Hell And The God Of Love (2022)

HELL AND THE GOD OF LOVE

INTRODUCTION

The topic of hell continues to divide and confound Christians, and it is a topic that should be explored with open hearts and open minds. Let us not study the Scriptures merely to prove that we are ‘right’ and that someone else is ‘wrong’. In exploring the Scriptures that are either translated as hell or that are related to the concept of hell, it is very important to understand what the Scriptures actually say, and also to understand what the Scriptures do not actually say. To explore Scripture with integrity, it is important to put assumption and tradition out of our minds and, as it were, begin afresh in reading the Scriptures. As with any exploration of the Scriptures, we must remember that Scriptures written explicitly to Jews cannot be unthinkingly applied to Gentiles, and the other way around. We must also understand that hell is a topic that inevitably raises far more questions than it provides answers. Questions such as:

Does hell exist or does it not?

If hell does exist, what is it and what is it not?

What do the Scriptures have to say about hell?

What did Jesus say about hell?

Is ‘turn or burn’ hell-focused evangelism really the best way to make Jesus known?

These and more are valid questions that give us good reasons not to ignore the doctrine of hell, and questions can help us not to rely on our assumptions of what hell is or of what hell is not. The fact that Scripture apparently witnesses to the reality of hell, and the fact that Jesus himself taught more on it than anyone else in Scripture, mean that Christians are obliged to deal with the subject. How we deal with it is of critical importance.

OPENNESS

As stated already, we certainly must deal with the subject of hell on the basis of exploration and revelation, and not on the basis of assumption or speculation. One must certainly ask if hell is a subject in which a ‘right’ answer will ever be found – since, if such a complete answer already existed, then I am sure that it would have been uncovered long before now. It is also pertinent to ask if any doctrine of hell is truly of crucial importance to our daily lives? Is it essential to have a doctrine of hell to help us live each day as Christ’s disciples? And, if so, why? If a doctrine of hell is not needed to help us live each day as Christ’s disciples, then let us not treat any doctrine of hell as if it were of primary importance.

CONTEXT AND CULTURE

We must also remember that whatever Jesus actually said about the concept of hell was said to Jewish people who lived and breathed their covenant life with YHWH, and we as Western Gentiles barely understand about a covenant with YHWH – let alone live it. The context and culture into which Jesus spoke must be understood and taken into account if we are not to distort what Jesus said and did. Any discussion on hell must also take into account that, while it is indeed a Scriptural concept, many words in Hebrew or Greek may have been translated into English as ‘hell’ when, in fact, that was not what the text actually said. For example, Scripture speaks about a lake of fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels alongside speaking of a burning rubbish tip, and there is also the idea of a final and ultimate separation from YHWH. Are all of these and more to be understood as hell? Our thinking on a subject like hell needs to be sympathetic, gentle and free of dogmatism, for every family has their own personal struggles about wondering what may have happened to loved ones when they died. We must express our thinking soaked in compassion. Our thinking also needs to be informed, and not just something we think that we believe, although we are not at all sure why or how we believe it.

SOURCES

In order to help both our thinking and our understanding to grow healthily, the following discussion quotes many sources who are acknowledged in the Bibliography. The sources quoted here do not represent every thought about hell, and the reader needs to keep up to date with current thinking on the subject in order to maintain a balanced and considered view. The thinking here will give you some idea of the kind of positions adopted by the various writers that I have quoted, but it is always a good idea to explore all these writers (and many more) in order to understand the different ways of thinking and believing that may contribute to your own ideas. Remember, too, that the writers and theologians quoted here must be allowed to change their minds over time and amend the way that they thought, so one quote must not be seen as the final word on the subject from and any quoted person. Rather, you are seeing a snapshot of the way that someone once believed, and they may have moved on in their thinking since then. Those who are no longer living obviously cannot contribute to the discussion any further, but let us be wary of labelling people in such a way that we suggest that their views were fixed for all time. In any discussion such as this one, the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are far less important than simply being willing to listen, to receive, and, if appropriate, to change the way that you yourself think and believe. While the subject of hell is not a pleasant subject to contemplate, it is surely significant enough to make worthwhile all the effort that we may put in to learning and understanding.

IS HELL OBSOLETE?

It would be no exaggeration to say that both within and without the church many people – not just those who call themselves Christians – now see the doctrine of hell as indefensible and obsolete. They would hold that the whole idea of eternal punishment seems hard and unjust to human perceptions. Important questions are asked like:

Is hell a punishment, a consequence, or a choice?

If it is a choice, whose choice is it?

Why would the loving YHWH send people to hell?

Is hell punishment or annihilation?

Or is hell something else entirely?

Is there surely not a grave disproportion between crimes committed in a single lifetime and some kind of punishment administered for all eternity? Is it not enough that a person intended to obey YHWH and that what was done was done from pure religious motives and with a mind fixed on YHWH?

LISTENING TO OTHERS

Let us consider some of the thinking that some writers have with regard to hell. According to John Hick, since the sufferings of the damned in hell are interminable, they can never lead to any constructive end beyond themselves and are thus the very type of ultimately wasted and pointless anguish. He therefore believes that the needs of Christian theodicy compel us to repudiate the idea of eternal punishment. His position is that YHWH will eventually succeed in his purpose of winning all people to himself in faith and love. Hick would certainly ask what useful purpose could be served by YHWH’s sustaining the unrighteous in continual torment? He would ask if the concept of unbelievers being tortured unendingly by their Creator one of vindictiveness and cruelty, which is not compatible with the love of YHWH in Christ? Indeed, what then is love?

Love is the very nature of YHWH according to Scripture, and not merely an assumed attitude of YHWH. With regard to our human selves, we tend to regard love as something we do, but with YHWH, love is what he is. To say that YHWH is love may be a nice expression and a comforting thought, but the outworking of that love-nature is difficult to define and quantify. To illustrate the point, Paul, in his well-known passage in 1 Corinthians 13, writes more about what love is not, rather than what love is. What is abundantly clear from that chapter is that love is outworked and finds its expression in relationships, and love can only be understood in terms of relationships. Love means nothing outside relationships.

YHWH is love precisely because God the Father, Son and Spirit are, always have been and always will be, in love relationship. Yet love relationships always involve choice. YHWH created. YHWH caused things to be other than himself that, being distinct, they might learn to love him, and achieve union instead of mere sameness. Is the notion that YHWH the God of love must ultimately save all people flawed? Does love always get what it wants? Consider that, as Paul wrote, love does not insist on its own way.

If love does not insist on its own way, then another way is surely possible; not another way that is outside love, but perhaps a way that is outside the community of love. Human beings are not themselves love; they are, however, capable of love relationships. But nothing is guaranteed in human love relationships. There is always the element of choice with regard to consequences. A choice that can only end in one set way is no choice at all. When love presents its choices, they are real choices, with consequences that can lead to real ends. That in itself proves that YHWH is the God of love, precisely because he presents us with very real choices.

According to Helm’s reading of Scripture one’s location in either heaven or hell depends only upon one’s relationship to Christ. Is he correct? Is heaven or hell dependent upon a ‘decision for Christ’? Is our ultimate destination dependent upon the beliefs that we embrace? In our modern, distorted view of church in the West, we have turned Christianity into a set of beliefs, an intellectual or academic acceptance of facts. That someone should go to hell because they lack intellectual capacity is unthinkable because it is unjust; but everyone is capable of relationships, and so everyone is capable of relationship with Jesus Christ. Is hell just and subject to justice precisely because no-one has any advantage or disadvantage in themselves? We do not know how to reconcile divine mercy and the torment of the lost. But we do know YHWH.

Our disarmed faith knows YHWH, and it suffices, according to Blocher. For Hick, Christianity is one among many religious satellites orbiting the common deity, Christianity is but one way among many to the salvation which YHWH the God of love will ultimately effect in all. For him, the fact of evil constitutes the most serious objection there is to the Christian belief in YHWH the God of love. Yet the fact and nature of evil is meaningless and empty except for YHWH the God of love who granted his created human beings both the exercise of free will and reaping the consequences of free will. If a human being is to be a being capable of entering into a personal relationship with his maker, and not a mere puppet, they must be endowed with the uncontrollable gift of freedom. In order to be a real person, a human being must be free to choose and to accept the consequences that come from making a choice. A human being must be a morally responsible agent with a real power of moral choice, according to Hick.

John MacKenzie said: “Sin always brings evil consequences with it, and these evil consequences always react in some way upon the perpetrator.” Relationships surely bring responsibilities. Love relationships bring good consequences; evil relationships bring evil consequences. What is clear from human experience is true also for YHWH: Choices are never without consequences. If, with regard to hell, we ask how YHWH can turn his back on human beings he created, one must also ask how he could turn his back on his own Son – but he did – and by his own choice. YHWH apparently loves us even more than he loves himself. YHWH apparently loves us even more than he loved his own Son. When there was an incredibly difficult choice to make, YHWH made that choice in our favour. Therefore, Christianity presents us with YHWH the God who is so full of mercy that he becomes a man and dies by torture to avert that final ruin from his creatures, and who yet, where that heroic remedy apparently fails, seems unwilling, or even unable, to arrest the ruin by an act of mere power, as C S Lewis observed. Love cannot insist on its own way.

WHAT IS HELL?

Now we move on to consider what hell is, and what it is not. According to Paul Copeland, it is agreed by all Bible-believing Christians that hell is a place of eternal judgement and destruction, but this seems to be an assumption too far. Copeland maintains that hell must be seen as the creation of the God who is infinite in justice. It is, for him, the preparation of the wrath of YHWH. He declares that hell is the cup of the wine of the wrath of YHWH.

Some like Augustin, however, think it unjust that anybody should be doomed to an eternal punishment for sins which, no matter how great they were, were perpetrated in a brief space of time; as if any law ever regulated the duration of the punishment by the duration of the offence punished! Such thinking neatly ignores human experience where a brief act of murder can result in life imprisonment for the perpetrator. Nevertheless, YHWH does not arbitrarily stretch forth his arm like an enraged and vindictive man and take direct vengeance on offenders. Rather, by his immutable laws, permeating all beings and governing all worlds, evil is and it brings its own punishment.

YHWH rewards successful fulfilment of commandments and punishes transgression, according Helm. Quite understandably, Charles Darwin did not want Christianity to be true, for then his father, brother and almost all his best friends would be everlastingly punished. Darwin called this thought the damnable doctrine, which it quite literally is. There is, however, error at the heart of Darwin in refusing to believe in hell, for Darwin’s thoughts and wishes were self-centred; he had a vested interest. When YHWH gave his Son for the whole of creation, he had no vested interest; indeed, it cost the Father far more than any vested interest could ever bear.

Norris states that the fires of hell will consume all the false doctrines, the scandals and the logic of evil, but not the soul. But hell is not merely what we moderns might call a psychological experience of souls that is overwhelmingly painful. The demonic powers that have warred against YHWH will be destroyed in hell. John Wenham spoke of ‘being more than ever persuaded that the final end of the lost was destruction in the fires of hell’. According to Copeland, death is not simply the inevitable breakdown of a highly-evolved, complex machine, but something deserved because of sin.

The nature of YHWH’s wrath against sin is most clearly seen in the cross of Christ. He died as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Yet he also died as a sacrifice to satisfy divine mercy. He died for you and me. An older liberalism affirmed that the justice of YHWH was subordinate to his love, rather than co-ordinate with it. The ultimate effect of this subordination was the complete rejection of the doctrine of retributive justice. The danger here, according to Hart, lies in the suggestion that love and justice are somehow two separable quantities within the character of YHWH, and that the dynamics of atonement consist in some sort of power struggle between two distinct sets of claims within YHWH himself.

The view which simply says that there is a good God in heaven and everything is all right – leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil – that view is a ‘boyish philosophy’, according to C S Lewis. He wanted us to think deeply about this and not simply jump to conclusions based on assumption and tradition. Lewis goes on to make his position quite clear in this way: ‘Every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is; and thither he is bound; it is the place that justice, and God’s word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law assign to him.’ Copeland writes that just as it requires an eternity for finite creatures to fully know his love, so also it requires an eternity for finite creatures to experience his wrath. Those in hell enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free, according to Lewis.

We all have choices to make in life, and none more so that who or what we will worship. These choices have consequences, and love’s justice must allow these consequences to be reaped, or free will is nothing but a game in which all travellers arrive at the same place whether they wanted to or not. YHWH does not play games, and neither are the consequences of our choices hidden from our own eyes. YHWH’s goodness and his justice are both eternal attributes. YHWH’s justice and goodness are also infinite. Love and justice mean that a belief in a God of love is fully compatible with belief in hell; indeed, you can’t have one without the other.

One issue is whether or not Scripture teaches that the wicked are finally annihilated, resurrected to everlasting pain; or is immortality the benefit only of the righteous through Christ? Or, as Moltmann said, is it that the second death is ‘eternal damnation after the Last Judgment – the final separation of God from the men and women who are damned’? Grudem asks if hell is a ‘place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked?’ Is the last judgement to be understood as YHWH’s final and irrevocable rejection of some and his eternal reward of others, or is it an interim stage which prepares people for heaven? For Edwards, the ‘traditional idea of hell has been banished to the far-off corners of the Christian mind.’ Like Wenham, unending torment may speak to you of sadism, not justice.

Fudge believes that ‘the ultimate punishment of hell is total everlasting extinction’, while Bonda declares that ‘God does not have in mind the destruction of evildoers, but their redemption and healing; they will repent and turn back to God – Israel first, then all nations’. MacQuarrie says that the view he has tried to formulate himself is similar to the belief that ‘we survive in the memory of God’, and that God is gradually healing and transforming the past, so that ‘the past can find its place in the final event of the future’.

What actually is hell? The issue often centres around the Greek word aionios and its meaning – is it an unending duration of time or some unknown quality of the age to come? Or both? (Or neither?) Is the body temporal while the soul is immortal in either heaven or hell? What kind of hell is hell, anyway? Does Jesus ever encourage us to try and find an exhaustive answer to this question? Or are we trying to theologise something that is not for us to put in black and white theological terminology?

The notion that YHWH the God of love must ultimately save all people is surely flawed. Does love always get what it wants? As Paul wrote, love does not insist on its own way. If love does not insist on its own way, then another way is possible; not another way that is outside love, but a way that is outside the community of love. YHWH is love, but human beings are not love. They are, however, capable of love relationships. But nothing is guaranteed in love relationships. There is always the element of choice. A choice that always ends in only one way is no choice at all. Is death really the end of hope, or may we yet be saved when we are beyond the grave? How far does YHWH’s mercy extend?

If there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved other than the name of Jesus, what if we do not hear of him or receive any meaningful communication which may reveal him to us during our lifetime? If hearing the message of the gospel is the only way to be saved, what of those who are deaf and cannot hear or what of those who never hear? Is death, therefore, really the end of any chance of being saved? Or will YHWH somehow give us another chance? There are the issues (as explored by John Sanders) of Universal Evangelization before the individual’s death, Eschatological Evangelization after the individual’s death, and Inclusivism which consider a universally accessible salvation apart from evangelization; these are all attempts to reconcile YHWH’s justice with his mercy.

CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES

What, then, shall we conclude from all this? We all have choices to make in life, and none more so than that who or what we will worship. These choices have consequences, and love’s justice must allow these consequences to be reaped, or free will is nothing but a game in which all travellers arrive at the same place whether they wanted to or not. But YHWH does not play games, and neither are the consequences of our choices hidden from our eyes. I believe that a ‘conscious acknowledgement’ of Jesus Christ is not what rescues a person from hell and directs them to heaven in the way that some say, and I would suggest that the devil himself will one day make a conscious acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as the Lord, but not as his Lord. Such a confession will not help the enemy one iota, however, for the issue is one of knowing YHWH, not knowing about him. I have made clear that no-one can select the bits of Jesus that they would like to receive and leave the rest until later, and the sooner we stop giving the impression that we can do this, the better. I have shown that there is no agreement among Christians on what hell is or is not. There major issues here that we need to wrestle with, but we need to do so in love and vulnerability – not in arrogance and exclusivism. Do we take life in Christ each day anywhere near as seriously as we should? How we face death is at least as important as how we face life.

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REFERENCES

There are a number of words translated as or referring to Hell in the Scriptures of the new covenant, and I record here the words used and where they may be found:

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GEHENNA:

MATTHEW 5:22,29,30

I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

MATTHEW 10:28

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

MATTHEW 23:15,33

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?

MATTHEW 25:41-46

Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

MARK 9:43,45,47,48

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

LUKE 12:5

But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

2 THESSALONIANS 1:9

These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…

REVELATION 14:9,10,11

Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

REVELATION 20:10

The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

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HADES:

MATTHEW 11:23

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades.

MATTHEW 16:18

I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

LUKE 10:15

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades.

LUKE 16:23

In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

ACTS 2:27,31

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’

1 CORINTHIANS 15:55

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

REVELATION 1:18

I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.

REVELATION 6:8

I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him;

REVELATION 20:1,13,14

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

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FIRE:

MARK 9:48

And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

MATTHEW 5:22

MATTHEW 25:41-46

HEBREWS 10:26,27

For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

JUDE 7,22,23

Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire… And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.

REVELATION 14:9-11

Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, “Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.

REVELATION 20:10,14,15

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever… Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

REVELATION 21:8

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

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ETERNAL DESTRUCTION:

2 THESSALONIANS 1:9.

These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Augustin, City Of God, from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, in the public domain on the Internet at: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2

Jan Bonda, The One Purpose of God, (Cambridge, Wm B Eerdmans, 1998)

Paul E Copeland, ‘Heaven And Hell’, The Scottish Evangelical Theological Society, Bulletin Number 2, 1981

David L Edwards. After Death?, (London, Cassell, 1999)

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Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, (Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press, 1994)

John Hick, Evil And The God Of Love, (Glasgow, William Collins Sons, 1979)

C S Lewis, Selected Books, [C S Lewis Omnibus] (London, HarperCollins, 1999)

Professor John MacQuarrie, ‘Death and Eternal Life’, The Expository Times, Vol LXXXIX No 2, November 1977, pages 46-48

Júrgen Moltmann, The Coming Of God, (London, SCM Press, 1996)

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John S MacKenzie, A Manual Of Ethics, (London, University Tutorial Press, 1929)

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John Sanders, No Other Name, (London, SPCK, 1994)

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