Position Paper: Ecclesiology and Eschatology

The following is the fifth and final position paper for my systematic theology class, on ecclesiology and eschatology.

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I affirm, with the Nicene Creed, that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.[1] In the first place, this means the Church is one, a unity. I believe this unity is visible and organic, not just invisible and spiritual. That is, the Church, the Church Christ founded in the first century, has not split into pieces or grown into multiple "branches", all of which can be considered to be part of the true Church, over time. This unity is based on the unity of God and of those who are in Christ. In Christ, the many members of the Church are reconciled to God and each other, united into one body (Rom 12:4-5, Col 1:18-20) by the mystery of the sacrament of communion, by which we all become partakers in the singular body and blood of Christ (1 Cor 10:16-17), as well as by baptism and the indwelling of the one Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 12:12-13) So the apostle is able to say of the Galatians that "in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ... you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:26-28 RSV) I define the Church by this biblical teaching rather than by empirical observation which suggests that it is diverse and divided.

The understanding of the unity of the Church as being merely spiritual in nature is thus unacceptable. It does not do justice to the incarnational nature of the church as both a divine and a human institution, just as the Lord, while fully God, also became fully human for our sake. Instead, it creates a division between the Church's two natures and holds that unity applies only in its invisible nature. In this it is an echo of the old heresy of Nestorianism, which imposed a sharp distinction between Christ's human and divine nature.[2] Bishop Timothy (Kallistos) Ware explains that the separation between the visible and invisible church is only a reflection of our limited human perspective; the body of Christ is a single, incarnational reality just like Christ himself.[3] The unity of the Church is not merely an ideal to strive after; it is a promised and ever-present reality. Through historical study and a long period of spiritual seeking, I have come to identify the Orthodox Church as the same church that Christ founded.

Second, the Church is holy. This holiness is based on God's perfect holiness and is not dependent on the holiness of its members, least of all its imperfect earthly members. This view has been firmly established at least since the fourth-century Donatist controversy, when it was argued by Augustine.[4] This holiness is very much an "already-not yet" reality; mysteriously fully present and yet not fully realized in us. The apostle John says something similar: "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 Jhn 3:2) We are already God's children, but what we will ultimately become in him is not yet clear. Just as we partake in the body and blood of Christ through the Church, we also participate in his holiness through the worship, sacraments, fellowship, and prayer life of the Church. Titles for the Church like the people of God (2 Cor 6:16), bride of Christ (2 Cor 11:2), and temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16-17, 6:19; Eph 2:21-22), as well as the body of Christ, all hint at the holiness in which all in the Church have a share.

Third, the Church is catholic. This is a frequently-misunderstood term, and not just because it is often seen as synonymous with "Roman Catholic" (as I used to think). It is often taken to mean "universal", as referring to the nature of the one Church as extending through time and space. While this is true of the Church, the word "catholic", as originally used, means "full and complete, all-embracing, and with nothing lacking.[5]" This can be seen from its Greek composition from the roots kata and holos, meaning roughly "according to the whole". This means, among other things, that the local church is not simply a piece of the true Church; the fullness of the entire Church is found in every single local church; nothing is lacking for its members to participate in the richness of the faith. As Paul says, the Church "is [Christ's] body, the fulness of him who fills all in all." (Eph 1:23, see also Col 2:10).

Fourth, the Church is apostolic, in at least three ways. Most simply, it began with the apostles. It is the Church established by Christ on the apostles' testimony to him. Second, it preserves the apostolic teaching of Christ, which was originally received from Christ (Mat 28:18-20) and is especially expressed in the New Testament. The Church receives, treasures, and passes on the apostolic tradition as described in the NT (1 Cor 11:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 2 Tim 2:2). In this way it is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth." (1 Tim 3:15) Third, like the apostles themselves, the Church is sent into the world with a mission (the Greek word apostolos means "sent one"), "to bear witness to His Kingdom, to keep His word and to do His will and His works in this world."[6] In this respect, the Church, and we individually as members of it, continues the work that Christ commissioned the apostles to do.

Related to the second meaning, the continuity of the faith of the Church with the apostles' teaching can be seen in the process of apostolic succession, by which the teaching is passed down in an unbroken chain of leadership stretching from the apostles to the present. This idea was argued by the pre-Nicene church fathers to rebuke false teachers who based their ideas on their own reading of Scripture or a "secret tradition" that Christ passed on apart from the apostles. Irenaeus, the most revered theologian of the second century, was a prominent spokesman for apostolic succession, writing in his work Against Heresies, "It is within the power of all ... to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about."[7] Like the early Church, I see the episcopal model of church polity as normative, since the role of bishops (overseers) was and is crucial to the preservation and articulation of orthodox Christian teaching.

I affirm the infallibility of the Church—the whole Church. "This again follows from the indissoluble unity between God and His Church. Christ and the Holy Spirit cannot err, and since the Church is Christ's body, since it is a continued Pentecost, it is therefore infallible."[8] Again, the apostle teaches that the Church is the "pillar and bulwark of the truth." (1 Tim 3:15) As well, Christ promised the Spirit to guide the Church into all truth. (Jhn 16:13) This teaching is frequently misunderstood. It does not mean that any individual within the visible Church is infallible, as Roman Catholics would claim. It also does not mean that the Church cannot hold mistaken points of view or opinions; for example, the Orthodox Church is currently considering the possibility that it may have been mistaken about the heretical status of the Oriental Orthodox churches for the past 1500 years. (That is, that they may not actually hold the view on Christology that was condemned by the council of Chalcedon) It also does not mean that large portions of the Church cannot fall into false teaching, as was seen in the Arian controversy. The infallibility of the Church pertains to dogma, particularly the canons of the seven ecumenical councils as well as lesser councils or other teachings that are later accepted by the whole Church. In matters like these, I believe that according to the promises of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is impossible for the whole Church to embrace error.

I affirm the function of the Church, as a place where the salvation of the gospel of Christ is made manifest. This occurs through the worship of the Church directed to God, the participation of its members in riches of God's grace, and the outward-oriented ministry of the Church to the world. In worship which transcends time and place, the Church joins the angels and "the spirits of just men made perfect", the Church of all ages and places, in their unceasing praise of God (Heb 12:22-24). Through the Church, we enter communion with both God our father and our brothers and sisters in Christ; again, we all become part of the one body of Christ. "We are members one of another" (Eph 4:25); it is in the Church, not individually, that we receive salvation and are transformed into Christ's likeness. "The church thus serves not only as a signpost of the coming fulfillment of divine purposes with and for the whole creation but as a manifestation of that fulfillment 'ahead of time', as it were—already in this age, yet fully to come in the eschaton."[9] Though salvation is a lifelong journey, through the Church we experience it in eschatological fullness, so that Paul is able to speak of the whole path of salvation in the past tense. (Rom 8:29-30) And again, the Church is apostolic in that it is sent out into the world both to witness to Christ (Acts 1:8) and to demonstrate the love of Christ through practical action as well as words. (1 Jhn 3:17-18)[10]

I affirm that the Church is the continuation and fulfillment of national Israel as the people of God. Through Christ it inherits the promises made to Israel. Paul argues extensively for the Church's continuity with Israel repeatedly in Romans (2:28-29, 3:28-31, 4:11-12,16,18, 9:7-8, 10:12); elsewhere he says "There is neither Jew nor Greek ... for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28) It is not that God's covenant with Israel has been revoked (Paul argues this extensively in Romans 9-11); rather, this covenant is fulfilled in all that it set out to accomplish in the new covenant in Christ's blood, plus the promised salvation of the gentiles. (Isa 52:10) Therefore, since Christ is the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5), it is advisable to interpret Paul's words about the continuing future of Israel in Romans 11 as presaging a large-scale conversion of Jews into the Church.[11] There is no other way leading to salvation.

I deny that the Church consists essentially of a collection of individuals who are "saved", have an "authentic relationship with God", are "true Christians", etc. My definition of "Christian" is dependent on the Church, rather than the other way around. The Church is the incarnational institution established by Christ, which preserves the apostolic faith truly witnessing to him, and they are Christians who belong to it. There is definitely a sense in which Christians are seen as constituting the body of Christ, but as members of it. (1 Cor 12:27) In other words, when we become Christians, the Church does not expand to include us; we become part of its unity. The unity of the Church amid divisions among its members depends on there being something recognizable as the "Church" that continues whole even after schism, which is not possible if the Church is nothing more than a collection of individuals.

It is frequently said that "outside the church there is no salvation." Does this mean that everyone who does not formally belong to the "true church" is not saved? By no means! Just as those who are formally members of the Church can still be living according to the law of sin and death, dead to the life of the Church,[12] "there may be members of the Church who are not visibly such, but whose membership is known to God alone."[13] I do not claim that God's grace is limited to those within the Orthodox Church; I don't fully understand the mysteries of his love. But this does not mean that the "true" Church is invisible or discontinuous from the visible Church, or that it is not necessary to seek salvation through it. "What God may do should not become the outer perimeter of what humans should do."[14]

I affirm (again with the Creed) that Jesus will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. He will return the way he left the disciples (Acts 1:11) to judge the nations (Mat 25:31-33). The kingdom of God, currently present only within the Church, will triumph over and succeed the kingdom of this world (Rev 11:15), and this kingdom, Christ's kingdom, will be eternal. (Luk 1:32-33) Everything beyond the creedal statement is opinion. One of my opinions of this judgment (shared widely by Orthodox theologians) is that I don't interpret Matthew 25:31-33 literally, that we will wait in line with everyone who has ever lived to be sorted by Christ as judge. Rather, "the very presence of Christ as the Truth and the Light is itself the judgment of the world."[15] As Jesus teaches in Matthew 25, we will be judged based on how we have fulfilled the law by loving and serving others (Rom 13:10), or, equivalently, by how we have loved and served him. (Mat 25:40,45)

I deny that God actively imprisons or tortures people in hell. The judgment is our response to Christ's return in glory, not a literal proclamation by him of our individual fate. We are not "sent" to heaven or hell by any external power, but by our own hearts. Thomas Hopko explains: "Now men can live without the love of Christ in their lives. They can exist as if there were no God, no Christ, no Spirit, no Church, no spiritual life. At the end of the ages this will no longer be possible."[16] I believe that the essence of hell is not being banished from the presence of God (which would be a relief for those who hate him, appears to consider God's presence in quasi-spatial terms, and which, if applied consistently, would simply be annihilation), but continuing to exist eternally in the presence and knowledge of God. For the righteous, this is heaven, for the wicked; it is the torment of hell. The fire of hell is none other than our God, the consuming fire. (Heb 12:29)

I affirm that we cannot know when Christ will return, as he makes clear. (Mat 24:36, 25:13; Mar 13:32; Luk 12:40; Acts 1:7) Though much about the eschatological day of the Lord is obscure, the Scriptures make very clear that Jesus will return at an unexpected time. (How this will work when one group or another always seems to be expecting his imminent return, I don't know!) Any teacher or sect that claims to have knowledge of the day of Christ's return is either lying or deluded, and refuses to listen to the teaching of Scripture about this. The truth is, Christ could return tomorrow or he could return in centuries. We cannot know one way or another. Hence, Jesus teaches us to be ready (Mat 24:42-51), to live in a state of readiness. This readiness does not look like stocking up and preparing for an imminent and expected disaster, but like actively practicing the teachings of Christ, living the life of the Church in a constant vigil so as to greet the Lord at his return.

I affirm (once more with the Creed) the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, as especially taught by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection will be the completion of the salvation from sin and death that Christ purchased for us. It will be a bodily (not just spiritual) resurrection, but not a return to our mortal bodies. Rather, our once-weak bodies will be raised imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual (rather than physical, whatever that means. (1 Cor 15:42-44) In this, as in the rest of salvation, we will follow the example of Christ, "the first-born from the dead". (Col 1:18) The resurrection of the dead will be the Lord's ultimate victory over death (1 Cor 15:54-55) and will also be accompanied by the perfection of the rest of the creation (Rom 8:21). The world will become the paradise that God created it to become; the kingdom of heaven will fill the whole earth. (Rev 11:15) God's good purposes for his wayward creation will be completed, for all eternity.

I deny that the goal of eschatology is to discern a hidden schedule of events that will take place in the "end times". The subject of eschatology may be described with language like an "eschatological agenda"[17] or even "God's timetable".[18] This linear kind of thinking, which risks over-focusing on the order of events a the exclusion of their deeper meaning, simply misses the point of eschatology. The point is Christ, who is the true End we look to. (Rev 22:13) "Wherever He is present, there the End is also present."[19] In other words, the End is not some series of events to look forward to in the future—for those in the Church, the End is already here!

Thus Paul is able to speak of our deliverance to the kingdom of the Son in the past tense (Col 1:12-13), and our resurrection with Christ and elevation to the heavenly places. (Eph 2:4-6) As he says elsewhere, "behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." (2 Cor 6:2) The End is not simply waiting at the conclusion of history for us; for Christians, it is an eternal now, as if intersecting with every point on our time line at a right angle from the transcendent beyond, calling us out of the linear succession of moments that seems so natural to our existence and into eternal life. Thus, I disagree with the tenor of eschatological theories about the "rapture" the tribulation, the millennium, and the nature and relative ordering of these things, especially inasmuch as they are presented as what the study of eschatology is "really about". They are highly speculative (sometimes approaching conspiracy theories) and needlessly distract from the fact that the End has already come. Glorify him!

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1. "The Nicene Creed" in The Orthodox Study Bible (eds. Jack Norman Sparks et al.; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1791.
2. Patrick Barnes, The Church is Visible and One: A Critique of Protestant Eschatology (12 January 2015), 30.
3. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 243–245.
4. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 311.
5. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, (12 January 2015), I.2.16.
6. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, I.2.16.
7. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (Kindle Edition: Veritatis Splendor Publications, 2012), III.3.1.
8. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 248.
9. James R. Payton Jr., Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2007), 150.
10. Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 972–974, 978–979.
11. Erickson, Christian Theology, 965.
12. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV.1.9.
13. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 248.
14. Payton, Light from the Christian East, 171–172.
15. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, I.2.14.
16. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV.8.2.
17. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1119.
18. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1095.
19. Stephen Freeman, "Is There a Christian Theory of History?", Glory to God for All Things 7 November 2014, < http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2014/11/07/christian-theory-history> (16 January 2015).

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit

My heart sank as I read this headline: North Carolina Church Plans Halloween Bible Burning. My first thought was that a church had developed such a disrespect for the Bible and a sense of license for taking "freedom in Christ" that they thought this kind of behavior was okay, even exemplary.

The reality was worse. Some excerpts (the article is mercifully short):

Marc Grizzard, of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, says that the first King James translation of the Bible is the only true declaration of God’s word, and that all others are “satanic”. ... “[We will be burning] books by a lot of different authors who we consider heretics, such as Billy Graham, Rick Warren… the list goes on and on,” Pastor Grizzard told reporters. ... Mother Teresa is also on the list of Satanic authors.

As I read this, I recalled the Bible's definition of the "unforgivable sin": attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to demons (or the Devil). In Matthew 12:31-32 (KJV, for Grizzard's sake):

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

I now understand a bit better why blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is such a terrible sin, sharing a bit of the heartbreak God must feel at being so slandered by someone calling himself a Christian. A militant, God-hating atheist would be more likely to come to know God than this man. I'm not sure there's still any point to it, but I'm praying for Pastor Grizzard. Pray with me if you like, and for God's sake, be careful about calling anything "Satanic".

Why the Hell? Part 4: The Nature of Hell

This is part four of a four-post series on Hell. One Two Three

This is it. Last time, I attempted to reconcile the apparently retributive nature of Hell with the value placed on grace and forgiveness by Jesus as well as modern culture. But I haven't established what the Bible actually says about what Hell is, besides retributive. This is what I'll attempt to tackle in this post. It's worth stressing even more than usual that the conclusions I draw in this post are exploratory in nature, attempts to interpret and understand something I don't think we can fully understand in this life, and by no means final, even for me. I'll break the post up into three sections throwing the New Testament data up into the air and then an attempt to tie it all together into some kind of package.

The Teaching of Christ

Jesus preaches repeatedly on peoples' eternal destinies, though much more in parabolic than in literal speech. As I said in post 2, He mentions two different destinations for the wicked: Hades and Gehenna. Hades, aside from the connotations it would have carried as the mythological Greek underworld and universal destination for the dead, is contrasted with Heaven in Matthew 11:23 and Luke 10:15, implying that the righteous (in Christ) will not see Hades. Peter's speech (Acts 2:26-31) may reinforce this, or may be saying that the righteous will not stay in Hades after they die. In Matthew 16:18 Christ promises that the gates of Hades (defensive in nature) will not prevail against His church (which must then be on the offensive).

There is also, of course, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), where the rich man goes to Hades and is said to be in "torment" and "in agony in this fire". Unsurprisingly, some translations render this particular usage of Hades as "Hell" in English, but the Greek is the same.

Jesus makes clear, however, the association of Gehenna (always translated as "Hell") with fire (Matthew 5:22, 18:9, Mark 9:43). Gehenna is a place into which people are cast (Luke 12:5), thrown (Matthew 5:29, 18:9, Mark 9:45), or sentenced (Matthew 23:33), a place where the body and soul are destroyed (Matthew 10:28)--not very pleasant imagery!

Jesus also mentions, mostly in parables, an outer darkness (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30) or fiery furnace (Matthew 13:42,50), whose mention is always followed by the phrase "In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth"--see also Matthew 24:51 and Luke 13:28. These last two references are especially interesting because though the phrase "In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" is exactly repeated in them, no specific place (outer darkness or fiery furnace) is mentioned for them to correspond to, only specific company--hypocrites or evildoers. Luke clarifies that the weeping and gnashing of teeth will be "when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out." Jesus doesn't try to equate this place with either Hades or Gehenna, but from His descriptions it sounds much more like Gehenna.

Finally, in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus tells of the judging of the sheep and the goats, corresponding to the righteous and the wicked. The goats/wicked are sent "into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels", and in the last verse are sent away to "eternal punishment" versus the "eternal life" of the sheep.

The Epistles

The epistles don't say as much about eternal judgment as Jesus, but they do make a few specific references that illuminate things differently than His teachings. The clearest of these is 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10 (emphasis added):

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.
This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

Unlike Jesus' teachings, Paul's writing here is not ensconced in a parable and, beginning his letter, is the most context-free description of Hell we have. We see that when Jesus returns, He will punish the wicked with "eternal destruction" and be sent away from the presence of God. Granted, Paul's purpose here is to encourage the Thessalonians, not establish a definitive doctrine of Hell. Hebrews 10:27 mentions "judgment and [a] raging fire that will consume the enemies of God", which adds little to but corroborates Paul's writing.

One other interesting thing to note is that throughout the New Testament, "falling asleep" is used synonymously with Christians dying to be with God (Jesus describing Lazarus in John 11:11, Luke describing Steven's martyrdom in Acts 7:60, Paul describing David in Acts 13:36, and Paul in his letters in 1 Corinthians 11:30, 15:18, 15:20, 1 Thessalonians 4:14, 4:15, 5:10). The Greek literally just means "asleep"; obviously context is essential to distinguishing this usage of καθεύδω from its more mundane one. Of course Jesus didn't die and come back to life on the boat just before calming the storm, and Paul's usages in 1 Thessalonians 5:6 and 10 work against each other or make no sense unless they have different meanings.

Revelation

Undoubtedly the most colorful depictions of Hell are found in Revelation following the cosmic battle between Christ and the forces of evil, and they have heavily influenced Christians' understanding about Hell along with their hope for a sinless paradise for those who are in Christ. It's worth saying, though, that even more than Jesus' parables, Revelation, as apocalyptic literature, is highly nonliteral in its descriptions and imagery. Literal interpreters often look for people and events in the news that correspond to the figures in Revelation (like calling out Obama as the antichrist) or at least expect the events in the book to mirror more or less exactly to how the end times will be, as in the Left Behind books, which are based on a highly literal interpretation of Christian eschatology.

But I think this approach misunderstands the point of studying apocalyptic literature. The venerable New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger explains:

Apocalyptic literature among the Jews contained weird symbols of mythological beasts representing nations and individuals. The meaning of such imagery must have been as clear to the original reading public of apocalypses as the significance is today of newspaper cartoons that depict the British lion, the Russian bear, the Republican elephant, or the Democratic donkey.
Jewish and Christian apocalypses have often been called, quite appropriately, tracts for bad times. They were intended to strengthen readers to meet some crisis, some grim ordeal, or some impending calamity. To struggling and suffering people the message of apocalyptic writers was one of hope and encouragement. These writers affirmed in no uncertain terms that God Almighty rules and overrules in the affairs of humankind, and that despite the apparent success of earthly tyrants his righteous purpose will ultimately prevail.¹

A few things to note about this description of apocalyptic literature: the people, events, and symbols were meant to correspond to things in the time of the readers, not figures in the actual apocalypse. Revelation was not written as a riddle to be figured out but as an encouragement to the churches in (originally) Asia Minor, so it is to be expected that the author would use imagery that the readers would understand, not that would only make sense to conspiracy theorists thousands of years later. If we get into trying to unlock the "hidden meaning" of the text or find what its symbols correspond to today, we're missing the point. The primary purpose of Revelation is not to give a detailed account of the end times--if it were, we would expect a much clearer, more coherent account.

And yet, I do believe the book of Revelation was inspired by an actual vision the author had, i.e. that he didn't simply make something so elaborate up to encourage his readers. And in light of the promise given just before the vision begin in 4:1, "I will show you must take place after this", I do believe the book is really predictive in some sense, behind the highly contextualized imagery. So, what can we learn about Hell from this book?

Hades is mentioned four more times in Revelation, always along with the personification of Death. (1:18, 6:8, 20:13-14) They are given authority to claim and hold peoples' lives, but give them up for the final judgment in chapter 20. Jesus is given the keys to Death and Hades (1:18), harkening back to His prediction that the gates of Hades would not overcome the church (i.e. by keeping anyone dead). Oh, and then Death and Hades themselves are thrown into the lake of fire.

Now this is very interesting. Hades is itself shown to be temporary here, doomed to the same fate as Satan (20:7), death itself (20:14), and those who don't believe in Christ (20:15). This fate is depicted a lake of fire, "the second death". One other thing I want to latch onto is that in the depiction of the new Jerusalem, the final paradise for those who remained faithful to Christ, it is said that its gates will never be shut (21:25) but that no evildoer or impure thing will ever enter it. (21:27)

Synthesis

If the preceding exposition taught you anything, it should be that the New Testament's teaching on Hell is nowhere near as clear or straightforward as it is commonly portrayed in debates. Hell is portrayed as the outer darkness, and as fire--but how can fire be dark? And it is portrayed as eternal destruction--but how can fire keep destroying anything forever? And how do we know we're making proper sense of this data when much of its is presented in the form of apocalyptic imagery and parables?

Two possibilities can be ruled out from the start. First, as numerous passages, especially 2 Thessalonians 1:9 makes clear, the destruction of Hell is eternal--not a "one and done" thing as annihilationism claims. And second--this may be a huge relief, even though it shouldn't be--I don't think the torment suffered in Hell will be physical in nature. Besides the objections I raised in part 1, Hell is depicted not just as a place prepared for the unrighteous, but for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41) and Death and Hades personified (Revelation 20:14). Last I checked, none of these beings have physical bodies, and unless you want to assert that God will give them bodies just to torture them in, they will not suffer physical torment in Hell--yet their destination is said to be the same as that of unregenerate people.

By focusing on the physical, bodily horror of being burned alive in Hell, preachers not only go beyond what the Bible actually says, they replace the real reason to fear Hell (being shut out from God's presence) with with primal squeamishness and aversion to fire. This is manipulative and misleading. But then what do we do with all the images of fire, which are consistently associated with Hell? Just because they aren't literal doesn't mean they aren't true or meaningful.

My struggles with the surface-level contradictions and tensions in the Bible led me to read it in a deeper way--to look for how apparently conflicting verses, like the descriptions of Hell as a place of fire and of darkness, can both come from a deeper, coherent theological truth. Rather than simply try to reconcile these descriptions as literally as possible, I look for the reality that could produce them both--what is really being said, behind the details and products of genre and culture.

Here is how I apply this kind of "theological interpretation" to Hell. The descriptions of Hell as outer darkness, a fiery furnace/lake, and destruction are all intertwined. The imagery of darkness represents separation from God, the source of light (Revelation 21:23). And yet not total separation (which, according to Colossians 1:17, really would be annihilation); they will still be conscious enough of those who were more fortunate to resent them (Luke 13:28). The imagery of fire represents the destruction of human sinfulness, which is inevitable apart from God. The core theological truth I think all of the above verses are getting at is that Hell is exile from God, the source of all goodness, light, and meaning--a fate worse, though not as cringe-inducing, than being licked by flames forever.

And yet, it is an appropriate fate; a fate more satisfying (if the word can apply here) than God bodily torturing people forever. It is impossible to argue that God is unjust to punish unrepentant sinners who rebel and turn away from Him by giving them what they want. The gates of the new Jerusalem are never closed, but no impure or evil thing enters through them (how could they, if they're in the lake of fire?). Just as salvation is God reaching down to fallen humanity wherever they are and us responding by taking His hand and being raised to life, Hell is the result of God and unrepentant sinners mutually rejecting each other. The difference between Heaven and Hell is the difference between those currently enjoying eternal life and those who know it not, projected out to infinity.

Conclusion

It appears I have arrived at a view of Hell very similar to the one taught by C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller--that is, the one I started with. This was not intentional. I really didn't know where I would land in this series until a few hours ago. In this series I was not simply trying to fortify the position I already held with some more Biblical arguments, but to go from a belief that I held more because I wanted to, to one I held because it really represents the best way I know of understanding what the Bible has to say. It is really affirming to discover that these two beliefs are the same.

I wasn't trying to make Hell more palatable or lessen the tension it gives people; this is impossible, because the tension is intentional. No matter how much intellectual sense we make of Hell, it is still going to be a painful subject because the reality that people can and do reject God is painful. I have addressed the intellectual "problem" of Hell as best I can right now, but the emotional problem is pastoral and beyond the scope of this blog, a subject for heart-to-heart conversation rather than some light theological reading. And above all, remember that the Bible is not a book about Hell, or even how to get out of it, but a message about how God broke into this broken world and transforms it completely. Don't let the fear of hellfire get you to lose sight of that.

¹Bruce Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content, p. 302.

Why the Hell? Part 3: Retribution and Rehabilitation

This is part three of a four-post series on Hell. One Two Four

Hopefully none of you were really taken in (for too long) by my April Fool's Day post about how I've adopted a universalist view of Hell. I thought it was pretty believable, anyway. Anyway, working on that fake ending to my exploration of the doctrine of Hell prompted me to get back to work on the real conclusion--no fooling.

Though my conclusions in the fake post were based on some seriously bad, biased exegesis and deliberately ignoring many relevant verses (which my friend/theological sparring partner Mitchell was quick to point out), I did raise or reraise several real issues that I've been thinking about--the literally contradictory descriptions of Hell and our confusion about rehabilitation vs. retribution. And because of my well-known tendency to write too much, I'm only going to answer the second of these issues in this post.

The biblical/cultural tension

The Bible, especially the Pentateuch, seems to define justice around retribution--the "balancing out" of wrongdoing by doing harm to the offender. (It is definitely not synonymous with retribution, as I explored in a previous post, but does see retribution as the appropriate punishment for wrongdoing)

Retributive justice is the pattern laid down in Exodus 21:23-25 and all over the law. The main theme of the books of prophecy is the prediction and enaction of God's retributive justice against the nations for their sins. As I mentioned before, this retribution is largely temporal, consisting of physical harm, death, and destruction. In the New Testament, retributive justice takes on a more eschatological flavor. Jesus declares that the wicked will depart from Him into an "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41) and revelation 20:11-15 similarly depicts a judgment for those who have already died.

And yet rehabilitation (the restoration of sinners from their state of wrongdoing) is also a prominent theme in the Bible. Obviously it is the core of the gospel message and many posts could be written about all the ways rehabilitation is seen in the New Testament, but even Old Testament books of prophecy like Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and Zephaniah end not with punishment but with promises of restoration to Israel's former state of favor. So which is it--is God primarily retributive or rehabilitative when it comes to dealing with sin?

The answer is that forgiveness for sin (and rehabilitation through it) is conditioned by God on something in us--call it faith, repentance, "turning from sin", our forgiving of others, etc. This is how forgiveness works between us and others, and between God and us. We are repeatedly called to imitate God by forgiving others as He forgave us; reflecting His forgiveness is part of our role as divine image-bearers. Punishment is what happens when the condition for forgiveness--repentance--is not met, and God continues to count our sins against us. A murderer who refuses to be rehabilitated, who continues to think of himself as a murderer and kill people, is very unlikely to ever be rehabilitated and will instead accrue a good deal more punishment for himself. Similarly, we can't expect God to be able rehabilitate unrepentant sinners because rehabilitation is not a passive process, but requires the cooperation of the one forgiven.

Now contrast this short Biblical take on punishment/retribution and forgiveness/rehabilitation with the view of western culture. We skew far, far towards valuing rehabilitation over retribution. By way of modern example, Norway's prison system, which has a maximum sentence of 21 years and is highly focused on rehabilitation of prisoners, is seen positively as highly progressive (mass shooters aside) and has been showing excellent results in re-offending rates. On the other hand, consider the outcry over the man in Saudi Araba sentenced to be clinically paralyzed for stabbing and paralyzing a friend, a modern example of "eye for an eye" (or "spine for a spine") justice (later proven to be false, but still relevant here). This kind of "justice" is seen through western eyes as cruel, barbaric, or inhumane, even though it was considered progressive when it was handed down to the Israelites in Exodus. Again the question haunts us: is this view of justice, though apparently more fair and loving than a retributive view, fundamentally wrong because it doesn't match how God "does" justice?

Judgment, deferred

I don't think so. The reason is that God has a self-declared monopoly on the kind of judging that goes on in the end of Revelation. (Romans 12:19, Hebrews 10:30, James 4:12) Indeed, we are told not to judge (others) or we will also be judged (by God), an inversion of the command to forgive others as we have been forgiven by God. Though, interestingly, the New Testament also mentions that believers will be given authority and wisdom to make God's judgments (1 Corinthians 6:2-3, Revelation 20:4), so the command not to judge is qualified by "yet" (1 Corinthians 4:5). This verse also mentions the reason we're supposed to defer judgment to God: "He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart"--valuable information for making sound judgments that currently only He has.

In a nutshell, we don't need to ensure that perfect justice gets done because God will be the one to do so. Instead, we are to freely forgive others as He forgave us. But we can't allow our lack of responsibility for retributive judgment to lead us to forget that it is, in the end, necessary. This is especially true in our culture that sees people as having intrinsic value and rights, not intrinsic evil. In America we aren't all alike under sin, we're innocent until proven guilty (probably of some nasty crime you haven't committed that the media makes a big deal out of). We are all given a chance at rehabilitation through the Gospel, but by the same token we can't expect rehabilitation if we reject this chance.

Is forgiveness a limited-time offer?

So hopefully this shows how we as Christians can affirm the value of forgiveness and rehabilitative justice, even though God will display retributive justice in the end. But again, the nature of this retribution seems dubious even to me--how can God punish people eternally for finite sins? The "Hell-as-a-place" view usually gives the image of painfully contrite people screaming in flames, repenting their sins to a God who no longer cares or forgives. After all, how could anyone stay unrepentant and unregretful in that kind of eternal conscious torture? (More on the "flames" and "eternal conscious torture" in the next post) I personally don't agree with the answer I gave earlier, that our sins are infinite because the One they are against is infinite. I have really been enjoying this quote from the end of this Eastern Orthodox article on righteousness.

I had this brought home to me quite profoundly the second Sunday I attended an Orthodox church. My priest, Father Gregory Horton, had invited my wife and I to dinner at his home. As our wives worked together in the kitchen preparing the meal, he and I discussed theology. At one point, he posed the question to me, “Matthew, what is grace?” I must confess that I was a little put off by that. For a second, I felt, “Does Father really think me so spiritually immature that I do not know what grace is?” So I responded very quickly, and anyone who is listening to this who has had experience with Western Christian theology knows exactly how I answered it. I proudly asserted, and we all know this, right? “Grace is God’s unmerited favor.” Father smile at me, chuckled a little and said, “Why is it that everything is a thing for you Westerners?” I had no idea what he meant, so to end my confusion, I demanded, “Well then, you tell me, what is it?” “Grace, dear Matthew,” he replied, still smiling, “is the Holy Spirit.”
It was a revolutionizing moment in my Christian experience. As time passed, I began not just to comprehend, but also to experience what Father Gregory was telling me. The Orthodox Christian life quickly teaches us that God does not deal in things. Grace, for instance, is not some commodity that God produces. It is not something He wraps up in a spiritual package and sends to us so that we can open it up and apply it to our lives. The same must also be said for faith, or mercy, or wisdom. None of these are things. They are activities of God within the soul of a human being. Grace is God at work transforming me. Faith is the Christ who dwells within me, reaching out to the same Christ who sits on His throne in heaven. Mercy is God expressing His goodness in and through me. Wisdom is God thinking His thoughts in me. Again, this is so crucial, but it runs against the grain of this objectifying mindset that has determined, for Christians and non-Christians alike, how the Western world understand the Christian experience, and so I pray that those of you listening will really let this settle in.
Perhaps it will become clearer as we apply all this to the question of imputed righteousness. Just as with grace, or faith, or mercy, or wisdom, the Western mindset is at work here. It takes God’s activity of imputing righteousness and turns it into a thing called imputed righteousness. But just like grace, faith, mercy or wisdom, righteousness is not a thing. You cannot buy a can of it, nor is righteousness some sort of spiritual currency that God can apply to our account in heaven in order to erase the debt we owe Him for sinning against Him.
What is righteousness? It is not a thing, it is a state of being. Specifically, it is God’s state of being. It is not some thing that God produces. It is who He is. Righteousness is not even some quality or characteristic within God that He can somehow pull out chunks of and give to us to help us pay our debt to him, or use in some other way. No, righteousness is God’s perfectly humble, perfectly self-sacrificing, perfectly good, perfectly loving way of existing.

Notice the distinction: the western Christian definition of "grace" is "God's unmerited favor". The Orthodox definition is "the Holy Spirit". I'm not sure I fully agree with this definition, but it speaks to something else I've been concerned with. Theologians talk about spiritual concepts like grace, righteousness, or holiness as if they were spiritual "things" that could be quantified, and I think this betrays a wrong way of thinking about them. This translates to imagining sin as this nebulous, spiritual mass of bad-ness which we can't see or sense, but to which we continually add and which God will hold against us if we don't get it covered. I see sin as a state of being, not a thing. Our sin is infinite not because they are simply against a God who is infinite, but because it represents our state of separation from the infinite God. Without Him, we are nothing.

This clarifies the retributive justice God promises in the end times. If sin is just a thing we can have counted against us, there is no reason why people couldn't still be forgiven and saved from their punishment other than God arbitrarily deciding to stop forgiving people and let them burn. But if sin is something intrinsic (or not) to our persons, it opens another possibility. As 1 Corinthians 4:5 and 13:12 say, there is a time coming when the things hidden in peoples' hearts and minds will be revealed and we will see God face-to-face.

Could it be that at that time, Jesus' razor-sharp distinctions between sheep and goats, between His friends and enemies, will become apparent to us? Whereas now a person's attitude towards God is often muddled and convoluted, a mystery even to ourselves, it will become crystal clear; we will either love God with a love that surpasses any we've ever known, or hate Him like we never did before. And once this perfect clarity is achieved, there will be no going back; no one will change their mind. The current lack of clarity in our vision of God, far from something to simply be gotten over, should be considered an expression of mercy, because without it, everyone would just hate God.

That got really interesting towards the end. However, I have tried, as much as possible, to stick with the topic of how God's justice applies to the existence of Hell and avoid saying anything about the actual nature of Hell. That will be for next time, in what will hopefully be the actual final post.

April Fool! Or, how to spot bad exegesis

My Monday (April Fools' Day) post got some interesting responses. I was expecting general amusement at my series on Hell ending so unceremoniously with universalism, but a surprising number of people either were fooled or played along in case my change of mind was real. I don't mean to shame you, dear readers, but if you are taken in by a completely insincere post full of false teaching and Biblical mishandling and slapped together with no forethought in an hour and a half, that worries me. I haven't even read Love Wins and don't know any of the arguments Rob Bell used! In light of these responses, I thought I'd dissect my post as a case study in how to spot bad exegesis, since I understand its argument fairly well and can bad-mouth the author as freely as I like.

This is actually surprisingly simple. As I explained last time, the Greek word that is translated to "Hell" in the New Testament is "Gehenna", referring to a place of paganistic fiery child sacrifice outside Jerusalem. So Jesus warns in Luke 12:5: "But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." What are some other characteristics of this Hell?

• Fiery (Matthew 5:22, 18:9, James 3:6)

• A place of destruction of both body and soul (Matthew 10:28)

• A place of darkness (Matthew 6:23)

Well, here we have a contradiction. Hell can't literally be a place of both fire and darkness. What is Jesus getting at? I think these speak to theological, not literal truths--darkness as the absence of God's light, and fire as the destruction of the soul as the body decays.

Like any convincing lie, my post started with truth. I built off my word study of Gehenna in the second post of the series, looking for what Jesus and other New Testament voices have to say about Hell. The first problem was that I was being deliberately selective here about what I stated about Hell. As my friend Mitchell pointed out, I ignored any verses that mention Hell as eternal (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 or Jude 13) or a place of punishment (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 again, Matthew 23:33).

I also make an (I would say) unfounded leap from verses that speak of Hell as a place of destruction to Hell being a place of destruction (as in annihilation) of the soul. The view that the Christian soul dies along with the body and is subsequently raised with it is called Christian mortalism and is interesting to look into, but I seriously mishandled it here. This becomes obvious in the following paragraphs.

Here's the crazy part. God isn't just destroying the soul--He's destroying it so He can give us new life. 1 Corinthians 15:50 says, "I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." And in v53: "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."
In fact, earlier in v42-44, Paul says: "So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." What he is saying applies just as much to the soul. It must be destroyed in order to live forever--to be "saved through the flames" (1 Corinthians 3:15). It isn't pleasant, but it's worth it in the end.
But what about their sin? Paul covers that too! Romans 7:1 says that "the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives". Dying frees us from the power of sin, and we can't die again. Christians have already died to their sin by being identified with Christ's death, but everyone else still dies in both body and soul, as Jesus says--so that they can be freed from sin. Psalm 32:8 reads, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." This verse clearly isn't David speaking like the rest of the Psalm; it's a promise from God.

Here is where the nature of the post as a joke should become obvious. My assertion, "God isn't just destroying the soul--He's destroying it so He can give us new life" is completely unfounded. This was not a conclusion drawn inductively from scripture, it was me pre-emptively deciding the conclusion I wanted to draw about Hell, before turning to scripture to "justify" it. This "justification" then consists of turning to verses that sound like they could speak to my point and quoting them completely out of context. Paul is talking in 1 Corinthians 15 about the (bodily) resurrection of Christians, not of nonbelievers. In 3:15 he is not talking about salvation at all but about peoples' work building up the church.

It's interesting to note here that the New Testament writers themselves, especially Paul, are quite guilty of this kind of out-of-context quoting, which New Testament scholar Peter Enns notes extensively in his books. Some examples:

• Matthew 2:15 says Jesus fulfilled Hosea 11:1, which is talking about disobedient Israel.
• John 19:36 says Jesus "fulfilled" an obscure Passover regulation that originally had nothing to do with Him.
• Paul actually misquotes Isaiah 59:20, changing "The redeemer will come to Zion" to "The redeemer will come from Zion".
• The author of Hebrews similarly alters the text of Psalm 95:7-11 in 3:7-11, changing forty years from the duration of God's anger to the duration of His showing the Israelites His deeds, only to reference the Psalm as originally written a few verses later.

So we can't simply dismiss the kind of fast-and-loose handling of scripture I displayed as "unbiblical"; clearly it is, in fact, biblical to quote verses out of context to support your point and even alter them to suit your rhetorical ends, which I didn't even stoop to do in my post. So why are the Biblical authors right to do this while I am wrong? Because I think the apostles were inspired both by the Holy Spirit and by the realization of how Jesus Christ completely changes the meaning of God's history with His people. In addition to the original, Biblical-literal meaning of these verses, the apostles saw how they fit into the new "big picture" of Christ as lord, savior, and head of the church. Jesus breathes new life, new context, and new meaning into old words. In contrast, my hermeneutic was not based on my conception of Christ (as I usually hope it is) but on a deceptive, preconceived view of Hell.

The second part of the post used some similar tactics of deception as the first--starting with something true and agreeable and easing into a lie. Again, the rehabilitation-retribution divide is something I'm still wrestling with, and my conclusion might seem plausible even to me if I hadn't knowingly fabricated it.  My idea of how God progressively reveals Himself in new ways to His people is not without Biblical precedent (see the deeper view of the law presented in the New Testament, the increased focus on an eternal afterlife, the changing nature of the Old Covenant after the Babylonian exile, and of course Christ Himself), but clinging to the belief that "God and His word never change" is much simpler, so it's easy to miss this concept of progressive revelation and impose a greater unity on scripture than it really displays.

But, of course, it's also easy to take progressive revelation too far, as I did. The building of a structure or painting of a picture is a better metaphor for it than metamorphosis. Though we can expect to interpret and apply the Bible in new ways as culture and circumstances change, those new ways should expand on or illuminate what the Bible actually says, never contradict it. Like it or not, there is zero scriptural evidence for the Bible being like the Norwegian prison system, progressive though it may seem to us.

So, a few points for application (namely spotting bogus theology that people genuinely believe):

• Read critically. Be wary of trains of thought that seem good and correct but slide into untruth. This takes practice but is incredibly important, especially on the internet.
• When people quote scripture, think about how they're handling it. Look up the references and their context yourself. If something doesn't seem right, consult a friend or a commentary (I happily volunteer my own services for this).
• You've probably heard the anecdote of how bank tellers are trained to spot counterfeit bills by studying real ones intensively. While I'm pretty sure this isn't actually true, the metaphor still applies to theology. The best way to detect bad theology is to know what you believe and why, not just on the level of individual verses but in the story of the whole Bible. This is the focus on Biblical theology classes like at my church. It's a lifelong labor, but one that is supremely worthwhile--believe me.

Why the Hell? Part 3: O Great Love of God

Alright, it's finally time to finish up the exploration on Hell. I've done a lot of thinking and soul-searching, and come to some pretty remarkable conclusions. You may not agree with everything I have to say, but I truly believe I've arrived at a Biblical picture of Hell that is as complete as I can make it.

The Nature of Hell

This is actually surprisingly simple. As I explained last time, the Greek word that is translated to "Hell" in the New Testament is "Gehenna", referring to a place of paganistic fiery child sacrifice outside Jerusalem. So Jesus warns in Luke 12:5: "But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." What are some other characteristics of this Hell?

• Fiery (Matthew 5:22, 18:9, James 3:6)
• A place of destruction of both body and soul (Matthew 10:28)
• A place of darkness (Matthew 6:23)

Well, here we have a contradiction. Hell can't literally be a place of both fire and darkness. What is Jesus getting at? I think these speak to theological, not literal truths--darkness as the absence of God's light, and fire as the destruction of the soul as the body decays.

Here's the crazy part. God isn't just destroying the soul--He's destroying it so He can give us new life. 1 Corinthians 15:50 says, "I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." And in v53: "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."

In fact, earlier in v42-44, Paul says: "So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." What he is saying applies just as much to the soul. It must be destroyed in order to live forever--to be "saved through the flames" (1 Corinthians 3:15). It isn't pleasant, but it's worth it in the end.

But what about their sin? Paul covers that too! Romans 7:1 says that "the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives". Dying frees us from the power of sin, and we can't die again. Christians have already died to their sin by being identified with Christ's death, but everyone else still dies in both body and soul, as Jesus says--so that they can be freed from sin. Psalm 32:8 reads, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." This verse clearly isn't David speaking like the rest of the Psalm; it's a promise from God.

God's Motives

Throughout scripture we see God revealing Himself more and more to His people as they grow in spiritual maturity and wisdom. As their understanding of Him, of righteousness, and of sin continue, He continues to move ahead of them, drawing them to greater understanding of Himself. As I observed last time, our conception of justice has evolved considerably since the first century. Rehabilitating wrongdoers is now seen as more just and more loving than simply punishing them.

So I believe God, continuing to be vastly beyond us in righteousness, is not "challenging" us to revert back to a retributive model of justice. The purpose of His destroying sinners' souls and raising them to life again is that they can be made perfect, without stain or blemish (Colossians 1:22), fit to enter His kingdom. Death, either through Christ or through Hell, is an essential step of that rehabilitation.

Friends, God is simply too powerful and too loving (2 Peter 3:9) to let any soul slip through His fingers. Whether through Christ or through the fire of Hell, He will bring every last one of us to repentance and a glorious, perfect new life with Him. Yet this shouldn't be a damper to missions, but should drive us to seek to hasten the coming of God's new kingdom! Rejoice in the God who makes all things new under Christ (Ephesians 1:10)!

Author's note: In case it wasn't already obvious, this post is an April Fool's Day joke and I haven't really become a universalist.

Why the Hell? Part 2: A tour of afterlives

This is part two of a four-post series on Hell. One Three Four

This is going to be a pretty fun post. I'm going to investigate some of the cultural and mythological lines of thinking, besides the Bible itself, that have helped to shape our modern understanding of Hell. Three mythological underworlds have done so: Sheol, the Hebrew underworld; Hades, the Greek underworld; and Hel, the Norse underworld. Also, the valley of Gehenna is an important part of the cultural background for Jesus' teaching on Hell and the writings of the poets Dante and Milton have been critical in the evolution of how the church has viewed Hell.

Sheol

Sheol is the underworld of the Old Testament, variously translated as "the grave", "the dead", or in the KJV, "Hell". It's used 66 times in 64 verses in the OT. In keeping with the view of the cosmos in my post on evolution, it was thought to be underground, so people spoke of going "down to Sheol". (Genesis 37:35, Job 17:16) It was a dark, still place, cut off from God and the light. Souls in Sheol were thought to have no personality, thought, strength, or ability to praise God in Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:10, Isaiah 38:18) Still, these "shades" could be summoned to commune with the living (1 Samuel 28).

Sheol was generally seen as a universal, morally netural destination for the righteous and the wicked; the Jewish eschatological hope was temporal, not for any eternal paradise after death. The wrath of God was manifested not in any punishment in Sheol itself but in His violently sending people there, as in Numbers 16:33 where God shows His displeasure with the rebelling Korahites by sending them "down alive into Sheol", i.e. causing the earth to shallow them.

Nonetheless, we do see some glimmers of hope for life after death in the Old Testament in the form of redemption of the soul or spirit, if not the body, from Sheol (Psalm 16:10, 49:15, Hosea 13:14) In the intertestamental period, a shift in thinking led to Sheol having separate compartments or being seen as the destination only for the wicked, with the righteous going to "Abraham's side" (Luke 16:22) or even the belief that Abraham stood at the gates of Sheol preventing any circumcised man from entering.

Hades

Hades is, of course, the Greek underworld, and would have been well-known in the Hellenized Judea that Jesus lived in. If you're a nerd like me who grew up with an illustrated book of Greek mythology, you probably already know all about Hades. Like in Sheol, souls in Hades were senseless and weak, drifting around like leaves on the wind and living an afterlife similar to on earth but drained of its joys and the ability to change. Obviously Jesus' use of the term doesn't mean that all the Greek myths are true; He was simply teaching His audience using concepts they were already familiar with.

"Hades" is used to translate the Hebrew "Sheol" in the Septuagint and in the New Testament, where it is mentioned 10 times. As such, it is used semi-analogously to Sheol as a synonym for death (see Revelation, where "death and Hades" are paired four times). Still, it is definitely not a universal destination and is seen as being a place for the wicked (Luke 16:23, Matthew 11:23). In Acts 2 Peter explains how Psalm 16:8-11 prefigures God raising Christ from the dead, not only in spirit but bodily. 2 Peter 2:4 also mentions Tartarus, the abyss below Hades that served as a prison for the titans and other enemies of the gods, as the place God sent the rebellious angels.

Gehenna

Gehenna is not a myth; it is a historical place, a valley just to the south of Jerusalem. Gehenna, the English version of γεεννα, is just the New Testament version of the Old Testament "valley of the [son/children] of Hinnom". This valley is mentioned 13 times in 11 verses in the Old Testament, never positively.

The Hebrews viewed the valley of Hinnom (or Topheth, a place in it) as a place of paganistic idolatry and abomination, where other nations would sacrifice their children in fire to the gods. The people of Judah are later seen to do the same thing, to their condemnation. Besides these usages, the interesting ones are Jeremiah 7:32 and 19:6, where God promises that the Valley of Hinnom will become the Valley of Slaughter, a place of horrifying judgment and wrath on the godless. 7:30-34 reads:

“For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the LORD. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.

And 19:1-7:

Thus says the LORD, “Go, buy a potter’s earthenware flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, and go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you. You shall say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind— therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its wounds. And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.’

In the New Testament, Gehenna is mentioned 12 times, 11 by Jesus and once by James, frequently associated with fire, and is always translated to "Hell" in English. We should not, as (apparently my favorite figure in modern Christianity) Rob Bell did, assume that Jesus is using the word literally, as if it is better to cut off your hand than to take a trip to the Valley of Hinnom. Nor does it seem likely that He specifically meant a return to the child-burning that took place there. It is overwhelmingly likely to me that when Jesus said "Gehenna", He was using it in the eschatological sense of the above passages, as a place of terrible divine wrath and judgment.

I think the significance of the fact that Jesus' word for Hell had such significant historical connotations for His listeners (Jewish listeners) is commonly understated. And there are more questions: was Jesus using "Hades" and "Gehenna" interchangeably, or did He have separate conceptions of the two that we have since lost? (The KJV translates "Sheol", "Hades", and "Gehenna" all to "Hell", and I think that Christians with more modern translations still think of them as all being equivalent to Hell) Or could it have been context-dependant, with "Hades" substituted when speaking to more Hellenistic gentile audiences?

I don't think the difference between Hades and Gehenna was simply Jesus' audience. In Matthew 16:18, after Peter's confession that He is the Christ, Jesus says, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of [Hades] shall not prevail against it." If Hades was just Jesus' Greek version of Gehenna, why did He use the word when speaking in private with His disciples, all of whom were Jewish? And He also uses "Hades" in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31, told to the Pharisees. So, it seems that our modern view of "Hell" may include Biblical teachings on both Hades and Gehenna. More on this distinction in the next post.

Hel

The Norse mythological underworld of Hel, ruled by the giantess of the same name, was not developed until well after the Bible was written and of course no one in the New Testament period had any knowledge of it. I only include it because, obviously, it is the origin of our English word "Hell", which indicates a connection worth looking into. Hel is just one part of the larger body of Norse belief about the afterlife. Norse paganism doesn't distinguish between the righteous and the wicked so much as between causes of death. Those who died "honorably" in battle were thought to go to the hall of Valhalla or the field Fólkvangr; Hel was reserved for those who died ignobly or old age or disease. Elsewhere, though, evil men are also said to go to Hel; the myths don't make much of an attempt to establish a consistent "doctrine of Hel".

One of the major myths in which Hel appears is in the death of the god Baldr. After he is killed by Loki's treachery, his brother, Hermod, is sent on the eight-legged horse Sleipnir to retrieve him from Hel. The Swedish "viking metal" band Amon Amarth, which draws much of its lyrical inspiration from Norse mythology (and the rest from Viking history), has done an excellent song about this story, in which Hermod gives this description of his journey to Hel:

Wailing voices on the wind
Urging me to turn
Distant tortured screams
Cold blue fires burn
I hear the sound of river Gjöll
Running cold and deep
Its golden bridge shines in the dark
The bridge that Móðguð keeps

These verses reflect Hel's overlap with Niflheim, the primordial world of ice containing nine frozen rivers. It's hard to see how Hel relates to the Christian Hell, being frozen instead of burning and reachable by horse, but it at least reflects the Germanic mindset towards the afterlife from which our modern, western culture partially arose, similar to the polytheistic background we set Old Testament Yawhism against.

Milton and Dante

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1261-1325) and the English writer John Milton (1608-1624) have been hugely influential in shaping and defining the common western view of Hell with their epics The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost, respectively.

The Divine Comedy describes an allegorical from Hell to Purgatory to Heaven, with Virgil acting as Dante's guide. In the first part, Inferno, Dante describes a Hell with an intricate geography divided into nine circles, each for a different kind of sinner and representing varying levels of punishment. In the outermost circle, Limbo, reside the unbaptized and "virtuous pagans" like Virgil himself and is really more of a deficient version of Heaven for those who avoided lives of sin but were not baptized into Christ. (Obviously this clashes pretty strongly with Protestant theology where you're either for or against Jesus)

Beyond that the circles correspond to various sins like lust, anger, and fraud, and the sinners therein are punished poetically in ways that fit their sins; the wrathful continue to fight each other or lie sullen underwater in a black marsh; fortune-tellers are forced to walk with their heads on backwards so they can't see ahead; thieves have their identities stolen as they are pursued by snakes and transformed into various forms. The lowest circle is not burning but frozen, where traitors are encased in ice. In the very center is Satan himself, not the ruler of Hell but just another prisoner, encased in ice to the waist and chewing on Brutus, Cassius (two of the conspirators against Caesar), and Judas Iscariot.

Paradise Lost opens in Hell, where Satan has just been cast down after his unsuccessful rebellion against God. Milton describes Hell through Satan's eyes:

At once, as far as angels' ken, he views
The dismal situation, waste and wild:
A horrible dungeon, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flam'd; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible,
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades,
Where peace and rest can never dwell; hope never comes
That comes to all: but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed',
Such place eternal justice has prepar'd
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness; and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
O how unlike the place from which they fell!

The description of a fiery Hell obviously contrasts with Dante's description of Satan as encased in ice, and in this depiction Satan, though nominally a prisoner in Hell, does set himself up as its ruler to plan his revenge against God, saying it's "better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven".

As Paradise Lost only covers the events up until the fall of man, no people are depicted in Hell, but the classic elements are there: a terrible, hopeless dungeon, pitch-dark yet eternally burning whence God casts the rebellious. This description (minus the pitch dark; no one seems to know how to draw dark flames), along with The Divine Comedy's theme of differing degrees of punishment and regions of Hell according to the sin, accounts for much of the popular conception of Hell today.

In the next post we'll start to actually put all of these pieces together into a coherent view of Hell. Note: I have no agenda here and still have no idea where I'm going to end up with this.

Why the Hell? Part 1: Two main views of Hell

This is part one of a four-post series on Hell. Two Three Four

In the Christian conversation on Hell, I've noticed most people tend to fall more on one of two sides (these sides aren't binary opposites but form two ends of a spectrum). Specifically, people tend to think about Hell as more of a physical place, or as more of a spiritual state. Let me elaborate on both of these views:

Hell as a Place

The short version of this view is that it focuses on Hell as a physical place to which sinners (those who inevitably sinned and aren't covered by Christ's forgiveness) will physically go (or be cast into by a just, vengeful God) when they die to be punished for their sins. This view is the one held and caricatured by street preachers who wave around signs bearing lists of sins with the message that if you have done any of these, you're going to Hell and need to repent. This view is the one that I often seen doubted, critiqued, and attacked; how is it just, people ask? How is it loving? Isn't it cruel and capricious?

Some examples are in order. Many more theologically conservative churches preach a version of this view, one of the foremost being Mars Hill Church in Seattle. In his preaching on Hell, Mark Driscoll tries to emphasize that Hell is not arbitrary or capricious, it's God's just punishment for real choices that you have made (but can't not make). In a sermon on predestination he says, "Everyone chooses Satan, sin, death, and hell. And apart from a new heart, that’s all anyone would ever choose." Or elsewhere:

Friends, here’s the bottom line. There are only three options. Number one, Satan chooses who has sin forgiven and eternal life granted. That means that no one receives grace. Number two, sinners choose who is to be saved. The result is that we all have already chosen. We have chosen sin. We have chosen Satan. We have chosen rebellion. We have chosen death. We have chosen rejection of God. We have chosen to be objects of wrath. We have chosen hell.
Every single human being has chosen. By virtue of sinning, you have chosen. You have chosen Satan. You have chosen death. You have chosen wrath. You have chosen hell. And the third option is that God, too, would choose. And that God would choose to save some. That God would choose in undeserving, ill-deserving mercy and grace to save some.

The message is pretty clear: we have sinned, we have rebelled, we have chosen idols over God, we can't change this decision, so we need Christ to save us from the wrath and justice of God by which we are headed for hell. He doesn't elaborate on the specific nature of hell too much other than the standard (of this view) description of it as "eternal conscious torment"--with the implication that this torment has something to do with fire.

John Piper falls largely into the same neo-Reformed theological "camp" so I won't address his view in too much detail separately, but a recent post caught my eye: "Every sin against God is a capital offense." The implication is the same: God, being morally perfect, is justly displeased and angry with our sins, so if we don't believe in His son He throws us in Hell. This view is closely correlated with the penal substitution view of atonement: God's wrath against our sin burns unquenchably, and unless Christ's sacrificial death is applied to us it will fall on us. John Calvin's former profession as a lawyer led him to draw parallels between God's condemnation and a "guilty" verdict in a courtroom, an analogy which has been held by Reformed Christians ever since.

Hopefully this description makes the "Hell as a place" view make more sense even if you don't come from it. Back to the challenges to this view, that it portrays God as cruel, capricious, unloving, or even unjust. Holders of this view would counter that God is not unjust to punish people eternally, even for a finite number and scope of sins, because of the infinite greatness of the One they have sinned against. As an illustration, if you punch someone in a bar you might (might) get kicked out, if you punch a police officer you'll spend the night in jail; if you punch the President, you'll be wrestled to the ground by the Secret Service, be demonized on national media for days, and possibly go to Guantanamo or something. So, by analogy, by sinning against the One who is infinitely greater than the President, you deserve an infinite punishment.

As for the charge that this view depicts God as unloving, proponents (especially of the more Calvinistic variety) would probably answer that, because our condemnation is justly deserved, God is not unloving or cruel to sentence us; He is just being just in accordance with His perfect nature. What is incredible is that out of the mass of sinful humanity, God would--in love--choose to save some. Again, by analogy, if a judge pardons a prisoner on death row and leaves others to their fate, none of them have any right to call the judge unjust for not pardoning them as well! As Driscoll says above, we have chosen and deserve Hell, and anything we receive from God beyond that is simply mercy. Besides, God has given everyone this life in which to seek Him and find salvation, so He is loving in that.

The problem is, these counters still aren't convincing to me. I have trouble making myself believe that we really can deserve infinite punishment for one (just one, the street preachers will emphasize) finite sin. The courtroom analogies not only impose a Renaissance/modern-era conception of justice on God, but they seem to excuse Him from needing to be loving as He is being just. I have already pointed out that we expect God to be totally just to everyone; we should expect the same of His love. Does giving people a chance to respond to the gospel and blessing them temporally really come anywhere close to matching the "justice" of punishing them eternally?

Again, if we use this picture of Hell to motivate Christians to evangelize or non-Christians to convert, it seems more like we are trying to save people from God Himself than from themselves or their sin. The primary problem of nonbelievers, by implication, is not their sin itself, which seems not so bad by comparison (swearing, cheating on your taxes, ditching church) but what God is going to do to them for it. We are convicted to minister to people and tell them the gospel not so much because of the innate plight of their sin and separation from God as because of His terrifying wrath hanging ominously over their heads. And this is dangerous to believe for us and for them.

One other thing: the horror and punishment of Hell are popularly depicted as being physical; your indestructible resurrection body experiencing "eternal conscious torment" in the fires of Hell--presumably wondering, "Why, God? What did I do to you to deserve this?". People think back to their most painful burn experience and extrapolate the implied horror from there. There are at least three problems with this conception of the horror of Hell as being primarily physical, with any more spiritual kind of torment thrown in more as an afterthought (besides the apparent cruelty):

• It's based on an understanding of justice as being primarily retributive, whereas in western culture (particularly in Europe) we tend to see rehabilitation as the point of punishment. This view on justice is, I think, what prompts Christian universalists to believe that the imagery of Hell depicts a temporary destination after which everyone will, ultimately, be "rehabilitated" to believe in God and reach Heaven. This take on salvation is, of course, rejected by orthodox Christians, but it raises the question: is our view of justice as being rehabilitative, loving and advanced though it seems (look at the example we make of Norway), unbiblical or wrong? Or should our changed perspective on the nature and point of punishment lead us to a different take on Hell than the one held by first-century Christians? Does our perspective on justice need to go back before it can go forward?
• The explanation for how finite sins can have an eternal punishment rests on the spiritual dimension of the sins, not their physical realities--you have offended an infinitely great God. Yet the perceived punishment itself--eternal conscious torment in fire--has little in the way of a spiritual dimension. It doesn't seem to fit the nature of the crime.
• Hell is depicted pretty consistently in the New Testament as the counterpart to Heaven (such as in the point-counterpoint in Matthew 25:46), but Heaven is not thought of primarily (if at all) as a place of full-body massages, four meals of candy a day, and beautiful music for all eternity; in fact, we rightly consider this view of Heaven as a place where you simply get all the earthly pleasures you could ever want as wrong as it is childish. If the main "point" of Heaven is not the physical reality of it, why should we expect Hell to be different?

Hell as a State

Perhaps in response to the difficulties modern audiences have with this conception of Hell as "eternal conscious torture", but desiring to take the Bible's teaching on God's justice seriously, other Christian thinkers tend toward a view of Hell that emphasizes its spiritual, not physical reality. In this view, Hell is a place of sinfully-desired, self-imposed separation from God. God doesn't cruelly throw people into eternal punishment against their will but simply allows them to forever walk away from Him, to their own damnation.

The best-known proponent of this view is, of course, C.S. Lewis, who describes it with the most detail in his classic, The Great Divorce, which I summarize in one of my first few posts. In it he depicts Hell as an endlessly sprawling, decaying city absent any of the light of God we see in the real world, full of bitter people degenerating into mere oblivion. The inhabitants of this Hell are able to take a bus trip to Heaven, but even when seeing it they almost all despise and reject it, preferring their own autonomy sinful habits to the surrender and humility required to live in Heaven. In this view, God does not shut people out of His presence, but they shut Him out of theirs. He casts his former mentor George MacDonald as the plot-exposing guide to the narrator, who says this peoples' inability to turn to accept God:

Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see.

And elsewhere:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'thy will be done.' All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No one who seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

The Tim Keller video posted in the comments to my prelude to this series gives another, more modern exposition of this view. Weaving together diverse sources from Kierkegaard to The Iron Giant and taking both C.S. Lewis' writing and Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) as jumping-off points, he describes Hell as the eternal continuation of the self-chosen trajectory of sin and addiction to things other than God that we begin in life. His definition of Hell is "just a freely chosen identity based on something else besides God, going on forever."

The modern Catholic stance on Hell, written in the catechism by John Paul II is surprisingly similar:

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." (John 3:14-15) Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.  (Matthew 25:31-46) To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."

The Eastern Orthodox church has a very interesting take on this view: Hell is not eternal separation from God, but both sinners and the righteous spend eternity with Him, which is Heaven for some and Hell for others. Is the Hell-as-a-place view a uniquely Protestant phenomenon?

Obviously this position is much more intuitively appealing and seems much more sensible than the Hell-as-a-place view, and currently the one I hold is very much like it. By emphasizing the nature of Hell as something sinners choose rather than have forced on them by a vengeful God, it becomes clear that Jesus came to save people from their sins (Matthew 1:21) rather than God's wrath for their sins. The biggest problem of this position, at least to me, is that it seems to lack the kind of direct scriptural support enjoyed by Hell as a place. But is this because it is actually unsupported, or just because we're reading the scriptures incorrectly? That is the big question that prompted this series. Next time: a hopefully fascinating detour through some underworlds of mythology.

Why the Hell? Prelude

This post is another offshoot of all the thinking I've been doing on faith and skepticism. I'll be looking at one of the most common and influential reasons I've seen skeptics give for their rejection of Christianity: the doctrine of hell. People express disbelief, ridicule, and even moral outrage at the notion of a God who willfully condemns people to eternal punishment for the smallest infractions. How is this view of God just, they ask? How is it loving for God to torture people for eternity? How is anyone who believes in hell not just deluding themselves about God's essential goodness? For the next however-long-it-takes (I reject any notion of posting on a set schedule) I'll be studying this criticism of hell.

First, a disclaimer: conservative theologians might now be worried that I am trying to "water down" Christian doctrine or alter it to be more palatable to our modern, western culture and sensibilities. I am aware of the danger of this habit, especially considering the whole controversy over Rob Bell's borderline universalist book Love Wins not too long ago. In the name of peoples' sensibilities, various Christian groups have turned the body of Christ into a fun social club, Christian doctrine into an indecisive "conversation", God into a kind of cosmic Santa Claus who just can't wait to bless you with a third car, and Christ Himself into a blond-haired, blue-eyed patron saint of the American Protestant middle class--your homeboy, your pal, even your boyfriend.

But if we take from these examples the lesson that correct Christian doctrine must be difficult to accept and if it is easy we're doing something wrong, we miss the mark. Different parts of the gospel are difficult to different cultures. For example, as westerners we have a relatively easy time applying Jesus' command to forgive others (when the media doesn't go into a condemning frenzy) relative to people in collectivist cultures where grudges can last generations and involve entire extended families. Some cultures have more trouble accepting the fact that God forgives than that He condemns. If so many people are leaving the church and pointing to hell as their biggest issue with Christianity, we must ask ourselves: do they dislike hell because they have rejected God and the gospel, or is there something wrong with how we are presenting the doctrine of hell that is rightly offensive to peoples' consciences?

I have been realizing that my posts lately have been pretty difficult to read, both because they are a bit of an organizational mess and because they are roughly the length of my honors thesis. Like I did with predestination, I'm going to try and solve both problems at once by breaking what would have been a long post up into a short series. Here is what's coming:

1. Exploring the "difficult" view of hell
2. What we can know about the nature of hell
3. What we can know about the intentions of God (pertaining to hell)