There are three main positions in contemporary Christian theology on hell:
Eternal conscious torment (ECT): The traditional view, held by the vast majority of Christian theologians throughout church history and reflected in the ecumenical creeds. Those who die apart from Christ experience permanent, conscious separation from God, described by the language of fire, darkness, and suffering. Jonathan Edwards, whose preaching on hell remains some of the most serious theological engagement with the doctrine, argued that the severity of hell is proportional to the seriousness of sin — which is an offense against an infinitely holy God, making even finite human sin infinitely serious.
Annihilationism (Conditional Immortality): The view that those who die apart from Christ are ultimately destroyed — they cease to exist — rather than suffering eternally. John Stott, one of the most respected evangelical theologians of the 20th century, expressed serious sympathy for this view. The argument is that the biblical language of "destruction" and "perishing" more naturally suggests cessation than eternal suffering. The counterargument is that the same passages that speak of destruction also speak of eternal punishment and the permanence of separation — and that annihilation, while less intuitively troubling, is still a catastrophic final loss.
Universalism: The view that all human beings will ultimately be saved — that God's love will ultimately be effective for every person. The theological tradition has always recognized a few theologians who held this view (Origen, Gregory of Nyssa). In the contemporary period, Rob Bell's Love Wins (2011) brought the question to popular attention. The primary biblical objection to universalism is that it requires explaining away not just isolated texts but a consistent pattern across the New Testament — Jesus's warnings about the narrow gate, his parable of the sheep and goats, Paul's references to those who will be excluded from the kingdom, John's vision in Revelation.
The honest position is that eternal conscious torment is the most naturally consistent reading of Jesus's teaching, that annihilationism is a defensible alternative position held by serious evangelical scholars, and that universalism requires reinterpreting a consistent pattern of New Testament teaching rather than resolving a peripheral difficulty.