratively expresses the truth that, God’s nature being what it is, there must be, under any economy over which He presides, a provision for the adequate punishment of sin. The eternal fire is such a provision, and, being eternal, it can be no mere temporary contrivance for tiding over an emergency, but must be the retributive aspect of the Divine holiness. God is, was, and ever shall be a consuming fire in relation to sin unrepented of; this is His unchanging and unchangeable attitude. Some of the OT saints were all their lifetime subject to bondage through fear of death, for to them Sheol (Isaiah 38) was a place where all life in fellowship with God was lost. But suppose that their worst fears had been realized, it would still have been true that they had had a passing experience of the life eternal. And similarly if, after ages of suffering, the wicked were to cease to be, it would, none the less, be true of them that they had been cast into the eternal fire. In Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom, etc., we have examples of what is meant by ‘suffering the doom of eternal fire’; but this does not mean that ever since the fire destroyed the cities their inhabitants have been enduring its pains. Eternal fire may or may not mean everlasting suffering in it (see artt. Eternal Punishment and Retribution).

Literature.—Origen, de Princip. ii. x. 4–8, c. Cels. iv. 13, v. 15; Lactantius, Inst. vii. 21, 26; Augustine, de Civ. bk. xxi., Ench. cxi–cxiv., de Gest. Pelag. 10, 11; T. Burnet, Concerning the State of Departed Souls, 1738; Matt^{. [Note: Matthew’s (i.e. prob. Rogers’) Bible 1537.]} Horhery, Duration of Future Punishment, 1744; J. Agar Beet, The Last Things^{2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred]} ; R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch, also Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life; J. L. Clarke, The Eternal Saviour Judge; H. Constable, Duration of Future Punishment; J. Fyfe, The Hereafter; F. W. Farrar, Eternal Hope, and Mercy and Judgment; Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality; H. N. Oxenham, Catholic Eschatology; E. B. Pusey, What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment?; Ed. White, Life in Christ. See also Literature at end of art. Retribution.

A. Bisset.