The Purifying Fire

Previously, our class has discussed the nature of water in the Bible, and I have argued that it is a positive force that God uses to cleanse the world. In this sense, I am being quite literal; water is used to purge earthly filth from the world and soul. But fire, water’s natural opposite, is not a physical element in the same sense. It shows up repeatedly in the Bible as a spiritual essence when a person’s righteousness is in question. But like its counterpart, water, fire is also a purifying agent that purges spiritual filth from the human soul.

In the Book of Daniel, for example, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego are condemned to death in a white-hot furnace because they refuse to worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. In her article, “The Fiery Furnace in the Book of Daniel and the Ancient Near East,” Tawny L. Holm argues that death by fire is not uncommon in ancient Babylon, but death by fire in a furnace is extremely rare. She cites one theory as to why the author chose to use a furnace: “…the author of Dan. 3 is taking literally the metaphorical use of burning in a furnace for purification or refining, as found in the biblical psalms or in other biblical descriptions of Israel’s suffering in the exodus or exile” (86). But Holm does not buy into that explanation completely. Tracing the ancient Middle Eastern diaspora, she observes that the pagan religions in the region believed that fire was proof of divine justice. If the condemned, specifically blasphemers, burned to death during execution, they believed it was the gods who had spoken and carried out punishment. If the condemned did not burn, this was evidence that the gods found no fault with in their hearts and had spared them because they were pure.

Holm argues that the author of Daniel would have known about this and several other customs pertaining to fire, and used them as inspiration. Certainly, the story of the furnace mirrors what I have just described. The condemned did not burn because God found no fault in their hearts; they chose to remain faithful to him rather than sacrifice their beliefs and worship Nebuchadnezzar’s false idol. Furthermore, in the furnace, they offered heartfelt prayers to God not to save them, but to do his will as he would: “Let them know that you alone are the Lord God, glorious over the whole world” (Daniel 3:45, New American Bible). When they emerged unscathed, Nebuchadnezzar obviously saw that the gods, or in this case God, had proven that their hearts were pure.

Later in the Bible, in the New Testament gospels, John the Baptist uses water to cleanse the physical filth from the souls of the candidates, but he foretells how Jesus will come to purge their spiritual filth:

I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with an unquenchable fire (Luke 3:16, New American Bible).

John’s words echo the story of Daniel. If Jesus, God the Son, finds the sinners’ souls to be pure, he will shower them with his grace and spare them a terrible fate. If his cleansing Spirit and fire fails to purify, he will punish sinners by letting them burn, presumably in Hell.

This is obviously not a comprehensive list of how fire is used to purify or to prove the purity of a person’s soul in the Bible, but these are two of the most significant examples. Eternally opposites but similar in function, water and fire are agents used to clean impurity from the human soul, one in an earthly sense and the other in a spiritual sense. But both are positive forces that God uses to prove his might over his people.