Answer
God’s omnipresence is one of His essential attributes. His justice is also essential, and, therefore, it is necessary for Him to punish unrepentant sinners. Hell is described as a place where people are removed from God’s presence (see Matthew 25:41), yet God is everywhere present. This is a paradox.
Three passages are particularly important to this discussion. First is Psalm 139:7–8, in which David says, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there” (NKJV). The word translated “hell” in the NKJV is the Hebrew Sheol, which simply means “the grave” or “the place of the dead.” Sheol is a broad term and is not synonymous with hell, a word commonly used to refer to the eternal place of punishment. All Psalm 139 says that God is as present in the afterlife as He is in this life.
Second Thessalonians 1:9 says that those who do not know God “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (emphasis added). Compare this to Revelation 14:10, which says that people who worship the Antichrist “will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” (emphasis added). These two verses delineate the apparent contradiction. But there is a rather simple explanation to be found in the original Greek.
In Revelation 14:10, “presence” is a literal translation of the Greek enopion, which means “in the presence of, before.” This is a spatial word, suggesting proximity and literal, measurable distances. In contrast, the word translated “presence” in 2 Thessalonians is prosopon, which most commonly refers to a person’s face or outward appearance. Paul in 2 Thessalonians appears to have taken this verbiage directly from Isaiah 2:10 as found in the Septuagint. There are other references to God and His people being “separated,” even on earth (see Psalm 22:1). Theologian Dr. Louis Berkhof teaches that Paul refers to “a total absence of the favor of God” (Systematic Theology, GLH Publishing, ch. V, § A.2, 1938). This description of hell would present a more exact opposite to heaven. Heaven provides blessing and wholeness not through being closer spatially to God, but by being in complete fellowship with Him. Hell is associated with a complete lack of blessing due to the severing of any fellowship with God.
In heaven, believers will “see his face” (Revelation 22:4). At that moment, they will behold all of God’s beauty, grace, and perfection. In hell, sinners will know nothing of beauty, grace, or perfection, as God, as it were, turns His face away.
Ultimately, it appears that God is indeed “present” in hell, or hell is in His presence, depending on how one looks at it. God is and will forever be omnipresent. He will forever know what is happening in hell. However, this does not mean that the souls imprisoned there will have a relationship with God or engage in communication with Him. He will be spatially present but relationally distant.
