More Hell

1. I know of no one who has anything like a perspicacious, serious understanding of the Christian gospel and rejects it. What’s widely rejected is not Christ but a superficially Christian religion which is moralistic without being moral, and which offers superstition while denying mystery. What’s rejected is not Christ but Christians, whose resentment, unsurprisingly, puts its hopes in hell for the unconverted.

2. Christians have a lamentable tendency to make claims about what the non-Christian believes, often because they mistakenly believe that it follows from what he believes, or at least from what they claim he believes—care is not always taken to see to it that he really believes it—and they mistakenly believe that belief is closed under implication. So, e.g., self-described atheists are not really atheists because they really do believe there is a God whom they reject. Suppose we reject this unsavory practice and accept the obvious fact that in our world–though not, perhaps, in the ancient world of the NT–there are plenty of people who simply do not believe there is a God. On the traditional view, do human beings end up in hell in virtue of not believing, or in virtue of a positive rejection of God? The former is implausible: it implies that all those who die in infancy, or below a certain level of mental development, and almost everyone from the ancient pre-Christian world, and almost everyone from outside Christendom in the past 20 centuries, will be condemned to perdition. It seems much more plausible to say that it’s rejection, not failure to believe, that counts. But a crucial point: one does not reject God unless one believes that God exists. One says ‘no’ to a person only if one conceives oneself as talking to that person. If he believes that God exists and refuses to honor, worship, obey and generally treat him as God ought to be treated, then he wrongs God. (I leave it as an open question whether he thereby harms God.) However, if he believes that God does not exist, then he does not wrong God by not honoring, worshiping, obeying, and so on.

In general to wrong anyone, including God, requires mens rhea. You can’t be guilty of doing it except by intending to do it. And you cannot intend to wrong someone you believe is not real. You cannot intend to do anything to someone who is not real. Suppose you die and in Hades encounter Zeus who angrily asks why you did not sacrifice an ox to him when you proved that theorem in Jensen’s Logic class. You are entitled to respond that you did not sacrifice the ox because you thought—mistakenly it now turns out but perhaps justifiably when you were alive—there was no Zeus to sacrifice it to. Conceivably, your disbelief might result from some act or omission for which you are culpable, and it might inherit culpability from that. But the point is that something like this has to be true if Zeus justifiably blames you for failing to honor him. (Presumably he can still zap you, but you’ll be in the right.)

However, the issue about damnation is the rejection of Jesus Christ, not atheism. Let’s focus on educated inhabitants of our contemporary world. Almost no one believes that Jesus did not exist. They believe that the Gospel narratives are at best only slightly accurate in their portrayal of Jesus, and in particular that he was not the child of a virgin, that he did not perform miracles, and that he did not rise from the dead. They believe that Jesus was merely a man, not the Son of God, God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, etc. Does such disbelief amount to a rejection of Jesus Christ? It’s worth noting that Jesus’ warning about the “unforgivable sin” is not directed at those who believed he did no miracles, but to those who saw them as a manifestation of evil. (If there is someone for whom there is no hope, it’s someone who regards God’s best efforts on his behalf as the devil’s work. Not, it seems, someone who believes that effort has not been made, or that there’s no one to make it.)

3. The “conservative” argument that there must be a Hell, lest people be able to do as they please without retribution is as much a “moral,” extra-biblical argument as the “liberal” argument that a good and loving God would consign no one to everlasting torment. What we need are arguments that take Scripture seriously, that is, that read it through the lens of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

4. The current defense of traditional conception of Hell, either as retributive punishment, or as where those who persist in bad choices consign themselves, are to my mind uncomfortably close of an idolatrous understanding of human nature, in virtue of ascribing to mere creatures a kind of free agency appropriate to no one but God himself. (Much of traditional philosophical anthropology seems as committed to paying ourselves metaphysical compliments as traditional philosophical theology is to paying them to God.)

5. Any faith unhinged by the loss of Hell is not faith in Jesus Christ.

6. The final victory of God in Christ is universal salvation freely accepted by all creatures in response to God’s love. It is a world in which every creature has confronted the horrible possibility of the loss of the God who was in Christ and turns away from it, freely—even if as by fire—to that God. If this is not how things wind up, then what can we say but the refusal of love is, in the end, stronger than love? This obvious and disastrous implication is evaded by those who posit justice as an independent principle in God. For them, it is justice that is stronger than love.

7. Tertullian tells us that he looks forward to laughing as he looks down from heaven at the sages and philosophers roasting in Hell. (Cited by von Balthasar, DWH? 49-50)

8. One freely chooses something only if one had a reasonably accurate estimation of what it is he’s choosing. It’s absurd to claim (as some do) that God is just to subject persons to everlasting torment as a consequence of their making a free choice, when that was never what they intended to choose. (You receive a chain letter. It threatens dire consequences if you do not make ten copies and send them on. It promises great rewards if you comply. You throw it in the trash, and that night the author sets your house on fire, claiming that this is what you chose and that he is therefore just. The mere fact that something follows from one’s choice, when its so following is contrived by another, and when one lacks sufficient reason to believe that it so follows, hardly makes it just that it follows.) Again, note how much rides on the claim that non-believers are not merely those who do not believe; they must be characterized as actually rejecting God.

9. When Dostoevski speaks of those who have “damned themselves in damning God and life” for all eternity cursing the God who calls them and rejecting forgiveness (von B. DWH? 57) he implicitly portrays the infinite, omnipotent, omniscient God as stumped by the finite, material human mind. This is, in a perverse way, a preposterous elevation of the human agent to the level of God.

10. Why would God value human freedom this much? Are we all wrong when, for instance, we judge that it would be a terrible mistake to allow a loved on to throw himself off the precipice if we had the means to intervene, to touch his mind just enough to cause him to reconsider, especially if we knew he would afterwards freely thanks us? The integrity of the human self is not, I think, so fragile as defenders of this view of Hell suppose, not so fragile as to be undone by a life-saving interference. The view at once ascribes too much and too little to the human person.

11. If we agree with Lochet (cited by von Balthasar, DWH? 113), “The whole of Scripture is full of the proclamation of a salvation that binds all men by a Redeemer who gathers together and reconciles the whole universe,” then isn’t it incongruous to conclude merely with the hope that all men will be saved? If we believe this at all, can we really—as opposed to rhetorically—deny universal salvation? Perhaps, given the imponderables involved here, it is presumptuous to be sure of universal salvation, but we are entitled to assert that it is what God intends, not simply what he hopes (or wishes) for. Our confidence in universal salvation is properly proportionate to our confidence in God’s ability to bring about what he intends.

12. What seems to me best to fit with the indeterminacy of all this is the idea that God is utterly committed to harrowing Hell (which is populated only by those who want to be there), that how long it might take to persuade the damned to repent, to forgive and to accept forgiveness, is known to no one, not even to God, and that it is in some sense possible for it to continue indefinitely or to continue to the point of the self-destruction of the damned self before God can save it. But God intends to keep these possibilities from being actualized.

13. In response to the reproach that the improbability of final damnation encourages complacency, it must be noted that risk is not merely a matter of how probable an event is, but also of how bad an outcome would be if it were to occur. If an outcome is bad enough, then it is irrational not to take action to avoid it, even if it is quite improbable. The probability of its happening must be negligible, for practical purposes zero, for it to be rational to ignore it. The improbable outcome here, the final loss of a human being, is an outcome of the worst sort. Any non-negligible chance of it happening should be enough to motivate us to action. This concurs with the magnitude and seriousness of the choice for or against God as it is consistently portrayed in Holy Scripture. (Here too we are dealing with imponderables, making a judgment of improbability is epistemic only. Given what we, with our limited understanding now know, it seems unlikely that God would ultimately fail to persuade anyone, that “you can’t always get what you want—unless you’re God.) On the other hand, we should ask how we can appeal to this possibility as a reason to choose for God, when so much supposedly rides on that choice being free. It might be the choice of an agent cause, but it is still a coerced choice. One does not freely choose to love someone because the alternative is the possibility of him subjecting you to endless torture.

Note too that most who are sure about a populated hell are also sure that it will not contain them and that nothing they can do will get them in. Should we assume they are complacent about their behavior.

But we should finally point out that this objection belies a greater concern with human beings behaving well than God appears to have.

14. Keep in view that

God does not want John to do x

God has the power to prevent John from doing x

John does x

is not an inconsistent triad. God has his good reasons for letting do what God wants him not to do. God does not always get what he wants, at least not right away. Such is the kenosis of creation.

15. The question is, can God perform some action, say persuading John freely to accept God’s offer of salvation, where the action at least not does not appear to be absolutely impossible, i.e. beyond the scope of omnipotence. Most any speculative eschatological anthropology that assigns to human creatures the capacity to resist God’s persuasive efforts, or about alleged tendencies of damned human creatures toward psychical decay and self-annihilation get floated and accepted not as sheer epistemic possibilities, i.e. as how, for all we know things could be, but as how things probably are, just so long as they point to the desired conclusion. The situation is superficially similar to the various defenses and theodices offered as solutions to the problem of evil. There is no reason, a priori, to suspect that bringing about some good end without allowing evil lies beyond the power of omnipotence; it’s only the given that there is evil, that makes these speculations sound plausible (at least to some). Knowing that there is evil, and thus that God allows it, it is understandable, and perhaps (though I doubt it) justifiable, to make these claims about possibilities and even probabilities. (Consider how implausible most defense and theodices would sound—God can’t do x without permitting y—if we did not already know y has, in fact, happened. Yet there’s a significant difference between asking whether God could have a good reason for allowing something we know occurs and asking it when we do not know that it occurs, and in fact whether we will conclude that it does occur depends on whether we think there might be good reasons for God to let it happen. The matter up for discussion here does not assume that some are damned.

16. I do have a suspicion that the conviction that some are likely to be ultimately damned because of their free choices has little to do with God’s supposed ultimate respect for human freedom, or even with the supposed necessary connection of free choice to God’s ultimate aim of fellowship with humans, but instead amounts to a reintroduction of retributive punishment into a setting where it is officially disbarred, i.e., into Hell according to C. S. Lewis. An individual enters Hell, and remains there at any moment, entirely because of his own free choices, and God won’t efficaciously persuade him freely to make the right choice, because he deserves not to get this sort of very special help in virtue of the free choices he has already made. It would be unjust for God to go to this length for someone who has made so many bad choices, turned down so many other opportunities, and so on. God will let him out of Hell if he freely repents, but that’s more than he deserves.

17. Why do I believe, and not just hope, that I will be saved? Isn’t the only possible answer here that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world? Can my attitude be different when it comes to others, even those who do not know Christ? Am I that confident in the authenticity of my faith? (Kierkegaard’s “glitch”)

18. The traditional view of hell obviates the traditional theodicy that comes out of the free will defense. Despite the superficial similarity of explaining the evil in this world and in the next as due to creaturely freedom, the doctrine of everlasting torment makes nonsense of the claim that God wants us freely to choose him.

19. Much of this debate appears to come down to a context between an exalted doctrine of human beings as the image of God and an exalted doctrine of Jesus Christ as savior of the world.

20. Defenders of Hell envisage the possibility of human beings, as a result of their free actions, becoming so morally depraved that God cannot save them without destroying them. On the contrary, the proper fear is that attention to the character of God we meet in Jesus will lead some to reject God as morally unacceptable. If Hell has a population, it is more likely to be high-minded moralists and fundamentalists than those who are, in the world’s eyes, notorious sinners.

Added:

Some Q & A

Q. Is it true that I do not believe in hell?

A. Let’s see…I do not believe that God sends people to a place of post-mortem punishment. On the other hand, that humans can find themselves cut off from God, and for that reason in a “place” of despair and misery, is all too obvious. That, I assume, is where Jesus was when he was defeated, humiliated, crucified, rejected, and abandoned by Israel, his disciples, and God the Father – “he descended into hell.” But because he did, we do not have to. Jesus is the savior of the world. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and God did not fail in this endeavor. Attempts to place qualifications on this, making salvation ultimately conditional on what we believe or do, seem to me to lack theological and biblical credibility, whatever value they have had historically as a means to keep people under control.

The God who is in Christ saves us from ourselves, our self-destructive proclivities, from evil and death. In contrast, some versions of Christian theology implicitly tell us that God saves us from…God.

It is, I believe, important to distinguish matters of soteriology from matters of ecclesiology: who is saved vs. who is in the church. All humanity is saved in Jesus, but only some of us are privileged to be made consciously aware of this and given the opportunity to respond to God with love, trust and gratitude, and to bear witness to the love of God.

If there is a credible pro-damnation approach, It’s the sort of view C. S. Lewis held: by the choices people make in this life they might be able to render themselves incapable of responding positively to God’s grace and, since God will not force himself on anyone, one might damn oneself to a godless future. Is it possible for a human being to endlessly evade God? I don’t suppose anyone – even God – knows for sure. But I’d bet on the depth of God’s persistence and his powers of persuasion. The closest I’d get to believing in a post-mortem hell is the possibility that God might maintain certain persons in existence even though they persist in rejecting him, and despite the fact that such an existence might be quite miserable, in the hope that they can be persuaded to a change of heart. And I’d speculate that we might be called upon to share in that work of healing and reconciliation.

I take it as a central Christian claim that the “wrath of God” was “used up” at the cross of Jesus and that any notion of there being some “left over” diminishes the work of Christ.

All scripture is properly read through the lens of God’s grace, i.e., through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Making the gracious God we meet in Jesus the center may well force us to question, revise, or even reject some religious beliefs we have been taught to regard as essential to faith in him. E.g., the claim that in God there are two competing principles, love and justice, and that although God loves us, he must exact punishment from sinners and cannot forgive them unless they willingly accept Christ. But this is not true: God is love. God is just, but in the Bible (as opposed to what’s imported from Greek philosophy) God’s justice is entirely subordinated to, and defined in terms of, his love. The justice (righteousness) of God is nothing less than God’s unconditional commitment to his people; it’s not some sort of abstract moral principle about people getting what they deserve to which he is beholden.

As my colleague Randy Jensen says, forgiveness is forgiveness; it’s not letting someone off the hook because someone has paid on your behalf.

I don’t think it’s as important to believe that everyone is saved, as it is to hope that everyone will be, and thus align oneself with what God wants. (I suspect it’s just one of the instances in which God is less interested in our beliefs than in other propositional attitudes we can have. Which makes sense, since belief isn’t in our control; we can’t choose our beliefs: they befall us. Which in turn makes one wonder about the goodness of a God who putatively saves only those who have certain beliefs, ones it might be impossible for them to have. What if the Mormons are right? I can’t take that stuff seriously enough to even investigate it, so I’m screwed!)

Q. What do I make of Luke 13:24?

A. This exegesis to me seems to cast Jesus as a Christian theologian, speaking of heaven and hell, damnation and salvation in anachronistic terms. I’d approach the Gospels from a different hermeneutic perspective, one where Jesus is speaking to an Israel that still might, but probably won’t, accept him, change its understanding of what it means for it to be God’s elect people, and its conception of its Messiah. If it doesn’t, and continues on its course of seeking a messianic deliverance in the form of a military defeat of the Romans, it faces certain destruction and the eclipse of God’s promises. These warnings about the “wrath” of God, i.e., the inevitable outcome of Israel’s God-denying, Jesus-rejecting, course ,were of course fulfilled in A.D. 60. Jesus encounters an Israel that wants to get out of exile, the exile that is paradoxically continuing even though it has returned to the land, has forsaken idolatry, and is keeping the law with exactitude. They want to be with God and “make the cut;” they think they deserve to. But Jesus is telling them they won’t unless they repent, i.e. think differently and put their trust in Jesus, who reveals what God is really like and really wants of them. And, by extension, us.

Jesus is not of course merely the messiah of Israel, but in his own mind he is first that and I think we need to keep this in view if we are to make much sense of the NT.

It’s worth noting that this is written after Paul in Romans has made it clear that despite its corporate rejection of the God who was in Christ, and despite the many biblical prophecies predicting doom for Israel, God will not ultimately resile from his promises to Israel.

Similarly, with Revelation. I take this to be an apocalyptically coded work about the relevance of Jesus’ victory over the powers to the author’s current situation, viz. to the Roman Empire, the Christian Church, and the still-contested allegiance of the nation of Israel. “You evil powers think you can destroy God’s people, but the truth is that Jesus has already destroyed you, and that hidden victory will ultimately be made evident to everyone.” John’s Apocalypse is thus entirely in the tradition of late OT and intertestamental apocalyptic, i.e., a kind of theological politics. I don’t think it’s principally a set of predictions about the future of humanity, though the fact that Jesus by his death and resurrection has defeated the powers, human and more than human, is portrayed in its cosmic significance. (It’s worth noting that much of the cosmically apocalyptic material in the NT is taken by later Christian exegetes as pertaining to the “end of the world,” “the last judgment,” and other features of Christian eschatology, when this is the standard biblical way to talk about epochal happenings in the political fortunes of Israel among the nations.) The point is not that it’s all “just politics,” not theology, but that the call of Israel, and thus the messianic role of Jesus, needs to be understood in terms of God’s Israel vis-à-vis the nations.

Years ago, what had the biggest effect on my theological journey away from fundamentalism was thinking about the meaning of the atonement: What did Jesus do? What does it mean to say that the death and resurrection of Jesus saves us? How? From what? I found out that the “official” story I had been raised on was in fact just one of the possibilities the Church has focused on over the centuries, not the only possibility, and that the account of Jesus’ work I had been taught was the Bible’s was in large part a product of medieval theology (especially Anslem’s Cur Deus Homo?). The important and accessible source to start with here is Gustav Aulen’s book, Christus Victor: Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is the means by which he defeated the powers arrayed against us, delivered us from bondage to them, and rescued us for God. Contrast this histrionic theory with the forensic theory that Jesus’ work was to save us from an allegedly loving God who otherwise can’t help but torture us forever for the sake of some abstract demand of justice. Aulen’s book is probably flawed in various ways as a historical account, both in what he says against Anselm and Abelard, and on behalf of Luther, but the theology–with its mythological elements excised–is great. (There are aspects of this view of Christ’s work in the Narnia books.) Gregory Boyd has written a lot of stuff valuable and relevant here (esp. because he quotes me…), though his view is what you get if you adopt the histrionic view without losing the mythology.