CHAPTER 1
Hell HasFew Friends
"There is one very serious defect to my mindin Christ's moral character, and that is thatHe believed in hell. I do not myself feel thatany person who is really profoundly humanecan believe in everlasting punishment."—BERTRAND RUSSELL (ATHEIST)
"Even the most ardent advocates of eternalpunishment must confess shrinking fromthe idea of hell as continuing forever. It isonly natural to harbor the hope that suchsuffering may be somehow terminated."—DR. JOHN WALVOORD (TRADITIONALIST)
Hell, as traditionally conceived, has few friends, it seems.
Atheists find the doctrine to be a strong deterrent to theirbelief in the God of Christianity. Charles Darwin, a former theologystudent who turned agnostic, cited this doctrine as one ofhis reasons for rejecting Christianity. Darwin wrote, in his autobiography:"I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wishChristianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the textseems to show that the men who do not believe, and this wouldinclude my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, willbe everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."
Darwin's biographer, Gertrude Himmelfarb, commentingon the above remark, wrote: "There may be more sophisticatedreasons for disbelief, but there could hardly have been a morepersuasive emotional one."
Darwin speaks for many, no doubt, who would concur thatthe traditional doctrine of hell is a compelling emotional reasonfor disbelief. Defenders of the doctrine imply that the severestpossible view of hell must provide the best incentive for the conversionof unbelievers. On the other hand, we may never knowhow many people's conversions have been prevented by their reactionto the doctrine. Many react negatively to the doctrine froma conviction that any God who could concoct such a monstrous"remedy" for evil does not qualify as either good or just. RandyKlassen wrote: "It is claimed that Nietzsche, Marx, and Leninare among those whose revolt against the establishment and thechurch was in part based on the teaching of hell."
Some Christians might be tempted to write off the objectionsof unbelievers as being due to their hostility toward Godor their lack of sympathy for God's revealed sentiments. Such acavalier dismissal, however, would fail to take into account thefact that many fervent Christians, who love God and acknowledgeHis wisdom and justice, also express the very same distastefor the doctrine. For example, the following statements all comefrom adherents to traditionalism:
"No evangelical, I think, need hesitate to admit that in his heartof hearts he would like universalism to be true. Who can takepleasure in the thought of people being eternally lost? If youwant to see folk damned, there is something wrong with you!"
—J. I. Packer
"The saddest day of my life was the day I watched my grandmotherdie. When that EKG monitor flatlined, I freaked out. Iabsolutely lost it! According to what I knew of the Bible, she washeaded for a life of never-ending suffering. I thought I would gocrazy.... Since that day, I have tried not to think about it. Ithas been over twenty years. Even as I write that paragraph, I feelsick. I would love to erase hell from the pages of Scripture."
—Francis Chan
"There is no doctrine I would more willingly remove fromChristianity than [hell], if it lay in my power ... I would payany price to be able to say truthfully: 'All will be saved.'"
—C. S. Lewis
"The thought of hell, then, can carry no inherent attraction tothe balanced and coherent human mind."
—Sinclair B. Ferguson
As seen in these quotations, many staunch defenders of thetraditional doctrine of hell also express the revulsion they feeltoward the doctrine—though they also feel compelled, from theway that they have understood Scripture, to affirm and defend it.
Even stronger objections to the doctrine are raised by evangelicalspokesmen who have abandoned traditionalism in favorof some alternative view. John R.W. Stott wrote: "Emotionally,I find the concept [of eternal torment] intolerable." Similarsentiments were expressed by Stott's fellow conditionalist, JohnWenham:
Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice. It is adoctrine which I do not know how to preach without negatingthe loveliness and glory of God. From the days of Tertullian ithas frequently been the emphasis of fanatics. It is a doctrinewhich makes the Inquisition look reasonable. It all seems aflight from reality and common sense.
Another critic of traditionalism, Dr. Grady Brown, expressedhis disapproval in the following manner:
The doctrine of "endless punishment" has for centuries beenthe "crazy uncle" that the Church, with justifiable embarrassment,has kept locked in the back bedroom. Unfortunately,from time to time, he escapes his confinement, usually whenthere are guests in the parlor, and usually just at the timewhen we are telling them about a loving God who gave HisSon to die for their sins. It's no wonder that the guests runaway never to return.
Even traditionalist John Gerstner, whose book on hell revealsvery little in the way of misgivings about the doctrine, at onepoint exhibits the familiar double-mindedness of many evangelicals.Like other writers, he feels he must give the obligatorydisclaimer: "No conservative wants to seem to rejoice in eternaltorment.... It breaks his heart to see people perish by thethousands around him daily, even though it never comes near hisown soul."
On the other hand, he added: "[The evangelical] holdstenaciously to the doctrine for one essential reason: God's Wordteaches it.... If the evangelical will hold to God, he knows hemust hold to hell.... If he loves God, he must love hell, too....When Christ asks, 'Do you love Me?' He is asking also 'Do youlove hell?'"
This, then, is the awkward position into which the traditionaldoctrine of hell seems to place believers. On the one hand,the truth is to be embraced and loved, but on the other, it isuniversally viewed as repugnant!
Some traditionalists even affirm that God Himself hateshell. Charles Spurgeon wrote: "Beloved, the eternal torment ofmen is no joy to God." More recently, Dr. J.P. Moreland wrote:"And it's important to understand that if the God of Christianityis real, he hates hell and he hates people going there ... Godsays he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked."
As J. I. Packer said, "If you want to see folk damned, there issomething wrong with you!" What could we think of any manwho wished to see his personal rivals tortured without relief formillions of years? We might be able to find men on earth possessingsuch vindictive hatred as this, but, if we did, we couldhardly believe them to have the Spirit of Christ.
Yet, if the traditional concept of hell is correct, we mightbe forced to describe such an implacably vengeful man as very"God-like"—since God Himself, in such a case, would have conceivedand deliberately engineered just such a destiny for thosewho have insulted His own majesty. This statement might besomewhat mitigated by the caveat that God does not desire suchthings for any of His creatures, but that He has been forced tothis expedient, due to an element in His creation—human freewill—that has seemingly gotten out of His control, forcing Himultimately to adopt a policy of eternal hostility toward thosewhom He would have preferred to love.
The traditional doctrine of hell sits uneasily alongside thatother prominent doctrine of the Christian faith—the one thataffirms God's love for the world and His grace toward sinners,which was exemplified most vividly in God's self-manifestationin Jesus Christ. Christians who stand by both of these traditionalbeliefs (eternal torment and God's loving nature) have hadto find satisfactory ways in which to keep the two concepts fromseeming to cancel each other out.
TWO STRATEGIES FOR HARMONIZATION
One solution is found in Calvinist doctrine. This view holds thatGod does not really love all men redemptively, nor does He trulydesire to save them. God is sovereign, and can save whomeverHe chooses. However, He chooses to save only some, while passingover others, whom He could just as easily have included amongthe elect, had He wished to do so. It is difficult to say that Godloves those whom He has not chosen to save—especially if thisneglect of choosing them means that they will endure eternaltorment, from which He could have easily delivered them, aswell as the others. No contradiction must be assumed to existbetween God's vindictive wrath for the one group and His sacrificiallove for another. God loves His elect, and demonstratesHis love in saving them; but He hates the non-elect (Rom. 9:13),and makes that fact unmistakably clear by consigning them toeternal torment.
If this view is taken, it becomes difficult to affirm withScripture that "God is love," apart from the addition of somecaveat—that is, God is love to those whom He chooses to love.To the rest, He is apparently as unforgiving and vengeful as isthe most graceless character on earth. A being whose personalityis about equally divided between extreme love and extremehatred may well exist, but one could hardly explain why sucha bipolar entity would be admired for His grace and His lovingcharacter, when the very opposite of love burns in Him towardthe majority of the unfortunate people whom He has not chosento love, even though (unfortunately for them) it was He whochose to bring them into existence.
Those on the fortunate side of that ledger could be thankfulto be among the few who escaped this default attitude of wrath,and, when thinking only of His conduct toward themselves(which is how people often think), might regard the God whosaved them as a loving and gracious being. This would seeminglyrequire blocking out of the mind the fact that multitudesof others, including many of their own loved ones, were deniedthat same grace, by a God who could as easily have given it tothem, at no extra cost to Himself, had He simply been willing toextend His infinite grace more broadly.
What Calvinism gains in terms of affirming God's prerogatives,it seems to lose in terms of God's character. The Calvinistsees God's anger as being visited upon rebels whose rebellion wasdivinely ordained, and who are thus being eternally punished forliving in bondage to forces they had no power to resist, and fromwhich God did not choose to deliver them when He could have.If anything about this scenario seems morally objectionable, theCalvinist has one answer ready at hand: "O man, who are you toreply against God?" (Rom. 9:20).
The Arminian has an alternative solution to the difficulty ofharmonizing God's love for sinners with the concept of eternaltorment. On this view, God loves everybody and wishes to savethem all. Tragically, His universal love is thwarted by the freewill of some who stubbornly choose to resist Him all their lifelong. He loves them and would save them, if He could, but Hecannot save them against their will, and He leaves the final outcometo the individual's own prerogative.
This view may solve the conundrum of why a loving Godmight not save everyone (namely, He can't), but it leaves entirelyunaddressed the question of why a loving God, knowing fromthe beginning that He would lose most of those whom He loved,and that He would be obliged to punish them, would choose endlesstorment as the punishment of choice, given the availability ofother options.
Among earthly governments there are humane criminaljustice systems, which would never contemplate endless tortureas either a necessary or tolerable consequence for any crime. Insetting up the most ideal penal system that He could contrive,and being the most compassionate of all sovereigns, God mighthave been expected to adopt the most humane form of punishmentfor lawbreakers that justice would allow.
Arminian traditionalists bear the burden of explaininghow their system allows for the omnibenevolence of God whileretaining the most cruel (rather than the most loving) of all possiblepenalties for sinners.
SHOULD WE CONSIDER ALTERNATIVESTO THE TRADITION?
The ever-quotable G. K. Chesterton famously quipped:"Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of allclasses, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." As aRoman Catholic, Chesterton might have been expected to givehis ecclesiastical forebears (i.e., "tradition") a vote in determiningtheological questions, alongside Scripture itself. Protestantshave generally espoused quite opposite commitments, namely, touphold the sovereignty of Scripture over all other authorities—nomatter how many of them may be "voting" against it. It iseasily documented that, in every academic community—whetherof theologians, historians, scientists, or anyone else—the majorityhave very often been mistaken, and their "votes," in theirday, often stood in the way of progress toward more perfectunderstanding of the truth. Truth has never been determined bya majority vote.
The Protestant ideal, as stated by many theologians andclergymen, is to be "reformed and always reforming." This is anideal more easily affirmed than followed, since intellectual inertiais often strong, and the tradition is often embraced by thosewhose approval has some impact upon our social acceptance, ourfinances, our reputations, and our careers. To be "always reforming"is an excellent way to guarantee that we shall offend themaximum number of our conservative friends.
It is the heritage of Protestantism to cross-examine longstandingtraditions by appeal to Scripture, when necessary.Where Scripture and tradition fail to align, it is our acknowledgedduty to stand with the Scriptures against the traditions.Staunch traditionalist J. I. Packer rightly articulatedthe Protestant ideal: "We are forbidden to become enslaved tohuman tradition ... even 'evangelical' tradition. We may neverassume the complete rightness of our own established ways ofthought and practice and excuse ourselves the duty of testingand reforming them by Scripture."
The late John R. W. Stott, who was once, arguably, the leadingevangelical voice of Great Britain, confirmed this sentiment,namely, that "the hallmark of an authentic evangelicalism is notthe uncritical repetition of old traditions but the willingness tosubmit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical scrutinyand, if necessary, reform."
There are a number of reasons that a thinking Christianwould wish to know whether the traditional doctrine of hell isreally true or whether there is something more humane than thistaught in Scripture.
One reason, of course, would be the comfort this knowledgemight allow us to extend to others (and ourselves) concerningthe fate of loved ones who have died without having come toChrist. Paul says that Christians do not grieve the loss of theirdead in the same way as do others "who have no hope" (1 Thess.4:13). However, not all of the believer's loved ones are Christiansthemselves, and, if the traditional doctrine of hell is true, thenChristians can have no more hope or comfort at the loss of theirunsaved friends and family members than an unbeliever has. Inthe case of being bereaved for our unsaved loved ones, our faithhas not positively transformed our experience of loss, as Paulsuggested. If anything, our faith serves to make such loss moreintolerable for us than for the unbeliever, who may be obliviousto the hell into which their deceased friends and family membersdescend. Our loved ones' hell becomes our hell, as well, in ourbelieving that they will be endlessly tortured.
Another reason to discover whether the traditional view isreally true or not is that it has presented the largest stumblingblock to sensitive unbelievers (and believers as well) who are notas ready as some to see as a tolerable mystery the dichotomy of aGod who is universally loving but nonetheless willing to endlesslytorment His foes. To many, it is no "mystery" but simply"nonsense." As Dr. Brown noted above, the doctrine may be seenas the "crazy uncle" of evangelicalism, flying in the face of ourdeclarations of the love of God for sinners. To this, many evangelicalsmay simply say, "We are not obligated to accommodatethe objections of those who are God's enemies. They are boundto stumble at the offense of the cross, and there is little we cando to prevent that!"
