For a lot of us, hell was never presented as something Christians disagreed about.
We were taught what hell was, who went there, and what happened when they got there. It was simply what the Bible taught, and most of us probably assumed Christians had always understood it basically the same way.
But they haven't.
Christians throughout history have agreed that God will judge evil. What they haven't always agreed on is what that final judgment actually looks like.
Does it mean everlasting conscious punishment? Does judgment ultimately result in the destruction of the wicked? Or does God's judgment ultimately lead to restoration?
These aren't new questions. Christians have been wrestling with them for centuries, reading many of the same passages and sometimes reaching very different conclusions.
So rather than beginning with the view of hell we inherited and asking the Bible to confirm it, what if we begin with the Bible itself?
What words does Scripture actually use? What did those words mean to the people who first heard them? What images do the biblical authors draw from? And what happens when we allow all of those passages, not just the ones that support the view we already hold, to shape our understanding of final judgment?
Because before we can have a meaningful conversation about hell, we need to understand what the Bible actually says about it.
And that’s where the conversation starts to get interesting.

First, “hell” is a bigger word than we think.

The Bible doesn't actually give us one word for “hell.” Our English word hell has functioned like a junk drawer word.
Our English word hell comes from an old Germanic word associated with a hidden or covered place and, eventually, the realm of the dead. That made it a fairly natural word for early English translators to use for biblical terms that we’ll discuss in a minute. But over time, “hell” came to carry much more specific ideas about fire, torment, and final punishment. Nowadays, when we hear “hell”, we immediately conjure pictures of one thing: a fiery place of everlasting punishment where the wicked go after death. But is that the same image the original authors and hearers had in mind?
The Bible actually uses several different Hebrew and Greek words that have, at different points, been translated as “hell”, and they don’t all mean the same thing.
Sheol is the Hebrew word used throughout the Old Testament for the realm of the dead. It isn’t simply a place reserved for the wicked. Jacob, for example, expects to go down to Sheol mourning for his son Joseph (Genesis 37:35; see also Job 14:13; Psalm 16:10; Ecclesiastes 9:10). It is associated with death, the grave, and the place of the departed. So when an English translation renders Sheol as “hell,” we can easily import ideas into the passage that weren’t necessarily there in the Hebrew.
Hades is the Greek word most closely associated with Sheol. In fact, when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, Hades was commonly used to translate Sheol. We can even see that connection within the Bible itself: when Peter quotes Psalm 16:10 in Acts 2, the Hebrew Sheol is rendered with the Greek Hades (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27, 31).
The New Testament continues to use Hades for the realm of the dead (Matthew 11:23; Revelation 1:18; 6:8). And Revelation gives us an important clue that Hades is not simply another name for the final place of punishment: Hades itself is eventually thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:13–14).
Whatever the lake of fire means, Hades and the lake of fire are not interchangeable terms.
Gehenna is different again. This is the word Jesus most often uses in passages that English Bibles translate as “hell.” Gehenna comes from the Hebrew Valley of Hinnom, an actual valley outside Jerusalem with an ugly and brutal history.
This was a place where God's own covenant people turned to wicked idols, even sacrificing their own children in the fire (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6; 23:10; 2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:30–32; 32:35).
Israel had a special purpose and vocation in God’s Story. They had been called to bear God's name and represent Him to the nations (Exodus 19:5–6; Deuteronomy 4:5–8; 28:9–10). Instead, they gave their allegiance to other gods and participated in the very practices God had forbidden, profaning the name they had been called to bear (Ezekiel 20:39; 36:20–23).
The prophets then took that history and turned the valley itself into an image of coming judgment. Jeremiah warned that because of Judah’s idolatry and covenant unfaithfulness, the Valley of Hinnom would become the “Valley of Slaughter”—a place that embodied what would happen if God’s people continued down the path of rebellion (Jeremiah 7:31–34; 19:1–15).
Long before Jesus used the word Gehenna, the valley had already become a prophetic image of God’s judgment against covenant rebellion.
So when Jesus warns about Gehenna (Matthew 5:22, 29–30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43–48; Luke 12:5), His Jewish listeners aren't hearing a generic Greek word for a fiery afterlife where “bad people go when they die.” They're hearing a name loaded with Israel's covenant history.
That makes Jesus' use of Gehenna especially confrontational. He isn't merely warning “bad people” about punishment someday. He is speaking to Israel and reaching back to one of the darkest images in their own story to warn them that covenant identity alone will not shield them from judgment. The God who judged His people's idolatry and rebellion before could judge His covenant people again.
This is what happens when God's covenant people turn from Him, give their allegiance elsewhere, and profane the name they were called to bear.
Then there is Tartarus, which appears only once in the New Testament, in 2 Peter 2:4. Peter uses it when describing rebellious angels who are confined in gloomy darkness while awaiting judgment. Jude uses similar imagery when he describes rebellious angels being kept in darkness and chains until judgment (Jude 6). The term Tartarus comes from the Greek world, where it referred to a deep place of imprisonment.
Again, this is something quite different from Sheol, Hades, or Jesus' warnings about Gehenna. But depending on the English translation you read, all of these words could be translated with the word “hell”.
And then we get to Revelation's lake of fire.
Interestingly, Revelation never simply calls the lake of fire “hell.” Instead, John tells us what it represents:
“This is the second death” (Revelation 20:14; 21:8).
And what gets thrown into it?
The beast. The false prophet. The devil. Death. Hades. And finally, those whose names are not found in the Book of Life (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 13–15).
That should at least make us pay attention to the symbolism. How do you literally throw death into a lake? How do you throw the realm of the dead into it?
Paul calls death “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26), and Revelation ultimately announces that “death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4; see also Isaiah 25:6–8; 1 Corinthians 15:54–57).
The point isn't that these words have nothing to do with judgment. Several of them clearly do. The point is that they aren't interchangeable.
Sheol is not Gehenna.
Hades is not the lake of fire.
Tartarus is not Sheol.
And the lake of fire is called the second death.
Each of these words and images comes with its own biblical context. Once we recognize those distinctions, it becomes much harder to treat “hell” as though Scripture gives us one word with one simple definition.
And if we begin with our modern picture of hell and read that picture back into every one of these passages, we absolutely will miss some of what the biblical authors were trying to communicate.
Before we decide exactly what final judgment looks like, we need to let Scripture define its own terms.

Christians have answered the question differently.

When Christians have tried to take all of these different words, images, and passages seriously, they haven't always arrived at the same conclusion.
And these disagreements aren't new.
Christians were wrestling with the nature and purpose of final judgment long before our modern denominational lines existed.
Broadly speaking, three major understandings have emerged throughout Church history.

Eternal Conscious Torment

Eternal conscious torment is probably the view most familiar to many of us. It holds that those who finally reject God continue to exist and consciously experience God's judgment without end.
Supporters point especially to passages like Matthew 25:41, 46, where Jesus speaks of “eternal fire” and places “eternal punishment” alongside “eternal life,” as well as Mark 9:43–48 and Revelation 14:9–11, with its language of unquenchable fire and torment whose smoke rises “forever and ever.” Revelation 20:10 similarly describes the devil, beast, and false prophet being tormented “day and night forever and ever.”
This understanding predates him, but Augustine of Hippo became one of its most influential defenders in Western Christianity. In The City of God, Augustine argues explicitly that the punishment of the wicked is everlasting just as the life of the redeemed is everlasting.

Conditional Immortality

Conditional immortality, often associated with annihilationism, begins with a different question:
Does Scripture actually teach that every human being is inherently immortal?
This view holds that immortality belongs ultimately to God and is given as a gift to the redeemed (Romans 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:53–54; 1 Timothy 6:16). Those who finally reject God really are judged, but the final result of that judgment is death and destruction, rather than being kept alive forever in torment.
Its proponents point to the Bible's repeated contrast between life and death: Jesus warns that God can “destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matthew 10:28); “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23); those who believe will not “perish” but receive eternal life (John 3:16); Paul speaks of “eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9); and Revelation calls the lake of fire “the second death” (Revelation 20:14; 21:8).
There are important strands of this thinking very early in the church.
Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the second century, insisted that human beings do not possess immortality independently of God. Life and continued existence are God's gifts. In Against Heresies, he writes that life “does not arise from us, nor from our own nature,” but is bestowed by God's grace, and says that the person who rejects that gift deprives himself of “continuance for ever and ever.”
Exactly how Irenaeus's final judgment theology should be categorized is debated, but his understanding of immortality shows that the assumption that every human soul must naturally exist forever was not simply a given among early Christians.

Universal Reconciliation

Universal reconciliation, sometimes associated with the Greek word apokatastasis, or “restoration,” holds that God's judgment is real but ultimately serves His purpose of restoring creation. Judgment is therefore understood as corrective or purifying, with God ultimately overcoming evil and reconciling His creation to Himself.
Its proponents appeal to passages such as Romans 5:18–19; Romans 11:32; 1 Corinthians 15:22–28; Philippians 2:9–11; Colossians 1:19–20; and 1 Timothy 2:3–6.
They point, for example, to Paul's statement that “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22), his vision of the end when every enemy has been defeated and God becomes “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24–28), and the language of God reconciling “all things” to Himself through Christ (Colossians 1:19–20).
This view also appears surprisingly early.
Origen of Alexandria, writing in the second and third centuries, became one of the most important early proponents of apokatastasis. Scholars describe him as the earliest Christian thinker we know of to develop the eventual restoration of all creatures into a complete and coherent theological account.
And Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great fourth-century Cappadocian Fathers, wrote of divine punishment in reformative and purifying terms. Scholars continue to study the precise contours of his eschatology, but his writings contain strong affirmations of an eventual universal restoration in which evil itself finally ceases.
So these aren't simply three ideas invented by modern Christians who became uncomfortable with hell.
Christians have been wrestling with these questions for a very long time. Augustine, Irenaeus, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa were all deeply serious early Christian thinkers trying to make sense of the biblical language of judgment, death, punishment, restoration, and eternal life.
They didn't all put the pieces together in the same way. And Christians have continued wrestling with these same questions ever since.
Part of the reason is that every one of these views has difficult passages to explain.
Eternal conscious torment has to reckon with Scripture's repeated language of death, destruction, perishing, and the second death (John 3:16; Romans 6:23; Matthew 10:28; Revelation 20:14).
Conditional immortality has to reckon with passages that seem to speak of eternal punishment, eternal fire, unquenchable fire, and torment “forever and ever” (Matthew 25:41, 46; Mark 9:43–48; Revelation 14:9–11; 20:10).
Universal reconciliation has to reckon with passages that seem to describe final judgment, destruction, and exclusion (Matthew 7:13–23; 25:31–46; 2 Thessalonians 1:5–10; Revelation 20:11–15; 21:8).
No view gets to simply ignore the passages that make the conversation uncomfortable.
Recognizing and understanding this demands humility about the conclusions we hold and generosity toward Christians who have reached different ones. We can believe Scripture is authoritative, take God's judgment seriously, and still disagree about how all of these texts fit together.
Disagreement here doesn't necessarily mean someone isn't taking Scripture seriously. Sometimes it means faithful Christians are trying to make sense of a biblical picture that is bigger and more complex than any one passage.

Everybody gets a seat at the table.

Doctrine matters. What we believe about judgment matters. And precisely because it matters, we should be willing to open our Bibles together, wrestle honestly with the passages that challenge our own view, and resist the temptation to only collect the ones that support what we already believe.
There is room within the historic Christian conversation for real disagreement about the final fate of the wicked.
Christians can affirm together that Jesus has conquered sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:20–26, 54–57; 2 Timothy 1:10), God will judge evil (Ecclesiastes 12:14; Acts 17:30–31; Romans 2:5–11; Revelation 20:11–15), the dead will be raised (Daniel 12:2; John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15; 1 Corinthians 15:20–23), and God will ultimately set His creation right (Romans 8:18–25; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1–5)—while still disagreeing about exactly what final judgment looks like.
Because ultimately, hell isn't the center of the Christian story.
Jesus is.
The story ends with death defeated (1 Corinthians 15:26, 54–57; Revelation 21:4), creation restored (Romans 8:18–25; Revelation 21:1–5), and God dwelling with His people (Revelation 21:1–3; 22:3–5).
That's the hope we share, even while we continue wrestling with some very difficult questions about judgment.
But here’s the thing: underneath all of our questions about hell are even deeper questions:
Is God just? Is He merciful? Does His judgment fit His character? What about the person who never had a meaningful opportunity to hear about Jesus? What about the person we love who died without believing?
And underneath all of those questions is perhaps the most important one:
Can we trust that God is who He says He is—just, merciful, good, and faithful—even when it comes to final judgment?
Because ultimately, our questions about hell aren't only questions about what happens at the end.
They're questions about the character of the God who judges.
And that's where we'll pick up in Part Two.

Sources & Further Reading

For the history of the English word hell: Oxford English Dictionary, “hell”; Etymonline, “hell.”
For Augustine and eternal punishment: Augustine, The City of God, Book XXI, especially chapters 9, 17, and 23.
For Irenaeus on immortality as God's gift: Irenaeus, Against Heresies II.34 and IV.38–39.
For Origen and apokatastasis: Origen, On First Principles; Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaiṣan, and the Origin of Universal Salvation,” Harvard Theological Review 102.2 (2009): 135–168.
For Gregory of Nyssa and universal restoration: Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism; Morwenna Ludlow, Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner (Oxford University Press, 2000).