*Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this series are not intended as an official statement of CBTS or a uniform position of its faculty. This material is offered in the spirit of faith seeking understanding and to encourage further theological reflection. To read more installments in this series, click here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Before our blog series concludes by discussing Christ’s “descent into hell,” this blog post will briefly address one more word which designates a hellish prison for wicked spirits. In fact, this participle tends to include the word “hell” in its English translations. The Greek word occurs only once in the New Testament. The Apostle Peter uses this word in 2 Peter 2:4 to describe a divine punishment in the past (with continuing effects). The word is ταρταρώσας (tartarosas, from ταρταρόω), which can be translated into English as “cast… into hell.”
4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains [ESV margin: “Some manuscripts pits”] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked 8 (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
(2 Peter 2:4–10a)
Gene Green reflects scholarly consensus when he says this about the word translated “cast… into hell” in verse 4: “This verb, found only here in the NT, refers to being sent to Tartarus, the ‘deepest region of the underworld, lower even than Hades’ (OCD 1476).”[1]
Alongside other spectacular instances of divine punishments from the Book of Genesis, Peter mentions an example of God punishing angels who had sinned. He apparently assumes his readers’ knowledge of this event, much as they would know of the great flood of Noah’s day, as well as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Lot’s day.
Some in the Reformed camp have attempted to apply the divine punishment here mentioned to all fallen angels, but in a metaphorical manner. Here is one example from Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology: “They [all fallen angels] are even now chained to hell and pits of darkness, and though not yet limited to one place, yet, as Calvin says, drag their chains with them wherever they go, II Pet. 2:4; Jude 6.”[2] Notice, however, that such an interpretation actually blunts the contextual point stated in verses 9 and 10—God’s awesome and climactic punishments upon lustful rebellion (which, at least, in Peter’s other two examples, occur during the history recorded in Genesis). These inescapable punishments are described as temporal foretastes of inescapable judgment on the last day. I submit that this cannot simply describe the fallen condition of all evil angels (a fall which is assumed rather than described in scripture). It describes a particular punishment of imprisonment, a punishment which is tied to a particular event recorded in scripture. Judging from the sequence of Peter’s three examples, this punishment seems to have happened either before or at the same time as Noah’s flood, an event which itself occurred before Sodom’s destruction.
Under the infallible inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Peter apparently agreed with an interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4 which is well-attested both before and during his era (though we may not thereby conclude that the apostles would have agreed with further, fanciful developments and uses of such an interpretation). Here is the first portion of Genesis 6:
1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. 5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
(Genesis 6:1–8)
We have various extrabiblical writings from the centuries immediately before and after Christ, demonstrating a common understanding in which Genesis 6 describes both angelic and human sin. The “sons of God” are not regenerate men or descendants of Seth or human rulers; they are heavenly beings (just as they are in the Book of Job, for instance) who somehow engaged in perverse unions with “the daughters of men” (human women). Though realizing that many of my Evangelical and Reformed brothers strongly disagree, I myself see this understanding to be the plain and uncontrived (albeit mysterious) meaning of Genesis 6.
As to the insistence of various Reformed brethren (such as John Murray) that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 were godly descendants of Seth (as described in Genesis 5), I wish to make one observation. We must be careful not to label Seth’s line as “the godly line” and Cain’s line as “the ungodly line”. The scriptures never tell us that everyone (or even most) descended from Seth came to faith or that everyone (or even most) in Cain’s line remained in rebellion against God. Actually, such an idea must gloss over the rest of Adam’s descendants (through his many other sons and daughters) or assume that they all sided with one of two families: the Sethites or the Cainites. Such an assumption is foreign to the text. Furthermore, Seth’s line is neither said nor implied to be a holy, covenant nation like Israel would later be, with its people in a national covenant with God (and thus forbidden to intermarry with other nations). These sorts of ideas may seem to fit paedobaptist assumptions that God’s covenant of grace is always given to both believers and their children in some sense, but we shouldn’t read that into the early chapters of Genesis. What we can say is that Genesis highlights a few people from Seth’s line who were definitely regenerate, righteous people, as well as one descendant of Cain (named Lamech) who stood out as a wicked man. This continues the theme of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, but it doesn’t imply that these spiritual seed lines were neatly divided according to two biological family lines. In any case, by the time of the flood, only Noah and some of his immediate family were righteous, and the text does not say that the rest of the Sethites were turned away from God by bad marriages. Still, there is something significant about Seth’s line. Though their family tree included both righteous and wicked people, nevertheless Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were descended directly from Seth. That is what Genesis emphasizes. Thus King David and his offspring Jesus Christ, the promised Seed of the Woman, are the seed of Seth. The special thing about Seth’s bloodline is that it leads to the coming Redeemer.
Regarding the sin of heavenly beings in Genesis 6, it was further understood in the centuries surrounding Peter that God sent these particular angels to Tartarus, “thought of by the Greeks as a subterranean place lower than Hades where divine punishment was meted out, and so regarded in Israelite apocalyptic as well.”[3] If Peter had meant to avoid such an interpretation, surely he could have avoided the verb form of the name Tartarus when mentioning the fate of sinning angels. Again, this is not to suggest that Peter endorsed either the pagan Greek mythology which spoke of Tartarus or the fanciful and presumptuous speculation which was often attached to Genesis 6. Nevertheless, Peter affirms that God punished a certain group of angels for a certain sin (apparently their lustful rebellion against created boundaries as recorded in Genesis 6) with hellish imprisonment until the final day of judgment. They are being kept “under punishment until the day of judgment” (verse 9) because they “indulge(d) in the lust of defiling passion and despise(d) authority” (verse 10).
Notice how Jude speaks so similarly to Peter as he himself describes the imprisonment of certain angels “until the judgment of the great day”:
6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire [“different/strange flesh”], serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
(Jude 6–7)
Notice also that Jude very specifically compares (“just as” [ὡς] in verse 7) the sin of these angels who left their created role and boundaries to the sin of Sodom and the other cities of the plain, “which likewise [τὸν ὅμοιον τρόπον τούτοις] indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire (more literally, ‘pursued different/strange flesh’).” According to verse 4, Jude is reminding his readers of such sins because of “ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Again in verse 8, Jude emphasizes how the libertines in the church “in like manner” to the Israelites in the wilderness, the angels who sinned, and the Sodomites, now “defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.”
Let me note here that, though many connect an angelic interpretation of Genesis 6 to a particular interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19–20 which would teach a postmortem descent of Christ, this is not a necessary connection. The meaning of Christ making proclamation “to the spirits in prison” should be a separate discussion, not a foregone conclusion based on texts like Genesis 6. For myself, I understand 1 Peter 3 to teach that Christ “in the Spirit” (the Holy Spirit of God) preached (ἐκήρυξεν) to human sinners in the days of Noah, sinners who are now deceased spirits in prison. This is consistent both with Peter’s earlier use of “the Spirit of Christ” in 1 Peter 1:10–12 (the Spirit by whom the gospel is preached) and with the repeated contrast between the flesh and the Spirit in both 1 Peter 3:18 and 1 Peter 4:6. It also fits with what Peter himself calls Noah in 2 Peter 2:5, “a herald (κήρυκα, ‘preacher’) of righteousness.”
Conclusion
To conclude the two most recent blog posts, we can say that the New Testament’s use of words like “Abyss,” “Pit of the Abyss,” and “Tartarus” seem to collectively describe realms within the present Hell (Hades), places of imprisonment for evil angels or demons. Not all fallen angels are currently confined in Hell; apparently God can and does bind certain evil spirits in Hell. This occasional imprisonment is due to specific angelic sins. In view of the Old Testament concepts of Sheol and “the pit”, the present prison for evil angels seems to be roughly the same place, or another part of the same place, where the deceased spirits of unrighteous humanity are confined. One particular Old Testament text might especially imply this:
21 On that day the Lord will punish
the host of heaven, in heaven,
and the kings of the earth, on the earth.
22 They will be gathered together
as prisoners in a pit;
they will be shut up in a prison,
and after many days they will be punished.
23 Then the moon will be confounded
and the sun ashamed,
for the Lord of hosts reigns
on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem,
and his glory will be before his elders.(Isaiah 24:21–23)
Perhaps Isaiah 24 here portrays the imprisonment of both angelic and human sinners in the abyss until their ultimate punishment.
There is much here which we must approach with humility, sensing our own ignorance. But we can conclude with some biblical certainties. What will happen to wicked angels at the end of history? They, like their fellow human prisoners, will be cast into Gehenna, the lake of fire, which is eternal Hell.
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
(Matthew 25:31–33, 41, 46)
10 And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
(Revelation 20:10, 13–15)
In the next blog posts, we will finally address the concept of Christ’s “descent into hell” directly.
[1] Gene L. Green, Jude and 2 Peter, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 250.
[2] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 149.
[3] A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third Edition (BDAG), revised and edited by Frederick William Danker (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 991.
