The Not-So-Traditional View: Does Your Particular Belief About Hell Really Have Church History On Its Side? – Part 5

As we have seen in the previous parts of this series, the modern, metaphorical view of hell has a weak historical pedigree. Of course, it also has no biblical leg to stand on. ¹ For more on the profound weaknesses of the modern, metaphorical view, see “The Many and Varied Problems with the Modern, Metaphorical View of Eternal Conscious Hell“. But church history is the strongest argument that the doctrine of eternal conscious hell has. Therefore, the more it can be shown that the historical view of eternal conscious hell entailed physical torture in (typically) literal fire and God’s retributive wrath and vengeance, across the centuries and across the various traditions within Christendom, the more that any foundation for the more palatable forms of eternal conscious hell lose any appeal whatsoever.

At least annihilationism – and universalism, to be fair – have some notable early church presence.  And at least annihilationists don’t pretend to be part of the dominant tradition in the first place.

As with Part 4, there isn’t necessarily a major theme to Part 5 (the way there was for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). That said, two items of note are as follows:

Mysticism and Visions:

Several of the theological treatises noted below are either directly connected to visions claimed by their authors, or are by authors known for visions and mystical experiences (such as John Bunyan).

The significance of these visions is not just that they happened. People in all kinds of religions have claimed visions of things. Rather, the significance is that it is revered, often canonized saints who are either seeing these visions or speaking approvingly of these visions when reporting them on behalf of others. Respected figures in church history believed that the content of these visions was a true reflection of what hell was like.

Eastern Orthodoxy:

This entry to the series has a bit more of an emphasis on Eastern Orthodox adherents of eternal conscious hell.

Of course, saints and fathers from the Christian east have not been ignored previously and have already been included in this series. This is because there was a lot of crossover in the early centuries of Christianity. The first major split was after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where what we would call the Oriental Orthodox Churches (most notably the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt) began to split off from the rest. As a result, many major figures from before that point are venerated and respected across greater Christendom. This includes some who have been cited in this series thus far. ² For example, John Chrysostom was cited in Part 2. He is not only a canonized saint across the board, but is also considered one of the three holy fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. See “Feast of the Three Holy Fathers, Great Hierarchs and Ecumenical Teachers, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom,” Greek Archdioscese of America, n.d., https://www.goarch.org/-/feast-of-the-three-holy-fathers-great-hierarchs-and-ecumenical-teachers-basil-the-great-gregory-the-theologian-and-john-chrysostom (accessed November 8, 2025).

The other two, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus, have been left off (for now at least) due to uncertainty about where they ultimately stood on whether eternal conscious hell was even true (especially Gregory of Nazianzus). The same can further be said among those prior to the Great Schism of 1054, when Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy formally split. ³ For example, Gregory the Great of the 6th century is canonized in both traditions. See Part 2. Furthermore, even Augustine of Hippo, often seen as the paragon of western Christianity, is an Eastern Orthodox saint. See “The St. Photios Greek Orthodox National Shrine: Celebrating the Feast Day of St. Augustine of Hippo” Greek Archdioscese of America, n.d., https://www.goarch.org/-/photios-shrine-augustine-of-hippo (accessed December 24, 2025).

Those in the Christian east have already been represented from the start of this series, and so this is largely a continuation of what I have already been doing. That said, because there are a few here from after 1054, it will help demonstrate that even after Eastern Orthodoxy had become its own distinct tradition, the pre-1054 view of hell as a fiery torture chamber continued to be normal among the saints. It was never just a western Christian idea. ⁴ I will note that it does seem that both today and in past centuries, universalism has had a history of being more common out of the Christian east. That does not effect this series, since we are only looking at the beliefs held specifically by believers in eternal conscious hell. However, it does come up in broader discussions of hell in church history. And as noted in Part 3, sometimes supposed traditionalists are not traditionalists in the first place, which can affect this discussion.

There is also a connection to the point above about mysticism and visions. One of the accounts of a post-schism theologian included here is specifically tied to visions, as is the account of the pre-schism Eastern Orthodox saint known as the Venerable Bede. Furthermore, the excerpt below from the eastern desert fathers is not itself from a vision, but it is from a community known for mystical experiences (including elsewhere in that collection of writings).

Significance of History in Light of the River of Fire Model of Hell

This question of church history is especially significant in the Eastern Orthodox tradition both because of how significant church history is to Eastern Orthodox Christians, and because of how popular the river of fire view has become. It is unclear what proportion of Eastern Orthodox believers actually hold this view, but it is at least common enough to be part of the discussion. In Part 3, we looked at this variation of the modern, metaphorical view to some extent. It is the view that the wicked and the righteous both spend eternity in God’s loving presence. Rather than hell being torture imposed retributively by God, the excruciating, eternal pain and suffering of hell is simply the natural reaction of sinners exposed to the love of the God who they hate.

Along these lines, in the years since Part 3 was published, R. Zachary Manis has also endorsed a version of this view that he calls the divine presence model (otherwise known by me as “the river of fire view but for Protestants”). Dr. Manis discussed even this view in an interview with Chris Date on Rethinking Hell Live, Episode 108.

This river of fire view suffers from largely the same problems as other variations of the modern, metaphorical view. Whether the unending pain and misery of eternal conscious hell is fundamentally about separation from God or about God’s loving presence, either version has really no biblical basis at all. And, significantly for our purposes here, it also has a weak historical pedigree, all the while being treated as though it has the same level of historical dominance as the standard form of traditionalism that it directly contradicts. As was the case when I wrote Part 3 of this series, it is difficult to find examples in past centuries of anyone actually holding the river of fire/divine presence view. When coupled with the examples of prominent eastern fathers and theologians across the centuries who held to hell as a place of eternal torture and retribution, this view loses much of its historical luster.

Examples of Fiery Torture In Hell From Church History

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Collection of Early Monastic Writings)

In the sixth century, a collection of various sayings of the Egyptian desert fathers from the previous few centuries was compiled and translated into Latin. This volume was highly influential into the middle ages and beyond. ⁵ Benedicta Ward, trans. and ed., The Desert Fathers: Saying of the Early Church Monks (Penguin Books, 2003), Location 525 (Kindle).

In one noteworthy example, we are told of an Egyptian hermit who was tempted by a woman of the night and how he resisted temptation:

When he began to burn with desire, he said, ‘People who do things like this go into torment. Test yourself, and see whether you can bear a fire which is everlasting.’ Then he put his finger in the flame of the lamp and he burnt it, but he did not notice the pain because of the fire of passion within him. So, until the dawn came, he burnt his fingers one after the other. ⁶ De Vitis Patrum, sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V, found in Benedicta Ward, The Desert Fathers, 47.

Whether this was an account of an actual holy man’s experience or was meant as a parable, the fact is that the expectation of a desert monk at the time was that the wicked would burn in literal fire for ever and ever.

It should also be noted that, while these sayings were mainly preserved in a later Latin translation, this all took place in the Christian east. This serves as further evidence against the myth that eternal fiery hell was a distinctly western idea.

It is with this in mind that we can gauge what was meant with statements like the following:

Two brothers who were attacked by lust went away and married wives. Afterwards they said to each other, ‘What have we done? We have ceased to live like angels and have lost purity, and later on we will come to fire and torment.’ ⁷ Ibid, 44.

If nothing else, these eastern fathers certainly don’t describe the fate of those in hell like being in God’s unwanted love…

Remember the souls in hell. Meditate on their condition, the bitter silence and the moaning, the fear and the strife, the waiting and the pain without relief, the tears that cannot cease to flow. Remember too the day of resurrection, imagine God’s terrible and awful judgement. Bring into your sight the confusion of sinners before God and His Christ, before angels and archangels and powers, and all the human race, punishment, everlasting fire, the worm that never dies, the darkness of Tartarus – and above them all the sound of the gnashing of teeth, dread and torments. ⁸ Ibid, 12.

The Venerable Bede (Pre-Schism Medieval Theologian and Saint)

St. Bede the Venerable, an English scholar and theologian who is canonized in both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, recounted visions of hell in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Most notable was his recounting of the vision of Drithelm, a vision he called a “memorable miracle.” ⁹ The Venerable Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, 5.12, found in J.A. Giles (ed.), The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 253. Reproduced at The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/venerablebedesec00bede/ (accessed December 13, 2025).

Among the things Drithelm saw in hell were black flames in the midst of darkness (because, once again, historically it was understood that darkness didn’t negate literal fire in hell): ¹⁰ For more on the argument that fire and darkness cannot co-exist in hell, and historical answers thereof, see Ronnie Demler, “Yes, Fire and Darkness and Co-Exist,” Consuming Fire [blog], posted July 11, 2016, https://conditionalism.net/blog/2016/07/11/yes-fire-and-darkness-can-coexist/ (accessed December 24, 2025).

When I came into it, the darkness, by degrees, grew so thick, that I could see nothing besides it and the shape and garment of him that led me. As we went on through the shades of night, on a sudden there appeared before us frequent globes of black flames, rising as it were out of a great pit, and falling back again into the same. When I had been conducted thither, my leader suddenly vanished, and left me alone in the midst of darkness and this horrid vision, whilst those same globes of fire, without intermission, at one time flew up and at another fell back into the bottom of the abyss ; and I observed that all the flames, as they ascended, were full of human souls, which, like sparks flying up with smoke, were sometimes thrown on high, and again, when the vapour of the fire ceased, dropped down into the depth below. ¹¹ Ibid, 255.

Other elements of this vision included an “insufferable stench” and a demon trying to grasp him with burning tongs. ¹² Ibid.

It is also worth noting that Drithelm had previously seen a form of purgatory, where temporarily condemned souls would jump between fire and freezing water in a futile attempt to find relief. When seeing this fire, his thoughts were as follows: “I began to think that this perhaps might be hell, of whose intolerable flames I had often heard talk.” ¹³ Ibid, 254. Even if one might think that being tormented with fire and ice could represent some sort of metaphor, the fact that Drithelm saw people in fire and immediately thought of how he heard hell was full of fire says that he was probably thinking of just regular, literal fire.

In the next chapter (Book V, Chapter 13), Bede recounts a man from Mercia who had lived a sinful life and was shown hell right before he died and went there. In his case, he was physically tormented by demons in his last moments int his life:

This said, they immediately vanished, and two most wicked spirits rising, with forks in their hands, one of them struck me on the head, and the other on the foot. These strokes are now with great torture penetrating through my bowels to the inward parts of my body. ¹⁴ The Venerable Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, 5.12, found in J.A. Giles (ed.), 260.

Why would the man tell us of demons torturing him with forks (likely the infamous pitch forks of common hellfire lore) if the torment of hell was to be told by God “thy will be done”?

Rather, as Bede elaborates, the man felt and saw the demons torment for the sake of instructing others of what was to come if they did not repent:

Of whom it is manifest, that (as the holy Pope Gregory writes of certain persons) he did not see
these things for his own sake, since they availed him only for the instruction of others, who, knowing of his death, should be afraid to put off the time of repentance, whilst they have leisure, lest, being prevented by sudden death, they should depart impenitent. ¹⁵ Ibid.

Bernard of Clairvaux (Medieval Doctor of the Church)

Medieval abbot and doctor of the church, Bernard of Clairvaux, lists out just about every medieval trope about hell as among his true and genuine fears, with no indication of metaphorical usage at all.

Hell it is I fear ; the Face of my Judge, before whom the angels veil their faces in fear-at this I fear and tremble. At the mere thought of the anger of the Almighty, of the beholding of His Face in wrath, of the crash of a perishing world, of the roar of the elemental fires bursting forth, of the tumultuous conflict of the powers of nature, of the voice of the Archangel, of the awful word of the Judge’s doom at the mere thought of these I tremble and shake.

Terrible to me is the mere idea of the teeth of the monster of hell, of the lions roaring for their prey, of the abyss which contains and which hides them . I shudder at the gnawing of the never-dying worm , at the ever-burning lake of fire, at the smoke, the sulphur, the livid clouds, the whirlwinds of flame, and, lastly, at the outer darkness which broods over all . Who shall make my head to be a river, mine eyes a fountain of tears ( Jer. ix. 1) , so that by my weeping day and night I might anticipate and so avoid the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the hard fetters upon hands and feet, the weighty and cramping chains, which strangle, which burn to the bone, and yet are never consumed ? Alas, my mother ! why hast thou borne me to be a son of sorrow, a child of wrath, reserved for fiery indignation and everlasting lamentings? Why didst thou nurse upon thy knees, why didst thou nourish from thy breast, one born but to be consumed, to become food for the everlasting fire ? ¹⁶ Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermon XVI. Of Contrition of Hear, and of the Three Kinds of True Confession,” Life and Works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, Dom John Mabillon, ed., Samuel J. Eales, Trans, (John Hodges, 1896), 4:90-91. Reproduced at Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=4GlKAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed November 10, 2025).

Gregory Palomas (14th Century Eastern Orthodox Theologian, Saint)

St. Gregory Palomas was a Greek Eastern Orthodox theologian and saint who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries. He is known especially for his role in the fifth Council of Constantinople. And regarding hell, he did not see it as a place of passive separation from God, or as a place where the tormenting fire was God’s love (love which, unlike the fire St. Gregory speaks of, humans were created for). He saw a fire that could torment both spirit beings and human flesh alike:

What sort of fire is that, which burns bodies, and rational beings with bodies, and spirits without bodies , tormenting them while detaining them for ever alive? It will melt even the fiery element in us, for the Scripture says “the elements shall melt with fervent heat” (2 Pet . 3: 10, 12). How greatly is suffering increased when there is no hope of redemption. And that fire is unquenchable…[God says] I did not create you for this, nor did I prepare the fire for you. The unquenchable fire was lit for the demons who are irreversibly in the grip of evil. You joined them because your unrepentant minds were like theirs, and you share the dwelling of the evil angels by your own choice. ¹⁷ St. Gregory Palamas. The Parables of Jesus: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas, ed. Christopher Veniamin (Mount Thabor Publishing, 2023), 27).

Mark of Ephesus (15th Century Eastern Orthodox Theologian and Saint)

St. Mark of Ephesus was a prominent eastern theologian in the 15th century, perhaps best known for his rebuttal against the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. And it is in this context, in his first homily on the matter, that we can see Mark’s affirmation of literal fire and physical torment in hell.

This is one of those situations where there is not a convenient statement of 1-2 sentences directly on the matter. Nevertheless, when you follow his line of reasoning as he discusses the eternal fire of hell in contrast to other things, it becomes clear enough.

Essentially, in response to the Roman Catholic Council of Florence, Mark of Ephesus argues against the idea that there exists a fire of purgatory that temporarily burns those who will ultimately be saved. The contrast that this sets up is very telling:

But that souls are delivered thanks to a certain purgatorial suffering and temporal fire which possess such [purgatorial] power and has the character of a help — this we do not find either in the Scriptures or in the prayers and hymns for the dead, or in the words of the teachers. ¹⁸ St. Mark of Ephesus, “First Homily Refutation of the Latin Chapters Concerning Purgatorial Fire,” found in Seraphim Rose, The Soul after Death, 5th ed. (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2025), 200. Also available reproduced at The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/the-soul-after-death-2009-fr.-seraphim-rose (accessed December 13, 2025).

It is in this context that St. Mark says this about eternal hell:

…And so, we entreat God and believe to deliver the departed from (eternal torment), and not from any other torment or fire apart from those torments and that fire which have been proclaimed to be forever. ¹⁹ Ibid, 202.

There is no purgatorial fire. In that backdrop, we are told that there is an eternally burning fire of torment. If the point of the treatise is that there is no literal fire in purgatory, why even mention the eternal fire of hell if that isn’t fire either?

He likewise says elsewhere:

And if there is to be encountered in these hymns and prayers any mention of fire, it is not a temporal one that has a purgatorial power, but rather that eternal fire and unceasing punishment. ²⁰ Ibid, 202.

Again, his whole point is that there is no fire of purgatory. And to make that point, he contrasts it with the fire that does exist: eternal hellfire of torment.

To further belabor this point, he cites the words of St. Theodorus the Studite, who desired to see people freed from eternal hell, as an authority:

“Deliver, O our Savior, all who have died in faith from the ever-scorching fire, and unillumined darkness, the gnashing of teeth, and the eternally-tormenting worms, and all torment.””

Where is the “purgatorial fire” here? ²¹ Ibid. 203.

Lastly, after citing the teachings of the fathers before him, like St. Basil the great and St. John Crysostom (see Part 2), he sums up their teachings on 1 Corinthians 3:15 in regards to the wicked, in contrast to the argument that it describes purgatory:

…while those who bring bad works suitable for burning, being punished by the loss of them, will eternally remain in fire and will inherit a salvation which is worse than perdition, for this is what, strictly speaking the word “saved” means — that the destroying power of fire will not be applied to them and they themselves be utterly destroyed. ²² Ibid, 208, emphasis added.

Of course, if I wanted to sum up how the traditional view of hellfire contradicts what the Bible says about it – how it very much does destroy both body and soul (Matthew 10:28), how it burns up the wicked like weeds (Matthew 13:40), how it reduces them to ashes (Matthew 4:1-3, cf. 2 Peter 2:6) – I would probably frame the traditional view exactly as St. Mark of Ephesus does here (at least as it is in English).

But for our purposes, what matters is the running theme throughout this homily: burning alive in fire is not the lot of the saved in purgatory, but it is the lot of the damned. While this homily is not a treatise on hell, it tells us plenty.

Teresa of Avila (16th Century Roman Catholic Mystic and Saint)

If you are Protestant and know of any Catholic nuns of past eras, the first you would have heard of would probably be Mother Teresa. The second would then be the Teresa she was named after: Teresa of Avila.

Like Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila was one of many Christian mystics in her era to claim visions of eternal torment in hell. And like Catherine, she is worth noting as a representative of historical Christian belief because she is a canonized saint. She also is cited by other Catholic writers on the topic (including John Furniss in his infamous 19th-century pamphlet that was cited in Part 2). ²³ Reverend John Furniss, The Sight of Hell, (Excelsior Catholic Publishing House, 1982), XXVIII, reproduced at Saintbooks.net, n.d., http://www.saintsbooks.net/books/Fr.%20John%20Furniss%20-%20The%20Sight%20of%20Hell.html (accessed October 25, 2025). She recounts in her vision:

I felt a fire in my soul. I cannot see how it is possible to describe it. My bodily sufferings were unendurable. I have undergone most painful sufferings in this life, and, as the physicians say, the greatest that can be borne…yet all these were as nothing in comparison with what I felt then, especially when I saw that there would be no intermission, nor any end to them. ²⁴ Teresa of Avila, The Life of S. Teresa, of the Order of our Lady of Carmel, David Lewis, trans. (Burns, Oates, and Co., 1870), 265-266. Reproduced at The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/lifeofsteresaofj00tere/mode/2up (accessed November 8, 2025).

Having established hell entails extreme physical torture, she then says of the fire:

I have read of the diverse tortures, and how the devils tear the flesh with red-hot pincers. But all is
as nothing before this; it is a wholly different matter. In short, the one is a reality, the other a picture ; and all burning here in this life is as nothing in comparison with the fire that is there. ²⁵ Ibid, 267.

The Belgic Confession (16th Century Reformed Creed)

The 1561 Belgic Confession is a widely accepted doctrinal statement across the Reformed Christian world, either formally (like the Christian Reformed Church in America does), or implicitly. It tells us the following about hell:

Their innocence [that of the righteous] shall be known to all, and they shall see the terrible vengeance which God shall execute on the wicked…who shall be convicted by the testimony of their own consciences, and, being immortal, shall be tormented in that everlasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels. ²⁶ Phillip Schaff, ed., “The Belgic Confession,” The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes (Harper & Brothers, 1877), 3:435. Reproduced at Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=XLW2ta73beIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed November 25, 2025).

While not quite as pithy and overt as some of the other statements we have seen in this series, nevertheless, this statement is made in Article 37 on The Last Judgment. A short time earlier in this section, it was affirmed that this would all happen upon the resurrection of the dead.

For all the dead shall be raised out of the earth, and their souls joined and united with their proper bodies in which they formerly lived. ²⁷ Ibid, 434.

Shortly after affirming that the wicked would be raised from the dead, in their own physical bodies, it then said they would be immortal and tormented with fire. Why mention this torment in fire right after saying they would be raised bodily, if this fire was a metaphor for unfulfilled desire or hatred of God? The Belgic Confession affirms a living soul, so you don’t need a body for that sort of non-physical torment. The torment in view is physical torment in a real fire of some form.

Matthew Henry (17th Century Presbyterian)

I admit, my point does get the most traction from the many, many figures in church history who believed hell fire was literal fire (albeit supernatural fire). In contrast, Matthew Henry’s wording most likely indicates a belief that the fire symbolizes God’s wrath. Nevertheless, his comments about God’s wrath and the fires of hell, even if symbolic, put him far more in agreement with the likes of Dante and Milton than of C.S. Lewis or many apologists today.

[3.] If they must depart, and depart with a curse, may they not go into some place of ease and rest? Will it not be misery enough for them to bewail their loss? No, there is a punishment of sense as well as loss; they must depart into fire, into torment as grievous as that of fire is to the body, and much more. This fire is the wrath of the eternal God fastening upon the guilty souls and consciences of sinners that have made themselves fuel for it. Our God is a consuming fire, and sinners fall immediately into his hands, Heb 10 31; Rom 2 8, 9. ²⁸ Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible: Matthew 25, reproduced at Bible Study Tools, https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/matthew/25.html (accessed December 24, 2025).

While it may be the case that the fire is symbolic (at least in a sense), he goes out of his way to explain that the effect is the same as if being burned alive. It is not simply a metaphor of internal anguish, or simply the loss of all things good. It is a “punishment of sense as well as loss.”

If there was any doubt that Matthew Henry expected hell to entail physical torment, and may have thought it as solely spiritual/internal in nature, he also said the following earlier in his commentary on Matthew:

In hell there will be torments for the body; the whole body will be cast into hell, and there will be torment in every part of it. ²⁹ Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible: Matthew 5, reproduced at Bible Study Tools, https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/matthew/5.html (accessed December 24, 2025).

For good measure, it is also worth noting that Henry, like a considerable number of church figures in history, believed that the saved in God’s kingdom would watch the wicked suffer forever in hell and praise God as a result. ³⁰ Notable examples of church figures, included in previous entries in this series, include Tertullian of Carthage, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Richard Baxter, Jonathan Edwards, and John Gill. For more on this, see Trevor Johnson, “Seeing Hell: Do the Saints in Heaven Behold the Sufferings of the Damned (And How Do They Respond),” master’s thesis, Reformed Theological Seminary, 2004. Reproduced at Reformed Theological Seminary,  https://rts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Johnson-Seeing_Hell.pdf (accessed November 8, 2025).

Those that worship God shall go forth and look upon them, to affect their own hearts with the love of their Redeemer, when they see what misery they are redeemed from. As it will aggravate the miseries of the damned to see others in the kingdom of heaven and themselves thrust out (Luke 13 28), so it will illustrate the joys and glories of the blessed to see what becomes of those that died in their transgression, and it will elevate their praises to think that they were themselves as brands plucked out of that burning. ³¹ Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible: Isaiah 66. Reproduced at Bible Study Tools, https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/isaiah/66.html (accessed December 24, 2025).

John Bunyan (17th Century English Author and Preacher)

The great English preacher and author is most famous for his allegory of the Christian life, The Pilgrim’s Progress. However, his lurid descriptions of hell in that work were not just for funsies or artistic embellishment. It was not as though he was being hyperbolic and he actually believed in the much more spiritual view that hell was really just the passive sadness of being cut off from the source of all goodness.

On the contrary, surviving sermons remind us that, like everyone else in his time (apart from contemporary annihilationists and universalists), John Bunyan believed in a hell of terrible physical pain, torture, and God’s active vengeance. For example:

First, we undergo a variety of torments. We are tormented here a thousand, no, ten thousand different ways. Those that suffer upon the earth seldom have more than one affliction at a time. But if they had ulcers, gallstones, headaches, and fever all at the same time, would they not think they were very miserable? Yet all those together are but like the biting of a flea compared to those intolerable, sharp pains that we endure. Here we have all the sufferings of hell. Here is an unquenchable fire which burns us; a lake of burning brimstone that ever chokes us; and eternal chains that bind us. Here there is utter darkness to frighten us, and a worm of conscience that gnaws upon us everlastingly. Any one of these is worse to bear than all the torments that mankind ever felt on earth! ³² John Bunyan, “Visions of Heaven and Hell.” Reproduced at Grace Gems, https://www.gracegems.org/28/Bunyan_visions_of_heaven_and_hell.htm (accessed November 15, 2025).

Although the above is from a vision of his, he claims it to have been true and not a fictional account. ³³ Ibid, 4. And although he does consider one element to be metaphorical, being the worm of conscience, that explicitly-specified metaphor is in contrast to the other elements spoken of literally and even compared to the much lighter physical pain of earthly illness.

Consider also his words from a more grounded theological treatise on the resurrection:

The holy shall be in everlasting light: but the sinner in everlasting darkness. Without light, I say, yet in fire ever burning, yet not consumed; always afraid of death and hell, vehemently desiring to be annihilated to nothing. Continually fearing to stay long in hell, and yet certainly sure they shall never come out of it. ³⁴ John Bunyan, “The Resurrection of the Dead,” The Entire Works of John Bunyan, ed. Henry Stubbing (James S. Virtue, City Road and Ivy Lane, 1863), 1:378. Reproduced at The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/entireworksofjoh01buny/mode/2up (accessed November 9, 2025).

John Bunyan evidently saw no problem with darkness and literal fire co-existing.

Likewise, in John Bunyan’s sermon “A Few Sighs of Hell,” he describes the eternal torture of the wicked in many ways. How they must “cry, scorch and broil, and burn for ever,” and how the most lurid tortures on earth (like having your skin slowly ripped off with red-hot pincers) would be “a flea bite” compared to the torment of hell-fire. ³⁵ John Bunyan, “A Few Sighs of Hell,” The Entire Works of John Bunyan, ed. Henry Stubbing (James S. Virtue, City Road and Ivy Lane, 1863), 1:150. Reproduced at The Internet Archive,  https://archive.org/details/entireworksofjoh01buny/mode/2up (accessed November 9, 2025).

Not surprisingly, with such lurid descriptions of hell, Bunyan also did not run away from retributive punishment and God’s vengeance for those in eternal conscious hell. As was the norm, he embraced it:

Again, that thou mightest be tormented to purpose, the mighty God of heaven will lay as great wrath and vengeance upon thee as ever he can, by the might of his glorious power. As I said before, thou shalt have his wrath, not by drops, but by whole showers shall it come, thunder, thunder, upon thy body and soul so fast, and so thick, that thou shalt be tormented out of measure. ³⁶ Ibid, 142.

N.A. Motovilov (Pupil of 19th Century Eastern Orthodox Saint Seraphim of Sarov)

Rather than coming from a sermon or systematic theology, the following was from a vision reported by Nikolay Alexandrovitch (N.A.) Motovilov, a disciple of St. Seraphim of Sarov. It is recounted in English in a biography of St. Seraphim by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore.

I found this one to be worth highlighting because it shows that the 19th century, the idea of literal fire and eternal physical pain was alive and well in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The fact that this account was included in an Eastern Orthodox writing in our own time is also noteworthy. The river of fire view is not the only mainstream Orthodox view even today. And in this account, hell was the active infliction of pain in fire:

The Lord granted me to experience in my own body, and not in a dream or apparition, the three torments of hell. The first was that of the fire which gives no light and which can be extinguished only by the grace of the Most Holy Spirit. This agony lasted for three days. I felt myself burning, yet I was not consumed. ³⁷ Father Lazarus Moore, An Extraordinary Peace, St. Seraphim, Flame of Sarov (Anaphora Press, 2009), 141. Reproduced at The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/extraordinarypea0000unse/mode/2up?q=worm (accessed November 3, 2025).

Especially noteworthy is the fact that this vision reported a literal worm that ate Motovilov’s physical flesh, without killing him:

This torment was the undying worm of Gehenna. The worm in this case was visible only to Archbishop Antony and myself. But my whole body was riddled with this pernicious worm which crawled through the whole of me and in an indescribably frightful manner gnawed at my vitals. Though it crawled out through my nose, mouth, and ears, yet it went back in again. ³⁸ Ibid, 142.

Ignatius Brianchaninov (19th Century Eastern Orthodox Cleric and Saint)

Wikipedia and social media are never good places to end research, but they can be helpful in starting it. When I can find substantial engagement online about the river of fire view, St. Ignatius Brainchaninov of the Russian Orthodox Church often comes up as someone who taught contrary to such a view. For example:

The vast prison of hell has many sections and many different kinds of torment and torture by which every man is repaid according to the deeds he has done in the course of his earthly life. In all sections imprisonment is eternal, the torments eternal. There insufferable, impenetrable darkness reigns, and at the same time the unquenchable fire burns there, with an ever equal strength. ³⁹ Ignatius Brianchaninov, “On the Remembrance of Death,” The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism, trans. Archimandrite Lazarus (Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991). Reproduced at Orthodox Christian Information Center, http://orthodoxinfo.com/death/stignaty_death.aspx.

From the Dantesque pairing of tortures to the sins committed in life, to yet another example of not assuming fire and darkness contradict each other (common human experience tells us they don’t), this later, post-schism traditionalist was quite traditional.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (Early 20th-Century Edition)

It was really not that long ago that literal fire and eternal torture in hell was normal in the Roman Catholic Church, despite what some will claim today. We see this, for example, in the 1910 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Some few of the Fathers also thought of a metaphorical explanation. Nevertheless, Scripture and tradition speak again and again of the fire of hell, and there is no sufficient reason for taking the term as a mere metaphor. It is urged: How can a material fire torment demons, or human souls before the resurrection of the body? But, if our soul is so joined to the body as to be keenly sensitive to the pain of fire, why should the omnipotent God be unable to bind even pure spirits to some material substance in such a manner that they may suffer a torment more or less similar to the pain of fire which the soul can feel on earth? ⁴⁰ Charles Hebberman et. al, eds., The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline and History of the Catholic Church (Robert Appleton Company, 1910) 7:211. Reproduced at The Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/07470918.7.emory.edu (accessed November 16, 2025).

Conclusion To Part 5

Many myths exist regarding the actually-traditional traditional view of hell, the view of hell as a place of everlasting fiery wrath and torture. It is written off as being a creation of the cold and loveless western church that the far more enlightened and compassionate church of the east resisted getting trapped into. ⁴¹ For example, this was a frequent theme in Alexandre Kalomiros’s seminal presentation that helped make the divine presence view so popular in Eastern Orthodox circles. See Alexandre Kalomiros, “The River of Fire,” [presentation] 1980 Orthodox Conference, Seattle, WA, 1980, reproduced at Ancient Faith Blogs, n.d., http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/the-river-of-fire-kalomiros/ (accessed December 2, 2025). It should be obvious by now that this is not the case.

The actual-traditional view is often written off as being medieval and a creation of Dante, as though he were some sort of psychopath. Now, reaching the fifth installment in this series, we know that he was simply an artist who relied upon many centuries of standard Christian doctrine to fuel his imagination. If he was a madman, then so were so many revered Christians who both influenced him and came after him, Christians revered by many who now hold the modern, metaphorical view and consider the dominant view to be a caricature at best and morally atrocious at worst.

Annihilationists at least acknowledge that, while our view had at least a bit of notable early church presence (and may have had a lot more), it still is not part of the dominant tradition. ⁴² For more on early church annihilationism and universalism, see “Introduction to Evangelical Conditionalism: The Doctrine of Eternal Torment Was Not Universal in the Early Church“. See also Glenn Peoples, “Church Fathers who were Conditionalists“. William Tanksley’s three-part series on Irenaeus of Lyon is also worth a read: “Irenaeus and Continuance” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. We own that. If your view of hell is more like the loving river of fire than actual fire, it is time for you to do the same.

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