Interestingly, I just found this on a blog...
http://thefullcourt.blogspot.com/
3/27/2007
Catholic Pope believes in Hell, Southern Baptist Billy Graham doesn't
From the Way of Life website.
"The Orlando (Florida) Sentinel for April 10, 1983, asked Billy Graham: “Surveys tell us that 85% of Americans believe in heaven, but only 65% believe in hell. Why do you think so many Americans don’t accept the concept of hell?” He replied: “I think that hell essentially is separation from God forever. And that is the worst hell that I can think of. But I think people have a hard time believing God is going to allow people to burn in literal fire forever. I think the fire that is mentioned in the Bible is a burning thirst for God that can never be quenched.”
In his 1983 “Affirmations” for evangelists, Graham said the fire of hell could be symbolic:
“Jesus used three words to describe hell. ... The third word that He used is ‘fire.’ Jesus used this symbol over and over. This could be literal fire, as many believe. Or IT COULD BE SYMBOLIC. ... I’ve often thought that this fire could possibly be a burning thirst for God that is never quenched” (A Biblical Standard for Evangelists, Billy Graham, A commentary on the 15 Affirmations made by participants at the International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July, 1983, Worldwide Publications, Minneapolis, Minnesota, pages 45-47).
In Time magazine, November 15, 1993, Graham said: “The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from his light, from his fellowship. That is going to be hell. When it comes to a literal fire, I don’t preach it because I’m not sure about it. When the Scripture uses fire concerning hell, that is possibly an illustration of how terrible it’s going to be—not fire but something worse, a thirst for God that cannot be quenched.”
From the Pope
"HELL is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
Hell "really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more".
Although we (Prots) may disagree with much of Catholic theology, we should be glad when we find such a clear, unequivical affirmation of the truth of the Bible coming from the Pope. The world just got reminded that Hell is real.
He's right. Hell does exist, it is eternal - and very few people speak of it these days.
Well, to be fair to Graham, saying the fire in Hell may be symbolic is hardly the same as saying Hell does not exist. Is the fire in Hell metaphysical? I've heard that a theological issue which has prevented the Catholic Church from infallibly asserting the doctrine of purgatory is not at all that the Church is unsure that purgatory exists (since biblical and patristic sources are hardly ambiguous that it does exist), but that She did not want to add to the doctrines in which the Orthodox Churches may have points to disagree with infallible doctrine.
(An analogous case wherein the West went ahead anyway is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; the East doesn't quabble with the notion that Mary was sinless, but the language references Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin in ways which create linguistic problems for the East.)
The problem with purgatory for the East is that the West would describe it, like Hell, as having fire. Indeed, many Western descriptions of the worst sufferings of Purgatory use similar words. The East, on the other hand, prefers references to a "tempest," etc. In this case, it seems like either one church is wrong, or references to fires may somewhat be an attempt to explain a metaphysical condition with an inadequate vocabulary of human experiences. I consider the latter possibility far more likely. (What's also quite possible is that the East's concepts have been mischaracterized to me.)
If Graham believes the fires of Hell, themselves, pose the same metaphysical problems, "symbolic" may simply be a poor choice of words; I'm not at all sure that such a metaphysical understanding of Hell is heretical, or even necessarily contradictory to the papacy's. Mind you, I'm only saying I'm not *sure*.