Will There Be Weeping and Gnashing of
Teeth?
Matthew 13:36-42 and
47-49; Romans 8:38-39
Years ago I heard some
right-wing preacher on the radio rant that “There is not one single
contradiction in God’s holy word!” It hadn’t yet remotely occurred to me that I
would one day go to seminary and become an ordained Christian minister, but
even so I wondered: Has he ever read it? I’ve written elsewhere about
contradictions in the Bible so I won’t go into many of them here.[1]
I want here to look at just one of them, one I haven’t written on before. It is
the contradiction between Matthew 13:36-42 and 47-49 on the one hand and Romans
8:38-39 on the other.
The Gospel of Matthew has
various features that appear in it multiple times. It has for example several
passages in which the author says that something has happened to fulfill
something in the Hebrew Bible. See for example Matthew 1:22-23.[2]
See also Matthew 2:5-6, 2:15, 2:17-18; and 2:23[3].
Another of Matthew’s repeated phrases, and the one I want to consider here, is
the Gospel’s habit of having evil people thrown somewhere where there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. Sometimes it’s into “the outer darkness.” See
Matthew 8:12, 22:13, and 25:30. On other occasions it’s “the furnace of fire.”
We will consider two of those passages here.
At Matthew 13:36-43 we
have an explanation of a parable Jesus has just told the people, the parable of
the weeds in the field. In that parable, Matthew 13:24-30, a sower sows good seed,
but weeds come up along with the wheat. The sower’s servants ask the sower if
they should pull up the weeds. The owner says no, you might pull up the wheat
too. Let them grow until the harvest. I’ll sort them out then. The disciples
ask Jesus for an explanation of the parable. Jesus says that at the end time “The
Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all
causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of
fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:41-42.
At Matthew 13:47-50 we
find the parable of the net thrown into the sea that catches every kind of
fish. The fishers keep the good fish and throw out the bad. The text then says:
“So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the
evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” In both of these passages a place of
horrific punishment for earthly evil awaits the evildoers.
We’ve all heard it of
course. Christianity has long understood the cosmos as consisting of a heaven
above and a fiery hell below with the earth somehow suspended between them.
Either at the end time or immediately after a person’s death there will be a
judgment, or so we’re told. The righteous will spend a blissful eternity in
heaven. The evildoers will spend an agonizing eternity in hell. There are more
problems with that view of life, the cosmos, and God than I can possibly deal
with here. I’ll just say that that view of a three-tiered universe can only be
a metaphor for us at best because we know that the universe isn’t constructed
that way. Also, since when was anyone except Jesus perfectly righteous? Since
when was anyone perfectly evil? I mean, even Hitler loved dogs and children (as
long as they weren’t Jewish, Slavic, or Roma children). Surely we are all some
combination of good and evil, a reality that Matthew pretty much ignores.
Be that as it may, the
Gospel of Matthew, which is the only place in the Bible that has a place where
the evil go where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, gives us a
vision of a post-death judgment that results in people spending eternity either
in bliss or in agony. Matthew’s God is vengeful that way. Matthew’s God rewards
the good and punished the bad. Matthew’s God is making a list and checking it twice.
He’s going to find out who’s naughty and nice. In this view of God you’d better
be righteous rather than evil because if you’re evil you’re going to pay for it
big time.
Now let’s turn to the
other side of the contradiction we’re studying. Romans 8:38-39 are my favorite
verses in the whole Bible. There we read:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
These lines are for me the Gospel of
Jesus Christ in a nutshell. God loves me. Period. God loves you. Period. God
loves everybody. Period. It may not be possible for us mortals to love
everyone, but God’s love is so much greater than ours that absolutely nothing
can separate us from it or it from us.
Paul gives us here a
rather specific list of things that can’t separate us from the love of God, but
then he universalizes the point: “nor anything else in all creation” he says.
Is it in creation? It can’t separate us from the love of God. Is unrighteousness,
including our own, in creation? It can’t separate us from the love of God. Is
evil, including our own evil, in creation? It can’t separate us from the love
of God. Is sin, including our own sin, in creation? It can’t separate us from
the love of God. Nothing. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
These great words from
St. Paul seem to me directly to contradict Matthew’s image of evildoers being
cast into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of
teeth. Yes, I can hear some Christians more conservative than I saying that the
punishment of the furnace of fire is an expression of God’s love. That
assertion makes no sense to me. Let me explain why it doesn’t.
Love, or at least human
love, can sometimes punish its object. Those of us who are parents get that I
think. We love our children, but sometimes we take away something a child
values—screen time, allowance, etc. In former times we may even have spanked
one of our children though I trust we don’t do that anymore. There is however
only one way that punishing a child is consistent with loving the child, only
one way that doing it is morally permissible. That’s if the punishment is meant
as a corrective. We punish our child, nonphysically I trust, to correct some
improper behavior by the child. Indeed “I’ll teach you a lesson” has come to
mean I’ll inflict physical pain on you. Punishment—nonphysical of course—is permissible
and appropriate only as a corrective for bad behavior.
The scenes Matthew gives
us in which someone is cast into the furnace of fire where there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth assumes that being cast into that hellish place
happens after a person’s death. Unless you believe in reincarnation, which most
Christians myself included do not, correction makes no sense after a person has
died. There’s not going to be any future behavior to correct. The only purpose
for Matthew’s furnace of fire after a person’s death has to be punishment
having nothing to do with correction. Not even human love would do that. God’s
infinitely superior love would never do it.[4]
You may have noted that I
attribute the statements in Matthew about the furnace of fire in which there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth to Matthew not to Jesus. That’s because
the phrase “furnace of fire” appears nowhere else in the New Testament, which
suggests if it doesn’t quite prove that Jesus didn’t say it. The author of the
Gospel we call Matthew said it. If we can safely conclude that Jesus never
talked about people being cast into a furnace of fire where there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth, and I believe we can, then Matthew’s verses
about that place of torment are hardly divine truth. They express the belief of
an ancient Christian who lived decades after Jesus. We take them seriously
because the are in the Bible. We don’t have to accept them as true or
meaningful.
So to answer the question
I posed in the title to this piece, no, there will not be weeping and gnashing
of teeth in some furnace of fire. Weeping and gnashing of teeth is not what God
wants for anyone, for God loves everyone. I’ve always quite liked Pope Paul Vi’s
saying that while he believes there is such a place as hell he’s not sure
anyone in it. I don’t even think that hell exists. The hoary Christian notion
of hell as a fiery place for the eternal torment of sinners is incompatible
with our God of love. So I will stand with St. Paul on this issue. Nothing,
absolutely nothing can or ever will separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God!
[1] For
more on contradictions in the Bible see Sorenson, Thomas Calnan, Liberating
the Bible, A Pastor’s Guided Tour for Seeking Christians, Revised Edition,
Volume One, Approaching the Bible, Coffee Press, Briarwood, NY, 2018,
pp. 199-201.
[2] Be
careful with this one. I has a significant translation error in it between the
Hebrew original and the Greek version the author if this Gospel used. The
passage it quotes is from Isaiah. That passage uses the Hebrew word for young
women not the word for virgin. Matthew’s error here is hardly insignificant.
[3]
The Bible verse Matthew claims to quote here doesn’t exist, but never mind.
[4] I
am painfully aware that in the US we often punish people convicted of crimes by
sentencing them to prison where little or no effort is made beyond the fact of
imprisonment itself to correct the prisoner’s behavior upon release, but we
hardly do that out of love for the convict. We may call the state apparatus
that oversees a state’s prisons the Department of Corrections as we do in my
home state of Washington. Mostly corrections in that title is a euphemism for
punishment. It eases our conscience to call it correction though very little
correction actually takes place. Just look at the statistics on recidivism. We
don’t send people to prison out of love. We do it mostly out of vindictiveness,
a very un-Christian value indeed.
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