Why does Christianity believe in hell and demonic forces?

Cover image by NonStampCollector and used with permission

Why does Christianity believe in hell and demonic forces?

More specifically, the New Testament (NT) writers and Jesus speak of these things, but as if they are already known truths among those they are teaching to. The Old Testament (OT) does not provide any revelations that would serve as sufficient context for these teachings. If the existing scripture of Christ’s time* didn’t reveal these things, and if it’s possible they weren’t first revealed by Christ, where did the revelations about Hell, eternal damnation, and the forces of Hell come from?

That can be broken down into many claims and a question (where did they come from if not the OT?) that actually leads to another claim, and I am contemplating how much effort should be spent backing each of those claims. Lets first come up with some short hand for the revelations I’m discussing. I like the term Segregated Afterlife (SA) to refer to dead souls being separated between hell for the unrighteous and heaven for the righteous. I also like the term Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) to refer to the theological fate of those unrighteous. Finally, let's stick with the term demonic forces (DF) to refer to evil fallen angels that will also be condemned to hell and frequently come across as the adversaries of the righteous.

The OT doesn’t provide anything supporting these ideas as described above.

• SA and ECT aren’t anywhere in the OT. Instead we have:

  • Two, maybe three instances of OT heroes being caught up and brought directly to heaven (I’ve heard conflicting interpretations for the Moses story),

  • Both Job 21:13 and 1 Kings 2:6 (read more than one translation of that one, some don’t acknowledge that the manuscripts refer to Sheol) illustrate that the unrighteous can go to Sheol in peace. If you are inclined to argue those two don’t actually reveal anything about the afterlife that’s fine. They certainly don’t support SA or ECT either.

  • The dead prophet Samuel’s spirit was summoned by a medium. (1 Samuel chapter 28) After asking Saul “Why do you consult me, now that the Lord has departed from you and become your enemy?” The only thing he has to reveal about the afterlife is that “tomorrow you and your sons will be with me.” Saul’s terrible sin that God rejected him for? Not doing a good enough job perpetrating genocide against the Amalekites as God commanded. Apparently doing a botched job of it qualified him as righteous enough to spend the afterlife “with” God’s prophet though.

  Where did God reveal something as important as SA or ECT between when he created mankind and when he sent his only begotten son to the world though? It just isn’t in the OT.

• Evil DF aren’t in the OT either. Read the creation and fall of man story again. That was a talking snake. Nothing about it being possessed or anything. All future snakes were cursed for what that snake did. Not some demon father of lies, but an actual, from thence on crawling on its belly, craftier than all the other beasts God made, heel striking, snake. The word Satan shows up 27 times in the OT manuscripts and generally is a word for adversary, frequently as a divine being that is serving God’s purpose in punishing or hindering someone. In Job “the satan” is sitting in God’s throne room long after the Genesis fall of man. Jesus describes seeing Satan’s fall like lightning from heaven in Luke 10:18, but nothing about that was revealed in the OT (Ezekiel 28 is explicitly about the contemporary King of Tyre) and further it doesn’t discuss a host of demonic supporters of Satan anywhere in the OT.

The other main claim I’m making is that the theology of SA, ECT, and DF was already known to the people Christ and the NT writers were teaching to. I think this is evident by the way the writing comes across, but we don’t have to rely on that. Because where did they come from if not the OT? Enter…

The Book of Enoch.

The Book of Enoch (BoE) is purported to contain the prophecies of Enoch, the other OT hero besides Elijah who was explicitly taken directly to heaven. Historians believe it was written as late as the second century BCE, with portions of it that predate that. It was preserved in the Ethiopian church canon, but the rest of the church and rabbinical canons modernly known reject it. It is mostly apocalyptic prophecy that would be as hard to untangle as the second half of Daniel or The Book of Revelation.

Jude 14-15 quotes a “prophecy” of Enoch, that is almost word for word from The Book of Enoch 1:9. This was recently brought to my attention by an internet podcaster who claimed that The Book of Enoch is referenced in the New Testament more times than any Old Testament book. I don’t have that guys receipts, but Jude 14-15 is explicit, and the dead sea scrolls have multiple copies of fragments of this book demonstrating that it was important to at least that group of Christ’s contemporaries. The book is jam packed full of tales of heavenly angels, fallen angels, and even offspring of angels from the daughters of men. It also describes these angelic hosts being bound in chains to await judgment as 2 Peter 2:4 seems to expect the reader to already know about.**

But of the subjects I have brought up as not being in the OT but being in NT theology it doesn’t just discuss Demonic Forces. Quoting from Enoch 22 we have:

8 Then I asked about him, and about judgment on all, and I said: “Why is one separated from another?”

9 And he answered me, and said to me: “These three places where made, in order that they might separate the spirits of the dead. And thus the souls of the righteous have been separated; this is the spring of water, and on it the light.

10 Likewise, a place has been created for sinners, when they die, and are buried in the earth, and judgment has not come upon them during their life.

11 And here their souls will be separated for this great torment, until the Great Day of Judgment and Punishment and Torment for those who curse, forever, and of vengeance on their souls. And there he will bind them forever. Verily, He is, from the beginning of the world.

12 And thus a place has been separated for the souls of those who complain, and give information about their destruction, about when they were killed, in the days of the sinners.

13 Thus a place has been created, for the souls of men who are not righteous, but sinners, accomplished in wrongdoing, and with the wrongdoers will be their lot. But their souls will not be killed on the day of judgment, nor will they rise from here.”

14 Then I blessed the Lord of Glory, and said: “Blessed be my Lord, the Lord of Glory and Righteousness, who rules everything forever.”

And here in just seven verses that predate the NT, we see explicit, clear context for SA and ECT teachings as found in the NT that the OT is entirely bereft of, in addition to the previous demonstrations of DF teachings.

Conclusions:

Jesus and the NT writers didn’t get the Christian concepts of the afterlife and demonic forces from the teachings revealed from the OT but from revelations and teachings external to the OT. These revelations are reflected in The BoE that the NT explicitly values as prophecy. I chose the wording “are reflected in” carefully, as I don’t expect a one for one relationship. There may be inspiration from other sources I'm ignorant of or that are lost to antiquity. I have heard the Books of Maccabees and Jubilees have some of these teachings in them as well, and that many of these traditions and more were predated by or possibly even derivatives of the teachings of Persian Zoroastrianism.

As said by a random person on the internet to me yesterday, hearing about these teachings in The BoE caused an almost audible click in my brain as a jagged hole in my puzzle of Christian Theology got filled with a new puzzle piece that was apparently very important during Christ’s time, but which had been denied to me up until now.

My next essay is “The Authority of Scripture” and serves as a direct follow up to this one.

*I’m editing in an acknowledgement that I’m playing two sides of an argument here by imposing the “Sufficiency of Scripture” doctrine upon “Christ’s time” to presume that only what’s found in the Christian Bible was/is scripture, only to later demonstrate that this presumption can not hold.

** Enoch 69:28 appears to be an instance of where this is coming from:

Enoch 69:28: And those who led astray the world will be bound in chains and will be shut up in the assembly-place of their destruction, and all their works will pass away from the face of the earth.

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