HELL REVISITED

 

                            Homage to Bosch (collage, 2003)

There are several different general stances which have been taken by those who would consider themselves Christians regarding the subject of eternal damnation of those not saved. Here are a few comments on each. Only the first two options would be considered to represent orthodox Christian doctrine.

1. Hell exists, but wish it didn't.

I would guess that this is probably a common attitude of Christians today since it speaks of an overriding concern and pity for the fate of the lost, including some of our own family and friends. It is this feeling which has helped fuel the impulse to mission over the years. In addition, it speaks to some of God's basic characteristics: his love, forgiveness, and grace.

The prominent scholar Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary brings up one practical objection against this stance: “I am concerned...about theological slippage in our evangelical community. To tell our younger generation that we wish the Bible were not so clear about the reality of hell could encouraged them simply to take the step that we resist taking.”

2. Hell exists, and I am glad it does.

This is a much rarer response to the question unless one is talking of some die-hard fundamentalists who just relish the idea that they will be going to heaven while very few others will. But there are other, compassionate Christians who also take this view, but for more acceptable reasons. For example, Mouw has recently defended it in an article in Christianity Today magazine. Below are some quotes from that article:

3. Hell does not exist. All will be saved in the end.

This view is called universalism and is commonly stated as “All roads lead to heaven.” You will hear such sentiments mainly from non-Christians or nominal Christians.

Mouw says, “I am convinced that the idea of universalism fails to capture some important elements in the Bible's teachings about the requirements of divine justice. The Scriptures make it clear that God heeds the cries of the oppressed and that on the Day of Judgment all evildoers will be dealt with according to their deeds (Rev. 20:12). Universalism tries to get around the unspeakable harm that people do to each other, evading the need for repentance, while detracting from the Cross [If all are going to be saved anyway, why was it necessary for Christ to suffer and die.] and a real joy in God's justice.”

4. Those not saved will simply cease to exist.

Here is one way that some attempt to get around the idea of eternal suffering. This view is labeled annihilationism. I have extensively critiqued this unbiblical theology in four previous posts titled “Annihilationism:” with the respective sub-titles “Old Testament Scriptures,” “An Introduction,” “The Gospels,” and “Book of Revelation.”

One poster child illustrating the possibility of what View #1 can lead to is the once firmly evangelical scholar John Wenham. In his book The Enigma of Evil he stated that he didn't want to believe in the concept of hell for humane reasons. However, he also warned that we should be on the lookout for rejecting spiritual beliefs just because we personally don't like them. But, by the time his final book, Facing Hell, An Autobiography 1913–1996, was published just before his death, he was a confirmed annihilationist who wrote, "I believe that endless torment is a hideous and unscriptural doctrine which has been a terrible burden on the mind of the church for many centuries and a terrible blot on her presentation of the Gospel. I should indeed be happy, if before I die, I could help in sweeping it away."

5. Three Other Approaches

A. The famous apologist C.S. Lewis suggests in his fictional writings two ways in which one can mitigate the horror of imagining an eternity of unceasing pain that appears to be for some unbelievers a case of overkill. In The Great Divorce he imaginatively pictures an afterlife in which the dead have the free choice of visiting the outskirts of heaven and deciding to stay there or moving further and further away from the bus station to heaven in order to be by themselves and away from even the hint of God's presence.

This view fits in with Lewis' famous statement “The gates of hell are locked from the inside.” In other words, those who have rejected God's presence when they were alive are not likely to want to be around Him when they have died. So God grants them the dignity of their wishes.

B. But that does not help us understand the sad fate of whose who grew up in an environment in which the Gospel was never presented to them. Calvinists might simply state that God had predestined those people to damnation. Romans 1-2 seems to deal with this situation by stating that the Creation itself is testimony to God's power so that no one is without excuse for rejecting Him (1:18-23). On the other hand, Romans 2:12-16 can be interpreted to state that those who have never heard God's law may possibly obey His will anyway and have their sins accused on the Day of Judgment.

Lewis deals with this possibility, remote as it might be, in the final book in his Narnia Chronicles, The Last Battle. On Judgment Day, and all the inhabitants of Narnia parade one at a time into a tent where they are confronted by Aslan. Most of the Narnians are joyfully welcomed. However, one country is populated by a warring people who worship a bloodthirsty god. When those people (“who knew God but did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but became futile in their thinking...and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.” – Romans 1:21-23), enter the tent, all they see is the terrible deity they worshiped and are devoured by him. But there is one sole person from that tribe who for some reason had always pictured their national god as the loving and merciful deity which Aslan is in reality. That one person is saved.

I won't vouch for the theological correctness of these two view by Lewis, but they do perhaps give us insights to help rid the seeming arbitrary punishment of hell from our mind.

C. And Mouw even considers a recent contribution to the universalist view from David Bentley Hart, who says (in Mouw's words) that “each person will eventually want Jesus as Lord – that no one chooses hell when they see him.” Mouw's judgment on such a view is as follows:

“This is a much stronger argument than simply that the God we love wouldn't (despite what he said) condemn people. This is also what Hart argues. He says we have to ask whether a proper understanding of human nature allows us to believe that 'this defiant rejection of God for all eternity is really logically possible for any rational being.'”

Mouw identifies this idea as coming from Platonistic philosophy. “Plato taught that since evil is the absence of the Good, no one willingly chooses that which is evil. This perspective allows Hart to argue that what we might want to label in [Hitler's case] as 'intentional perversity' is in reality a state of ignorance '' due to the 'external contingencies' that Hart has listed, “such as disorders of the mind.”

Mouw's conclusion, however, is that each of us is choosing to follow a trajectory either toward God or away from Him, and God will not willfully change that personal trajectory.

“Embracing universalism means theological and spiritual loss. We miss out on the glory of redeemed people and the fullness of the divine glory. In a universalist future, God brushes off the degradation of his creatures. The wedding supper is not filled with guests dressed in the clothes of righteousness but with people trying to pass off their sins as inevitable, and therefore able to be dismissed. And God lets them. I find such a present (and such a hypothetical future) to be disheartening. I find it to be something far short of the joyful and triumphant repudiation of wrong the Bible promises.”