I’ve been following the recent chatter concerning the nature of the afterlife, sparked by the release of That All Shall be Saved by David Bentley Hart. In my Christian circles there hasn’t been a book on eschatology this talked about - controversial and polarizing - since Rob Bell’s Love Wins released over eight years ago. My thoughts on hell have changed over the last twenty years; much of the recent discussion gives me language and frames in which to discuss with others what is emerging for me as the key questions surrounding what I think about the afterlife. I’d like to share a few of those shifts - and questions - with you in this short article.
I spent the first 30 years of my life thinking Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) was the only biblical and historical Christian understanding of hell. Every single Christian teacher and book reinforced this; no doubt in my mind that ECT was concomitant with orthodox faith and practice.
I first heard about what is described as Annihilationism or Conditional Immortality (CI) when I was in seminary (15 years ago). Some well-respected theologians (John Stott & Edward Fudge, among others) were beginning to ‘come out’ as Annihilationists and I thought they were becoming theological liberals; why else would one abandon the clear teachings of scripture and the consensus of the Church for 2,000 years? But I read and listened to CI defenders lay out their case and I was stunned: there is actually a solid biblical case for CI.
A few years later I learned of Patristic or Christian Universalism (CU) (or Apokastatasis, the 'redemption' or 'restoration' of all things). My first blink on it was that this is just ‘all roads lead to heaven’ sort of New Age pluralism. This is how ensconced ECT was in my beliefs. But I began to read about Christian Universalism - Robin Parry, Fr. Aiden Kimel’s blog “Eclectic Orthodoxy” (https://afkimel.wordpress.com), Brad Jersak’s book Her Gates Will Never be Shut, and a smattering of Church Fathers and George MacDonald’s writings. I was surprised by the biblical and historical defenses of it. In fact, both CU and CI have historical and biblical warrant.
So after much reading, listening, and praying I'm no longer convinced that ECT is the only defensible eschatology for Christians. Incredible how 'safe' it's become in just the last 15 years to openly admit that? It seems more forgiving today to hold to Conditional Immortality. Almost no risk of losing your job or losing credibility. Perhaps less so if one wants to confess CU.
Where do I stand now? I am drawn towards a hopeful Christian Universalist position (ala Hans Urs Von Balthasar & Brad Jersak). Even more importantly on where I stand are the questions I think are key in this conversation. Below I list them, with brief excurses to explore relevant topics as needed:
1. I believe *most* of how one conceives of hell comes down to how one understands human freedom and God’s goodness. CU posits that an ETC version of hell violates God’s goodness; ETC posits that CU denies human freedom. But what we mean when we say ‘good’ and ‘freedom’ determines a great deal of how one handles this apparent tension.
Questions on human freedom:
2. What makes human freedom free? CU’s argue that only when God has defeated all the things that constrain one's will (death, sin, corruption, rebellion, etc) can a human have any semblance of true freedom to choose God or not. Libertine freedom, then, doesn’t exist for anyone enslaved to sin; it only exists when one has been freed from it at the final judgment by Christ.
3. On the other hand, those who argue for ETC and CI argue that if God removes all barriers to God's will/love and human freedom - ie. the argument made by CU’s - then in a real sense God is ‘forcing’ you to choose him. It’s not true freedom if one can’t not but choose God. Both sides say the other compromise true human freedom.
4. So a definitive question is: what is human freedom? Is it true that human freedom is an illusion until God frees us from that which keeps us in bondage, as CU’s argue? And if so, can we ever be said to ‘freely’ choose against God? Or is every choice against God evidence that we are not free?
5. How we answer ‘what is freedom?’ and ‘how and when are humans free to choose faith in God?’ will determine which understanding of the afterlife is compelling to us, and which is unpersuasive or abhorrent to us.
Now to questions of God's goodness and justice:
6. Is retributive justice (which both proponents of ECT and CI contend) just? Is paying for temporal sin for an eternity through conscious and excruciating torment in any sense just? Is God glorified by retributive justice? Are the crimes and sins of finite, fallen humans against an infinite God deserving of unending punishment? And if we can proffer some system of justice in which this sort of retributive justice coheres, in what sense and by what measure can this justice be said to be ‘good’ or ‘loving’? Does retributive justice in this sense compromise God’s love or goodness?
7. How do we understand God’s wrath as an expression of his justice and love? Is wrath essentially God’s love experienced by those who don’t want it? (as the Eastern Orthodox maintain) Or is God’s wrath *different* than God’s love? Does God’s wrath, as an expression of his love, ever have a telos unto something other than restorative union? Is retribution loving?
8. If God allows those who reject him to ultimately fall into un-being and non-existence as those who hold to CI maintain, does this in some way indicate that God loses? That God doesn’t get what God wants (i.e. “he desires no one to perish”)? That death and sin and evil (those things Jesus conquered on the cross) are allowed to win in some way - or - take down what God loves as they are defeated?
9. Does the existence of an eternal hell in some way violate the 'restoration of all things' (Acts 3.21, Matt 17.11) because not all things are in submission to Christ? Does ECT validate and ensure the eternal existence of rebellion and violation of God's will in his Creation?
10. Back to God’s goodness: Why would a good God - not under any compulsion or need to create - create humans he knew would reject and despise him and spend an eternity suffering for it? In what sense is this ‘good’ for his Creation?
11. Why would a ‘good’ God (in any analogous way we would think of someone being ‘good’) create creatures for endless, excruciating torment? Is God more glorious and victorious and powerful and good if most of his creatures who ever lived remain in rebellion to him for eternity? Or if they all repent?
12. How could those in heaven know about loved (and unloved) ones experiencing never-ending conscious torment and a - still enjoy God and b - glorify God for that punishment and c - still in any way be called ‘good’ or ‘loving’ persons?
13. *The existential angst of this question came into stark relief for me as I watched "White Bear" from the series Black Mirror on Netflix. This episode confronts us with questions of goodness, retributive justice, and whether redeemed (or any) human could enjoy and relish someone's hell for eternity.
To sum up:
1. If ECT torments your conscience don't abandon the faith over it.
2. When I say *most* of it comes down to how we see human freedom and God's goodness, that is to say:
- Historically you can find arguments for all 3 positions; none have been deemed heretical.
- Biblically you can make a case for all 3. There are texts for each
One final exercise: On the importance of philosophical commitments for what we make of Hell.
Those who hold a voluntarist philosophy (i.e. God’s goodness cannot be correlated to our own, it is something different altogether. Ergo: What God wills IS good by the fact he wills it) may not see the issues of God’s goodness being compromised by ECT. Most people who are voluntarists don’t realize they are - and - don’t realize it’s a foreign construct to Scripture and Church Fathers. A decisive point in my deconstruction of ECT was reckoning with the extent I had imported voluntarist frames into my theological position.
To show how this is related, let me offer two pushbacks often used when confronting the truthfulness of ECT:
1. God’s goodness is wholly other than our goodness. We cannot make analogous assumptions from human goodness to God’s goodness. It may seem unfair or unjust that God would consign finite creatures who’ve committed temporal crimes to infinite suffering and eternal punishment...but that’s just because we have such a puny appreciation for how majestic God’s holiness is.
I realized about 10 years ago that: 1- You have to be a voluntarist to make this argument and I wasn’t sure voluntarism was faithful and biblical, 2 - I essentially had to *gaslight my own Christian conscience* to hold this position, 3 - Jesus *repeatedly* makes moral arguments about how humans interact & analogously relates them to God.I.e. "Who among you if a son asks for bread will give a stone? How much more will your Father in heaven..." When Jesus teaches using an analogy from human love to God’s love, his point isn’t that it’s wholly different/other, but rather God’s love is like our love but better. Not discontinuous, but continuous and better, 4 - How can I trust a God whose morality is so unlike my own that I cannot understand the meaning of a word like ‘good’ or ‘love’? If God’s acts make these words unintelligible to me, how can I trust - or even know- such a ‘God’?
2. ECT exists so God can more fully manifest his attribute of justice. The reality of ECT is necessary so God’s full glory can be on display.
This position hinges on the idea that God is more glorified by creating billions of people who will never love him & consigning them to hell than if he'd never created them. God in some way *needs* or *chooses* hell to highlight his justice. Without ECT God is 'less-than-God' in some way. I argued and thought this for quite some time. But again, about 10 years ago, I began to question the assumptions that undergirded this belief. I came to see this reasoning has major issues.
This can only be maintained if one has relegated God's love to a subordinate attribute to his glory/justice/sovereignty or love becomes an unintelligible faculty of God with no referent to human existence. And - one has to assume that billions of persons remaining in eternal conscious torment of God brings more glory to God than billions of the same persons worshipping and loving him forever.
So, to say, "Hell exists to glorify God (i.e. bring more light to his justice/holiness)" is to abstract God's justice from God's Being/Love and to divorce our notion of justice from God's justice. Again we see voluntarism at work to make ECT cohere for Christians.
Conclusion
I no longer hold ECT as a conviction because I believe it doesn’t cohere with Scripture, it scandalizes my conscience as a Christian, and the only way to not be scandalized by it is to adopt an extra-biblical philosophical frame fraught with complications. As I said earlier, I’m happy to be a hopeful universalist but ultimately leave the final judgment into God’s gracious hands.
Could one tackle this question by doing a comprehensive study of the role of fire in the Bible? Is its use restorative or retributive? I'm not sure who asked the question, but it has been asked: "If God asks us to love our enemies and he doesn't have to in the end, does it nullify the biblical claim that his love is everlasting?"
We've all heard the familiar phrase: "God is in control." However, if his love is un-controlling (Oord), non-coercive, requiring a response from us to have a loving outcome, does hell fit in this scenario?
For love to continue in the afterlife, we have to continue to be able to say no to God, otherwise, we are glorified robots. Does hell, as punishment for saying no, nullify the ability to say no and thereby nullify the potential for love in the afterlife?
Posted by: Johan J Tredoux | June 17, 2021 at 08:38 PM
Ect or accretions to Hell, Like Dbh overdoes, and characterized in his book overlooks a simple fact that the 543 Anti -Origenist Council ONLY says on point 9 : . If anyone says or holds that the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time, and that there will be a restoration of demons and impious human beings, let him be anathema..
All parroting of modern accretions of Hell is good rhetoric , but a waste of words
Posted by: Jeff | December 19, 2019 at 03:13 PM
I Find the conversation helpful, altho' am not sold on the idea(s) being explored. I also find some issues resolve themselves upon cogitating on God's final mercy - the wiping away of every tear in the next life. Ie, we will have no memory of the temporal peeps we are today connected with; but does this also resolve, in our limited understanding to yet one more monster-like cruelty? That's not my Lord!
Posted by: Steev Rush Garrett | December 11, 2019 at 01:23 PM