New Testament texts on Hell:
“ If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell [Gehenna] to the unquenchable fire. And if you foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell [Gehenna]. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell [Gehenna], where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”
“His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Gospel
of St. Matthew 25:31-46
Jesus’ disciples ask about his return; he stresses the unexpectedness of the
Second Coming, saying that the “son of man will come like a thief in the night,”
so salvation will be possible only for those who have lived well. He tells
the stories of the good and wicked servants, the wise and foolish virgins, the
parable of the talents. Servants who do not prepare for the return of their
master will be punished with banishment to “the outer darkness; there men will
weep and gnash their teeth.” At the Last Judgment, all nations will be gathered,
and “he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep
from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats
at the left.” Those on the right will “inherit the kingdom prepared” for them,
but to those on the left, the goats, he says: “Depart from me, you cursed ones,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his [fallen] angels [i.e. demons].”
St. Augustine, early 5th C. Christian theologian: Enchiridion Ch. 111-112
“After the resurrection [of the dead], when the final universal judgment has been completed, two groups of citizens [Latina = cives] one Christ’s, the other the devil’s shall have fixed lots: one consisting of the good, the other of the bad – both however, consisting of angels and men. … The former shall live truly and happily in eternal life, the latter shall drag a miserable existence in eternal death without the power of dying, for both shall be without end. But among the former there shall be degrees of happiness, one being more pre-eminently happy than another, and among the latter there shall be degrees of misery, one being more endurably miserable than another.” Sin and damnation cause men “to be lost out of the kingdom of God, to be an exile from the city of God, to be alienated from the life of God.”