They believe that all of the authors present a coherent picture of the afterlife: reward for the few in Heaven and eternal punishment for the vast majority in Hell. As a result, there cannot be any true contradictions between any two passages in the Bible. They reject the liberal concept, described below, that there is a gradual evolution in religious thought in the Bible about the afterlife. The Bible is seen as authoritative; it is believed to give a consistent vision throughout of life after death.
Liberal Christians recognize that the writers of the Bible held a variety of beliefs concerning Heaven and Hell, and believe that the beliefs of the authors of the Bible evolved greatly over the approximately 850 years during which the Bible was written. Thus, there is little internal consistency in the Bible on the afterlife. The earliest books of the Bible described Sheol : an underground cavern where all people, good and bad, spent eternity after death, leading a thirsty, shadowy, energy-less existence isolated from God. Borrowing some ideas from the Zoroastrian religion, some later Jewish writers saw the faithful being resurrected and leading long lives in a purified earth before dying a second time. After the Greek invasion, the Jews picked up the Hellenistic concept that some individuals will go to Heaven for eternal reward, while the rest go to Hell for eternal punishment. The book of Daniel, from the 2nd century BCE, and the Christian Scriptures from the 1st and 2nd century CE describe this Hell. It is pictured as either a place of annihilation, where people simply cease to exist, or of eternal punishment.
Liberal Christians do not interpret the Bible's teachings literally, and therefore reject the idea of the reality of Sheol. They also reject the idea of the reality of Hell as either a place of annihilation or eternal punishment. Most look upon Hell as a concept, not as a place of punishment.
